The Failure of Anti-Developmental Economic Growth: The Time to
Produce Peace by Choosing Win-Win Over Win-Lose Economics
Wayne H. Oberle
St. Ambrose University
The typical textbook author’s quantitative, circular-flow, static-equilibrium, allegedly-nationalistic, neo-colonial, economic growth (EG) theory/model is now ineffective for poor or working people to understand the battle for the soul of people, economics, and capitalism. Why? A post-9/11 world needs giant corporations, entrepreneurs, managers, workers, governments, consumers, and citizens of all classes at home and abroad to work together to produce EG, development (win-win effects), and peace--not anti-development (“free lunch”/win-lose effects), poverty, violence, and war. It’s ineffective because his abstract, amoral, allegedly-rational, short-run-maximizing hero, economic man, only cares about his own selfish short-run material gain. His mass education doesn’t prepare him to understand six key economic messages: (1) Adam Smith’s fallacy-of-composition-violating term, “invisible hand,” to “sell out” spirituality, morality, and win-win economics to please the elite; (2) his final warning to reject survival-of-the-fittest or win-lose principles and not to worship, admire, or serve the elite; (3) Marx’s prediction that greedy capitalists will eventually kill capitalism; (4) Keynes’ demand-side government policies to save it from unemployment, inflation, and monopoly may fail; (5) supply-side policies giving the elite tax breaks may produce win-lose--not pro-developmental--economic growth; and (6) Deming’s wisdom that only better is better--we need more quality to produce development.
He lacks the critical-thinking skills to get the messages and to understand that economic growth typically produces anti-development (AD) rather than development (DEV). Consequently, he naively behaves as a order-taking warrior who makes or implements win-lose economic policies that enrich the elite and giant corporations but hurt the working poor, entrepreneur, “middle class,” environment, and economy itself. Examples include air pollution, huge tax cuts for the richest one percent, and giant corporations that close local factories to shed good jobs, open foreign sweatshops, outsource production, squeeze suppliers, and merge to destroy price competition, expand market share, and price-gouge the same consumers we need to buy our nation’s output. He ignores survival-of-the-fittest corporations (e.g., Enron, Halliburton, Wal-Mart) using anti-mercantilist sector-based policies to manipulate our allegedly-price-competitive, invisible-hand-based markets to enrich themselves but hurt others. A rising mean per capita GDP hides that most Americans are not better off--the median income of Americans is the same as in 1989: Win-lose economic growth isn’t development.
This article identifies the key variables of two polar-opposite economic theories/models. The first is a non-historical, cookie-cutter-designed, politically-correct, popular, crisis-producing, soul-less win-lose economics that tells us “what we want to hear.” It produces win-lose or anti-developmental capitalism characterized by 45 million Americans without health care, outsourcing, layoffs, and no-bid federal contracts. The second is a kinder, gentler, non-ruthless economics--a structurally-realistic, qualitative, holistic, soulful one that tells us what we need to hear. It’s based upon win-win economic principles (WWEPs) that produce better people, higher-quality inputs and outputs; higher productivity; joy in work; lower costs and prices; investment in ecology, entrepreneurs, social capital, and good jobs; win-win interpersonal relationships, organizations, and institutions in and out of markets to produce win-win or pro-developmental capitalism; and PEACE.
There are five reasons why a win-win model is better than a win-lose model. First, by identifying all five qualitative types of real-world individuals, it gives everyone a way to avoid being an order-taker--to be free, cooperative, responsible peacemakers who practice WWEPs that produce integrity, continuous improvement, quality, development, and peace instead of win-lose economic principles (WLEPs) that produce hypocrisy, corruption, broken promises, anti-development, violence, and war. The other four reasons are that a win-win model, in contrast to a win-lose one, doesn’t violate: (a) the textbook’s fallacy of composition--an error in thinking that what’s true or good for one individual is necessarily true or good for the whole, and vice-versa; (b) Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” a fallacy-of-composition ideology/lie implying that ample market competition necessarily transforms selfish/greedy individual behavior into “what’s good for society”--that individuals, organizations, and nations don’t need to be responsible for how they treat others; (c) Smith’s near-deathbed public warning: to not worship or admire the rich and the powerful--to responsibly practice WWEPs; and (d) Oberle’s Micro-Macro Law of Economics: the health of a nation’s five fragile, highly-interdependent systems (ecology, economy, society, polity, and diplomacy) across time, place, and cultures is only as good as the win-win quality of the economic principles, behavior, interpersonal relationships, and effects of its five real-world types of individuals--exploitive man, economic man, socio-economic man with a win-lose mindset at the moment, Socio-Economic Man With A Win-Win Mindset At the Moment, and Developmental Person.
