PRABHUPADA: Here is a revolution against this modern civilization. They are simply after economic development, and here it is condemned. It is condemned that this kind of endeavor is simply wasting the balance of our life.

Our false standard of living, no longer sustainable

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion
TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

Rethinking the economy with reference to Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam

More than 30 years ago, Srila Prabhupada, Founder-Acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, spoke of a coming collapse of banking and the need to revert to localized economies and how gold and silver coin should be re-introduced as counter-inflationary measures. He was not an economist or politician, but he saw through the eyes of Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam, the ancient Sanskrit handbooks for human civilization, and in presenting them to the English-speaking world, Srila Prabhupada appealed to world leaders to study them and take direction from them in carrying out their duties as heads of state. Now we see his words coming true.

Unfortunately, those leaders then did not care to pay any heed, and enacted policies that are now proven to be ruinous. Neither are our present leaders inclined to consider Srila Prabhupada's recommendations, though they are thoroughly bewildered, without any clear sense of what to do under the circumstances. The President of the United States (George W. Bush) could only signal that things are looking tough and that it will take some time to fix. The new president-elect Barack Obama is talking of creating new jobs and offering a timeline for getting the economy back on track, but stops short of spelling out exactly how. There is consensus among the pundits that the situation is looking grimmer by the day, but no agreement on remedial measures. Even now, when mainstream finance houses such as Citigroup—no more just the kooky libertarian ecomomists—are openly speaking out about an imminent gold rush and descent into depression and civil unrest or worse, war, those in charge hesitate to abandon the current system under fail.

Meanwhile the applicants for government bailout continue to queue up. The costs are totalling trillions of dollars, staggering figures that we cannot picture or comprehend. What is the worth of all that money? Where will it come from? Where will it go? Is it just disappearing again into a black hole, without any accounting?

Even as the seismic convulsions of the global financial markets are turning millions of people out from their jobs and livelihoods and hearths and homes, the government, under advisement from the very persons who have gutted the economic prosperity of the nation, hands out trillions of dollars in an all-out effort to prop up the illusory credit machinery that has come to be accepted as the economic model for progressive, modern, democratic society. It is something like the band continuing to play on even as the Titanic was sinking beneath the waves. The dollar is going down, and the money conjurers cannot save it, but persist in playing the game all the way to the finish.

And what then? When the dollar cannot purchase food, rent, gas, what will the people do? Srila Prabhupada expressed concern for the people who are living day to day.

"Mostly people, they have no provision for eating either today or tomorrow. There are no sufficient grains. Formerly even in the villages you would see that a common man has very good stock of foodgrains and cows. Formerly the standard of richness was considered how many morai, the bank... what is called? Where grain is stocked? Silo. So in India it is called morai, grain stock. And how many cows one has got in stock. Then he is rich man. Nowadays how much paper money he has got. Actually it has no value. Suppose you have got some papers. Each paper it is written there 'one thousand dollars.' But if there is no grain, what will this one-thousand-dollars paper will do? It actually so happened in the last war in Germany. Their money was thrown in the street. Nobody cared to take it, because it has no exchange. So long the paper money you can exchange, there is value. Otherwise it is paper only. But if you have got actual commodity—grains and cows—then you can eat in any circumstances. Never mind war is going on; you don't care. You get sufficient food. What you will do with the paper money? So this paper currency is useless. If the things are going on nicely it has value, but in times of crisis it has no value." (excerpt from lecture on Srimad-Bhagavatam 5.5.3, Vrindaban, October 25, 1976)

This is government's duty, to look after the well being and safety of the citizens, to ensure that their basic necessities are provided. Food production and distribution must be a top priority, ensuring that there is sufficient stock of food grains, and allowing export only when there is surplus. This much is common sense.

But there needs to be more radical intervention to restore confidence in government and economy. Srila Prabhupada's advice that government should stop printing more paper money, and should issue gold and silver currency runs contrary to the capitalistic free market that has been in place for the last century, but undoubtedly such a move would at once bring prices down to real value, checking inflation. Power of purchase would be limited to the amount of gold or silver in one's possession, and this would discourage hoarding or stock-piling and artificially driving up prices. It would also help to resurrect local economies, because monetary transactions depend on exchange of physical metal.

Skeptics argue that this is altogether impractical and would never work with the way of doing business we have become accustomed to believe in: credit cards, large-scale industry, online trading and FOREX, not to mention Internet transactions. How are you going to send your gold coin to eBay or Amazon.com? Clearly gold and silver currencies will not work for a global economy such as we have now. Indeed.

But what we have now is also not working. The world of magic and instant credit has wreaked ruin not only to the value of money, but to the core values of society. People have become habituated to instant gratification of their senses, and define happiness or contentment not in terms of what or who they are, but in terms of what they can buy. Those with more money are supposed to be more happy, but this is not the case, for lust is insatiable, and is only aggravated by feeding it.

