Our Declaration of Independence states that we have “the unalienable right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” In the real world your ability to pursue happiness is determined by the culture you live in; the economic incentives, the political freedoms, the social pressures for success, and what defines success anyway.

Everything is interconnected: A tapestry. Our heritage and culture, our belief system, our economics and politics are all intertwined in our psychology. This series will explore the best economic and political systems to adopt to fulfill the promise of America. We will draw on the lessons of history so we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. We will draw on what we know about human nature, what motivates work and creativity, what provides us with fulfillment. What is the culture that leads us onto the path of a more affluent, more fulfilling world.

I am not attempting to describe a Utopian Society. I am attempting to describe a culture that gives each of us the opportunity to live a Utopian life, a life where we are pursuing our own happiness and not interfering in the pursuit of happiness of others.

In imagining this ideal society, I always come back to the world of Star Trek. In addition to being technologically advanced, they are all pursuing careers in science, the arts, exploration and discovery. As it turns out, we are closer than we might imagine to the path that will lead to a global economy that will provide growth and an improved lifestyle for all. All we need to do is to approach our current problems with a new methodology looking for solutions that are constructive and inclusive, not defensive and inward looking.

Unlike most blogs which are read as a chronology, I have organized these essays to read as successive articles. I want you to read the following with an open mind. Ask yourself: Why isn’t this true? Why do I believe that this can’t work? These doubts come from our culture where much of what we believe is accepted with the rubric of “everybody knows that . . .” Well everybody once knew that the world was flat and kings had a divine right to rule.

This quote comes from Ted Kennedy’s eulogy of his brother Robert Kennedy:

“Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not.”
Robert Kennedy

In the world of Star Trek they have a really great invention, a replicator. You can, as the captain often does, ask for Earl Grey hot, and it produces, replicates, a cup of Earl Grey tea, at your preset desired temperature. They use it to replicate virtually everything, although it is said the chocolate is not quite as good as the real thing.

What sort of economy do they have? There is only one factory in the world, the factory that builds replicator machines. There are a certain number of employees needed to run the factory, but beyond that, there is no need for any manufacturing jobs. The rest of society is described as involved in projects of self-improvement and contributions to society. Those who make it into the StarTrekAcademycan be explorers through the galaxies. Others are involved in research, medicine, teaching, the arts, etc. No one is consumed with the accumulation of things, or feels insecure about having the basics of living, food, clothing, etc. Private sector jobs in manufacturing are minimal. Jobs in the service area are as they are now, relatively unskilled. Most jobs are in the Government, in one form or another.

The economy that achieves this advanced state of affairs is one that rewards innovation and the investment of capital. It must also share the productivity gains of the economy with the labor force, enabling more leisure time, more evolution to new pursuits by the labor force. The idealized advanced affluent society is not achieved by an economic dynamic that tries to maintain a struggling working class. The communist economy envisioned a classless Utopian society. The Star Trek economy is classless in a materialistic sense, but it is not classless. The class distinctions are made on personal achievements. There is military rank on the Starship Enterprise, there are awards and kudos for achievements in a variety of different fields.

If the society does not have a materialistic component, what is the role of money? Well, there are still a variety of luxuries to buy, real chocolate, and assumably there will be more people wanting massages at the Spa, than there will be masseuses willing to give them. Traditional economic rules will still apply. But just as we went from a 60-hour workweek to a 40-hour workweek, we can go to a 20-hour workweek. The downward path of the workweek and increased leisure time was one of the hallmarks of our growing middle class affluent society. In our move toward Free Market Capitalism starting in 1980, that trend has been reversed and the workweek has grown.

There may be no way to invent a replicator, but the ongoing process of innovation and productivity gains can produce a widespread affluence, and not one that concentrates wealth among a select few, a tight knit group of super wealthy.

There must be a return on investment for capital to flow into new research and development (r&d), new ventures, new innovative production facilities. Then there must be a mechanism of binding arbitration to distribute a fair portion of the gains of increased productivity to the labor force.

The dynamic is outlined by Mark Shields on the PBS NewsHour on Friday, Feb. 25, 2011.