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Models/Ways to View The Long-Run Health of A Nation’s Economic and Non-Economic Systems:
Win-Lose Economics or AD: NH (f) AP + IP + LP + TP + MOP + TPy + GSP +
InP + MaP + MkP + UFP + MP + CPP
Win-Win Economics or DEV: NH (f) TE + EP + TDM + MP + MFP + GPF +
EnP + GPP + MBP + DMP
Code: Of Win-Lose or AD Model: Of Win-Win or DEV Model:
AP: Agricultural policy TE: Type of education
IP: Industrial policy EP: Entrepreneurial policy
LP: Labor policy TDM: Type of decision-maker
TP: Trade policy MP: Market power
MOP: Monetary policy MFP: Multi-lateral foreign policy
TPy: Tax policy GPF: Global police force (e.g. NATO)
GSP: Government spending policy EnP: Environmental policy
InP: Investment policy GPP: Grassroots political power (subsidiarity)
MaP: Managerial policy MBP: Material-based power
MkP: Marketing policy DMP: Decision-making principles:
UFP: Unilateral/bilateral win-win rather than win-lose
foreign Policy DEV: Development (win-win effects)
MP: Military Policy
CPP: Centralized political power
(distinct from a true republic)
AD: Anti-development
(win-lose effects)
I. The Quantitative Model of Win-Lose Economics. Textbook economics is the typical, cookie-cutter form of inside-the-box, win-lose thinking. It’s an allegedly-competitive, conflict-producing, winner-take-all theory. Greedy (arrogant--as if “we’re the world”), psychological (non-structural--as if “the effects of our decision/behavior/relationships with others don’t matter”), de facto survival-of-the-fittest (as if “winners should blame our/their victims as losers”), and anti-holistic (as if “the health of our five systems doesn’t matter”) people use it as a win-win mask to hide their AD. As Lord Kames’ patronage of Adam Smith shows, it’s a set of beliefs that win-lose-principled (WLP) decision-makers expect politically-correct economists to use to apologize for the “free lunch” they take from others and the five fragile, inter-dependent systems. An inside-the-box thinker only cares about the immediate or short-run material gain or loss of a specific decision--he wants to raise his/her/its own business profits and/or consumer satisfaction, even at loss of others. He uses efficiency, circular flow, supply-and-demand, sector gain/loss, or other non-critical forms of win-lose thinking or behavior to ignore the fallacy-of-composition and rationalize his putting his own needs, wants, and interests first and/or at the expense of those of other individuals, long-run interpersonal relationships with them, and of our ecological, economic, social, political, or diplomatic systems’ need for long-run sustainability and peace.
The Theoretical Failure of Typical Authors of Economics Textbooks. Neglecting the history of social and economic thought, the Adam Smith Problem, our Micro/Macro Law of Economics, and their own coverage of monopoly and the fallacy-of-composition, typical textbook authors make two dangerous errors about Adam Smith’s economics. First, ignoring that he used his term, invisible hand, to intellectually “sell-out” his own and everyone else’s win-win economics to the elite for materialistic gain, they endorse it as if ample price competition exists--producing stable, win-win relationships in and out of markets between corporations and individuals of all socio-economic classes. They contradict themselves by stating that oligopolists/monopolists restrict output, layoff workers, and avoid price competition to raise their prices and profits; however, without analyzing interpersonal relationships within or between markets, their coverage of free enterprise and invisible hand erroneously implies that price and non-price competition or game strategies necessarily transform selfish, greedy, or win-lose thinking/behavior into development (“what’s good for society”)--as if win-lose capitalism is good for all when it’s not. Second, they ignore (especially in his popular book, Wealth of Nations) Smith’s warnings that greedy capitalists, corporations, monopolists, merchants, and rich or powerful people abuse win-lose principles to exploit others, keep working people dependent, raise prices, blame workers for wanting a living wage, and refuse to invest and/or keep people employed when the economy slumps. Ignoring his near-deathbed warning, they don’t warn their readers about his serious concern that some corporations ruthlessly abuse their material-based power (MBP) and WLEPs. Doing so destroys independent market forces, entrepreneurs, price competition; exploits slumps (bearish) and bullish (inflation, war) conditions; grabs unearned monopoly profits; and hurts suppliers, workers, consumers, output quality, development, and peace.