Srila Prabhupada would have us back up and look at the situation from a broader perspective. Consider first what economic prosperity means. At its simplest, it means addressing the basic needs such as food, shelter and clothing. These are the basic economic problems of humankind. By utilizing the land to grow food grains and other essential commodities, keeping cows for milk production, extracting valuable minerals from rivers and hills, and by light industry not only can we produce the necessities of life, but enjoy opulent wealth. Three months of healthy, honest labor in the fields yields enough food to supply a man's family for a year. But the same man working in a factory or office 8 to 9 hours a day, 5 or 6 days a week, takes home pieces of paper, which he then has to exchange for his food. Whereas he could have been satisfied to pluck an apple from the tree in his own garden, now he has to get into his car, and risk his life on the road driving to the supermarket and back, and the cost of the apple is compounded by the cost of the gas and road tax and insurance. So what is the real advantage? Even if the money is much more, how many more apples can he eat? And there are fewer apples to be had, because the farmers have gone to the cities to work in the factories and office buildings. In Srimad-Bhagavatam human beings who spend all the days of their life working hard to earn money are compared to asses kept by washermen. The ass carries the heavy load of washing, all the while anticipating that he will be rewarded with a handful of grass at the end of the day's work, but it never occurs to him that grass is growing everywhere and that he could get it freely without so much endeavor. Working in this way, human beings are missing the aim of life, which is spiritual development.

"You don't require industries, trade. You don't require. If you have got land and cow, then everything is complete. This is basic principle of Vedic civilization. Have some land. Have some cows. Dhanyena dhanavan gavayah dhanavan. Not industry. There is no need of industry. Because you want some food, nice food, nice milk, nice fruit, that will be produced by nature. You cannot manufacture all these things in the factory. At the present moment, the big, big factories, they are the activities of the asuras [demonic persons], ugra-karma [terrible, harmful activities]. All the people are dragged to the city, industrial area, to engage them in the produce of iron bars... big, big iron bars, Tata Steel, iron industry, and so many other industries. Capitalists, they have drawn all the innocent people from the village. And they think that "We are getting fat salary." But what is the use of fat salary? One side you get fat salary; another side you have to purchase three rupees a kilo rice. Finish your salary. This is going on. Let them produce their own food. Let him have some land. Let him produce his own food. Let there be cows. Let cows become happy." (excerpt from lecture on Srimad-Bhagavatam 1.10.4, Mayapur, June 19, 1973

Srila Prabhupada points us to the Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam, which direct human beings to organize society in such a way that by working cooperatively they can fulfill their needs, and utilize the time left over for cultivation of spiritual advancement. But instead of making simple solutions to simple problems, we have made everything complicated. We have created an artificial standard of living, and in order to pay for it, we have to expend the better part of our time and energy working whole lifelong, and in the end, we are cheated out of enjoying the results we work so hard for, either by infirmities of old age and disease, or by death, or by government taxation, or by robbers or confidence tricksters, or by children and relatives, or by natural disasters. And instead of using this valuable human life to acquire spiritual knowledge and get liberated from the cycle of repeated birth and death, we are pouring fat on the fire of material attachment to this body and the objects of the senses.

Critics of the economic principles espoused in Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam cite objections such as they are overly simplistic and belong to the feudal era and do not take into account the benefits to humankind from industrial and technological progress. But they fail to see the bigger picture, that human life is an opportunity to once and for all get free from the shackles to material existence.

PRABHUPADA: Here is a revolution against this modern civilization. They are simply after economic development, and here it is condemned. It is condemned that this kind of endeavor is simply wasting the balance of our life. If one is intelligent, he sees that "I have got, say, ten thousand dollars in the bank balance, now I must utilize it properly so that it may not be spent," that is intelligence. Similarly, we have begun our death from the date of birth. Daily, every moment we are, our balance is being decreased. So therefore we should be intelligent. So long the balance is there, let me utilize it properly by which I can be really benefited. So the ideal of my benefit is that I'm suffering in this material condition of life, to stop this conditional life, to get freedom life. That is the aim of life. And that freedom can be achieved only by going back to home, back to Godhead. Not any other way. You cannot get the freedom of life here in this material world. That is not possible. Although you are trying for it. Everyone is trying to. So without endeavor for this purpose, if we are simply trying to develop our economic condition, that is.... What is that? Ayur-vyayah? What is that word?

STUDENT: [reading from the verse:] Yata ayur-vyayah param.

PRABHUPADA: They are simply killing the duration of life. (excerpt from conversation, Los Angeles, June 10, 1976)

Life is short, not more than a hundred years and for most, considerably less. Twenty years is consumed by childhood and youth, another thirty years consumed by married life and working for livelihood, and at fifty, the countdown to the finish begins. In this way fifty years or more are dissipated in eating, sleeping, mating and defending—everything revolving around the body and the pursuit of sense gratification. If we were to put it in terms of economics, it would be a very bad investment. Who will put all his money into a company that he knows is going to end up bankrupt? Yet that is exactly what happens to this body in the end. Everything adds up to zero. In the end, we do not own anything, but are owned by Krishna, who appears before us as Death. Therefore, we should invest our time and energy—as much as is not absolutely necessarily diverted to maintaining the body—for our permanent life as spirit soul. Without this, every other activity of the human being is a failure. The Vedanta-sutra enjoins, atatho brahma jijñasa: "Having attained this human form of life, we should inquire after Brahman." "What is God? Who is God? What is my relationship with Him?" These questions are what distinguish the human being from the animals, and are the beginning of Krishna consciousness.