I happen to believe that all workers are entitled to collective bargaining, for a just wage, to healthy working conditions, to a place that preserves their moral integrity in the workplace, to insurance, and pension. And the only way you get that, because we don’t have employers who are spontaneously generous. We haven’t had them historically. There have been exceptions. But, I mean, the only reason we have a five-day workweek, the only reason we have an eight-hour workday, the only reason we have a minimum wage law and child labor laws and pension funds is because of labor unions’ clout and skill.

With the decline of organized labor in the name of increased productivity, corporate profits have risen, the stock market has risen, but the number of families living in poverty has also risen and the middle class is under stress and shrinking.

The fatal flaw of Free Market Capitalism is that without an equitable distribution of wealth you will not have a growing middle class. A middle class with the mass consumption demand necessary to maintain an economic system based on mass production. And with a society of have and have nots, social unrest is inevitable.

Let me repeat this because it is critical! You need a vibrant middle class to produce the mass consumption that is necessary to maintain mass production. The emerging markets are growing based on their exports to the middle class consumers of the developed nations. If China, India etc. don’t develop their own domestic consumer base, their own middle class, to sustain their mass production, the whole system will collapse as our middle class consumer collapses.

We tried Pure Unregulated Capitalism at the beginning of the industrial revolution. It resulted in the world of Charles Dickens, super wealthy and an underclass fighting to survive. Social services as summarized by Ebonizer Scrooge was “Are there no prisons, are there no workhouses?” It was not a world conducive to the pursuit of happiness.

We tried Communism and it didn’t work, there were no incentives for innovation and growth. Then what does work? Socialism? Socialism as defined by Merriam-Webster is “a system of society or group living in which there is no private property; a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.” Put another way it is a society of common ownership and cooperative management. It’s Communism Light. And it doesn’t work for the same reasons that Communism didn’t work.

What does work is a system of Regulated Market Capitalism. It works if the system of regulations is not too repressive on the free market dynamic of Capitalism and is not so weak and under funded that the regulators and regulations can be ignored: As they were in the time leading up to the crash in 2008. Regulation is not Socialism.

Freedom of Religion is one of the founding principles of America. Many of our earliest pioneers and settlers came to America for the sole purpose of escaping persecution based on the oppressive religious beliefs of the majority of people in their home country. As Americans we are supposed to have the right to live and worship the precepts of our own chosen religion, or no religion. As Americans we are expected to respect the beliefs of others. We should be tolerant; our society is based on tolerance.

It seems that we often forget that part of America. There are those in the extremes of religion who believe they have a monopoly on truth and moral behavior, God’s will. These people need to have their beliefs validated by putting them into law, imposing their morality on others.

The ruling on Roe v. Wade stated that the individual pregnant woman had the right and responsibility for making the moral choice, the final decision on their own bodies and the possible use of an abortion procedure. From that day to this there has been opposition. Opposition based on a moral opinion that some want to impose on women. This is not about Pro Life vs. Pro Abortion. There is no Pro Abortion lobby. This is about Pro Choice and I think this is what America is all about, not the majority or zealous minority imposing their moral view on women.

There is no evidence that allowing gay and lesbian couples the right to marry does any harm to anyone and some states have had legal same sex marriages for years. There is no reason why people who are so inclined should be denied the right to have a same sex marriage. This, like abortion, is a wedge issue in politics. It is a McGuffin.

What’s a McGuffin? Well I became aware of the term in a bio of Alfred Hitchcock and his filmmaking. He was discussing the movie Notorious and the selection of the object that was of import to the spies. Was it to be industrial diamonds, enriched uranium, or what? Alfred Hitchcock pointed out that this was the McGuffin. The thing that the characters on the screen were all consumed with, but the audience doesn’t care. It could be anything; they went with enriched uranium.

To the religious right, stem cells are not the issue, rather an object that represents the abortion issue. It is a straw dog, a litmus test, for whether you are with them or against them. Perhaps the abortion issue itself is a McGuffin representing a litmus test for whether you adhere to their dogma, and that you are one of them, a true believer. I have heard the right describe their goal as the establishment of a Culture of Life (although many favor capital punishment). I think it is more like establishing a Cult of Life.

