Prospering Makes Demands

Who is Responsible for What?

Prosperity is not an essential. Many societies have lived for long periods at subsistence levels i.e. without much in the way of personal assets. Few visiting the TOP webcluster are in that category, however. So let us see the demands that the aspiration to prosper places on a society and its members.

If something is desired, then responsibility must be assigned. In this case, the responsibility for a society is primarily with The Citizenry who naturally assign certain matters to The Government.

THEE Note:Closed It is irrelevant whether people in general know that they are responsible and in charge or welcome such notions. The Government and The Citizenry are hexadic structures located in the framework for realizing values in society (sPH6). The framework is written up in detail in Ch.12 of Working with Values (1995).

Prosperity's demands are showing in the TET diagram in the light of the imperatives that have been proposed for each Mode. This then enables us to think about responsibilities.

The Quadrants

Market-centred

Once prosperity is agreed implicitly and explicitly as a goal of society, then activities in the Market-centre Quadrant become an obligation. However, obligations here are rather uneven: The Citizenry has to do all the wealth-creation. Individuals have to take risks with their capital and their energies on new business ideas, new markets and new enterprises. The Government should probably keep out of the way as much as possible. The most that any Government can do in this Quadrant is to affirm the value of commerce, productive work and enterprise.

ClosedSocial Tensions
need economic and political handling

Without commercial activities, there can be no prosperity. Yet all business and enterprise inherently generates inequalities and social tensions, as well as a «tragedy of the commons».

Governments make economic attempts to manage these social tensions via Power-centred, Cause-centred and Community-centred modes as explained later.

Social tensions also need to be handled politically. The political emergence of prosperity as a goal is examined in the politics Satellite. It clarifies the need for values of the individualist mode in political institutions. There is also an examination of the way tensions are handled in a society.

 Power- & Kinship-centred

The Government comes into its own in here. In power-c terms, it commands coercive power in society and therefore it can and should enforce laws and market regulation to protect citizens, private property and commercial transactions. In kinship-c terms, The Citizenry desires that The Government should be protective and pay special attention to its economic difficulties and the needs of domestic industries. People naturally desire active protection if they come to believe that foreign firms are guilty of unfair predatory behaviour.

Note: No decision or intervention. Closed Establishing what regulation is needed, or what might be done about foreign competition, is not determined in this Quadrant. The focus here is on strict enforcement of existing regulations (power-c) or on the comfort of mutual aid, internal admiration, encouraging attitudes and supportive communications (kinship-c).

Cause- & Perspective-centred

The Government and The Citizenry have a more equal standing here. As part of cause-c, both must understand that some form of capitalism is required. Certain basics are essential: individual enterprise, private ownership, accumulation of wealth, assets and debts, regulated markets and investments, contracts and property rights. Although independence and making a living runs with the grain of human nature, capitalism has to be promoted and socialization (indoctrination) is needed.

Perspective-c evaluation is also a matter of education. The Government certainly needs to learn and disseminate what is going on in society, and look at matters from multiple perspectives. If The Citizenry is not educated and not prepared to learn continually throughout life, The Government will very likely pull the wool over its eyes.

Community- & Reality-centred

The Government and The Citizenry now must reap what they have sown. The Government intervenes in society, ideally, to benefit economic activity in general. However, there may be temptations e.g. to be heavily swayed by kinship-derived views and therefore over-protect domestic firms.

There must be interventions that create regulatory authorities: but designing them to be effective is another matter. In the same way, affirming enterprise and promoting capitalist ideas should lead to appropriate legislation (e.g. commercial contracts, property rights &c). A reality-centred view seeks to face up to economic forces and unavoidable issues so that intervention is timely and appropriate. Often, government intervention panders to The Citizenry and when reality strikes, as sooner or later it does, The Citizenry should take the blame for the mess.

It is evident that the most important contributions for effective intervention come from: perspective-centred, and reality-centred modes. The kinship-centred mode is important too because it alone calls for political leaders and The Government to actually care about the people. This is self-evidently not possible in systems where politicians are in the grip of vested interests.

Originally posted: Q3-2009