Adapted from a comment I submitted to a recent post by Simon Johnson on his Baseline Scenario blog.
Too often, we fall into the trap of the cyclical model asserted by the quasi-scientific, nee apologetic, of economic theory, that attempts to define social interaction as if transaction reflects some sort of discrete closed system that abides by external and “natural” mathematical principles and behavioral laws.
The only abiding principle of relevance is that human beings are inherently social and in their sociality, they seek to devise methods for organizing their behavior into predictable patterns of collaborative action. (The invention of money as a medium of value exchange is one example.) When the material interests of one group become irreconcilably divergent from another’s, there is war, fought using the means at hand.
The warring that has occurred throughout history is cyclical in name only, because the means of combat is never the same. Though our idea of war seems constant, replacing bows and arrows with nuclear bombs changes the historical facts on the ground, and so too, the mathematics of conflict.
Today’s corporations have become nations of people with substantively divergent interests, who have at their disposal the means to nuke their opponents’ ability to construct stable systems for organizing their interactions and transactions into useful and reasonably predictable patterns. By assuring a chaos of unpredictability, corporate nationals are able to prey upon the nation of the dazed and confused.
The changes required are systematic rather than reformist but the weapons wielded by those who embrace the status quo, are the material, psychological and sociological equivalent of a nuclear arsenal.
To begin with, it is necessary to cast off the false “science” of naturalistic Newtonian economics. We must begin with an aim.