It is all about a validation for one’s belief system. Who is with us and who is with them. If you want to impose your moral views on everyone because your view is in the majority, then you have to accept the fact that Islam is growing in America. It will become the majority in some communities. Want prayer in school? What if your children were asked to bring a prayer rug and face the east at the beginning of the school day. What if Islam became a majority in the country? Would you be willing to pledge allegiance to “One nation under Allah” and live under Sharia law?

I call this the “Walk in his moccasin test.” America was founded on a respect for diversity of ideas, beliefs, and cultures. At its best America is a melting pot. It is wonderful!
But America is threatened by those who want to impose their beliefs on all of us. It disrespects the diversity that is in fact America’s greatest strength.

Our economic and political systems can only lay the groundwork for living a utopian life, pursuing our own happiness. The culture we live in, the system of laws and social pressures are subject to human nature. Human nature wants to be reassured. Many, all too many, want to be validated by having their worldview be the  predominant worldview of the entire culture. If America stands for one thing and one thing only it should be for upholding the rights of the minority against the tyranny of the majority.

Tolerance and respect for diversity is the only policy that allows America to be America, land of the free. If we follow the maxim, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” we can achieve this goal.

THE ECONOMY

We are at levels of wealth disparity that rival the great depression. We are at levels of personal and government debt that compels borrowing and puts us on the fiscal edge. We are running trade deficits that are shipping the wealth of America overseas. We escaped the recession, deflation scare of 2000–2003 by bringing interest rates to an effective zero, pumping money into the economy, and running the largest federal deficits in history. What will we do for an encore? The political necessity of making the economy look good for the next election cycle has created what I call the Ponzi scheme economy. (p. 101)

We do not have a stable, sustainable economic system. It is hyped by more and more money being pumped into the system. Just as Ponzi could have kept his scheme going if he could continue to find the funds to pay off the notes as they came due. How far could Ponzi have gone if he had the full faith and trust of the U.S. Treasury? It gives the illusion of a growing economy, but just like the Ponzi scheme, our economy will eventually fall like a house of cards. (p. 103)

How could any civilization let this happen [the deforestation on Easter Island, resulting in soil erosion, starvation, cannibalism]? It happens gradually, so slowly you just don’t notice. Can you say: Global warming!

Or, can you say: Unbridled Free Trade! First free trade takes our wages and benefits, then it’s let’s eat Aunt Tillie for Thanksgiving! It is just a question of how far we are willing to see our standard of living decline, before we recognize that our economy is a Ponzi scheme. (p. 116)

Of course that assumes that the American taxpayer can pick up the bill [for private pension plan failures], added onto all the other bills the future American taxpayer is supposed to pick up. Chop, Chop, Chop. Each move to make us competitive, to push obligations to some high growth future, is like seeing a tree on Easter Island falling. (p. 118)

THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

Our standard of living has been averaging down since the ’80s, since the time of Reagan. It will continue to average down as U.S. companies find that the only way to compete with societies with a Charles Dickens like lifestyle is to downsize the wages and benefits offered to U.S. workers. (p.109)

The mass domestic consumption in India and China envisioned by a large middle-class will not materialize if the middle-class income is not being paid to the labor force. (p. 110)

The scary part is that while investing in cheap production overseas, exporting to the large middle-class of the U.S., provides great profits in the short term. It will in the end fall of its own weight. The failure to develop a new overseas middle-class will put out of balance the capacity of mass production with the necessary mass consumption needed to sustain it. It will result in overcapacity of production, deflationary pressures, and stagnation in job creation. (pp. 114-115)

POLITICS

The biggest dynamic that inhibits this process [creative destruction] is that the holders of wealth, the cash producing mature industries, don’t want new innovation to threaten their market share. They have combined with those in power to maintain the status quo. (p. 124)

The democracy of the United States has been described as a great experiment. Without our even being aware of it, the experiment has failed. (p. 219)

How many times have you watched on election night as the media has broken down the demographics, by religion, by race, by region, by age, by . . . , by . . . , by . . . !

