There is a little bit of economy in all of us (Part 3)

(Continued from Part 2)
...As beautiful as it may sound, we are unable to move towards this Utopian idea, even in small phases, at least until 2 things take place.

First: The Need for a Unifying Paradigm Shift
Yup. Frankly said, something else other than MONEY that has the power to glue humans together and trigger a movement to discard the idea of 'money' as obsolete. This in my mind would most definitely have NOTHING to do with race or religion. Their very nature being divisive between the "are" and "are nots". Except if you've read Dune. In Dune, whole new unified religions arise once humans become spacefarers and discovered other habitable planets. Facts and figures collected in space, forced discarding of earth-bound "divisive" truths and beliefs. Thus a new unifying "world religion" may be able to bring people across the globe together, but without strong focus, continued opposition from contemporary religions would dilute and maybe even reverse its unifying impact, breaking it apart from within.

Another way to approach this puzzle is to figure out what motivates people to change. Between extrinsic motivators, fear is stronger than greed. Someone may be inclined to perform better due to a threat as opposed to a cash reward. Yet, a unifying principle built on a "Focus of Fear" (Pestilence? Tyrant? Climate shock?) so universal that it affects everyone to forget their Focus of Greed (Money) is pretty questionable in these times. Also, if the focus of fear was created by Man, then others would only be driven to think how to solve/ destroy/ undo the fear, thus freeing themselves of the fear, instead of changing. Example: Doctors worldwide have been running around trying to kill the HIV virus for years, instead of spending that time and energy to educate and guide fellow humans to change/control their sexual behaviours which would have been a better solution in the long term.
Intrinsic motivators are then better able to pull everyone through change. This means giving either a sense of Duty or a sense of Joy internally that drives the individual to change. Intuitively, it is better to sell the idea of a new unifying pradigm shift to the young crowd with a "Focus on Joy" and the mature crowd appealing to their "Focus on Duty". I am not saying it doesn't work the other way round or it doesn't work in tandem. Just that this sequence would feel natural for both groups to adopt in changing and accepting the new unifying paradigm and eventually forgetting the importance of money.

What could be a successful unifying pradigm shift? For that I looked at Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Briefly it states there is a hierarchy of 5 needs for humans, where each of the first 4 Deficiency Needs leads to the next as they are satisfied; from the basic Physiological, to Security, to Belongingness and finally to Self-Esteem. As we can see, all these can be satisfied by the presence of money in our lives. With money we can eat, then have personal and financial security. This leads to having a lifestyle attracting friends, family, collegues and potential partners, who then make us feel good. These and our self positive feedbacks solve the deficiency needs in layers 3 & 4. Having satisfied all these the 5th layer is open where the Being Needs of Self-Actualisation lie. That comes from needing to be completely balanced, centred and knowing what we want to achieve and create as individuals, without it being an objective to satisfy any of the lower deficiency needs. Thus the importance of money for an individual diminishes.
There is a lesser famous but equally ground-breaking part of Maslov's work in 1969 where he mentions beyond the Self-Actualised layer; there exist "Self-Transcended" individuals. Maslow's landmark 1969 article, “Theory Z” (re-printed in Maslow's basic text on Transpersonal Psychology, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, NY: Viking, 1972) has one interesting comment to make about Self-Transcended individuals:-
["Transcenders are interested in a “cause beyond their own skin,” and are better able to “fuse work and play,” “they love their work,” and are more interested in “kinds of pay other than money pay”; “higher forms of pay and metapay steadily increase in importance.”]

I don't completely understand the definition of the words he uses, (having no access to his full text) but the first point to note is that Maslov mentions mystics/holy men are not the ONLY self-transcenders. There are other mature individuals who display these qualities as well. Secondly, he coins the term "peak experiences" and "plateau living" as elements that satisfy their Being Needs. It hints self-transcenders are driven by higher goals and operate in a serene and holistic mode. Lastly, he mentions how we need to study, understand and de-mystify them in order to strive and achieve what they have shown us as the currently observed pinnacle of humanity. The excerpt below underlines what is the first step to identify a unifying paradigm shift:-
[“Human history is a record of the ways in which human nature has been sold short. The highest possibilities of human nature have practically always been underrated. Even when 'good specimens,' the saints and sages and great leaders of history have been available for study, the temptation too often has been to consider them not human but supernaturally endowed…. If we want to know the possibilities for spiritual growth, value growth, or moral development in human beings, then I maintain that we can learn most by studying our most moral, ethical, or saintly people.” — Abe Maslow.]

