[From Bill Powers (2011.09.25.0756 MDT)]
**This page was sent to you by:**marken@mindreadings.com
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[From Rick Marken (2011.09.24.1410)] I think this is a very good article
that is relevant to this group because the way I say “economic
security” is “being in control”. Best Rick
Yes, a very inspiring article, especially since I woke up thinking about
the same subject – where have the people gone in all these national
discussions of economics?
Consequently, I couldn’t agree more when you say “economic
security” is “being in control.” But I’d like to make that
more specific – it’s being in control of your own life, not somebody
else’s. Before my libertarian friends perk up and tell me I’ve finally
seen the light, I’m not talking about government versus people, but
people versus people.
It has seemed more and more to me that economics is not about “the
economy.” It’s about who gets to control whom. That question, it
seems to me, is behind every disagreement about how an economy ought to
be organized, or even how a society ought to be organized. Who gets to
say how many hours a day you can, or must, work, and how much you get
paid for it? Who gets to judge the quality of your work and either reward
or punish you for it as they judge to be appropriate? Who decides what
laws you have broken and what is to happen to you as a consequence? Who
decides whether you are a good citizen and may vote, or a bad one? Who
decides what clothes, if any, you will wear, or what kind of car you can
buy, or what substances you put into your body, or whether you can die
when life is too much to cope with?
In economics, the question is “who gets control of the way things
are done?” This boils down largely to the question of who gets the
most money.
Long ago, perhaps, money was simply a convenient way of providing credit
for goods supplied or work done. Without it, the same people could
provide the same goods or do the same work for each other, but the
impracticalities of a pure barter society or one based simply on good
will are obvious. You can promise to make me a pair of shoes if I agree
to read aloud to you every evening for a week, but how do I make sure I
will actually get the shoes? It would be fine if you would make me the
shoes because I need them, and if I would read to you because you enjoy
it so much, but this way of doing things requires that you know exactly
what I want and when I want it and I know the same about you, and that
each of us can do it without suffering any negative consequences as a
result which force us to break the agreement, or provide enough of an
excuse as soon as we have what we want. It’s much more practical for each
person to satisfy his or her (or both of their) own desires and
rely as little as possible on other people doing that right. There are,
of course, joys of community that require more than one person to
satisfy, but while that’s more difficult, we can work that out together,
too, without having to set up an elaborate system of rules that apply
rigidly to everyone.
Money is just a way to keep track of who has promised what. If you pay me
for reading to you, I don’t have to hang around barefoot until you
finally make me those shoes. Etc. Unfortunately, money is also one of
those programs supporting principles supporting system concepts that acts
just like the conveniences of home computing. It allows for fast and easy
interchanges of vital ideas, goods, and services between people, and by
providing that very facility, it attracts the scavengers, like bears to
honey and vultures to carrion. It attracts the hackers whose only thought
is how to better their own position regardless of what doing that means
for others. The bear doesn’t care why the bees made the honey; the
vulture doesn’t care if the lost hiker is really quite dead. If you’re
hungry, why not eat? The lower levels are working fine but there’s
something missing upstairs.
Obviously, if a person can obtain a great deal of money for doing no more
work than anyone else does, or preferably a great deal less work, that
hacker can drain buying power out of the system for personal use without
providing an equal benefit for those from whom the buying power was
drained. The balance of trade is upset. Furthermore, the possessor of
large stores of buying power can enlist the aid of those with less of it
by offering them some of their money back if they will make and enforce
rules that make the hacker’s position more secure. Simply by lending
money to those in need, at interest, the hacker can use the stored buying
power to make the store even greater. Of course it’s the hacker who
creates a good deal of the need for money, so this is a self-sustaining
strategy.
Inevitably, then, control shifts away from the people in general and into
the hands of the hackers. Once that shift begins, it is self-propagating.
Money begets money and power begets power. This is a positive feedback
situation which is stable only at the extremes. Every now and then the
changes reverse, and go to the opposite extreme, but if that is a low
point where buying power is threatened, the hackers go into emergency
mode and start the trend back to their side before the hackees can figure
out what’s happening. Note that “buying power” means both money
and using money to obtain power over others.
The solution to this systemic problem is twofold (at least).
