nffcCHAP.14b

(9/21/98)

CHAPTER XIV. B.

ECONOMICS AND THE WISE COMMUNITY -- BIONOMICS

BIONOMICS: The Inevitability of Capitalism, Michael Rothschild, Henry Holt, New York, 1990.

CHAPTER 18 -- JAPAN'S SECRET WEAPON

To understand Japan's "secret weapon" one must keep in mind the effects of the learning curve as discussed in Chapter 17.

(p. 189) "Only Japan was prepared to exploit the incredible economic opportunities presented by the microchip. At a crucial moment in economic history, when the first pulse of microchip innovation reached its peak, only the Japanese pursued policies that took full advantage of the learning curve's central lesson."

"Of course, no single formula can explain every aspect of America's economic defeat by Japan. But without an appreciation for the sheer power of organizational learning, Americans have no framework for understanding the inexorable forces that continue to propel their economic descent."

"By now, the symptoms of America's economic disease are well known, but its root causes -- policies, attitudes, and habits that stifle organizational learning -- have gone largely unreported. And unless the learning disabilities of America's companies are remedied soon, the prognosis for the American standard of living and America's role in the world will remain bleak."

(p. 190) "...[In 1987], Japan's real GNP per person -- the ultimate measure of a society's productivity and income -- soared past America's long-stagnant performance. To top it all off, 1987 was also the year the United States became the world's largest debtor nation."

"Explanations offered for Japan's triumph fall under two broad themes that can be conveniently labeled the 'tilted playing field' and 'nuts and bolts.' Americans stress the first view while Japanese emphasize the second. In truth both explanations are valid. Indeed, they are the two prongs of a coherent competitive strategy based on the learning curve."

(p. 192) "However, both schools of thought fall short. Although they portray accurately the key elements of Japan's success, neither view fully explains why this particular combination of government and business tactics proved to be so amazingly effective."

"Slavishly devoted to the mythology of equilibrium economics, American economists must bear much of the blame for America's competitive collapse....Unaware of the most basic rules in the evolutionary struggle for economic survival, the United States has become a pitiful giant, stunned and bewildered by its mounting losses. While Japan continues to roll up one victory after another, the United States -- crippled by its profound ignorance of real-world economics -- has little hope of devising an effective counterstrategy."

(p. 193) "...the Japanese government encourages smaller enterprises to merge and form larger firms."

"By contrast, the American government traditionally has tried to prevent mergers."

(p. 194) "Considering their devastating impact on the ability of American firms to accumulate adequate production experience, America's antitrust laws should be called antilearning laws."

"In a similar way, a comparison of American and Japanese foreign-trade policies reveals America's complete ignorance of and Japan's strict adherence to the basic teachings of the learning curve."

(p. 195) "In the past, Japan's extreme protectionism was excused....But the real reason for Japan's strict import control is that it gives an enormous boost to Japanese firms in their quest for accelerated experience growth."

There are, of course, specific instances where American manufacturers have been allowed to sell in Japan, but even these seeming exceptions to the rule reveal Japan's consummate skill at the learning-curve game. For instance, in the early 1970s, when it became clear that microchip technology would define the futures of all electronics industries, the Japanese government targeted the semiconductor business for an all-out effort. At the time, American companies...had commanding leads in all aspects of microchip technology. By every measure...American microchips simply overwhelmed the Japanese products."

"But when these American firms tried to sell their chips in Japan, they were denied import licenses. When they persisted, the Japanese government informed the Americans that they could sell in Japan only if they agreed to license their technologies to Japanese firms."

"Prevented by U.S. antitrust law from forming a united front, the American firms were skillfully played off against each other. One by one, the American chipmakers handed over technical secrets gained from hard-won experience and gave their Japanese competitors the tools needed to catch up almost overnight. To add insult to injury, the Japanese never followed through on their promises of open-market access."

(p. 199) "Without question, just-in-time production and total quality control are at the heart of Japan's manufacturing prowess, but even these twin techniques cannot fully explain the learning superiority of Japanese firms....the typical Japanese worker takes home about one-third of his or her annual compensation in the form of profit-sharing bonuses."

(p. 200) "...Japanese firms place tremendous emphasis on worker suggestions...." "Japan's vaunted lifetime employment system can also be seen as part of its elaborate reward structure."

RESPONSE: It seems to me that the Japanese have attempted to maintain cultural values as they adopted modern technology and manufacturing and have in many ways been successful in doing so. They have recognized that their true wealth is in their people and they have gone to great lengths to ensure that people maintain feelings of social connection and support. As a result each individual stands ready to give fully of themselves for what they believe is the good of the culture. In fact many Japanese are apparently actually working themselves to death.

But a Wise Community is not one that is willing to drive its workers to death in order to be #1 in production. This is just the concern that Karl Marx was attempting to express. His efforts may have been misfocused, but the underlying concern was right on target. If there is no God to give meaning to our life then life must be its own justification. How to do this is the challenge of a Science of Religion.

If our goal is to develop Wise Communities made up of Wise Persons than we have to find ways to deal with all the practical problems of the world that make this difficult to do. I think the real importance of BIONOMICS is that it appears to provide some ideas for tackling the key problems of an economy in a way consistent with a Science of Religion. To me this means not treating markets, economies, corporations as "natural" processes above and outside of human values and concerns.

Rather it is just the other way around. How can human values and needs get expressed so that economics impacts human life positively rather than negatively? Rothschild discusses on his p. 248 (see below) ways to achieve the above goals.

However, it seems worth stating that the most important goal is not the production of items at the cheapest possible price. But rather to produce goods or services in such a way as to ensure that everyone involved or effected is not diverted from their path towards becoming a Wise Person.

Therefore, underpaying workers or overworking them becomes a social concern just like pollution, or producing a defective product. To think the market will handle these issues is obviously erroneous. Consumers will buy the least expensive item of equivalent quality. This is especially true if they are not aware that the lower price is due to hidden costs in terms of worker exploitation, corruption, pollution, defective products, etc.

Another important issue that needs to be discussed here relates to the interaction of economics and religion (as in Science of Religion). In many ways the Japanese culture provides a fertile place where a Science of Religion might flourish. The Japanese have an extremely high level of education. They are not committed to the most destructive components of folk religion. But on the other side of the equation is the Japanese myth of cultural superiority. Since they don't have a clue about the attributes of a Wise Community and Wise Persons, their efforts to maintain their cultural traditions can only end up being self-destructive. They are still working to maintain a "tribal" culture in which the individual is submerged in doing the culturally approved thing whether that thing permits them to develop fully as an indiviual or not. Therefore, until this is overcome they will have no better potential to become a Wise Community made up of Wise Persons than any other culture.

(p. 201) "Japanese firms are famous for sacrificing quick profits for the growth that comes from increasing market share....[They] always cut their prices in parallel with their falling costs."

PART V: STRUGGLE AND COMPETITION; CHAPTER 19 -- ESCAPE THROUGH DIVERSITY

(p. 208) "Rather than constant combat, the hallmark of intense competition is diversity."

(p. 212) "Throughout nature, diversity provides a partial escape from direct competition."

(p. 209) "To decipher life's basic patterns, ecologists must conduct their research inside 'natural laboratories,' out in the field, in ecosystems that are complex but not so convoluted that nature's fundamental architecture is obscured."

"New Guinea is a 1,500-mile-long terrarium, the perfect place to observe nature's own evolutionary experiments."

(p. 210) "...[Leading bird ecologist, Jared] Diamond found several bird species, all descended from a common ancestor, that now live in separate altitude zones."

"His research documents the lifeways of New Guinea's 513 bird species and provides compelling evidence of the evolutionary connection between competition and diversity."

"In some cases, cohabiting species avoid each other by feeding at different times of the day. In other cases, birds limit competition's cost by specializing in different foods."

RESPONSE: In addition to helping us understand competition, the way ecosystems are studied provides a model for study of issues related to a Wise Community and the Wise Person. The above process is the style of developing hypotheses, gathering data, analysis, and testing that will be needed to develop guidelines to allow all persons to achieve a SFLIHM (a Sustainable Feeling that one's LIfe Has Meaning). Perhaps, we will never reach a time when everyone will achieve a SFLIHM. But with sufficient data and computer processing, good models should be developed that can be ever improved as more and more data is collected, experience achieved, better insights and theories evolved, etc.

CHAPTER 20 -- ECONOMY AS ECOSYSTEM

(p. 215) "The ecologists' 'carrying capacity' is the businessperson's 'market size.' Describing an industry's niche -- how it taps into limited consumer demand -- is the key to understanding its role in the economy."

"A company's technology shapes its product's features just as parents' genes determine their child's characteristics."

(p. 217) "Surprisingly, despite the differences between predator/prey and customer/supplier transactions, the basic designs of ecosystems and economies are much the same."

(p. 224) "Cutting costs and adding value are the twin goals of economic efficiency. Some businesses emphasize one, some the other. Balancing these irreconcilable objectives is the art of strategic management."

"In both ecosystem and economy, survival rewards efficiency. Inefficiency is punished by extinction."

