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Trump Happens When Cultures Believe Private Can Cover for Public.
History shows that when societies favour ‘private’ too much, tyrants emerge and public problems accumulate that private cannot fix. 1/
https://www.responsible-investor.com/articles/trump-happens-when-cultures-believe-private-can-cover-for-public
History shows that when societies favour ‘private’ too much, tyrants emerge and public problems accumulate that private cannot fix. 1/
https://www.responsible-investor.com/articles/trump-happens-when-cultures-believe-private-can-cover-for-public
Today’s ascendancy of private has been rationalized by the ‘modern’ belief that markets ‘have it all covered’ and, hence, all the public we need is ‘minimal government’ to uphold property rights. 2/
We told ourselves: 'Public is simply the sum of all private and markets can do the adding up for us to create the best of all possible worlds'. The mantra of our times: ‘markets are the solution/government is the problem’. 3/
Hence, we felt it safe to encourage the pursuit of self-interest at large scale. We became ‘consumers’, not ‘citizens’. We created super-sized corporate 'persons', duty-bound to maximize profit even at the cost of principle. 4/
Markets are often helpful, but they do *not* add everything up as their advocates had promised. Rather, they leave a growing mass of social and environmental problems in their wake. ‘Markets are the solution’ has been false advertising. 5/
Yet, ‘government is the problem’ has proved self-fulfilling! Persistent discrediting of government has driven the best of society into the silos of private business and a vacuum has slowly formed in the public square into which ambitious men have been emboldened to venture. 6/
Tyrants emerge when everyone is lulled into thinking it is safe simply to ‘mind their own business’.
Tacitus, Tocqueville and Adam Ferguson all warned us of the pattern. We just forgot again. 7/
Tacitus, Tocqueville and Adam Ferguson all warned us of the pattern. We just forgot again. 7/
In 1944, Hayek warned of a Road to Serfdom. He missed what Ferguson and Tocqueville knew: there is not one Road to Serfdom, but two! Turn left for serfdom or turn right for serfdom. Both roads gradually steepen down. Best, given the choice, not to venture too far down either. 8/
Alas, because we missed that, today's neoliberalism is a runaway feedback loop of an ideology: we have privileged imperfect markets but denied the legitimacy of governments to remedy the runaway problems that markets create.
A telling signal is that our biggest problems - global debt accumulation, wealth inequality, climate change and biodiversity loss - all exhibit runaway, vicious spiral, dynamics. We are literally in a tailspin, created by our own narrative. 10/
The eternal struggle of complex systems is to balance the tension between whole and part. In human society - a very complex system - that is the tension between the individual and the group, between private and public. Today, we are out of balance. 11/
If we are to solve our political, social and environmental 'public goods' problems, our first priority must be to restore a healthier balance between private and public. 12/
It is always easier to plead the case for private self-interest, but real leadership consists of leaning against this default. History's most notable leaders have been those who have been able to coax people to act beyond their self-interest 13/
Business above all must recognize that now is the time to place principle above profit, rather than propagate the false 'win-win' narrative that we can solve our serious problems and make a profit. Time to front up to reality. 14/ END.