First, we have to stop admiring hackers, however clever and talented they
seem. They seem so only to the extent that they appeal to the hacker in
all of us. We have to stop wanting to become rich, wealthy, happy
hackers, too, and thus applauding those who have done so and like to brag
about it. We can still approve of and seek happiness and wealth, but for
all of us, not just some of us. That’s the only stable state, the only
possible escape from cycles of boom and bust, tyranny and revolution,
feast and famine, war and peace.
Cycles like these are signs of a bug in the system, a design problem.
Simply trying to put the brakes on will not solve the problem because we
can’t keep them on forever and they will wear out if we try. Just pushing
back against the hackers will weaken the pushers and strengthen the
resisters and make the conflict worse, or bring down the system entirely
which is to nobody’s advantage (but that of the vultures).
Second, we have to understand how the system as a whole works. The role
of money in an economy can be understood by constructing a working model
without hackers in it, to see what the requirements are for stable
operation. Once those conditions are known, we can investigate how
hacking or gaming the system can be made somewhat unprofitable. If you
stand to lose by trying to gain abnormal buying power, why would you do
it?
Third, we have to shift our admiration to people who actually produce
things and ideas of use to everyone. It’s simply not true that the most
creative, organized, intelligent, and ambitious people are hackers. If
anything, the reverse is more likely to be the case, and the hackers
generally know this: they hire the creative etc. people. Creative people
will create no matter what their financial status; intelligent people are
not made stupid by lack of direction from outside. You can’t make anyone
have newer better ideas by paying more for them. The most you can do by
hiring smart and capable people is prevent anyone else from benefiting
from their work through confidentiality agreements and other
threats.
Fourth and last for now, we have to accomplish all the required changes
while maintaining what Hugh Gibbons calls “respect for the will of
others.” Not necessarily compliance, but respect in the sense of
admitting that everyone has to direct his or her own life by doing what
seems to be necessary.
A hacker is not an evil or stupid person, however often both adjectives
may seem to apply. The hacker is behaving in a way that seems to
accomplish certain goals. We have to continue asking “why” a
little longer than usual.
Why does a person want a large amount of money? One reason may be simply
to live better, to fulfill wants long unsatisfied. Perhaps the person
wants power over other people. Why does the person want that power? Maybe
because without it, the person can’t get certain other things – freedom
from control by others, perhaps, or influence over what happens to
himself, or admiration, or even love and respect. Any why does a person
want those things? Perhaps – always perhaps, because people differ –
perhaps because without things like love, respect, influence, and
freedom, one does not feel like a worthy person, a person deserving of
the good things in life, who does not feel secure in the present,
in future life, or, depending on beliefs, in the next life.
Who knows? We simply have to ask and find out what these people want, and
try to arrange for them to get it without doing the things tht tend to
destroy the economy for those at the bottom. Denying them what they want
is not the answer; the answer lies in finding out what they want and
making sure, as far as we’re willing, that they can get it without
thinking they have to control the rest of us.
I guess there is a fifth point. If a person says “I love you,”
that is nice to hear and gives a good feeling. But if you say “I’ll
give you ten dollars if you say ‘I love you’,” the same phrase loses
all its ability to satisfy. It’s just a way of getting ten dollars and
you have little reason to think that it’s meant. So just telling a
recovering hacker that you admire his restraint or courage or honesty or
ability to play a round of golf under 80 will not make the hacker feel
satisfied if he or she knows you have an ulterior motive, that you’re
just trying to help the hacker sober up and would say anything that might
lead to that end. If you say you admire, approve, appreciate, or
otherwise give a high grade to something about the hacker, you have to
actually have those feelings – you must really admire something other
than wealth, fame, and power. Insincerity is too easy to detect. You must
actually hope that the hacker gets what he wants – what he really
wants, not just the things that are only a destructive means to a
seemingly worthy end.
Discovering what a person really wants, and doing what you can to see it
is obtained, is the only means I can think of that might work. To do that
you have to change yourself, since you can’t change the other person. I
think one word for that attitude is love. Is that what that guy in
Galilee was talking about, or the guy under the Bo tree? Is respect for
the will of another what we really mean by that four-letter
word?
Best,
Bill