Which subgroup is your group of us, which groups are them? As predicted, we are no longer a unified, America, we are a composite of sub-groups, tribes. This tribalization of America is caused by and is the result of, the negative campaigning that plays to our fears, our paranoia.

Red states, Blue states: A house divided against itself cannot stand. This is why the U.S. experiment has already failed, but like Wiley Coyote running into thin air having left the edge of the cliff, we just don’t know it yet.

In the movie The Matrix, the matrix was a computer-designed program to subdue and mollify the human population. Our democracy has become a similar device, a means of control over the population. An illusion to make us think we are in control, while for all practical purposes real control is maintained in the hands of them, corporations and the elite of wealth and power.

I would like to think that the changes to our political system that I have just proposed would turn our politics back to one of positive solutions, unifying America. But, it will never happen. The holders of wealth and power have spent too much time and money constructing this Orwellian web of political control to give it up now. (p. 220)

Remember in 1994 when the Republican Contract with America proposed term limits on Congress. It had overwhelming popular support. Did we ever get term limits? Of course not, voluntarily give up power, you must be kidding!

It will literally take a revolution to revise our political system. It may take blood in the streets, but at the least the nation will need to be in crisis. I believe the crisis will be triggered by a deflationary collapse of the American economy. (p. 222)

Globally, you are establishing a wealthy, perhaps even an upper middle class level of consumption. But, this does not represent the mass of people necessary to provide mass consumption. It is in the erosion of the middle class here, and the failure to develop a robust middle class abroad, which is at the heart of the real danger to the global economy. It is the inability of mass consumption to keep pace with mass production. The building of a surplus in productive capacity, relative to the demand able to afford the output, which will inevitably lead to a global deflationary spiral.

Will social upheaval be the end result of an economic catastrophe? Probably. (p.242)

Can we evolve a world wide middle class based economy? Yes. Can we conserve and innovate to share the resources across the globe? Yes. Will we? No. It is not in our human nature. A human nature that is short term, what’s best for us oriented. (p. 256)

WORLDVIEWS

The box we all live in is the culture that we were brought up in: the religion and the values that our parents gave us, the peer groups we associated with in our youth, the values transmitted to us by society. This is what establishes our worldview. (p. 259)

As we move into the epoch of the global economy, an economy of many worldviews, many cultures, we will by necessity be working side by side with people who come from dramatically different cultures. They don’t believe that there culture is any less true or God given than ours. (p.262)

To live in the new global world is to live outside the box of our own culture. It will require tolerance. It will require us to be Americans, true tolerant Americans, not ideologues. (p. 263)

What Fromm [The Sane Society] is describing is that true happiness, “freedom, spontaneity, a genuine expression of self ” is realized by living outside the box of your own culture. But to find true happiness, true spontaneity and expression of self, you must sacrifice the security of living inside the box. You must risk exposure to a world that will not validate your belief system. (p. 263)

The last great hope! The trends as I see them in economics and politics don’t have very happy endings. Gloom, despair, and agony on us and our children! Thank God, I don’t know everything. The one great truth of history is that no one can foresee everything. Call it chaos theory, call it serendipity, there is always something that cannot be anticipated, something that changes the rules and the outcomes. (p. 269)

God’s divine plan is pretty simple when you get down to it. All the peoples of planet earth should learn to live together in harmony, learn to work together, and only in this way will humanity survive the challenges ahead. We need to work together to achieve the creative solutions needed to maximize the diminishing natural resources of planet earth. And, we will need to heed His words about materialism, aka conservation. (p. 279)

Transformations is distributed freely. Anything that is written by the author may be reproduced and quoted with attribution to the author. Any coyrighted material that I have used in the context of Transformations has not been cleared by the author for publication. Therefore, the standard copyright restrictions would apply to this material.  Contact monkonmtn@nc.rr.com

We have feelings of high and low self-esteem in each arena of our life: our professional life, our personal life, our social life. Do I fit in? Am I respected? Can I find that special someone? Am I making the most of my talent and abilities? Each question gives rise to different feelings of confidence and insecurity, different levels of self-esteem.