Their theory reflects five unrealistic assumptions: (1) EG necessarily produces DEV rather than AD; in fact, we now have more poor and fewer stable-middle-income people at home and abroad; (2) all people are insatiable or WLP economic men who care more about money than people but, thanks to market competition and/or government regulation, produce DEV rather than AD; in fact, although some are WLP and do produce AD rather than DEV, many, if not most, people are win-win principled (WWP--care more about people than money) and produce DEV and peace rather than AD; (3) all economic resources are scarce and nonrenewable; in fact, some (air, water, land, people) are, with good education, development, and economics, valuable and/or renewable; (4) competition is the best form of capitalism; in fact, high-priced, high-cost, low-quality GM and Ford vehicles are losing their market share to well-designed, reasonably-priced, moderate-cost, high-quality Toyota and Honda alternatives--showing that cooperation (responsible people using WWEPs to cooperate and produce continuous improvement, quality, DEV, and peace) is the best form of capitalism when it’s built upon win-win relationships with suppliers, workers, customers, and other stakeholders rather than upon economic conflict (irresponsible people abusing WLEPs and/or MBP to produce AD, poverty, waste, violence, and war); and (5) money buys every thing that people need to become human beings and enjoy a good life.
By being politically-correct scholars rather than structurally-realistic theorists, they inadvertently perpetuate two diseases that block true development. One is using supply-and-demand, circular flow, or other short-run analytical tools that mask our continuous need to see and analyze medium- and long-run structural changes (e.g., corporate manipulation of suppliers, customers, workers, investors, politicians) within or between the five systems that hurt small businesses, families, and win-win-principled capitalism. Although they typically use terms such as opportunity cost, the production possibilities curve, or limits to economic growth to describe economic conflict, their analytical tools fail to help us systematically analyze: (a) how WLP people, organizations, and nations hurt or exploit others (e.g., price-gouging energy/health care prices); or (b) how their WWP counterparts care for, cooperate, develop, and live in harmony/peace with each other--as if they don’t know how win-lose capitalism really works and can be transformed into win-win capitalism. A second disease is limiting their economic goals to ones that reflect market- or government-related economic activities, sectors (e.g., banking), or functions (e.g., EG, production, consumption) and being culturally insensitive to ecological, economics, social, political, or diplomatic needs or interests of others (e.g., real education, family, subsistence, survival, security, cooperation, community, DEV, system health/sustainability, or peace).
Helpful books on the poverty vs. development of people, economics, and capitalism include Adam Smith’s books, T. Arnold’s The Folklore of Capitalism, C.K. Wilber and K.P. Jameson’s The Poverty of Economics, G. Brockway’s The End of Economic Man, J. Viner’s Essays on the Intellectual History of Economics, Hazel Henderson’s Creating Alternative Futures: The End of Economics, George Soros’ The Crisis of Global Capitalism, Dr. W.E. Deming’s Out of the Crisis, and J.C. Bogle’s The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism. They suggest that our economic problems can’t be solved with more EG or win-lose economics--a post-9/11 world requires us to be good-willed Developmental Persons with a structurally-realistic, win-win-principled mindset, cooperate, practice WWEPs in our relationships with others, and produce integrity, development, ecology, and peace. Doing so would help others to analyze actual effects of crisis-producing, system-threatening, short-run-profit-maximization policies such as pollution, low quality, restricted output, high profits, low wages, corporate subsidies, factory closings, and class warfare. It would also help to explain why businesses such as Toyota or Honda that practice continuous improvement produce high-quality outputs at low costs, reasonable prices and profits, more good jobs, and a higher standard of living for more people.
Typical win-lose economic theorists suggest/imply that 13 allegedly-independent and autonomously-healthy (but actually-conflicting) economic sectors/variables magically increase a nation’s health (NH) by producing win-win economic growth. One is agricultural policy. It officially favors family farmers and food consumers but actually enriches corporate middlemen who sell their outputs dear and buy farm commodities cheap. A second is industrial policy, which hurts small businesses, exporters, the middle class, and retirees. It’s used to rationalize or justify corporate outsourcing and direct investment in foreign sweatshops as the best ways to be competitive, cut costs, and profit from low-wages and environmental pollution. Despite E.F. Schumacher’s warning in Small Is Beautiful, it incorrectly implies that all job-dependent human beings are objects to be bought, sold, or discarded--consistent with recent U.S. court decisions that our corporations don’t need to honor retiree pensions or health care coverage. A third is labor policy, which ironically is pro-corporate as unions make bigger wage and health care premium concessions to simply keep people employed.