"...until quite recently, it was impossible to develop a meaningful comparison [between economies and ecosystems]. After all, the great bulk of thorough ecological research is a product of the past 30 years....[In addition] Prior to the widespread use of computers, precise data on market shares, costs, prices, and other key variables simply was not available."

RESPONSE: The same could be said for developing an empirical Science of Religion. To gather sufficient data on individuals in numerous societies and circumstances to draw valid conclusions about which behavior and world views allow one to achieve a SFLIHM would not have been possible prior to the development of the current generation of computers.

CHAPTER 21 -- DIVIDE & PROSPER

(p. 227) "In a resource-limited world, the efficiencies yielded by the division of labor endow an ant colony with a powerful competitive edge."

"In a sense, the division of labor is just another example of competition's power to create diversity."

(p. 231) "As it was for every species, endless labor and bare subsistence seemed to be humanity's unalterable fate."

But, "Using their brains -- the most flexible feature of the human anatomy -- they invented farm tools."

(p. 232) "In a sense, the sophisticated division of labor the leafcutters [ants] achieved through body-size differentiation was simulated by our forebears' use of simple farming tools."

(p. 234) "For 9,000 years, we had used our bodies and crude tools to cultivate plants. Our division of labor was simple and physical. But with printing, we could use our minds to cultivate technology. Techniculture allowed a far more elaborate, intellectual division of labor. For the first time, the prime source of human diversity -- the mind -- could be harnessed for humanity's benefit. With technology as our new partner, the human economy was no longer chained to the sluggish pace of biological evolution."

(p. 234) "Whether an economy happens to be based on genetic or technical information, the same basic rules apply. Limited resources compel organisms to compete. Limited demand forces organizations to compete. Externally, they evolve specializations to avoid conflicts and boost efficiency. Internally, they evolve divisions of labor in pursuit of the same goals. In both realms and at all levels, competition is evolution's shaping force."

RESPONSE: And because the mind permits rapid change and this change alters society which is the primary shaper of individual change, an inherently unstable structure is produced. The goal of a Science of Religion would be to provide the ingredients for a new order of stability.

This stability would be expected to come out of a process that joins the individual and their culture together to produce a Wise Person and a Wise Community. As indicated in Chapter XV and XXXIV the goal is to find a way to allow modern humans with their language ability to join fully and completely with their community as proto-humans did during the millions of years that they were hunter-gatherers and to do it in such a way as they are not prevented from achieving their "Wisdom" potential.

CHAPTER 22 -- ENDING POVERTY

"...when an uncompetitive business firm folds, the company's employees do not die. They move to other jobs."

RESPONSE: Unfortunately, the reality is not quite as simple as the above implies. On Rothschild's p. 248 (below) the issue is more squarely confronted and the social challenge expressed for the real solution to such problems.

(p. 235) "Today, producing enough food no longer poses a serious economic challenge. Several of the most advanced economies are plagued by food surpluses, while their citizens fight a losing war against obesity."

"In a technical economy, the penalty for uncompetitiveness is not death, but poverty."

RESPONSE: The thrust of Rothschild's argument seems very important and very much to the point. The above statements raise issues that are necessary for us to have in mind. Malthus' images have been such a strong part of our education that most of us have not recognized the truth Rothschild points out even though it stares us in the face every day.

However, when we bring in the idea of the Wise Person and the Wise Community then we do have to raise some additional questions:

What is poverty? Are current definitions of poverty adequate? Poverty now is defined as annual income below a certain level. However, I would guess that many persons could live a very full life with income below the "poverty level." Part of this would involve focusing on the elements that make up a Wise Community and the Wise Person. None of these things are inherently dependent on a particular level of income although in some (perhaps most) circumstances a particular level of income is important.

One way the foregoing could be achieved is by communal living arrangements where food and housing would be dealt with very efficiently and possibly for monies beneath the poverty level. Perhaps, in association with these community living facilities special income producing activities could be provided so that persons would be self supporting. If such communities could be developed they might be important for individuals who for whatever reasons are not involved in the regular work force. See Chapter XXI, " Living Space for the Wise Person."

These kinds of facilities would ensure that every person is able to achieve a SFLIHM and develop/maintain a Wise Community. In the final analysis economic poverty is not the key concern in a person's life. If a SFLIHM is the goal the question is, What is the relationship between income and a sustainable feeling that one's life has meaning? These two concerns are not unrelated to each other. Neither are they directly related. Putting them together in an appropriate way is a primary challenge of a Wise Community.

(p. 236) "From the onset of the Industrial Revolution, bitter political controversy raged over the best way to expunge poverty....this dispute solidified into the great contest between capitalism and socialism....In 1989, with the stunning, nearly simultaneous collapse of the world's socialist economies, this colossal experiment came to an end. The results are plain -- socialism cannot erase mass poverty."

"But, by the same token, any claim that capitalism cures all is undermined by the persistence of widespread poverty amid great affluence."

RESPONSE: Poverty and all the issues around it is a core issue for a Wise Community. Hopefully, Chapter XV provide a handle on this important concern.

(p. 237) "...policymakers on both Right and Left seem immobilized....neither side comprehends how capitalism works, neither can hope to devise policies that will harness its forces to cure poverty."

"To grasp the true causes of poverty, it is crucial first to figure out why the range of incomes is so great."

(p. 240) "In a high-technology economy, wages are not simply a payment for raw labor. In effect, earnings are a financial return on the worker's past investment in human capital."

Response: Although the above statement focusing on investing in human capital is an over simplification the underlying truth is a deeply important idea. It provides one element of a double pronged approach. The other prong which Rothschild ignores is the religious and/or the therapeutic realm.

If we look at highly creative persons we see the real importance of human capital. Persons like Walt Disney, Henry Ford, James Watt, Isaac Newton provided jobs directly or indirectly for thousands, perhaps millions of people. Although none of these individuals were functioning at their highest capacity they provide a glimpse of what happens when persons are functioning at their highest level. And, in order to function at their highest level most people require substantial investments by society. Therefore, a Wise Community must be prepared to invest in potential of all its citizens. Some people are ready and able to benefit with almost no social support. However, most individuals need sustained support in order to advance to the place where they can live at their highest level and make maximum contribution to their society.

Part of the foregoing results because a core aspect of the individual's ability to benefit from social investments depends on their religious development. Up to this time our religious institutions have been so mis-focused, many persons have been seriously damaged in their ability to benefit from education and training. Human society will be misfocused until we develop religious institutions associated with a CPASR (Center for the Practical Application of a Science of Religion) that are based on falsifiable ideas rather than subjective claims of special access to Truth. Only then will every individual actualize their potential to tap into their inner strengths and begin to develop their full positive potential.

(p. 240) "...[Highly trained workers] earn more per hour than...[workers of lesser training] not only because their output is considered more precious but also because a premium is needed to induce students to defer consumption and make such a large investment. Without a stream of future income paying dividends on that educational investment, most people would not bother to acquire advanced skills."

RESPONSE: Here is another place where society needs to make a greater investment to obtain the levels of skill it needs in a way that doesn't fill the worker with counter productive expectations on salary. MD's are (or at least used to be), a good example of this phenomenon. Physicians spend massive quantities of time and much money getting ready to work in their profession. Because of the fantastic investment of time and money, and the painful process of their training, their social sensitivity sometimes becomes numbed. They then see dollars rather than suffering people for patients. It is essential that each person receive all the encouragement and help possible to develop their full potential. In so far as possible all constructive talents should be developed so they can help create or maintain a Wise Community. Improving skills should be a natural part of each person's growth independent of salary. In a Wise Community salary is only one measure of the social value of an individual. Each individual must receive social recognition, encouragement for continuous development, and acceptance. They must have a feeling of importance that is unrelated to the amount of money they earn for the job they do. When the foregoing condition exists salaries may become less significant as motivators. After all there is nothing one can buy with money that is as valuable as one's full and active participation in a Wise Community.

(p. 240) "Paradoxically, then, income redistribution makes dollar earning streams more equal by making percentage returns in educational investments less equal....In view of the growing importance of human capital, making investments in education less profitable is stupid social policy. And, though unintended, it is a logical consequence of the nineteenth-century economic thinking that ignores human capital."

RESPONSE: It may well be that our tax system needs to be totally restructured as suggested by Rothschild. Also, it seems like the number one priority of any society, but particularly of a Wise Community is development of human capital. This approach is congruent with the idea that the individual person is the only worthy focus of ultimate concern. As indicated above a Wise Community would probably do a better job than current societies of maintaining low costs for education.

Every person has to find some way to participate in socially valuable activity so they are able to pay their way in the world. Everyone needs help to guide them into the best way to do this. This guiding considers society's needs and the individual's full range of talents, and the kind of things discussed in Chapter XV.

These issues are far more basic than balance sheets and income redistribution. A society in which a person decides not to develop their full potential because they would have to pay more taxes is a long way from a Wise Community -- but probably not further away than any society that currently exists on Earth.

(p. 240) "...technicultural production depends upon an intimate relationship between machine capital and human capital."

RESPONSE: But as indicated elsewhere it seems essential to me that we find a way to discriminate between machine capital and human capital since they are different in a very basic way. We can't come to a position that holds that human labor can never be replaced by machine labor since the whole thrust of advancement comes out of this replacement. However, the core social value can be stated as helping as many individuals as possible achieve a SFLIHM, not the enhancement of machines. The only value of machines is in their value in helping persons achieve a SFLIHM.