I believe this is a logical argument hinting at a valid path for humanity to explore and to realise its own highest potential. The dire need to study the currently rare self-transcended individuals who are pioneering the next era of humanity, and to learn HOW they achieve their states of being/bliss, cannot be understated. It must be revealed that this is not a pseudo-religious experience but something that all humans are capable of achieving. Imagine a whole generation of young people focusing on the joy of exploring and embracing a lifestyle of higher morals not because it is preached by some religion. They do it after all their deficiency needs are already satisfied in highly planned, non-money driven, sub-environments where they are guided by the few existing self-transcended individuals along new paths of self-discovery. Having experienced the joys, later as adults they'd be able to focus on the duty to maintain, enhance and expand the same environment for youths worldwide to be guided in generations to come.
Each generation then is slowly removed from our way of life, ascending to a different level of understanding. Hopefully relooking at the impact of Humanity on Earth's systems. Finally devising ways of decreasing and even reversing the long term pollution we caused in the last few hundred thousand years, since we started standing upright. Harmonising ourselves with Nature; thus reversing the self-induced onslaught of Naraka on Earth and constructing the avenue leading to Svarga on Earth.

Second: The Need for a Servant Force
Continued in Part 4...

There is a little bit of Economy in all of us (Part 2)

(Continued from Part 1)
...And thus started the Economic Cycles as we now know it.

The elements were there. Taxes, Money and its supply controlled by the government. Products and Services becoming more and more complex as individuals became more and more interested in showing off their wealth; Art, Servants, Architecture, Fashion, Land, Timepieces and a whole host of things unrelated to living life came into play. Wants became more important than Needs. At this point, Premium pricing was natural. After all, how can you price something which people didn't really need? And it was socially "ok" to still want it even with people demanding unreasonable prices. Using Debt you could acquire something that was beyond your normal means and pay for it later. Debt was no longer used to address basic needs. It was used to address wants and gambling on investments (wanting more money).

Greed grew. Greed flourished. Greed trapped humans into a cycle of wanting and guilty pay back. In some, greed drove them to search for more riches to be made theirs. The Spanish set sail exploring crying "for God, Glory and Gold!
GOD: I've purposely omitted this can of worms from this commentary. It would have come into play back when I said the first Services industries appeared. Shamans being able to 'understand' the mysteries of life and educate the olden Warriors.
GLORY: Humans would have heard about the heroes who were kings. Heroes who were brave in the early economic wars. Rich people who lived their life in luxuries. They would want that for themselves as well. Their name to be in history (and there were still many places to be explored in the world then anyway)
GOLD: Need I say more? Sigh...

They colonised lands. Taking local wealth back to their kingdoms in triumph, as what their patrons expected. They then sent labourers and convicts to the new world as pioneers to establish the rules and lifestyles from the conquering countries. As if that wasn't bad enough, a worse phenomenon was that expanding businesses in home countries sent products to the new lands to be sold. They didn't care about the need / want / relevance of the product they sent. What businesses knew is that there is a market and products must be mass produced and sold. Increasing production, and thus profits. Managers were encouraged; given huge bonuses. So, managers rinsed and repeated this ad nauseum. They had to. It was the only way Investors (ie: People who were earlier patrons with lots of money, who wanted more money, and would have fired any management who failed to deliver) could be appeased.
The process repeated until all markets got saturated. Nobody wanted to buy and everybody saved money instead. No amount of pestering convinced people to buy because they had whatever they needed & wanted. Yup, ladies and gentlemen!! Supply had FINALLY caught up with Demand and there was excess supply, with factories still mass producing. At that point, production lines came screeching to a halt. Warehouses were bursting at the seams. Consumers switched to cheaper alternatives. Marketing budgets swelled to hide poor forecasting calculations. Wages were cut, even though workers were being paid overtime just days earlier. Eventually many experienced loss of jobs. Leading to further decrease in consumer Expenditure, and a vicious cycle ensued where at the end, the economy contracted.

In finance terms, a particular country's economy is said to be in recession if contraction happens for 2 quarters consecutively. 6 months. In my definition, I think the recession starts the moment EVERYONE is making insane profits. This means consumers across the board are hoarding; which then leads to the fact that VERY SOON they are going to stop buying. This is where companies still make mistakes. While they have very aggresive ramp-up strategies; No one thinks about phase-down strategies. Everyone says the other guy is going to bite the dust and I am going to take his share so I have to STILL ramp-up in a slump time. Besides, that's the only way I can keep the profits from last quarter going strong. Greed.