A fourth sector/variable is trade policy. Consistent with Adam Smith’s “free trade”/anti-fair-trade bias, it’s typically pro-corporate, anti-mercantilist, anti-nationalist, and pro-poverty. Our huge negative trade deficits reflect corporate colonies that exploit the Third World’s cheap labor/resources but don’t buy their value-added outputs to help them develop their people and five systems. A fifth quantitative, win-lose sector/variable is monetary policy. Its interest rate changes reflect the structurally-unrealistic assumption that “one-size-fits-all”--as if rich individuals or giant corporations can’t afford to pay higher interest rates to indirectly help poor and middle-income individuals get the break they need to experience the American Dream. It’s pro-usury because the Fed typically requires banks to keep a fractional reserve deposit in their vaults of only 8 to 10 percent but allows car-title/pay-day loan companies to charge interest rates/fees over 100 percent. It’s also pro-cyclical in that working people typically work over 40 hours a week but lose purchasing power as prices and interest rates rise during inflation and lose work time or get laid off during economic slumps; they get beat up on both the up and down sides of our nation’s business cycle. That means its real-world effects produce anti-development by enabling the rich and powerful to gain at the expense of the poor, working people, family farms, college students, and small businesses during both good and bad economic conditions.
A sixth variable is tax policy. In effect, it’s pro-big-government, regressive (elite pay less), and pro-elitist. It implies that elected officials have WWEPs, use them to make fair, progressive tax policies to help working people, and tell us what we need to hear. In reality, the pro-Federalist Republican Congress recently gave a huge tax cut to the richest one percent of Americans and huge tax loopholes, credits, rebates, offshore havens, and deductions to our giant corporations. Our typical textbook economists sugar-coat the class-warfare effects of Keynes’ economic principles (temporary deficit spending, for foul is fair--the time for fairness is not yet, we’re all dead in the long run) and/or supply-side economics. They ignore invisible, ineffectively represented working Americans losing their “middle class” standard of living despite their long work weeks, high productivity, rising health care deductibles, loss of pensions, and loss of purchasing power to rising prices for food, education, housing, energy, vehicles, travel, insurance, health care, recreation, retirement, and war.
A seventh sector is government spending policy. It exploits ordinary citizens who behave as Eric Hoffer’s “true believer,” who sees any rosy ideological cause, political movement, or economic forecast as a way to avoid or escape from the need to get a good education and personally produce development and peace. Despite obvious win-lose effects of Keynes’ principles, it portrays our federal government as a “big brother” who allegedly uses WWEPs to do what Smith’s private-sector invisible hand couldn’t logically and really do--use WLEPs to transform win-lose into win-win effects. In contrast to Smith’s warnings to keep corporations, capitalists, monopolists, merchants, and the elite (rich and powerful) on a tight lease, it abuses Keynes’ idea to use temporary deficit spending, public debt, or cheaper money to spur public investment to stabilize the economy but actually allows deep-pocketed corporations to profit immensely from unnecessary wars and to avoid taking responsibility to support workers and the economy during good times and bad; instead, it helps all elite to exploit the business cycle by being anti-patriotic and anti-mercantilist enough to lay off workers and to invest abroad instead of at home. It also reflects Keynes’ failure to understand Marx warning that “good capitalists” would eventually collapse capitalism by not realizing that they need lots of “middle-class” people to earn a decent living and have ample income to buy back a larger share of the nation’s and world’s output.
An eighth sector/variable is investment policy. In effect, it’s pro-big-government, pro-corporate, and anti-mercantilist. Typical textbook authors ignore Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations warnings that speculators, corporations, monopolists, and capitalists are materially comfortable or rich enough to live off of their capital and avoid the risk of investing during a bearish economy. They incorrectly imply that American investors (e.g., speculators, global corporations) patriotically use WWEPs to invest in our economy first and create good jobs at home and abroad during both good and bad conditions. In reality, the latter use lobbyists to get them tax credits to close American factories, open Asian sweatshops, or profit from war. They miss Dr. Deming’s key point--only long-run investment in higher quality lowers both costs and prices and creates more good jobs.
A ninth sector/variable is managerial policy. In effect, it’s anti-quality--as Deming-principled Toyota and Honda taking U.S. market shares from GM and Ford clearly shows. It’s anti-living wage or “middle-class”. Dr. Deming’s Out of the Crisis explains that short-run-profit-maximizing managers steadily transform the U.S. into a poor, anti-developmental Third World nation. They do so since lower quality lowers productivity and raises costs; we need continuous improvement to do the opposite--enabling more firms to lower prices and hire more middle-income workers both in the medium run and long run. They ignore what their investors and consumers will think of them after the short run, manipulate reports (e.g., Enron’s books), and lower productivity, development, morale, and stability by paying workers less than a living wage/salary. Why? They seem to privately worship the material, anti-humanist, win-lose “gods” of short-run profits, lower quality, restricted output, higher prices, bigger managerial “perks,” more tax breaks, and bigger market share. The result is higher long-run costs because they don’t realize that only long-run continuous improvement raises quality, productivity, good jobs, and everyone’s standard of living by lowering costs and output prices. The variable is pro-corporate or anti-entrepreneurial. For example, Enron reportedly wrote our nation’s energy policy and Halliburton allegedly double-billed its no-bid federal contracts in Iraq. It’s pro-elitist because it implies that giving tax breaks to the rich and big corporations will spur trickle-down economic growth for all.