So it seems to me that we have to find a way to put a social value on a person's labor that is above and beyond its value as an element of production. Perhaps, these theories would also lead to a way of treating salary so it will be recognized as an essential element in the good life and that would prevent exploitation of individuals merely because they lack the power to have their labor appropriately valued.

However, the above discussion may turn out to be irrelevant in light of the ideas Rothschild discusses on his p. 248, below.

(p. 241) "Continuous education and training is the only way to transform undifferentiated human beings into an array of extremely diverse, appropriately specialized workers. As in nature, increasing specialization is the only way to minimize conflict, boost efficiency, and raise output."

"Existing differences [of U.S. salaries] are ascribed to genetics and luck, factors for which no one is responsible. In keeping with nineteenth-century economic dogma, education's role in creating meaningful economic differences is overlooked."

(p. 242) "Workers with less than a high school education tend to earn less than those in any other education group."

(p. 243) "In an open labor market, no rule prohibits the uneducated from becoming rich or the well-educated from becoming poor."

"But, for the most part, the high degree of overlap reflects the imprecision of categorizing workers simply by their amount of education."

"The earnings diversity that does exist within a given occupation is easily explained. Because workers in well-managed firms add more value per hour, these companies can afford to pay premium wages and still be cost-competitive."

"The overall pattern of earnings is unmistakable. Education determines occupation and occupation determines income."

RESPONSE: Education is a crucial factor in helping a person to obtain a high salary and to live a better life. However, since significant numbers of high school drop outs earn as much as a good portion of those with high school and college degrees it seems overly simplistic to say level of education is the factor. Rather, I think, it should be clear that many of those who do not even finish high school have all kinds of other problems that make their economic success very difficult: inability to delay gratification; poor social skills; emotional/psychological problems of every kind; mental/ physical deficiencies; lack of goals, visions, plans, hopes, dreams, etc.

In a Wise Community a key part of education must be therapy, modeling, social integration, and total development in every way that impacts becoming a Wise Person. Individuals then would not only be able to develop their full potential, they would be welcomed into society. They would be able to participate in society in such a way as to best utilize their special and unique skills, interests, abilities, etc. Often this would be in the ways discussed in Chapter XV.

(p. 245) "Scratch the surface of any sophisticated argument for income redistribution and one finds a zero-sum mentality as David Ricardo wrote and his disciple Karl Marx believed, 'There is no other way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down.' Principles that accurately described the no-growth agricultural era were wrongly assumed to apply to the emerging technicultural economy. In the mid-1800s, no one -- not even Marx -- could have imagined the explosive economic growth that techniculture was about to yield. Ironically, zero-sum socialist thought became established just as the constraints of the agricultural age began to fade away."

"Among non-Marxists, belief in zero-sum economics was just as strong. John Stuart Mill, the grandfather of modern Western economics, accepted the Malthusian prediction that population increases would out-strip production gains. Like every other major nineteenth-century economist, he dismissed Adam Smith's emphasis on education and the division of labor as critical sources of economic growth. Committed to a no-growth mindset, economists of all stripes thought of the economy as [a system]...where insufficient resources compelled conflict. The equitable distribution of goods -- not their production -- was seen as the ultimate economic question."

RESPONSE: It looks as though economics got off to a rocky start with numerous erroneous or poorly focused hypotheses. For whatever reason these basic ideas have not been revised. Perhaps, modern economists like Rothschild will usher in such changes. It appears as though such changes would help everybody. Certainly, a Science of Religion needs to support the development of economic ideas compatible with its goals.

(p. 246) "Logically, redistribution is the only remedy for income inequality in a no-growth economy. But the higher an economy's potential rate of growth, the less sense redistribution makes....everyone is better off if the economy expands. But growth requires investment. Only investment can turn new science into new technology....To pay for more consumption by the poor, income redistribution must cut investment by the rich."

"Income 'fairness' is obtained largely by diverting what would have been private investment funds to government-supported consumption. Capital accumulation slows, the pace of technological change slackens, and the average standard of living rises more slowly."

"Of course, to recognize the hidden costs of income redistribution is not to argue against the need for a social safety net. It is painfully obvious that many people cannot possibly support themselves. Basic human decency demands that we assist the needy. No rational person disputes this."

RESPONSE: Assisting the needy must be totally refocused so that it is done in a way that truly expands the person and permits them to contribute to society at the highest level of which they are capable. To do otherwise is to deny the concept that the individual person is the only worthy focus for ultimate concern. However, this assistance will not only be educational in nature, but much of it will include therapy and help with religious growth (of a kind compatible with a Science of Religion).

But redistribution of wealth seems like a concept worthy of some study. Where do we start in saying, No!, to redistribution? How do the rich get rich? Perhaps by mining gold, oil or other natural resources -- which represents a non-renewable resource that they had no hand in creating. Perhaps, by polluting the environment so they can sell their product for a bigger profit. Perhaps, through graft and corruption. In most cases they have provided a service or product of value to others which has allowed them to make a profit. However, in some cases they have benefitted by some kind of exploitation or special favor.

It seems to me that the issue of income redistribution is much bigger than the issue of regressive taxation. Most rich people didn't get rich because dollars magically hopped into their hands. Frequently, this was due to a mis-use of power. Sometimes this is from government by way of special favors, non-competitive contracts, trade protection, etc. So carefully looking at whose dollars are in fact being redistributed would seem to be a helpful exercise. In addition just because someone has more money than they need to live on does not ensure that it will be spent to develop the economy. I think it would make better sense to provide tax benefits for money invested in programs that have the potential to enhance the society's development.

(p. 246) "In a technicultural economy, the root problem is not the maldistribution of consumption but the maldistribution of human capital investment...some estimates suggest that two-thirds of America's poor adults are functionally illiterate."

"In a world where the handling of information is the very essence of economic life, illiterates are completely outside the economic system.... With an estimated 30 million adult illiterates, America has the lowest literacy rate of any developed country....this fact -- or the fact that Japan and Western Europe have achieved virtually complete literacy -- is rarely even noted in discussions of America's poverty dilemma or its collapsing competitiveness."

RESPONSE: That there are vast numbers of Americans who are functionally illiterate should be a matter of grave concern to us all.

Many people blame our widespread illiteracy on deficiencies in our systems for teaching reading. If this criticism is valid (and it seems likely to me that it is) it raises some very important issues.

Changes were made in procedures for teaching reading based on theoretical considerations and research. However, it looks as though these procedures were not satisfactorily evaluated. As a result many individuals have suffered in very real and in-depth ways. My guess is that the problem arose because researchers failed to adequately take into account differences that exist among people.

Most people obviously do learn to read without need to focus on phonics. Others don't and some learn to read with great difficulty. Because researchers and schools only focus on part of the population a good many individuals' lives are significantly diminished. This problem arose to some degree because our society -- like all other societies -- is not committed to the belief that the individual human being is the only worthy focus for ultimate concern. If we were committed to the individual we could not so easily watch a whole group (whether in schools, slums, or in prisons) cast on the garbage heap.

I have a theory that part of the problem arose because there are two kinds of people: those with "slow brains," and those with "fast brains." Or, more likely people fall along a continuum. On one end of the scale are "fastest" brain people. On the other end are "slowest" brain people. I think dyslexia may be associated with the slow brain condition. Fast brain people can easily learn how to read by looking at words and remembering them. Slow brain people don't remember this way. They need more clues to be able to learn a word or anything else. Slow brain people tend to talk and write in long, involved, convoluted sentences. A sentence could easily be a paragraph. Fast brain people talk and write in clear, short, to-the-point sentences. They are not distracted by all the related issues and exceptions that distract slow brain people and enrich their thinking while confusing their delivery. Fast brain people are practical. They are bothered by inconsistencies of a practical nature. They are not likely to be bothered by inconsistencies in fundamental assumptions because they find such pursuits uninteresting, unrewarding. They don't question the assumptions underneath the practical assumptions. They normally wouldn't even realize there are any.

Slow brain people tend to remember patterns rather than individual facts. Therefore, they tend to see inconsistencies and inadequacies of underlying assumptions. Fast brain people normally have difficulty interacting with slow brain people because of the slowness and vagueness of their responses. Generally they have difficulty understanding the point the slow brain person is focusing on and see it as irrelevant. Albert Einstein is an example of a slow brain person. Werner Heisenberg is an example of a fast brain person.

It isn't clear to me whether Niels Bohr was a fast brain or slow brain person. However, I would say that quantum mechanics is fast brain science. It has no foundation. Intuitively it doesn't make sense. But it works. And that is the trade mark of fast brain thinking.

(p. 246) "...America's poor are the tip of an economic iceberg, the most pathetic products of a society that has consistently underinvested in its most precious resource -- its own people."

"Obviously, many millions of American workers are highly skilled. But over the last two decades, the proportions of those as skilled as their foreign counterparts has fallen....the U.S. population of scientists and engineers reached its peak in 1969...."

"In both Japan and Western Europe firms invest far more heavily in worker training than their American counterparts."

