Oligarchy and Financial Crisis
After I looked into Spiral Dynamics I am very sensitive now to any of those evolutionary patterns. I just recently found some in a very interesting article from Simon Johnson, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management about the economic crisis, it's causes and how to solve it.
He argues that the U.S. economic recovery will fail unless the "financial oligarchy", responsible for the crisis in the first place is broken. The government, captured by the finance industry is according to Johnson, running out of time needed to prevent a true depression. A highly advanced country like the US also has the most advanced oligarchy and with this statement Johnson describes three stades of political systems, a primitive one in which power is transmitted through violence, e.g. military coups; a less primitive system that is found in emerging markets where power is transmitted via money, e.g. bribes and finally a system in which the
“...financial industry gained political power by amassing a kind of cultural capital—a belief system. Once, perhaps, what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Over the past decade, the attitude took hold that what was good for Wall Street was good for the country. The banking-and-securities industry has become one of the top contributors to political campaigns, but at the peak of its influence, it did not have to buy favors the way, for example, the tobacco companies or military contractors might have to. Instead, it benefited from the fact that Washington insiders already believed that large financial institutions and free-flowing capital markets were crucial to America’s position in the world.”
Although this is the most developed form of oligarchy it is located pretty low on the Spiral. I see patterns of the achievist theme (ORANGE) in which everything is strongly focussed around prosperity and material well-being. Using Johnson's words we are dealing with "a society that celebrates the idea of making money". On the other hand I see elements of Purposeful-Authoritarian/Truth (BLUE). It looks like we need to move up the Spiral as this focus is not good enough for our well being in the future. And although Johnson's overall position seems radical including the solution he suggests at the end of the article I believe it deserves serious consideration...
Posted at
01:19PM Oct 25, 2009
by Volker Seubert in Personal |
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