A tenth sector/variable is marketing policy. In effect, it’s pro-corporate. While ma-and-pa firms have limited resources and budgets to promote and sell their outputs, oligopolists spend millions on advertising to convince consumers that their output quality is better and their prices are “price-competitive”--lower than those of their rivals. Contrary to typical textbook coverage of the fallacy-of-composition, production possibilities curve, and opportunity cost, it’s also pro-elitist. How? Affluent or rich individuals have a lot more discretionary income and purchasing power to buy expensive status symbols (e.g., cars, yachts, cruises, second homes) and invest than job-dependent workers do. That huge gap spurs or continues the business cycle as working people’s real income falls behind with layoffs, wars, and rising prices, debt, taxes, or interest rates.
An eleventh variable is unilateral/bilateral foreign policy. In effect, it’s anti-Christian because true Judeo-Christians forgive those who trespass against them. It’s anti-democratic because there’s reportedly no objective, non-partisan, Congressional oversight of White House staff use of secret government intelligence reports (e.g., on Iraq); if there was our political representatives likely wouldn’t have rushed to war with a poor nation that wasn’t a nuclear threat to the American people. It’s illegal if, as reported, Halliburton got a no-bid federal contract to provide military services and it’s anti-economic to go into a multi-year war without a nation-wide war effort (e.g., a military draft, higher taxes to pay for the war, controls on corporate prices, an exit plan with guideposts to win/end the war). Moreover, it’s anti-diplomatic since we didn’t build cooperative support from a wide coalition of world leaders (e.g., from the United Nations, international courts, international organizations such as NATO, major European and Asian economic powers), public opinion, and, if necessary, non-partisan inspections, before we put our/their troops in harm’s way. Sadly, our recent foreign policy is even anti-peace because pro-peace organizations argue it enflamed more insurgents.
A twelfth sector/variable is military policy. In effect, it’s pro-Federalist, pro-corporate, and pro-elitist for several reasons. One is its false belief that the threat or use of force or violence is a necessary, sufficient, and appropriate way to deal with enemies. Another is the fact that only one of 535 members of Congress has a family member serving in Iraq. A third is our leaders’ historical opportunity and responsibility to earn the respect of other nations by transforming our preemptive bully/top-dog, win-lose, war-based relationships and policies into win-win ones based upon trust, aid, relief, fair trade, cooperation, revolving small business loans, cultural exchanges, and cooperative investment to work for development, non-violence, and peace. Thanks to our soldiers who’ve honorably served or risked/given their lives, we should show our intelligence, wisdom, and cooperative oversight to restrain our own or other nation’s leaders who seek personal/political gain by over-reacting to threats or confusing corporate interests with the security of ordinary citizens. The Iraq War’s lesson is to displace war, reduce energy dependency, increase Congressional oversight of secret intelligence, and to raise economic security by supporting win-win businesses that pay their workers a living income to make good-quality outputs at lower costs and reasonable prices to raise more people’s quality of life.
The last quantitative, win-lose sector/variable is centralized political power. It’s our power elite’s “sacred cow” that typical economics textbook authors, journalists, and policy-makers avoid. Why? Because it’s pro-Federalist (anti-republican), anti-democratic, pro-bureaucratic, pro-hierarchical, pro-secretive, and pro-totalitarian (neo-fascist). As recent news reports/indictments out of Washington, D.C. indicate, it allows a small group of over-zealous, win-lose-principled, power-hungry political cronies or their staffs to quietly run an informal puppet government out of the White House. Fitzgerald’s independent investigation reveals that self-appointed hacks controlled and manipulated secret, top-level intelligence reports, retaliated against those who question their policies, lied or selectively spun misinformation to our democratically-elected representatives (e.g., rushing our nation to war with Iraq), and mocked our leaders’ formal advise-and-consent responsibilities. Our Constitution and Declaration of Independence formally require our three branches of government to check and balance each other, but they don’t reflect Jefferson’s long fight against elite-favoring Federalists or Adam Smith’s warnings that concentrated individual and corporate wealth or power over others is a daily challenge and threat to any true republic of, by, and for working people. Susan Dunn, in her 2004 book, Jefferson’s Second Revolution: The Election Crisis of 1800 and the Triumph of Republicanism, details why we can’t passively assume that our public or private leaders actually work for the people and not the elite.