RESPONSE: All of the above is food for careful thought. We need to do whatever it takes to increase the effectiveness of our educational system and to encourage companies to invest more in their workers. I suspect part of the problem comes out of lack of loyalty between companies and workers. In America companies reduce their work force during times of economic down turn (which of course makes those down turns worse both economically and psychologically). Workers move from one job to the next like nomads in order to increase salary, job advancement, etc. Under such circumstances this is almost a commons problem when it comes to investing in workers. It may well be that such training should be considered a social good (therefore earning some social/economic rewards) and a personal good so that the individual also invests money in their future as well as their time and energy.

Another element of this whole issue is a grave indifference to complex, deep seated social problems by the bulk of society. Urban Americans tend to be outside a firm social network. Also, our social institutions treat individuals in an adversarial way. People often think of society as the enemy rather than a friend. So they ask, What's in it for me, and mean this in a very short-term, selfish way. They don't think in terms of their total life. They don't consider subtle things like the difference between a bus driver who smiles and is helpful vs. one who is surly and indifferent.

However, part of the problem lies in the American goal -- "pursuit of happiness." We see play as the goal and work is just a painful experience necessary to allow us to play. If a person enjoys their work they are called "workaholic" and thought to have a disease. As a result many persons put more energy into getting out of work than in working. We depend on individuals raised in other cultures with other values to do the hard work, as well as a few "workaholics."

(p. 248) "Because the role of human capital in economic competition is ignored by conventional economic theory, neither the Left nor the Right comprehends the fundamental forces eroding the living standards of working Americans and crushing the hope of poor Americans. Both Left and Right continue to overlook the fact that income is an effect, not a cause...."

"In a technicultural economy, the only remedy for poverty is aggressive investment, especially in human capital. Genuine progress requires truly open access to quality education for every single American who is willing to put forth the effort to learn."

RESPONSE: The foregoing sounds crucial. And, of course there need to be institutions to help more and more persons get to the point where they desire to "put forth the effort to learn." As indicated elsewhere the above is consistent with the idea that it is the individual person who is of primary concern. The goal is to produce Wise Persons in a Wise Community. In such an environment each person would naturally develop to their fullest potential. This would create a feed-back loop in which others would thereby be helped to do the same. This synergistic interaction would let everyone participate in social progress, accumulation of wealth, and building a Wise Community.

(p. 249) "Without question, radical reform of the public schools should be the first step toward solving America's poverty problem. Providing every American child access to a high-quality education would be the single most powerful antipoverty program ever launched."

"...a future of society-wide poverty is by no means inevitable.... Overhauling a tax system that causes excessive consumption and inadequate investment is the first step. Slashing federal income-tax rates and replacing the lost revenues with a national sales tax would be the fastest, fairest way of motivating a profound change in the consumption/savings decisions of the American people."

"Beyond this, the recognition that experience and learning drive down real costs should lead American companies to appreciate the value of modest, incremental improvements....American firms must learn to stress long-term market share more than short-term profit. The U.S. government should continue to pry open closed markets that allow foreign firms to accumulate insurmountable leads in production experience. Antitrust laws that prevent technological cooperation among American firms should be repealed."

"Government programs based on the notion that redistributing income solves poverty must be replaced by policies that emphasize investment in human capital. To accomplish this a complete transformation of America's public-school system is essential."

RESPONSE: Well, there it is! A number of substantial changes are being suggested. Let's really analyze this and if it holds up get to it.

(p. 250) "We must absorb whatever valuable lessons we can from the Japanese, but in the end, America will prosper by competing in a different way....We must build our competitive strategy upon the features of American society that make us profoundly different from Japan."

"First and foremost, the Japanese are a homogeneous people. They are terribly polite about it, but they abhor foreigners....The Japanese genuinely believe that their 'racial purity' is the source of their economic and social success. They show no indication of abandoning these views."

"Too few Americans seem to grasp that it is our very heterogeneity that makes America such an incredibly vibrant society. America's astonishing creativity is unquestionably derived from its racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity. Creative sparks fly when people of different backgrounds approach the same problem."

"After all, of the five billion people on the planet, only 120 million are Japanese."

"Although the Japanese have in the past shown themselves to be remarkably adaptable, it remains to be seem whether or not they can transform themselves into a nonracist society."

RESPONSE: Rather strong language!

It would be encouraging to find that core values of a Science of Religion such as treasuring variety, working for ethnic and personal diversity, valuing universality above ethnic or national affiliations, do in fact lead not only to a humane society, but also an affluent society.

But those who would promote a Science of Religion can only hope that the Japanese and all other people will continue to broaden their cultural views. A Wise Community incorporates diversity and thereby experiences tremendous excitement. A Science of Religion teaches us that all people need to be united by their common humanity and enlarged by individual and cultural differences.

PART VI: FEEDBACK LOOPS AND FREE MARKETS

"The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order." Alfred North Whitehead

RESPONSE: The matter of change is of extreme importance and deserves much more thought than it has received. See Chapter XXVIII, " Managing Change in a Wise Community."

CHAPTER 23 -- SPONTANEOUS ORDER

(P. 256/257) "...The ultimate question raised by evolution....is it really possible that an unconscious, spontaneous phenomenon could have brought forth a natural world of such awesome diversity, beauty, and balance? We can see it. But it still boggles the mind."

"...the same sense of incredulity underlies the widespread mistrust of free markets. Anyone who thinks carefully about capitalism must ask, How could such a vast and complex system emerge without the benefit of some grand design?...The notion that no one is in control -- that economic order spontaneously emerges from the chaotic interaction of millions of individuals and firms -- is, quite simply, hard to swallow."

"If we do not understand how markets work, we can hardly claim to understand why they fail, or how to fix them."

"The sad truth is that two centuries after Adam Smith launched the study of economics, we still cannot explain how markets work."

RESPONSE: Economic order may spontaneously emerge from the chaos of the market, but as indicated before this doesn't prove that it is impossible to guide an economy. As Rothschild indicates above, understanding must precede fixing. There must be guidelines that can help societies steer their markets just as there are ways to guide organic evolution. But the ultimate proof of the value of the guidelines must be empirical study of the effectiveness of the results. If the results are not as predicted or desired than greater thought and study are necessary. As we learn the specific mechanisms of evolution and genetic control of an organism we see vast opportunities for guiding and controlling these systems, but always from a point of fundamental ignorance. Markets and economies must be open to similar study and understanding.

(p. 258) "Stalled for decades at a theoretical dead end, economics has no respectable alternative but to set off again in a new direction."

RESPONSE: This sounds good to me. But I am looking forward to hearing the reactions of economists. I particularly am waiting to see reactions from economists who bring their knowledge and experience to the issue, but are able to rise above the mindset and limitations of their education.

(p. 259) "...most natural phenomena are nonlinear. Only a tiny portion of nature's processes meet the rigid criteria of linear math. If a feedback process is involved, or if more than two objects are interacting, linear equations are useless. Much of physics. Most of chemistry, and all of biology falls outside the domain of classical linear science."

(p. 269) "Although the terminology is still somewhat fluid, most scientists refer to this nonlinear middle ground as 'chaos'....As Alan Garfinkel of UCLA put it, 'chaos is not disorder; it is a higher form of order.'"

"In its narrow scientific sense, 'chaos' covers natural phenomena that seems to be disorderly but in fact adhere to underlying patterns."

RESPONSE: Chaos theory is examined in depth in Chapter XVI. It is truly one of the most exciting and important developments ever made in scientific thought. It pushes our understanding of the universe to a deeper level of comprehension. Chaos provides us a way to more clearly see the world we live in.

However, there is a potential difficulty with models such as the one indicated in the above formulation. When chaos scientists talk about chaos being a higher form of order they usually refer to this as deterministic. However, deterministic here means cause and effect and does not include mathematical prediction. (As differentiated from the practical predictions most animals incorporate into their behavior.) The new form of order illuminated by chaos theory is beyond prediction at least in the way meant by the model used by earlier science. See Chapter XVI, " Chaos and A Science of Religion."

And it is obvious that the concept of mathematical prediction, requires a predictor. Even more than that it requires somebody to dream up the concept of mathematical prediction. Even though human beings are doing all this thinking and modeling and theorizing -- they have never adequately analyzed the implications of the role they are playing in this thinking. As a result they have failed to recognize that human beings don't just observe reality, they project their "reality" onto the universe. (Human Beings Are the Ultimate Reference System.)

Of course we know that human interpretations and explanations of reality are always found to be lacking when there is sufficient study. So, corrections are made. But up to this time it has never been acknowledged that this is an infinite process. Human beings cannot know TRUTH. They can only struggle toward it. Since at this time human beings are the only predictors that we know of who use mathematics, we have included human beings in our models in a way not normally recognized.

CHAPTER 24 -- RULES VS PRICES

"...market economies and natural ecosystems are versions of the same fundamental phenomenon."

"No one set up the ecosystem. No one set up the market economy. No one needed to. Like any self-organizing system, capitalism just happened."