The high esteem side of us feels confident, unafraid of competition, unafraid of the future, secure in our abilities, empowered to take on the world. The low esteem side of us seeks security, seeks shelter from potential failure and rationalizes the world to avoid risk and change. Our low esteem side is willing to follow the direction of an authoritarian, in order to avoid the responsibility for making one’s own decisions and risk failure.

You can determine ones esteem level by how you attribute the cause of things. If we are a high self-esteem individual, we attribute things to our own efforts or our own failings. If we are a low self-esteem individual, we attribute things to others; if it was a positive, we attribute it to luck or God; if it was a negative, we attribute the cause to bad luck, the government, or them, whatever them fits the bill.

We instinctively find an identity with a group or groups, our religion, our political philosophy, our friends with common interests, our school, our career, etc. This becomes us. Others become them. We draw esteem from our group and our position in it.

The insecurities of our low self-esteem side lead us to blame them for things that go wrong. The need for high self-esteem leads us to elevate our us group. Our religion is the true Word of God. Our school has the best sports teams, etc.

We each have a sense that we do or do not control our own world, the outcome of events in our life. This sense of control leads to expectations of outcomes. These expectations affect our behavior and in some sense predestine those outcomes. From a high esteem orientation we believe that we are in control, we make our own luck, From a low esteem viewpoint, there is always something that is out of our control, that is used to explain why things can’t and don’t work out.

America at its best is a land of opportunity. It provides us with the chance to live that utopian life to pursue our passion. But America is comprised of Americans and there will always be enough low self-esteem people who will comprise groups that will need to find a them to blame for their own shortcomings and who will need to artificially raise the status of their group so that they can have some sense of self-esteem. In short, there will always be racist groups who think they are superior solely because they are of that race. There will always be religious zealotry claiming an exclusive, special place in God’s plan.

This is the America as we would like to think of ourselves. This is the America that appeals to our high self-esteem, self-reliant side; egalitarian, all men created equal with an equal opportunity for all. But human nature has two sides.

Social Darwinism takes the Darwinian proposition of natural selection, the development of traits that enhance species survival skills, and applies it to the evolution of social groups. It is posited that good leaders and good leadership skills are traits that have evolved in some over time; good hunting skills in others; good nurturing skills in others.

The logic of Social Darwinism leads down the road to the divine right of kings, families bred to lead. It does not lead to a land where anyone can grow up to be President. Social Darwinism leads to the belief in a superior race and that perhaps we could genetically engineer super humans. It certainly does not lead to a belief that all men are created equal.

This is a belief system that acknowledges that there is an elite class and the elite of money and power have their privileges. They go to the right schools. They get introduced to the right people. To get ahead it is who you know, not what you know. Exactly what were George W. Bush’s qualifications for admittance to Yale? Legacy admissions are the same as Affirmative Action admissions to college. The admission is based on things other than academic qualifications.

Why do people seek the opinion of Steve Forbes? He achieved his status as an elite by being the son of Malcolm Forbes. It was his wealth that enabled him to indulge his ego and run for the Presidency, not his intellect and not his business savvy. Just having wealth makes you an elite, there is no personal attribute, you are no longer created equal, you do not need an opportunity to succeed, your success has been given to you on a platter.

Those of us in the working class simply accept the elite as the elite. The appeal of acquiescing to a class system is that you can believe that in this land of opportunity not rising above the crowd into the upper ranks is not a personal failure. It is not because you are inadequate. You protect your ego and your sense of self-esteem. You can be satisfied with being a worker. After all, that is your status, part of the working class; if you accept a class system.

Our hope has always been that our children will catch a break and join the upper crust. But as the cost of getting a higher education becomes more and more expensive, affordable more and more only to the already affluent, that hope of upward mobility for our children is fading.

The elite like to believe they deserve their lofty positions. After all this is the land of equal opportunity. They rarely acknowledge the advantages they have had since childbirth. They want to pass their wealth on to their children tax free. They want to continue legacy admissions to college and argue against social programs that would help the poorer “classes” get the education, health care and nutrition that is essential if we want to claim that there is an equal opportunity for all.

As a nation we have to be ever vigilant to keep our system of political and economic freedom on the path that fulfills the ideals America espouses. What class system exists should be based on what is earned, not on what is endowed.