But, a phase down across the board is what is needed at that point. A PRODUCTION phase down. A sales TARGET phase down. A marketing BUDGET phase down. A managerial KPI phase down. And yes as counter intuitive as it sounds, a WAGE phase down across the board. Think about it, how can a company go into survival mode in a slump time if the people want to be paid as they were being paid in the boom time? Can you imagine a ship crew experiencing storm in the middle of the sea eating their rations at the same rate? The other alternative is of course to lay-off workers. But, this is a very irresponsible way for businesses to deal with the crisis. "For a few to continue eating as much as they did before the storm, we'd like the others to walk the plank into the middle of stormy seas" ?
At the least, they should get to a port and drop the excess crew off. A responsible way of retrenching staff. Leave them in a safe place where it's more feasible to look for a job. This is where Government I feel can actually help by having a rotation of projects. When the economy is going into a slump, launching a flagship project where the Government hires workers to work on it would be a great boost. Money would go straight into the hands of needy citizens and there would be a demand for daily products that arise from their employed pockets. Companies can make it easier by actually helping their employees find jobs in batches, with the Govt.

Of course, those who feel they are not interested can always do their own thing. Sadly people would do their own thing because of the ultimate need of humans. To live and to be safe. To be cherished and remembered. To be ambitious and leave a mark. They would try their hand at entrepreneurship / freelancing to make lots of money. Again, this is a situation that can be avoided if people did not need to buy what they needed. The developed economies have got the right track in mind by having Social Security schemes. Citizens unable to work are paid Social Security money by the Governments. They just haven't went on to the next step. Instead of giving people money to lift their burden of buying, the people should in fact given those items they want to buy for FREE; thus releasing more and more people from the need and "trappings" of money. I am not talking about abolishing the concept of money. I am talking instead about humans having enough to live. Then, having money would purely be for pleasure and the pursuit of happyness (pun intended!). People would then look at money as the tool it really is. Economic cycles would not dictate our livelihoods.

As beautiful as it may sound, we are unable to move towards this Utopian idea, even in small phases, at least until 2 things take place...
(Continued in Part 3)

There is a little bit of Economy in all of us (Part 1)

Hey Guys,

At the dawn of time, Everybody had needs to be met to live (Demands). Everybody could contribute to get what was needed (Supply).

In the olden times, there was this barbaric act of just abandoning or killing lame / disabled babies. That was a way of getting rid of unwanted strains on the System. There will not be a Demand which is more than the Supply that it can give. In fact, a lame baby would not have been able to defend itself and thus create the situation where others in the tribe were endangered, while trying to protect it as well.
Eventually, love and compassion stayed the hand of some and these lame children grew knowing full well that they were not able to hunt/gather/carry as much as the others. They had time to apply their brains, observe, analyse and come up with better ways of contributing. They would always have had strong opposition from the Warriors who were physically contributing to the tribe. But, eventually by becoming shamans and medicine men and toolmakers, these drain on resources were suddenly suppliers for a different set of needs. Previously unexplored, and non-essential to life sustainment (Wants). Thus, the Services industry was born.

This could have been the first instance of a serious physical Demand-Supply gap in the System. The gap would have existed earlier when not all people got the food they needed in the earlier System. That would have drove them to their first fight for food, water and land (hunting grounds); the first economic wars for limited resources. Once both sides realised that it was mutually harming chances of survival, either one would have given way or both would have decided for a mutual cease-fire. Either ways, the first barter Trade would have happened at this point with a little bit of early Diplomacy / Alliances thrown in.
This developing serious gap though could not be solved with just fighting and winning. It also required more than trade, especially in a large locality where they were in total power, with no others to grab from. This scenario along with developing methods of farming would have set off the first Agrarian economies. People realised that they could get more done if each other found his own type of specialty farming and then traded with others his excesses. internal trade flourished within communities. Of course, when you Specialise you get more of a better product and markets were there to facilitate trade.

The first Markets would have sprung very soon after the first barter trades happened. Trading posts which eventually became centres for their empires or smaller points in between empires that served as Consolidation Points of that particular area's specialty merchandise. This is where true Marketing would have started as pricing, positioning, product and with manual promotions.
To control everything, the inherent power structure from the tribal era would have evolved to support Monarchy systems. This system along with the people who support the monarchy would have formed the first Governments. An important part of Governments would have been the introduction of Taxes. People who lived in one area had to give something to the local monarch as a token. This also would have been a carry over from tribal days where the chief was given the "lion's share". A real example, Siam's (present day Thailand) holdings had to send them a "Bunga Mas" every year. Bunga = flower; Mas = gold. It literally was a symbolic little tree and flowers made of gold. Another meaning for Bunga = Interest (as in the interest paid on debt) presumably for living on the "borrowed land" of Siam.

This of course led to an interesting point in the development of economy as we know it. The discovery and manipulation of precious metals, Monarchies, inequalities inherent to barter trades, the need for tax collection in a form where lots of vegetables didn't go bad in the Royal coffers. All these would have led to the introduction of the Currency system. Money.
And so now we had Supply & Demand for Specialised Products & Services focused at the Markets. Exchanges were being done using Money and Monarchs were being paid Taxes by everyone in their domain. They needed someone to keep track of everything and Accountancy was born. The day that happened, every transaction done outside the "books" became the Black Market. Untaxable, untraceable yet physically money flowed from one to another for goods/services that never really "existed".