RESPONSE: Does the foregoing mean that nothing can be done to improve market interactions? Must everything that happens in a capitalist economy "just happen"? Rothschild's statements on p. 257 (above) imply that markets can be fixed when they fail. I would think he would agree that to the degree that ecosystems and organic evolution are in fact valid models for a market economy we must believe that there are an infinite number of things that can be done to improve their functioning. At the same time we can recognize that new possibilities totally beyond our current understanding lie in the future.

(p. 268) "In late 1987, the first conference dedicated to 'the economy as an evolving complex system' attracted economists."

"Several decades will pass before this paradigm shift completes itself. But it is possible to anticipate at least one insight to be gained from this new perspective....chaos will prove to economists that erratic oscillations are normal and healthy for the economy. Instead of regarding erratic price swings and unpredictable business cycles as indicators of economic weakness, the chaos of the marketplace will be seen for what it is -- a sign of vitality."

RESPONSE: Certainly, the above makes sense in terms of chaos theory. It would seem very unlikely that anything as complex as an economy could function smoothly, without all kinds of ups and downs. On the other hand all body systems are chaotic systems. And the heart beats faithfully and well for most people all of their life. Some persons do experience irregular heart beats, but this indicates that something is wrong with the system. Is it possible that business cycles represent something wrong with the market system that potentially could be fixed before they occur?

If the foregoing is not the case, then we need to do a better job of reacting to these fluctuations so as to best support all the people in society. Downturns in a cycle (recession) might be seen as a time to focus on retraining, improve management practices, build stock piles, catch up on structural maintenance, etc.

(p. 269) "...banning cocaine....achieves precisely the opposite of its intended effect."

(p. 270) "Whether a market is black, gray, or white is a matter of politics, not economics."

RESPONSE: The above points out a current deficiency in American models of society and the individual. Americans have a propensity to think that any problem can be solved by passing a law. We need to correct our models so they provide better guides for developing a Wise Community made up of Wise Persons.

Abuse of drugs and alcohol is a very serious problem. To me it is an indication of a misfocused life, and distorted values. The goal of society must be to clarify the factors involved and develop strategies to solve problems in a way that is not destructive to individuals and society. Certainly we must learn how to use rules of economics to help solve these problems rather than making them worse.

(p. 272) "...the productivity of even a small network of resources cannot be optimized by a 'command-and-control' approach. Appropriate rules simply cannot be written for every contingency....Only decentralized, self-organizing evolutionary systems manage to make the most of scarce resources."

"If this fact were more widely known, it would have profound implications for public policy. Rather than attempting to rid itself of problems by legislating them away, society could set up markets to pursue agreed-upon goals. Today, for example, markets could be created to relieve the threat of global environmental devastation, a monstrously complex problem that has been made far worse by several decades of 'command-and-control' futility."

RESPONSE: The above thinking would apply to law in general not just public policy. It implies that law is erroneously focused. To try to develop rules for every contingency and punishments for every violation can't work and is approaching the problem from the wrong angle.

(p. 273) "Our ecosystem is being ravaged not because antipollution rules are too few or too weak but because they are too many and too strong. Whenever a rule substitutes for a price, inefficiency is guaranteed. Indeed, if the problem is complex enough, a rule-based approach promises that there will be no solution at all. Massively complex problems can be solved only by the self-organizing interaction of independent, self-interested actors."

"However, this logic [no one owns the air or the water] assumes that the air and water must be treated as a commons. This is not so....[It] is a matter of politics, not economics. In a sense, a nonmarket commons is the exact opposite of a black market. In a black market, the price of the outlawed item is fixed at infinity. In a nonmarket commons, the price of the resource is set at zero. But oddly enough, whether government regulations set prices at infinity or at zero, the economic consequences are equally disastrous."

RESPONSE: The above ideas are worthy of the deepest thought. They represent a quite different way of looking at many issues. On their face these ideas are very attractive. Are there other aspects, however, that need to be considered? Are important consequences being left out of the above discussion?

(p. 273) "The greatest financial scandal of all time -- America's savings and loan fiasco....[Really began when] In 1980, Congress quietly removed the limits on the 50-year-old federal deposit insurance program. Federal guarantees on savings accounts went from $40,000 per depositor to $100,000 per account on an unlimited number of accounts per depositor....With their legal liability all but eliminated, several thousand savings and loan executives promptly squandered an ocean of free taxpayers' money on high risk, supposedly high-return, investment schemes."

(p. 274) "Only the self-regulation of the market -- where individuals directly bear the costs of their bad judgment -- can discipline greed."

RESPONSE: It seems to me that greed should be removed rather than disciplined. In reality I don't believe it is easy to discipline greed. I think it comes out of weakness and deficiency and therefore often resists learning only from the experience. It may require therapy or therapeutic processes in order to achieve the necessary learning.

But there are many ways to learn. Experience which comes from bad judgement can be one way if the person making the bad judgement benefits from the experience. However, many times in organizations individuals are able to shift blame, leave before the bad effects become obvious, or in all kinds of ways avoid confronting the ignorance that led them to the bad judgement. It seems to me that the essence of a Wise Community is to ensure that every person has the chance to learn from their mistakes.

However, in our society we aren't satisfied to provide a person a chance to learn from their mistakes. We insist on heaping other pain and humiliation onto the mistake. When this is done persons become so involved in not getting caught they no longer are able to benefit from the experience.

(p. 274). "Over the centuries, the higher productivity of private lands led to the complete privatization of England's commons lands, a historical episode known as the enclosure movement."

RESPONSE: What was the source of the higher productivity? Was it because private ownership permitted better planning and utilization? Did it encourage greater motivation to produce? Or, something else?

(p. 275) "...setting up a free market to cope with the pollution problem would be simple and inexpensive."

"One way would be to have the United States Congress set up a new environmental trust fund called the 'Eco Trust.' The Eco Trust would be authorized to auction off Eco Trust pollution permits."

(p. 278) "The initial auction of Eco Trust permits would likely raise tens of billions of dollars."

"A market system has the added benefit of being easy to set up anywhere in the world."

"Despite its powerful advantages, the free-market approach to pollution control has been largely ignored."

(p. 279) "Interestingly, few of those who attack market proposals argue that markets will not work."

RESPONSE: I'll have to admit that I am skeptical on this one. Since each country would set its own limits it would seem easy for unscrupulous countries to sell unlimited permissions to pollute. The whole world would obviously suffer. This would be a result of dealing with the problem using a commons format rather than as a limited resource. Of course if international treaties that could be enforced were adopted this concept might generate limits that would reduce pollution.

In addition I would wonder why business would obey the limits of the "Eco Trust," but not the laws and rules passed to control their pollution?

(p. 280) "Ironically, those who claim to care most deeply about the earth's future insist on government policies that condemn the planet to the very catastrophe they seek to avoid. The longer the 'command-and-control' outlook dominates thinking in the environmental movement, the closer the world will come to ecosystem breakdown."

(p. 281) "As the situation deteriorates over the next few decades, the radical totalitarian program of today's Red-Greens[1] will seem more necessary and will attract wider support from a desperate public. Extremists always gain power from crises."

"On the other hand, if pollution markets are given a chance, they will prove their effectiveness quickly."

"Worldwide economic growth, unrestrained by the threat of ecological devastation, will allow people in even the poorest Third World nations to raise themselves far above their current misery."

(p. 282) "Throughout history, the forces of central control and decentralized self-organization have been locked in perpetual struggle. Since civilization began, societies have had to draw boundaries between state power and personal freedom, between politics and economics, between fixed rules and fluctuating prices. In the final analysis, despite its momentous consequences, the battle over the future of environmental policy is just another skirmish in a centuries-old war for the power to decide."

RESPONSE: It seems to me that the issue of state power vs individual freedom is a key one in developing a viable model for a Wise Community made up of Wise Persons. If we can develop such a model it should end the notion that state power and individual freedom are inherently in conflict. People have been led to believe that such a conflict is intrinsic. But I believe that in a Wise Community there should be no such conflict. However, most persons today think there is a conflict and work to deal with it in ways that make the development of a Wise Community unlikely. The adversarial model incorporated in our criminal justice system and most other social institutions is a key element maintaining this conflict.

PART VII: PARASITISM AND EXPLOITATION -- CHAPTER 25

(p. 286) "Since reproduction is genetic information's primary objective, every other life function plays a subsidiary role."

RESPONSE: At some level the foregoing is true. But it is a truth we must get beyond. As I have said many times in many places our efforts cannot be focused on the perpetuation of the human species as the primary goal. Obviously maintaining the species is essential. But continuing the species must be an inherent result of a higher goal. That higher goal is to recognize that the individual person is the only worthy focus of ultimate concern. Any other goals lead to the situation where any behavior -- no matter how cruel, how limiting, how destructive -- can be justified to achieve the "higher" goal. Human history is one long story of individuals being sacrificed for "higher" goals.

(p. 286) "Parasites cannot live on their own. They must drain life-giving energy from their hosts....the benefits of a parasitic relationship flow in one direction only -- from host to parasite."

(p. 289) "A well-adapted parasite weakens but does not kill."

(p. 287) "Every parasite has a 'hook.' Regardless of its size or way of life, a parasite must be able to physically attach itself to its host."

(p. 290) "Economic parasites use secrecy, deception, brute force, and legal authority as their 'hooks.'"

