Presents and explains an entirely new theory of economics and governance that could stop the destruction of our planet and the immense suffering of its inhabitants, both of which are the primary result of the bankrupt and unscientific ideologies in modern economics and politics.
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From the economic and governance foundations proposed by this book, all possible forms of economics and governance can be derived. These include all economic types of capitalism, socialism, and communalism and all governance models of democracy, anarchy, and authoritarianism. With this knowledge and awareness, you can choose the form of economics and governance you would advocate for and perhaps die for, whether it be on planet earth or on the moon, Mars, or elsewhere in the universe. Each model of economics and governance has its benefits and drawbacks depending on what you believe is important, less important, or even irrelevant. Regardless of model, economic and governance utopias do not exist. All models are intrinsically incomplete and inconsistent (See Kurt Goedel’s theorems that mathematically prove this), which is why human civilization changes and hopefully progresses.
The human species is struggling with immense suffering, planetary destruction, and a dystopian future. The perpetrators of this dystopian nightmare are, however, not agents from a secret cabal or conspiratorial organization (in league perhaps with evil extraterrestrials), nor is this nightmare the responsibility of any person, group, or institution. The perpetrators are the very economics theories, business practices, and political governance that control our everyday lives. Regardless of their obvious achievements across all domains of modern civilization, these theories and practices are intellectually bankrupt, unscientific, predatory, sociopathic, and deleterious to the planet and human survival. The historical and current evidence of their abject failure is in neon lights all around us: global warming, vast poverty, corrupt bureaucracies, gross corporate and financial mismanagement, pervasive pollution, biosphere destruction, unimaginable greed, pervasive alienation, drugs, mental illness, decreased competition, more monopolies, spreading authoritarianism, slowed innovation, and manipulative mind control through mass media and marketing, and this is just to mention a few. In the commodification of everything and everyone, we, the people of earth, are also guilty: we like our stuff, we like possessing stuff, and we want more and more stuff.
Still, the problem is essentially not with the people. It’s with those who advise and guide the people. It’s economists and world leaders who have no cogent science or predictive capacity to stop the slide into global dystopia. Yes, we have received many good suggestions and reforms from economists, leaders, and political scientists, but they have had little effect on our momentum toward planetary destruction and possible human extinction. Even though the critiques and criticisms of modern politics and economics, especially capitalism, could fill a small library, those experts have brought us no closer to fundamentally changing how we do business or govern in any significant way. A vast army of economists in our businesses, governmental institutions, and TV newscasts offer all kinds of contrary advice but the policies they advance have been and are no more effective than charms, amulets, and snake oil. When their advice is effective, it is only due to accident and luck. Because out of a 1000 contrary suggestions or predictions by economists and politicians, statistically one is bound to be right.
It’s not a pretty picture. As the Titanic of Planetary Health sinks, bands of economics play waltzes and politicians courtesy…
Many countries of the world have democratic or republican governments or at least espouse democratic principles. However, almost all businesses, corporations, nonprofits, and institutions are authoritarian, feudal, highly hierarchical, and anti-democratic. Oligarchic decision-making among executives, shareholders, and/or boards may appear democratic, but their decisions are self-serving, vertically aligned, nontransparent, and exclusive like feudal lords…
Both meritocratic rewards, i.e., more money and promotion for excellence, and the redistribution of wealth through income taxes, corporate taxes, universal healthcare, public education, public infrastructure, etc., have significantly increased the standard of living of the lower and the middle classes, especially the latter. Ironically, this redistribution of wealth has enabled the upper class to make far more money on their investments than could ever have imagined without the redistribution of wealth. Nonetheless, though the upper class is wealthier because of the redistribution of wealth, which generates more consumers and so vastly increases the scalability of production, they have been and remain stubbornly opposed to the redistribution of wealth, which created the middle class, and, ironically, then their own best financial interests. Poor or starving people don’t buy much. The moral of this tale: The more the rich hold on to their money, the less they will have; the more they give away, the more they will have. Generosity and not fear makes a community or nation affluent…
…an ever-expanding economy is no more predictable than trying to predict new technologies and creative endeavors. This is why economists are statistically no better than astrologists at predicting the future, even with their complex scarcity-based econometrics. But economists keep trying to predict what is inherently non-predictable: human history. The obvious, however, is not obvious to economists…
The economic pie is not a fixed pie but an ever-expanding pie with more than enough for all—much like the universe itself. However, economic pundits and predators would like us to believe it is a fixed pie, so they can control us through our fear of losing our piece or desired piece of the pie. Scarcity is an illusion manufactured by mismanagement, greed, propaganda, fearmongering, and incompetence. Most constructs in modern economics are illusions to perpetuate the dominant status of the powerful and wealthy. These include the myth of pervasive extreme self-interest to the exclusion pro-social behavior, called the “rational” basis to economic reasoning. Economists equate “rational” with selfishness and extreme self-interest and regard all social, altruistic, trusting, or interpersonal interests that run counter to the selfishness as “irrational”. Although prominent behavioral economists (who study the psychology of economic behavior) have shown that humans pervasively act counter to selfishness unless indoctrinated into extreme self-interest, they still, contrary to their own data, consider collaboration, social interest, and a desire to help others as fundamentally irrational rather than regarding extreme self-interest as fundamentally irrational. This is how ridiculous modern economic theory is. It clings dogmatically to unsupported concepts that are contrary to its own evidence.
Indeed, all social behavior (empathy, attachment, love, trust, mutuality, gratitude, etc.) is distorted in modern economic theory to be purely motivated by and reduced to base self-interests. This view is without scientific support. To the contrary, the vast preponderance of scientific evidence from psychology, sociology, and anthropology unequivocally shows that all self-expression (generativity) is embedded in complex social and environmental relationships (mutuality) that are not reductive to self-interest. Indeed, it is mutuality that enabled our species to survive and dominate the earth and what makes all constructive human activity possible. Modern economic theory is therefore not only erroneous but constitutes an irrational ideology of extreme individualism and me-ism. If humans at times act predominantly “rational,” as touted by modern economic theory, it is because they are either predators/sociopaths or are brainwashed in the cultural values and pseudo-science of me-ism, especially as students in economic and business classes.