But, traders were more preoccupied with the money that was flowing in to their coffers. They could not run around and carrying all thier wealth in precious metal coins. They became the source of money that fed the black markets. Most of them found themselves in a pool of their own blood at the end of such transactions. Banks would have been formed at this point. Strongholds that kept everyone's valuables for a Fee. Eventually, seeing all those valuables in there just lying being unused would have led some clever banker to go on a "shopping spree"; Investments. Or it might have led him to think it would be ok to give money to someone who needs it and ask him to repay higher later (before the original owner came to reclaim it); Debt + Interest. The art of managing all this would have been Finance, as it is a different creature from only record keeping like accounting.

Now, there is a little philosophical bent to my story. I feel that as humans until that point in History we would have had our natural greed. Greed to survive. Greed to eat more. Greed to live in better conditions. Yet without focus, there was no strength in this human emotion to trap humans. Once Money was there. It was easy to see, to feel, to hear its 'jingle' during sleep. Anyone who had money had everything. Monarchs being the prime example and then the traders (proving the common man could have it too). The presence of a focus for greed amplified the emotion. Humans (who are great hunters!) became trapped in the hunt for money; only for money's sake. Children picked up the wrong message from their parents. Instead of hunting for enough food, enough land to live on and enough security; they were driven to hunt for money not really knowing the reason. Not really enjoying the fruits of the labour. For having money is pointless if you don't know what you want the money for, right?

And thus started the Economic Cycles as we now know it.
(Continued in Part 2)

The current economic situation

Hey guys,

Yeah, it might be a little bit too cliche to talk about the economy when all blogs could be talking about the very same topic. In fact, I feel there could be a lot of financial experts, and others blogging about this with a vengeance... They could take the stance of:-

the Naive: It's not that bad...there's just a minor correction and things will pick up... wha..* ..!~ Another flying shoe and this one doesn't miss. People realising they get only two-shots to "shoe-boo" their favourite politicians accurately, have started practicing.

the Know-it-all: It's just as I've been telling all this while. Nobody listened to me yesterday when I started saying it. Nobody is listening to me today. The economy is so bad now that it can only get worse. It may get better on a short term (<-this sentence embedded, to be a loophole if situations suddenly pick-up). But, I still maintain.... bla bla bla...

the Politically Correct: It is a tough in these turbulent times for the employment-challenged. We see equity-challenged companies going belly-up(..oh? ..wha? ..sorry...) I meant, forced to take legal recourse to protect their debtors from the inability of the management to grasp reality.

the Management: Please understand that the multi-million dollar bonus I got is in no way related to the way the economy is behaving at the moment. That is for my past performance, ensuring the company behaved as it should. We would definitely have not taken the bonuses if we did not earn it (...using your blood, sweat and tears. Oh, and I am going to fire you now)

the Employee: ....

And yeah, the employee most probably got it right.

The Year is 2009...

Hey guys,

How are you all there? Well, it has been a long time hasn't it? I realise that it has been actually a year this blog lay dormant.

So, to what do we owe my sudden interest and effort to blog. The Season's changed. Yay!~ Recently, I was sitting bored, when for the umpteenth time someone wanted to be "unsubscribed" from the ISB-PGP YahooGroup mailing list. Enough was enough. The people on this list are all GMAT 700+ scorers or at the least people aspiring to get into ISB. They should have got the hint (especially the guy who was kindly requesting for the 3rd time) that there are no active moderators or owners operating in that group anymore. It had evolved to have direction of its own. A purpose of its own, with people free to join and to leave by themselves anytime. No permissions needed.

I had this smug smile on my face while I excitedly jabbed away at the keyboard that evening. You see, it's pretty easy to get yourself unsubscribed. You have a link at the bottom of ALL the mails. Obviously, people nowadays don't seem to read the fine print anymore. Everybody wants in, but nobody finds out how to exit when they've had enough. It's the same everywhere. Casinos, relationships, crashing economies, the Mafia, ISB-PGP groups... everywhere. When they need to exit, they cry for help. They ask people they know, etc etc.

Anyways, I just typed my mind and I had more than a few comments lauding my post. In fact, they asked for (yep, you guessed it!) my Blog Address!! I have to say, I never thought that I would get rave reviews for giving people a piece of my mind. Lol!~

This then led me to promising my new fans a regular update and well, this time I intend to keep up and well, build my presence online. I might need to get the help of some bloggers for tips and comments as to how I can improve the blog overall. Please anybody with bright ideas, come into my mind and throw my switch on!~ =). (No, NOT that switch damn it!~ All you one-track minded bloggers). Topic/theme suggestions are welcome too.

Ciao for now!~
-Mathanaseelan-