(p. 292) "To create an environment where cooperation flourishes, the elimination of exploitation in all its forms should be the chief objective of a society's economic laws. But keeping antiparasite laws in step with a rapidly evolving economy isn't simple. Identifying the economy's true parasites and writing laws that destroy their hooks requires a bionomic perspective."

RESPONSE: I am in total agreement with the idea that cooperation is very important. I would call it the essential element of a Wise Community. However, we need to focus on removing exploitation from all aspects of our society not only from the economic area, but from religion, from the family, from the criminal justice system. Part of this effort must be directed toward eliminating the adversarial aspects of our current society and replacing them with cooperative alternatives.

CHAPTER 26 -- PRIVATE CORPOCRACY

"In business, the groups that join together to form an enterprise --investors, managers, and employees -- must all benefit from their relationship if the organization is to remain healthy and competitive in its market. Unfair, exploitative relationships among the parties weaken the organization."

"Exploitative labor/management relationships afflict many firms. And, generally speaking, firms that fail to remedy exploitative internal relationships eventually are forced out of business by competitors who enjoy predominantly mutualistic relationships."

RESPONSE: Many of the exploitative labor/management issues come out of the theory of the adversarial relationship in our society. Until we can get to a better model we will be limited in overcoming this problem. Labor/ management/owners are not adversaries. As indicated above by Rothschild all must see that mutualistic relationships are essential.

Obviously, this is more difficult if one sees salaries and profits as fixed and in conflict. The goal should be to get to the place where each would recognize the other's wellbeing as their own wellbeing. None can benefit without the whole-hearted cooperation and support of the others. Until we can build structures that allow and ensure this relationship we can never develop a Wise Community made up of Wise Persons.

Economic parasites are only specific examples of the belief that one person is in competition with another and they can benefit at the expense of the other. This same fallacious idea underlies almost all crime, destructive relationships, and most negative aspects of society -- the things that prevent us from moving toward a Wise Community made up of Wise Persons.

(p. 293) "...although exploitative worker/manager relationships traditionally have received the most attention, the real problem area in the United States today is the relationship between a company's owner -- its share-holders -- and its management."

(p. 294) "A corporation's shareholders depend on management to organize the company's people and equipment....While this system works pretty well in small and medium-size corporations, it often breaks down in extremely large companies....A 'commons problem' emerges because no single shareholder has a strong proprietary interest."

(p. 295) "Among the many American firms inflicted with this silent, parasitic disease was Walt Disney Productions [after Disney's death]...."

(p. 298) "...because of mismanagement....the Disney corporation was worth twice as much dead as alive."

"By infesting organizations too huge to be attacked by predators, the corpocracies kept safe and snug, beyond the reach of predators eager to dismember their hosts -- and them."

"...the invention of junk bonds...is regarded by experts as a major contribution to the field of corporate finance."

(p. 299) "It took some time for junk bonds to catch on, but by 1983, they had grown to represent about 5 percent of the $400 billion American corporate bond market."

(p. 301) "...corporate predators serve a vital economic role. They weed out weak firms that mismanage people and resources....It is parasitism by corpocracies, not predation by takeover artists, that weaken an economy. The real enemy of efficiency, growth, and innovation is inept and shortsighted management."

RESPONSE: AMERICA: WHAT WENT WRONG[2] provides another perspective on this issue. Which one is more true to a Science of Religion? Further study on this seems important. However, I think that it would be better to develop ways to improve management either through training and education, or transfer. To believe that a whole corporation must be destroyed because of one or a handful of managers seems bizarre. The material in AMERICA: WHAT WENT WRONG? would tend to support the approach favored here.

(p. 303) "In the search for a parasite, the only reliable clue is finding its economic 'hook.'"

"The favorite state of corpocracies [for incorporating] is Delaware....Shareholders trying to block an unfair action by the management of a 'Delaware' corporation are out of luck."

(p. 290) "...every year in the United States, more than 12 million acts of robbery, burglary, larceny, and auto theft syphon about $12.5 billion....less than 0.3 percent of the economy's $5,000 billion annual output."

(p. 304) "No one can accurately calculate the damage done to the American economy by corpocracies. One guess puts the total cost of corpocracy at more than $800 billion per year, 16 percent of America's GNP...this estimate [is] probably...way too high. But whatever the invisible cost of corpocracy, it certainly dwarfs the annual $13 billion damage done by all the highly publicized parasitic acts of robbery, burglary, larceny, and auto theft."

RESPONSE: The idea of corpocracies seems too important to ignore. Yet, I've never run across it in the study of traditional economics. This is another example of Rothschild making economics practical by expanding its focus.

However, a more proper use of the term "corpocracy" would seem to mean rule of the country by corporations. There are many who feel this is what is really happening. Their economic power and access to the decision makers in society permit them to force political decisions not in the best interests of society in general.

(p. 305) "Without question, our standard of living would rise significantly if the corpocracies were purged from corporate America. In all likelihood, however, the required reforms will not be implemented. Like enormous tapeworms, these persistent, unobtrusive parasites will be sapping our economic strength for a very long time to come."

RESPONSE: This might be a fertile area to tackle in the process of developing a Wise Community made up of Wise Persons.

CHAPTER 27 -- PUBLIC BUREAUCRACY

"It's hard to believe that America might be infected with an even more devastating form of economic parasitism than corpocracy. But, sadly, large-scale exploitation is not limited to the domain of private enterprise."

"Without question, the most debilitating case of public-sector parasitism involves America's public schools....The sole objective of a public-school system is to produce a well-educated citizenry....For the last three decades...[schools have] been in an appalling tailspin."

"For a democratic society seriously challenged by powerful foreign economic competitors, the litany of public-school failures is ominous."

RESPONSE: I take the above with a grain of salt. As indicated elsewhere the problems of our schools are tied directly to the issues of concern to a Science of Religion. I can't believe that the answers will emerge by turning schools into businesses.

(p. 307) "Without question, student performance has been hurt by the social ills of shattered families, violence, and drugs. But these plagues cannot account for the whole problem."

(p. 308) "...contrary to common perceptions, the resources devoted to public education have climbed rapidly during the 30 years of the system's performance collapse. In 1950, public schools consumed 2 percent of America's GNP to educate its school-age population. By 1986, it took 3.5 percent for the same portion of the population."

"On a per-student basis, the United States spends more on its public schools than any nation except Switzerland. Adjusted for inflation, one year of public school for one student cost $1,200 in 1952; by 1989, it cost $4,400. During the same period, average scores on Scholastic Aptitude Tests Collapsed."

(p. 310) "A bureaucracy -- that portion of an administrative apparatus that exceeds what is necessary for essential coordinating functions -- does not contribute to its host organization. Indeed, a bureaucracy's drain on resources and its excessive rule-making cripples the efficiency of its host."

(p. 311) "The hook [for schools] is the legal monopoly of America's public-school bureaucracies."

(p. 312) "If the system were competitive rather than monopolistic, high-quality schools would be the norm."

"Students and parents, like shareholders, must be granted the power of choice."

"Remarkably, there is hope for real reform. One state, Minnesota, already has recognized that consumer choice and school-district competition are the keys to progress. In May 1988...Minnesota's legislature passed a bill that stripped school districts of their monopoly power."

(p. 313) When schools compete, "Whatever decisions are made, they will be driven by the desire to improve performance, because for the first time, job security and organizational survival will be linked directly to student performance."

(p. 316) "...school choice may well do more to encourage the voluntary reintegration of America's cities than any other conceivable program."

RESPONSE: The idea that school competition would lead to reintegration of cities seems rather unlikely to me. I would think the opposite is just as likely. It seems to me that the only way we can begin to integrate society is to change our many adversarial procedures. We must begin to treat human beings as if they are important and that any person's suffering because of neglect diminishes us all. We must find ways to work together to ensure the highest quality life possible.

(p. 318) "Revamping the public schools must be America's number-one economic and social priority."

(p. 319) "Recent polls show that 60 percent of Americans support the concept of school choice. Despite its awesome political clout, the education bureaucracy soon will be overwhelmed by an exasperated public."

RESPONSE: To think that allowing consumer choice in selection of schools will miraculously solve all of our problems sounds like a distortion of the issue and an over-simplistic solution. However, I'm willing to be convinced. It could well be that this approach is an essential part of the solution even if it is not itself the solution. It seems to me that the real solution will require a total revamping of our schools or at least some of them. Such changes would need to provide whole new options that pay more attention to adolescent growth and development, and the issue of religion.

See "Teenage Violence" by James Hemming, Chapter XXX."

PROPOSITION: I would say that an area of society more responsible for our ongoing problems than either corpocracy or the public schools is our religious institutions. Up to this point the true function of religion in a society has been overlooked by social scientists and other thoughtful persons. As a result we have built structures without a foundation. Religious institutions are the bonding institution in society. They provide the symbols and concepts used for assessing and valuing everything else. It is the failure of this institution that has made all the other failures possible as discussed in Volume I, Chapter Two, " Discovering Meaning."

