66. What will be the dominant ideologies of the 21st Century?

Posted on January 11, 2014 by thormay

Ideology

The 20th Cen­tury revolved polit­i­cally around com­pet­ing inter­pre­ta­tions of Cap­i­tal­ism, Com­mu­nism, Social­ism and Fas­cism. These are all ways to orga­nize the lives of peo­ple on a large scale. Are real alter­na­tives or new inter­pre­ta­tions likely to emerge in the chal­leng­ing years ahead? What might they look like?

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The notes to fol­low were pre­pared for a Bris­bane (Aus­tralia) mee­tup dis­cus­sion group. They in no way rep­re­sent sys­tem­atic research drawn from a com­pre­hen­sive selec­tion of resources, although a small, eclec­tic read­ing list has been added at the end. The notes are, how­ever, designed to stim­u­late dis­cus­sion for or against the propo­si­tions raised and may there­fore be of some value to a wider audi­ence.

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Fine Words Are Not Equal To Fine Deeds

by Aesop (c. 620 564 BC)

Once a very good lion was king of all the ani­mals in the fields and the forests.
He was not angry or cruel or unfair, but only kind and gen­tle.
Dur­ing his reign he made a royal procla­ma­tion to all the ani­mals.
He laid out rules for a Uni­ver­sal League of ani­mals.
In this League, the wolf would not harm the lamb, nor would the pan­ther harm the kid.
The tiger would not hurt the deer, and the dog would not hurt the hare.
Every­one should live in per­fect peace and friend­ship.
When the hare saw this procla­ma­tion, she said, “Oh how I have waited for this day.
How won­der­ful it is that the weak will stand alongside the strong with­out fear.”
After she said this, the hare ran away for her life.

_____________________ Con­tinue read­ing →

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65. The Precariously Employed – that’s you, today or tomorrow – A Search for a New World Order

Posted on November 13, 2013 by thormay

PrecariatLady

This is a work in pro­gress. Revi­sion and exten­sion is likely. The topic is immense, but immensely impor­tant. Ideas and con­tri­bu­tions are wel­come.  –  Thor

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Com­ment

 

1. From the late 18th Cen­tury in Europe lead­ing thinkers became aware that the basic pat­tern of their soci­eties was chang­ing beyond recog­ni­tion. The changes related closely to the inven­tion of pow­ered engi­nes and pre­ci­sion engi­neer­ing, indus­tri­al­iza­tion, the move­ment of peo­ples from the coun­try to the city, the spread of edu­ca­tion, the Enlight­en­ment and emer­gence of sci­en­tific think­ing, and many other fac­tors. Over the fol­low­ing cen­tury ide­olo­gies such as Cap­i­tal­ism, Social­ism, Com­mu­nism, Fas­cism, neo-Theoc­racy, elec­tive Democ­racy, pay-as-you-go-Plu­toc­racy etc grad­u­ally became formed into polit­i­cal move­ments and shaped the world we live in today. None of them were espe­cially good solu­tions for human devel­op­ment, and the wars which fol­lowed in their wake were dev­as­tat­ing.

2. Most peo­ple today assume that the social pat­terns and ide­olo­gies we have inherited from the past two cen­turies are now set in stone. There is “no other way” they feel. Yet real human orga­ni­za­tion has con­tin­ued to change beyond recog­ni­tion. The Inter­net and elec­tronic com­mu­ni­ca­tions have altered the very way we think. The pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion of goods and ser­vices flow across bor­ders at ever increas­ing speeds. The mean­ing of money itself, how it is cre­ated and dis­trib­uted, is only weakly related to the finan­cial world of a cen­tury ago, though most peo­ple do not under­stand this. Con­tinue read­ing →

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64. Democratic societies are less likely to make war than dictatorships. What is the evidence?

Posted on September 21, 2013 by thormay

War-copterD fears the insur­rec­tion of my eye­brows;
Blow us away, my storm trooper of the army of dreams, 
Lay us out in rows to moul­der.
Who will be left in this Val­halla of brave poses 
To wash the dishes, com­rade,
When the moon sets over the crim­son grass ?

[from the poem, Fire­power, by Thor]

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Dis­cus­sion Notes (i.e. my take on this)

1. There is no uni­form pat­tern defin­ing what a “demo­c­ra­tic soci­ety” is. There­fore blan­ket state­ments about the rela­tion­ship between “demo­c­ra­tic soci­eties” and war are inco­her­ent.

2. Exec­u­tive pres­i­dents with author­ity to declare war may be less con­strained in some cases than prime min­is­ters answer­able to a cab­i­net and par­lia­ment. A cur­rent exam­ple: the British Prime Min­is­ter put aside his per­sonal pref­er­ence for attack on Syria after a vote in the British Par­lia­ment rejected it. The French Pres­i­dent was not so con­strained. The Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent, feel­ing moral but not legal con­straint, sought a Con­gres­sional vote. He was saved from humil­i­a­tion through medi­a­tion by a less than demo­c­ra­tic Pres­i­dent of Rus­sia. This cur­rent par­a­digm has been almost unique. Aus­tralia, Britain, Canada etc. have a record of fol­low­ing USA into wars of aggres­sion with lit­tle par­lia­men­tary dis­sent. Con­tinue read­ing →

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63. The Freedom Enterprise and Other Yarns