II. The Qualitative Model of Win-Win Economics. In contrast to the 13 actually-conflicting or win-lose sectors of Model I, outside-the-box, win-win economic thinking is a scientific, unselfish (sensitive to the needs/interests of others), structure-transforming, individual-transcending (becoming responsible), inclusive (we’re all part of the world), anti-survival-of-the-fittest (conflict-reducing, cooperation-inducing), and pro-holistic way (e.g., using a Power Structure Grid to project a decision’s likely individual, relationship, and system effects across time) to see ourselves and relate to others. It helps us to: (a) see/analyze what could/should be (the normative) vs. what is (the objective); (b) practice more WWEPs in our relationships with others--to let go of taking a “free lunch” from them; (c) identify and oppose hypocrisy, corruption, anti-development, violence, and war; and (d) get a good education, cooperate to make continuous improvement, and produce integrity, quality, development, and peace. A win-win thinker does good by investing in both economic capital and social capital (e.g., teamwork, trust, bonding/unity). He works with others to design, develop, and implement win-win-principled economic theories and policies that produce more win-win or pro-developmental effects (e.g., good education, continuous improvement, productivity, small businesses, good jobs, high-quality, lower-cost outputs at reasonable prices, peace) for more people at home and abroad.
In sharp contrast to the first model, all 10 of the win-win variables give us win-win concepts (not win-lose categories of activity) that help us to: (a) identify, monitor, and shrink sources or forces of conflict and competition that produce anti-development; and (b) systematically use win-win principles (e.g., cooperation) to think, relate to others, and produce less anti-development, and more development and peace. Especially when WWP individuals, organizations, and nations use all 10 of them together in their daily relationships with others, they will reflect our Micro-Macro Law of Economics, strengthen/integrate win-win economics, and produce integrity, cooperation, continuous improvement, development, and peace. They give people who want to live a good life an alternative way to think, work, relate to others, and live in peace and harmony with them. They also help us to expose people with WLEPs who want us to lie, cheat, steal, or kill for short-run profits.
Types of education. Responsible, good-willed people have a qualitative choice to make about their own education--between structurally-realistic and structurally-unrealistic types. Win-lose-principled people typically have one of two types of conventional education. The most common type is a mass education whereby teachers help students memorize/cram for a test so they both appear to be doing their job. That short-run method helps mediocre school officials and teachers to keep their jobs or get bonuses for good test scores. But there’s a catch. That way of learning requires students to pass government-approved achievement tests to keep schools funded--leaving less or no time for both gifted and challenged students to learn communication, creative, and critical-thinking skills they also need to further develop at college, work, and throughout life. The typical result is short-run-profit-maximizing economic man, who’s good at taking orders but not win-win.
The second type is not a formal part of any school’s curriculum, but bullies, gangs, corporations, and terrorists use it. It’s a red or win-lose education--a WLP, survival-of-the-fittest, materialistic way of thinking, working, and relating to others, and its dangerous icon or bully is exploitive man. In contrast, a structurally-realistic, win-win, real education helps people to own/take responsibility for how their life affects themselves, other individuals, and the five systems (above). It helps us to identify and fulfill our life purpose, develop a conscience and win-win-principled relationships with others, and to freely choose to be a Socio-Economic Man With A Win-Win Mindset At the Moment who tenaciously becomes a Developmental Person (DP).
Entrepreneurial policy. Recent studies and news reports show that small businesses typically employ over 70 percent of all workers. These ma-and-pa/monopolistically-competitive firms typically keep communities economically and socially stable by living in them and re-investing their profits back into them. They are pro-Jeffersonian because they produce what economists call a positive multiplier effect from their employment, sales, tax revenues, and support of local groups. Especially because new corporate workers are now ineligible for pensions, they need more support than ever if they produce good jobs and higher-quality, reasonably-price outputs. Dr. Deming notes that buying on the basis of price tag alone from giant corporations (e.g., Wal-Mart, Enron, Halliburton) will support corporate policies that are ruthlessly anti-entrepreneurial, anti-labor, anti-women, pro-illegal immigrants, and anti-developmental. Locally-owned, WWP businesses that provide high-quality, reasonably-priced outputs and keep local people gainfully employed need and deserve our patronage.