PART VIII: MUTUALISM & COOPERATION

"All human beings are interdependent. Every nation is an heir to a vast treasury of ideas and labor to which both the living and the dead of all nations have contributed." Martin Luther King, 1967

RESPONSE: And it is this world treasury that we must acknowledge and replenish. It is critical that our religious and philosophical positions draw from this universal reservoir and be bound to it with the strongest of ties.

A Science of Religion's strength comes from this universal treasury. It is locked into no one tradition. All knowledge is its knowledge; all culture is its culture; all history is its history. The goal is to help each person rise to the point where they can not only accept, but revel in this position. This is the point at which all persons are joined to each other and can feel a universal sense of belonging. No person is their enemy. No one wants to take advantage of them and exploit them. Everyone wants for them what they want for themselves. Each person has achieved a SFLIHM.

CHAPTER 28 -- SOVIET CAPITALISM

"Ironically, the Soviet Union's thoroughly parasitic economy is the inevitable consequence of an economic theory intended to eradicate economic parasitism."

"For Marx, those not actually engaged in physical labor were society's parasites. This contradicts the bionomic view of capitalism...where parasites persist only when monopoly power blocks competition and market choice."

"By branding profit...as inherently evil, Marx captured the 'moral high ground' in what became a century-long struggle between socialism and capitalism."

(p. 324) "Marx could not have described profit as a flow of surplus economic energy whose reinvestment creates new information. He could not have explained profit as the reward for organizational learning. He could not have imagined profit as a positive-feedback signal transmitted to a firm through its network of ecological relationships."

(p. 326) "For a time, it looked as if the Soviet's centralized system worked rather well. The nomenklatura organized the postwar reconstruction of the Soviet Union, launched Sputnik, and put the first human being into orbit."

"But, on reflection, the achievements of the Soviet nomenklatura should not have been so surprising. Despite their flaws, gigantic monopolies are capable of getting some things done."

"The Achilles heel of a bureaucratically controlled economy was not exposed until the 1970s microelectronics revolution kicked the pace of technological evolution into overdrive. Change and innovation undermine the stability that bureaucrats crave. Instead of rewarding innovators, bureaucrats strangle them with rules, regulations, and red tape. Any shift in established procedures threatens the 'turf' of the bureaucrat involved."

"By its very nature, economic evolution -- particularly in the Information Age -- is incompatible with the top-down 'command-and-control' system erected by Stalin. Once the microprocessor demolished the cost of information processing, the hierarchical organizations erected in the first decades of the twentieth century became ponderous economic dinosaurs. An organization's agility and intelligence became more important to its economic survival than did its size and strength."

(p. 328) "In a civilized world, normal human beings seek security for themselves and their families by accumulating power and wealth....In effect, capitalism relies on greed to counterbalance megalomania."

"Without the lure of profits and the fear of losses, there is no disciplinary force to restrain bureaucratic growth. In a hotly competitive environment, where cost reduction is the only sure route to profits and survival, staff growth is considered an evil. Organizations that face no competitors or need not at least balance their budgets have no compelling reason to contain the growth of internal organizational parasites. Without natural selection, organizations weakened by parasitic infections are not weeded out. Without the requirements that 'value produced' exceeds 'resources consumed,' all economic self-control breaks down."

RESPONSE: It seems to me a mistake to call the desire to provide security for ourselves and loved ones greed. Using this approach makes greed appear to be a virtue, and I think that is what capitalists have been trained to do. But greed (the unhealthy desire to accumulate more than we need) is not desirable. It should not be encouraged. And, we should not attempt to encourage people to build social empires in attempts to fill a neurotic compulsion. There must be ways to develop new industries and keep them improving and running without exploiting human weakness and deficiency.

I would hope that the excitement of building -- and knowing we are creating a social good by providing employment and useful products -- would be much more energizing and lead to far better structures and processes than those that depend on greed. Working to fill a neurotic need has to include behavior that is strange, inefficient, and often hurtful to the people involved.

One can be mindful of the need for profits and fear of losses without being controlled by mental illness. Profits and losses are just as real to a healthy person who wants to succeed as to a neurotic who cannot accept failure.

It seems clear that at some level any organization must balance its budget. But this is not greed. It is just good sense. Also, as indicated elsewhere it would be nice to have a better way to deal with organizational parasites than destruction of the corporation.

(p. 328) "If the nomenklatura's monopoly hook were excised, with managers and workers suddenly finding themselves in a market system, the impenetrable Soviet bureaucracy would begin to wither away."

"...the competent and hard-working people in each firm would evict the incompetent and lazy."

RESPONSE: Evicting incompetents and the lazy is always difficult. Incompetence is actually either lack of sufficient training/education (i.e., a state of ignorance), or having the individual in the wrong job (where their talents and interests are not developed and utilized). Lazy means unmotivated. Many people are motivated by fear of loss of job. Others are motivated by enthusiasm for doing something they enjoy and feel is important.

When one is motivated by fear of losing their job they have many options other than doing something productive. They might decide to have sex with their boss. They might engage in networking to support the "right" people and thereby be protected from the need to produce products. They might build an effective smokescreen that convinces the right people they are doing a great job while they are in fact doing little. Etc.

(p. 329) "...'market socialism' is a contradiction in terms. There is no 'third way' between socialism and capitalism. Socialism is an ideology. Capitalism is a natural phenomenon."

RESPONSE: I remain skeptical on the foregoing point and would need to know more exactly what Rothschild means. Capitalism in the U.S. certainly has an ideological wing. My impression is that capitalists are at least as doctrinaire as socialists. Natural phenomena can be used for many purposes. I would call exploitative capitalism an ideology. As I've discussed elsewhere I'm not willing to accept that the only way economic systems will work is if everything is allowed to "just happen."

It's clear that no economy can be totally controlled in the sense of someone at the top making all decisions. But they can certainly be controlled in the sense of helping to develop and maintain Wise Persons and a Wise Community. Figuring out how to guide economies to promote Wise Communities made up of Wise Persons seems like the real challenge of economists, or at least some of them.

(p. 329/331) Rothschild's strategy for helping the Soviet Union through their transition phase in order to reduce the likelihood of nuclear annihilation: "...the West should strike a new bargain with the Soviets. If the Soviets commit themselves to truly free elections, free prices, and private property, the West must commit itself to an unprecedented package of economic assistance. In short, we should commit ourselves to a post-cold war Marshall Plan even before strategic disarmament is completed." (p. 330)

(p. 322) "Each year, the U.S. spends $300 billion, or 6 percent of its GNP, on the military. Approximately $150 billion of that is spent just keeping American forces in Western Europe. If the Soviet threat vanished, roughly $200 billion a year could be saved. In five years, the United States could save $1 trillion, one-third of the total federal deficit."

CHAPTER 29 -- GLOBAL COEVOLUTION

"Social scientists often grumble about the impossibility of conducting experiments. But the cold war's nuclear standoff allowed history's grandest economic experiment to run virtually undisturbed for five decades. Isolated by the 'Iron Curtain,' capitalism and socialism ran side by side. The West was the 'control group,' a natural, unplanned economy that went on pretty much as before. The East was the 'experimental group,' where Marxist economic theory was imposed by law. By the mid-1980s, the results were clear even to the most fervent socialists."

"But, to this day, not one expert seems able to explain precisely why socialism collapsed and capitalism flourished."

"Simply put, capitalism has been impossible to comprehend because we have continued to stare at it from the wrong angle....orthodox economists still envision the economy as a predictable clockwork mechanism where historical change is irrelevant because all movement is cyclical."

(p. 335) "But even the most casual observer knows that the economy is a system where history matters."

"Bionomics is the branch of ecology that examines the economic relations between organisms and their environment....Problems beyond the reach of orthodox economics are readily understood from the bionomic perspective."

"For example, although the advance of knowledge propels economic change, the equilibrium models of conventional economics ignore this process."

"Bionomics describes the ecosystem and the economy as separate, parallel domains of evolving information."

RESPONSE: The idea of social scientists holding that it is impossible to conduct experiments with people is important to look at. I am convinced that computers should give us the ability to gather data on large populations and then analyze for all kinds of factors. This is particularly relevant in terms of clarifying the factors involved in achieving a SFLIHM. By correlating various factors we should be able immediately to come up with many factors that are almost sure to be necessary to achieve a SFLIHM. Also, it should be easy to determine many factors that almost certainly will prevent achievement of a SFLIHM. With more data, better models, and improved theories the number of behaviors for which the effects are unclear -- between behaviors demonstrated to achieve a SFLIHM and those shown to prevent it -- should become smaller and smaller.

(p. 336) "Over time, organizational learning expands the stockpile of technology, reduces real costs, and raises living standards. In a world of fixed resources, learning allows the economic pie to keep growing. Economic growth is limited only by human creativity."

RESPONSE: But, in reality resources are not fixed. Learning allows us to expand available resources. Iron didn't become a resource until people learned how to use it. Ceramics as an unlimited resource to replace iron awaits the learning necessary to make this transition. Sunlight (photoelectricity) and sea water (fusion) are now seen as sources of almost unlimited energy, but still we haven't learned how to achieve these potentials.

So in a world of unlimited resources human creativity, learning, technology become even more critical because they become the tools for changing limited resources to unlimited resources. Even more these tools are essential to produce a condition where every human being is a positive, constructive force to help produce a Wise Community made up of Wise Persons.

