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Mon, Sep 29th 2008, 01:28

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To be or Not to be one of the following is not the question. Capitalist, Socialist, Laissez-faire, Keynesian, Shock-Therapy, or Conquering economics. Because over time most countries use a variety of methods to improve the economy. Therefore each country can be said to be using some percentage of at least four methods from the economic list over a period of time.

Example: The USA government provides some level of education, medical care, public transportation, builds roads for private transportation, police and military protection for its citizens. Even though having so many things run by the government is often considered Socialist economics.

Automobiles: A socialist government may say that it or the people own the automobile factory. A capitalist government says industry owns the factory. However, when the factory gets in trouble financially the government provides financial support to the factory just like the socialists. Also the USA recalled all Chevy EV’s (Electric Vehicles) leased to individuals in the late 1990’s and the Toyota EV1’s, then had them destroyed. Then launched a promotion of bigger Trucks and Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV) which is bad for the environment. This kind of action was previously blamed on Communist type governments only.

Global economics: Spreading the wealth and of course the work around the world was embraced by outsourcing jobs from the USA to India and China. A publicity campaign showing many India and China scientist and super models on USA television was initiated. This kind of activity was formerly considered propaganda from Communist countries. All countries have beautiful ladies and genius scientists. Global economics would demand each country to receive equal access to public attention.

Active Interaction: Overworked and no time to play or spend money. The obsession for wealth has executives pushing lower ranks to produce more, work harder, faster and longer.
Full spectrum analysis of the effects:
• Work through lunch and supper = Restaurants lose business close, no jobs.
• No vacation = Vacation industry shuts down, no jobs there anymore.
• Work harder = To tired to go out shopping, other stores close, more lost jobs.
• Lost jobs = No money to buy autos, pay house bill, Auto Housing industry close.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck said: Le pouvoir de la vie The complexifying force. We become or create more complex things as we evolve forward. Our global economy certainly fits into this concept. We need leaders that are smarter and who promote people being smarter to understand the increasing complexity of the world.

Wed, Oct 1st 2008, 18:13

Member deleted

One has to thank Mr. Jeff Hathor for a beautiful erudition, especially his quotation of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, as a beautiful summation. However, there are things that are more complex - not made by evolved leaders, but by the unevolved leaders that one is forced to not only inter-act with but also contend with - especially the consequences of their activities - in an inter-dependent world and more so in an inter-dependent world, evn if one discounts the problems that local electoral/ideological spin-offs create in themselves.

A smart leader is always an evolved one and an unevolved leader is usually a stupid one, with the others having to pay a price for either their stupidity (strategically speaking, morbid and rabid mindsets are stupid - for those who weild it and for others - the smart leaders whose simplifying life for their states/realsm-of-responsibilities - are just made harder.
Imagine inter-dependence in a world where for many within the morbid-rabid mindset and utterly stupid (in the long run for themselves and others - i.e. toxic), that inter-dependence is not an opportunity of mutual growth, but an opportunity to bring the other side down. For example, the Robin Hood of Richard Plantegenet's reign and context, applied in today's context by these stupid leaders!? Moreover who also may find polemical rhetorics to substantiate their arguments, for stupidity and toxicity!?

using a caricature for ideologies: Over Cows. You have two Cows.
Communism: The State takes your cows away and sells you the milk.
Socialism: You give one cow to your neighbour.
Nazism: The state takes your cows away and shoots you.
Capitalsim: You sell one cow and buy a bull.

Now, of course things never are as simple as that though the caricature is quite apt - in the ideal and true situations for each, and of course discounting human behaviour and its varied range of degrees - from smart to stupid.

The challenges are - apart from an inherited range of both advantages and disadvantages (for any given leadership), of having to contend with a rapidly evolving world that has both centri-fugal as well as centri-petal forces - amidst the environment of smart leaders and the utterly stupid ones. When the utterly stupid ones seem to begin to rule the roost, as it were, authoritarianism makes its appearance and whether that authoritarian leader is smart - like Plato's concept of a Philosopher King/Queen or utterly stupid like a King Nero - is of course stuff history is made up of - for that state and its people as well as the rest of the world, in what forces it sets off.

It is time to think beyond such strait-jackets of socialism, communism, capitalism, etc. that had their utilities and continue to have utilities as text-book classification for undergraduates. But moving beyond the undergraduate level and when it comes to a decision-making level - of smart leadership - it is less about certain abstractions that the labels of the nineteenth-twentieth-century ideologies contain, and rather the more cogent realities of the twenty-first century, with all its challenges and opportunities.

It is about an informed view over the consequences of certain prior actions, the roles and consequences of stupid leaders from the realms of inter-dependencies - economic as well as political, - and the addressing, in an intelligent and smart way of the problems at hand.

Using the same caricature over cows: You have two cows.

Communism: The State takes your cows away and sells you the milk. But there is a capitalist neighbour and he opposes the state. Or there is a socialist neighbour and he wants the state to give one of the cows to him.
Socialism: You give one cow to your neighbour. He refuses and insists upon paying you instead. You got one smart neighbour. He decides to steal it and you got a very stupid neighbour. He decides to murder you and claim your property as his own, and gets away with it - you got anarchy of the most horrible kind.
Nazism: The state takes your cows away and shoots you. Your neighbour insists upon joining the state in shooting you and wins a medal. You got born in the wrong country. Or your neighbour refuses to part with his cows and insists that you join him in his rebellion. You still have got a smart neighbour, though a very stupid state.
Capitalsim: You sell one cow and buy a bull. The neighbour will only sell you an old worthless bull for your prize cow. You again got a stupid neighbour though he thinks that he is being smart in outdoing competition. So you would want to have choice where you can go, apart from your neighbour. How far would you need to go and how easily your choice bull is found - would make your society smart or relatively stupid. Now imagine that not only your neighbour but everyone else cites religious reasons for selling you an old and worthless bull, for your prize cow?! Discrimination and you have got a very stupid society. Born in the wrong country once again. One can go on with the possibilities within the caricature served as an illustration here.

It never has been about ideologies per se as much as it has been about the contending notions of what constitutes being smart and what constitutes being stupid. A smart leader would be someone who knows the emaning of being smart as well as overcoming the stupid alongwith the consequences of the actions of the stupid. In a democracy - that can be a heartwarming ballad over tonnes of whisky and tears and one would feel more like having read one of Anton Chekov's tragedies, rather a Walt Disney Tom & Jerry fiction animation!