Types of decision-makers. All five qualitatively-unique, real-world types of individuals are ranked and defined on the following vertical continuum or hierarchy in descending order--with the best or win-win type, (5), placed last and the worst or win-lose type, (1), placed first, in order to reflect the latter’s likely higher amount of material-based power (MBP) and degree of commitment to or practice of win-lose economic principles (WLEPs): (1) Exploitive Man (ExM): He’s an icon/model of intentional harm, ruthless evil, dishonesty, WLEPs, and he fosters hate, greed, violence, war, or other forms of anti-development (AD). He’s an arrogant bully of MBP--one who intentionally and knowingly chooses to learn and daily practice WLEPs in his economic and non-economic relationships with others. The nightly news confirms his real-world MBP but typically masks his survival-of-the-fittest (SOF) ideology and WLEPs; (2) Economic Man (EM): Sadly, he typically serves as an order-taker who does the “dirty or free-lunch work” for ExM and doesn’t necessarily intend to or know that he harms others--produces win-lose effects or AD. He’s the mass-educated, structurally-naive, intellectually-challenged, individualistic, selfish, materialistic, hedonistic, anti-structural, theoretically-abstract, logically-illegitimate (fallacy-of-composition-violating), anti-spiritual perpetuator of Adam Smith's Mistake--his “invisible hand” passage in Wealth of Nations that alleges that ample market competition transforms his own and other people’s individual selfishness into “what's good for society” (that “bad produces good”). He doesn’t understand that Smith's overall economic message is that everyone (including the rich and powerful) needs to develop a conscience and use WWEPs to be an intellectual, moral, and spiritual Socio-Economic Man--not an amoral (principle-less) EM. Regardless of his false belief that economic growth always produces development (DEV), his typical market and non-market behavior produces win-lose effects--just as ExM and SEMWLM do; (3) Socio-Economic Man With A Win-Lose Mindset At The Moment (SEMWLM): He’s voluntarily made a personal intellectual/spiritual commitment to tenaciously become a DP over time; however, at the moment, for whatever reason, he’s too weak to behaviorally apply WWEPs--to actually do good to, for, and with one or more others. Despite his win-win commitment, he unintentionally produces win-lose effects that hurt others, his relationships with them, and our five economic and non-economic systems--just as unscrupulous/ruthless ExM and structurally-naïve EM do; (4) Socio-Economic Man With A Win-Win Mindset At The Moment (SEMWWM): She’s someone who’s freely made a personal intellectual/spiritual commitment to tenaciously become a DP over time and who is, at the moment, tenacious enough to practice WWEPs--to do good to, for, and with others and/or to non-violently challenge win-lose-principled (WLP) individuals, organizations, or nations to do the same. Fortunately, she produces win-win behavior, relationships, and individual, structural, and ecological effects--the same as a DP and in sharp contrast to the win-lose or AD behavior, relationships, and effects produced by ExM, EM, and momentarily-weak SEMWLM; and (5) Developmental Person (DP): He’s a truly good, God-like, graced, loving, responsible, truly-human or spiritual being--a vigilant economic steward or statesperson who produces integrity, quality, continuous improvement, development, and peace by daily practicing WWEPs in his relationships with others and by challenging WLP individuals, organizations, or nations to do the same. He’s the polar opposite or arch rival of ExM and a real-world mentor/role model of how good-willed people actually do good. He strives to be God-like (if not graced, enlightened, or empowered by God) by doing good and challenging principle-less and win-lose-principled others to do the same--to teach, serve, inspire, develop, empower, love, and sacrifice for others in increasingly more corners of his/her thinking, behavior, relationships, and life.
Market power. Market supply-and-demand-based, static-equilibrium analysis helps our economics students to pass multiple-choice exams, ignore how power affects price, and memorize how, in theory, businesses only need to make quantitative, price-driven decisions to keep costs down, profits up, and deny their win-lose effects. That approach fails them and others. They produce AD because they lack the holistic, system-level analytical skills and WWEPs they need to become win-win workers, managers, and leaders who produce DEV and peace. Why? Likely because their teachers and bosses were also “dumbed down” and not taught cooperative, critical-thinking, or creative-thinking skills--to think outside-the-box and explain the weaknesses of win-lose economics in both theory and reality (e.g., price-gouging of suppliers and customers). Although typical textbook authors describe how oligopolists de facto collude to avoid price competition and divide up the market, they typically don’t describe/analyze how giant firms use market cross-over (buying or selling to smaller types of firms on typically-unlevel playing fields) as a structural opportunity to exploit (SOTE) others (e.g., investors, suppliers, workers, consumers, the Earth) by abusing their WLEPs to take a “free lunch.”
Multi-lateral foreign policy. Any holistic, structurally-realistic, win-win model challenges us to develop foreign policy that supports the same Jeffersonian republican or anti-Federalist principles that our Founding Fathers and ancestors voted so clearly for in the presidential election of 1800. Multi-lateral foreign policy is based on WWEPs and stands for the common good, the public good, and for elected officials who represent the economic needs, interests, and lives of ordinary, working citizens rather than worship or admire the rich and powerful. For example, the Stanley Foundation of Muscatine, Iowa thinks the Iraq War is now enflaming an all-out Jihad terrorist or insurgent effort to get American/coalition troops out of their homeland. They perceive us as neo-Roman invaders who use “democracy” as an ideological type of Trojan Horse as our 150,000 troops militarily occupy their backyard to protect corporate oil profits and Israel. In contrast, perhaps we should work with other nations and global organizations (e.g., UN, NATO) to improve trade, aid, tourism, and cultural exchanges that’ll reduce the need for and risk of unilateral/bilateral foreign policy and costly wars.
