Reading Reviews #3

Agenda for A New Fairy Tale

Let’s take a look at the Korten’s ideal economy:

            It’s an economy that would 1) provide everyone with the opportunity for a healthy, dignified, and fulfilling life, 2) bring human consumption into balance with Earth’s natural systems, 3) nurture relationships within strong, caring communities, 4) honor sound, rule-based market principles, 5) support an equitable and socially efficient allocation of resources, 6) fulfill the democratic ideal of one-person, one-vote citizen sovereignty.

This economy sounds perfect, like a breathtaking beauty. Everyone wins, with no harm to nature. But is this really economy? I would think of a new name for it – fairy tale.

Beyond all doubt the author has a good heart and an active brain. He realizes that government and society keeps throwing money into saving problems, which could at best save some losses but could never put an end to them. He questions the methodology of treating symptoms rather than causes and tries to “look upstream” to find the causes. I think he does a great job in clarifying the problems – that most wealth the Wall Street generates is “phantom wealth”, that we are trading our nature for money, that rich people are richer by squeezing poor people who become poorer… that it is a cruel world. However, what I don’t concur is when he blames the economy for the problems. Is economy the reason?

I think the reason is humanity. It’s the greed that lies in the instinct of human nature. Greed is the power of modern economy, the foundation of the demand-supply curve, and, however, the reason why there is growth. In fact, I don't think growth can be infinite in the world of finite resources. What economy is pursuing is basically transforming the various resources on Earth into usable resources in our pockets faster and faster. I know that a lot of wealth we are producing is not real wealth, but for the people who receive real money, this is the real wealth. Maybe they are throwing babies downstream but, why they care, they live at the upper stream. They might feel guilty for indirectly causing poverty for other people, but they certainly feel happy for directly earning money. You may give them a lecture about morality but you can’t expect them to become generous; as long as they are powerful enough to make rules, they may do whatever they want.

Nature is cruel. The evolution of humankind to form civilized communities weakens the law of jungle, but cannot eliminates it. Absolute fairness is hopeless and meaningless. Changing the rule is not likely to change the situation. Besides, how can we even bring human consumption into balance with Earth’s natural systems when we are actually breaking the natural balance for dollars? Humankind is not friendly to nature. Humankind is exploiting the nature. Some may say that human contributes to nature, too. Yeah right. Is the best contribution being the protection from getting worn off by humankind?

Many Business 101 tells us that the moral of a business is to make money. I admire the author for having a heart for the general public, for his hope in replacing Wall Street capitalism with Main Street markets in building the New Economy (Fairy Tale). I don’t want to embellish Wall Street at all but I have to admit their contribution in making the States one of the world’s richest company.

As far as what I know, Qing dynasty of China had operated in the mode of Main Street markets, in a totally self-sufficient, closed economic system, until its gate was blasted open by invaders wanting an international trade. Now, putting the grudge of wars and interracial contentions for resources, I think my current conclusion would be that unless the whole world is united, a perfect economy could never appear.

Even within a country, people have different ambitions. Not everyone is obliged to care about everyone else, and we cannot blame them for having an indifferent heart. The main problem toward the perfect economy is that the tolerance level is too low. Only one player that plays against the rule is needed to break down the entire system.

Korten points out that Wall Street has no shame. Then what’s your plan for ensuring your new economy to have shame?