The Economy Misconception
The Economy Misconception
The word ‘economy’ has become a misnomer. In the society that you are growing up in it bears no relation to the original meaning of oikonomia. Most of what we produce and consume is created outside the oikos, the household. Thus, the laws of the household, the original economy, are now irrelevant and incapable of shedding useful light on what is going on in today’s economy.
Perhaps a better term for what is still called the economy would be ‘agoranomy’, as in the laws of the agora – the marketplace.
Extracted from “The Birth of the Market Society” by Yanis Varoufakis