Global peace force. Several years before 9/11 the European Union was already developing a prototype of a global peace-keeping force to protect the safety, security, and private property of citizens and tourists within its geographical borders. That concept, like the concept of democracy, however helpful, is no substitute for increasingly more widespread economic conditions in which business managers and leaders pro-actively create more good (non-Wal-Mart-type) jobs to establish stable and prosperous middle-class communities that aren’t trading local factories for cheap sweatshops. In other words, a global police-based peace force is more likely to be effective in areas without major poverty. Why? Because prosperous communities are much less likely to be targeted as areas for Islamic Jihad or other terrorist groups seeking to find poor, homeless, or hopeless kids as new recruits. We can deter them with win-win policies that increase trade, real education, business, cultural exchanges and travel among all people and nations of the world. We might also challenge the richer people, organizations, and nations of the world to raise and more closely oversee aid to the world’s needy.
Environmental policy. In the long run it becomes more obvious that farmers aren’t the only ones who need to do their share in taking care of our natural environment so its stewardship can be effectively passed from one generation to another. Sadly, many media columnists/reporters state that the former and current Bush administrations aren’t known for being good environmentalists. Both R.F. Kennedy, Jr.’s (2004) book, Crimes Against Nature, like E. F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful 30 years ago and Adam Smith’s 230 years ago, warn us about short-run-profit-maximizing corporations and monopolists. They want to make huge economic profits without paying for the ecological damage they impose upon the air, water, soil, forests, plants, animals, and human beings on our fragile planet. Our public leaders don’t seem to have any concept of a statesperson, public good, common good, ecology, or long-run economic sustainability. Our “anything goes,” crony-based, survival-of-the-fittest, win-lose capitalism really is making America a Third World corporate colony.
Grassroots political power. A 10/9/05 Quad Cities Times article stated that John Dean, the new chairman of the National Democratic Committee and recent (2004) presidential candidate, has a plan to re-focus, re-organize, and strategize the Democratic Party to get votes for the upcoming Congressional elections in Nov., 2006 and presidential election in 2008. His party will likely fail again unless its leaders wake up and conceptualize what initially made our country strong and popular--Jeffersonian-republican principles that support working people and help them become and remain economically secure rather than enriching mostly the rich and powerful. On the other hand, some recent national polls and news magazines suggest that the 9/11 presidency of George W. Bush is dead or over and that the best the Republican Party can do is either damage control or saying that “everything’s fine”. Educational/political conditions may not yet be ripe for grassroots political power. One analyst, Bob Scheiffer, says one-third of American people don’t care about either party.
Material-based power (MBP). A holistic, structurally-realistic mindset helps us to objectively see what WLP individuals refuse to see--huge gaps they produce between the classes within our own and other nations as their AD chickens come home to roost. If we’re WWEP we need to do more than state that the rich are getting richer and working people are getting poorer. We need to organize and create ways to reverse the dangerously-unlevel playing fields in education, business, politics, and ecology. That means WLP individuals and organizations have even more MBP or structural opportunity to exploit/rook others--thereby producing, consistent with our Law of Micro-Macroeconomics, a growing cancer of AD within our nation’s economic, social, political, ecological, or diplomatic systems. Given that glaring trend, it’s not alarmist to see that WWP individuals and organizations have a big challenge to reverse it before the AD cancers collapse our systems. We need to encourage each other to avoid MBP abuse and to practice more win-win principles each day.
The responsible choice of win-win over win-lose economic principles. Unless and until we study, identify, and document the importance of thinking and behaving as WWP rather than WLP individuals, we will continue, like lemmings headed for the cliffs, in the AD direction we’re now headed--falsely believing that AD economic growth is a sufficient substitute for DEV when it isn’t. Sadly, believing in or memorizing structurally-naive textbooks helps WLP individuals rationalize or mask the AD effects of short-run-profit-maximizing or other AD processes. We need to understand that there are two very different ways to think, see ourselves and the world, and to relate to others. Our fundamental decision each and every moment is--regardless of our quantity of material-based power at the time--who are we? WLP people take the easy way out and blame others while they lie, cheat, steal from, or kill others to “get ahead,” but WWP people don’t take a “free lunch.” Rather, they keep good, win-win principled families, businesses, governments, communities, and nations stable--from collapsing to the fiddlers or whores of short-run material gain, corporate games, and military glory. Deming’s idea, only better is better, offers a powerful and empowering alternative to the one that WLP people have told us to believe--“more is better” (but they didn’t tell us it’s mostly so for the elite).
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