Posted on August 18, 2013 by thormay

Freedom-enterpriseThe very best social ideas are always a cover for the very worst behav­iour. That’s the story of ide­olo­gies. The rea­son is hardly a secret. Almost every known soci­ety has, and always has had, a rul­ing elite whose inter­ests only occa­sion­ally and par­tially over­lap with the inter­ests of myr­iad enlis­tees who, in one way or another row the boat of state (tribe, clan …) or are rats in the bilge. In other words, there always have to be two sto­ries, one for pri­vate profit and one for pub­lic virtue. In the last cen­tury or so democ­racy has been one of the hand­i­est pub­lic virtue sto­ries. Actual democ­racy is a very embar­rass­ing beast for elites, but they have become pro­gres­sively bet­ter at man­ag­ing the appear­ance with­out the sub­stance. Con­tinue read­ing →

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62. Economic Complexity and the Engine of Psychology

Posted on August 14, 2013 by thormay

Industry-GovernmentCon­text: The essay con­sid­ers eco­nom­ics as a psy­cho­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non with the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a com­plex dynamic sys­tem. It is an ini­tial and some­what play­ful explo­ration, not a math­e­mat­i­cal paper on sys­tems the­ory. The orig­i­nal con­text was a dis­cus­sion group back­ground paper which evolved away from its ori­gins. The start­ing pro­posal adopted (for argument’s sake) was that “the most eco­nom­i­cally suc­cess­ful soci­eties have always depended upon a high level of gov­ern­ment col­lu­sion with com­merce and indus­try, if not con­trol. This argu­ment is a way of say­ing that the “invis­i­ble hand” of the mar­ket is not enough to main­tain an effi­cient mar­ket, at least beyond vil­lage level. There has to be an inde­pen­dent umpire, or forced con­trol (dic­ta­tor, mafia … )”. It became clear that the gov­ern­ment-indus­try col­lu­sion issue was really a sur­face gloss on a much more com­pli­cated real­ity. Con­tinue read­ing →

Posted in competence, culture, economics, ethics, evidence, law, management, motivation, philosophy, politics, regulations, rules, truth, wealth | Leave a comment

61. Ethical Behaviour is Harder for the Rich

Posted on July 28, 2013 by thormay

Rich ethicsCon­text: The mate­rial here com­prises dis­cus­sion points and some ref­er­ence links for a diverse group of peo­ple in Bris­bane, Aus­tralia, who fancy them­selves as “gen­tle thinkers”, and who meet from time to time to talk things over. All kinds of things. The topic on hand, “Eth­i­cal Behav­iour is Harder for the Rich”, is prob­a­bly of inter­est to thought­ful indi­vid­u­als in many lat­i­tudes, so I am putting it online as a gen­eral stim­u­lus for some cre­ative dis­cus­sion. Any opin­ions expressed in this piece are entirely my own, and may be dis­sected with­out mercy.

1. This lit­tle essay is about (my ideas of) the behav­iour of the rich. Of course all kinds of peo­ple are rich for all kinds of rea­sons (ditto for the poor). Nev­er­the­less I will argue that rich peo­ple demon­strate ethics in ways which are con­sis­tent with broad human ten­den­cies. Depend­ing upon the social con­text of their wealth (e.g. cor­po­rate ver­sus inherited) that wealth might influ­ence them to exhibit par­tic­u­lar behav­iours. Yet those habits will merely be a sub­set of some­thing much more gen­eral. Ethics, at bot­tom, is sourced in the evo­lu­tion­ary behav­iour of the species. Con­tinue read­ing →

Posted in China, culture, economics, ethics, innovation, law, management, merit, motivation, philosophy, politics, regulations, rules, truth, wealth | Leave a comment

60. The Democracy Problem

Posted on July 8, 2013 by thormay

DemocracyCon­text: The mate­rial here com­prises dis­cus­sion points and some ref­er­ence links for a diverse group of peo­ple in Bris­bane, Aus­tralia, who fancy them­selves as “gen­tle thinkers”, and who meet from time to time to talk things over. All kinds of things. The topic on hand, “The Democ­racy Prob­lem”, is prob­a­bly of inter­est to thought­ful indi­vid­u­als in many lat­i­tudes, so I am putting it online as a gen­eral stim­u­lus for some cre­ative dis­cus­sion. Any opin­ions expressed in this piece are entirely my own, and may be dis­sected with­out mercy.

a) The Aus­tralian Con­text

1. Some peo­ple in Aus­tralia express sur­prise that “the future of democ­racy” might be raised as a dis­cus­sion topic. One remarked to me recently that there was lit­tle to dis­cuss. He was really say­ing that he hadn’t thought about it care­fully. In that he rep­re­sents the Aus­tralian major­ity at this point in time. Yet emerg­ing from a bru­tal prison set­tle­ment in the 19th Cen­tury, where peo­ple were rou­tinely abused, whipped, and hung to death, Aus­tralia was one of the first mod­ern states to achieve uni­ver­sal vot­ing for all men and women. Some­thing like civ­i­lized life fol­lowed. Adult Aus­tralians now are all required to vote. This is very recent, as his­tory goes, yet for those who know lit­tle his­tory, Australia’s prison camp origin is the stuff of TV spe­cials and could never hap­pen to “us” nowa­days. Really? Con­tinue read­ing →

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