(p. 338) "Today, only in sheer size does America's economy still lead the world. By virtually every other vital measure -- income per person, education, savings, investment, nondefense R & D, and technically skilled population -- Japan outdistances the United States and is pulling away."

"The key to the foregoing is simple:...Japan's government took responsibility for creating a supportive business environment."

RESPONSE: In my interpretation of the Japanese system it seems to me that there are many things they do that provide useful insights to ways to tie one's economy and society together. One very big negative is the current procedures that allow corporations to literally work their employees to death. The good life has more to it than being caught on a tread-mill that requires one to run so fast that they are in a constantly exhausted state. It is essential that this aspect not be emulated or permitted. This is not mutualistic capitalism, but exploitation of vulnerable individuals.

However, on the positive side workers feel connected and know they will be taken care of by their employer. This aspect of Japanese industry seems very desirable to me. It is essential in a Wise Community though it might be achieved in very different ways.

(p. 340) "The Japanese took advantage of our mistakes, but they did not defeat us. We have no one to blame but ourselves."

(p. 340) "In intellectual circles, socialism is still synonymous with social consciousness....to be antiwar, one must be against capitalism. To be proenvironment, one must be against capitalism. To care about the poor, one must be against capitalism. On all vital political questions, the morally correct position demands strict allegiance to anticapitalism."

RESPONSE: This is a key point and one which requires attention. The foregoing didn't happen by accident. Rather capitalists have been portrayed as greedy, uncaring, power hungry persons willing to exploit individuals, society, and the environment to make a profit.

If social consciousness is not inherently in conflict with capitalism then we need to clarify this point. Exploitative capitalism vs. mutualistic capitalism seems like the core issue. This point needs to be developed in much more detail. What are the characteristics of mutualistic capitalism? How can they be encouraged? How can exploitative capitalism be discouraged?

This is an especially relevant question today since exploitative capitalism seems to have won the battle and is now working to mop up any opposition. However, in my mind they have merely created an environment that will either mobilize opposition to destroy their victories or destroy society itself. Unless they are able to see that their fate and the fate of humanity are the same.

(p. 341) "...political freedom and economic progress are natural partners....Half a century of economic experimentation proved beyond doubt that tyranny cannot yield prosperity."

"...the global economy will become ever more tightly integrated. New technologies will keep raising living standards around the globe. Even Latin America and Africa, both long oppressed by their own peculiar forms of feudal parasitism, will be drawn inexorably into the democratic capitalist community."

RESPONSE: Well, its a glorious vision and it seems basically sound to me. The idea that political freedom is essential to economic progress is an encouraging thought. The hope that political freedom will be spread to all human beings who will all benefit by increased living standards is even better. This kind of prospect makes the possibility of developing Wise Communities made up of Wise Persons even more likely as an achievable goal. It seems to me the key ingredient is for us to develop a clear statement of where we want to go and what we need to do to get there.

POSTSCRIPT: BIONOMICS VS. SOCIAL DARWINISM

(p. 344) "...the most familiar form of social Darwinism is an economic philosophy. Politically, a social Darwinist is a denizen of the far Right --a hard-core, laissez-faire capitalist who believes that in the struggle for prosperity, the capable succeed and the incompetent fail."

RESPONSE: The above sounds like Libertarianism to me. However, this ideology certainly has power in the current political arena in the U.S.

(p. 345) "Despite their differences, one common thread runs through all forms of social Darwinism -- the notion that all important human characteristics are predetermined genetically."

"Nothing less than the cause of human progress obliged the strong to obliterate the weak."

"...despite the most determined efforts, no scientist has ever found statistically important differences in the intelligence of ethnic, racial, or social groups.

RESPONSE: It seems to me the core issue raised by Social Darwinism as by all other traditional positions involves the question: Is the individual human being the only worthy focus of ultimate concern? If each person is of infinite worth then the goal must be to nurture each person, not exploit them. We cannot take advantage of them just because we are smarter than they are, have more power than they do, are in a favored situation, have more information, or any other way are in a position to do so.

If we have genes that make us stronger or smarter than another than that gives us an obligation as well as an advantage. We must use those genes not only for our own best development, but to guide and help others to move beyond where they would be able to go without our help. If our culture, country, resources, geography favor us than we have a responsibility and opportunity to use this advantage to help the unfavored to our benefit and to theirs.

Almost all world views to this point boil down to a justification to exploit. This probably shouldn't surprise us because it is clear how ideas get promoted in the world. Those who have the power promote the ideas that they believe support them and suppress those that they believe do not. Obviously this is not true and/or effective 100% of the time. But it is true enough.

However, I am convinced that those who promote ideas allowing the exploitation of others are just as much victims of those ideas as those who are exploited. If the goal is to produce a Wise Community made up of Wise Persons -- and if this is the best way for a human being to live -- then exploiters are just as much cut off from the good life by their beliefs and behavior as are the exploited.

No one I've talked to up to this point is willing to accept the idea that it is the individual human being who is the only worthy focus of ultimate concern. Partially, this is because my statement is taken to mean that anything an individual person does would be alright. My statement is interpreted to mean that persons have no social responsibility, no responsibility to humanity.

Actually, my statement has just the opposite effect. When an individual truly recognizes they have infinite value, they must understand that their nurturing connections with other human beings is the prime source of this value and the key way it is actualized.

Whenever we place anything above the individual whether God, country, culture, church, Pope, our short term interest, etc. we open ourselves to cruelty and exploitation. Our primary resource to help us escape one of the before mentioned patterns is the innate social drive to bond with people and nurture them and be nurtured by them.

(p. 347) "Human sociobiology is biological determinism of a decidedly modern style....To them, culture emanates not from the mind, but from DNA."

"The singular biologic success of the human species was a direct result of accumulating knowledge, not...any...instinctive behavior. The three major spurts in human population coincided with the invention of stone tools, agriculture, and machine power. Each of these epochal breakthroughs was a consequence of creative thought."

"The bionomic perspective holds that the human species' uniqueness flows from the mind's ability to reduce the laws of nature into sequences of written symbols -- information."

RESPONSE: But of course mind is a product of DNA. Probably the invention of stone tools and agriculture are tied to changes in DNA. However, beyond that is the area of knowledge. And what a mind does with knowledge is unpredictable. This is why the existence of different cultures may be of fundamental importance. Different training and experiences permit us to see the same thing in very different ways. This variety may be essential to the continued existence of our species.

(p. 348) "If our descendants have the good fortune of communicating with extraterrestrial beings, they will find that these creatures are fully familiar with laws of gravity without even having heard of Newton. Except for the use of different symbols, their gravitational equations will be identical to ours."

RESPONSE: The above is a common misperception. In reality other intelligent entities may see the world so differently from the way we do that it may be almost impossible to cross the gap. The key concept here is, "Human Beings are the Ultimate Reference System." When our reference system comes in contact with another equivalent reference system, translating one to the other should be an exciting and challenging experience. However, we will then begin to realize just how many ways there are to interpret the "objective" universe.

Our current way of looking at this issue provides a very poor foundation for successful communication with aliens, or with computer intelligence for that matter. At this time we can't even communicate with dolphins or acknowledge the intelligence of chimpanzees because of the deficient models we have about what intelligence is and how it relates to the universe in general. We will not be able to tackle the problem in such a way as to begin to really see other organisms for what they are until we recognize that intelligence is not a generic trait, but is totally specific to the unique organism involved.

(p. 348) "This conception of a parallel relationship between an ecosystem based on genetic information and an economy derived from technical information is fundamentally different from that proposed by social Darwinists and human sociobiologists. In their view, human culture is not parallel to, but rather is an extension of, human genetic information. For them the tree of cultural evolution grows from genetic roots."

RESPONSE: Obviously the tree of culture grows from genetic roots. But for me the essential element is that these genetic roots are very flexible and allow for all kinds of cultural and technological options. Certainly the difference between tribal technology in Africa and technology in modern Japan are not genetic in the sense of instinctive in origin, but cultural. And this is why a Science of Religion that stresses education is so important. A Science of Religion provides the religious perspective to help a primitive tribe to be able to use modern technology without losing the human truths embedded in their current culture.

In other words their current culture is deficient just as all other cultures are deficient because they are not Wise Communities intent on helping all their members become Wise Persons. However, they also have the potential to grow, expand, change just as all other cultures do. They also have part of the puzzle. Imbedded in the experiences of their culture and the life style and history of these people are answers that are essential in clarifying what a Wise Community is, what a Wise Person is. The critical need is to develop models and processes to help each society get from where it is to where it needs to be.

(p. 349) "When an analogy is purely coincidental and superficial, nothing can be learned from it. But if an analogy is close and detailed and has a logical foundation, it may reveal a great deal about the hidden nature of things. The more precise the parallels, the more convincing the analogy becomes. For the analogy between ecosystem and economy to be useful, it need not be perfect....The analogy between genetic and technological evolution is powerful, it is not perfect."

RESPONSE: And it seems very useful to me. BIONOMICS appears to open many doors. This includes doors we need to go through if we are to build a Wise Community made up of Wise Persons.

2. AMERICA: WHAT WENT WRONG