1 INTRODUCTION

Economics needs a new paradigm. The present one, serving economic growth and
those who benefit from it, has quit serving humanity. GNP is less correlated
with human well-being and humanity than it used to be. Being a stream
quantity and not a stock quantity (as 'economic growth' wrongly suggests),
GNP can be compared to a running tap. As long as thirst is humanity's main
need and want, a faster running tap correlates with more well-being and a
decrease in suffering that impedes human flourishing. This correlation
becomes less when some people, having quenched their thirst, use it to
indulge other wants, when a faster running tap becomes a measure of status
and power and when restricting others' access to one's tap induces ruinous
conflicts.

I define economics as (our study of) the way in which we organize that
people get what they need (some more than that, other not at all). Or, less
morally biased: (our study of) the way in which we organize that people get
what they want.
The key concept is want...

2 THE ORIGIN OF WANTS AND WANT

Every system of ideas is founded in metaphysics. Or in denial of the need
for it, which amounts to an anti-metaphysics which has the same founding
function.
That is, if metaphysics is understood to mean our answers to three
questions:
1) How can we know? (epistemology)
2) What can we know? (ontology)
3) How can we know what we should do? (meta-ethics)
My answers are:
1) We can only know by experience.
2) Only Quality or value can be known experientially.
3) We can only know what we should do by attaching differential meaning to
alternative actions.

I experience, therefore I am. I act to give my existence meaning.

Experience is structured and patterned.
Structure enables us to distinguish different experiences. The
smallest entity of experience is a 'Quality event'. Quality
events differ at least temporally or spatially from each other.
We can distinguish myriads of other 'qualities' however that can
be present in a Quality event (or not).
Recognizing a pattern implies experiencing similarity (equality
of at least one quality) between Quality events that are
temporally or spatially different.
Patterns 'demand' explanation. It is an essential human urge to
ask 'why' a pattern exists and endures. Children learn early that
the 'normal' answer is that 'someone wants it'. Someone
apparently values creating, preserving or reproducing that
pattern. Experiencing a relatively stable (in time) or consistent
(in space) pattern of values implies experiencing the value of
creating, preserving or reproducing it.
Children also learn early to want things themselves. They are asked why they
do things. They learn to identify with a pattern of values in their
experience, with 'I', a pattern of creating, preserving and reproducing
other patterns. They learn to extrapolate the development of these latter
patterns into the future and that an accepted answer to 'why do you do
that?' describes a future state in such a development: something they want!
'I' is a collection of 'wants'.
Children learn that some wants are more acceptable to others than
other wants. Some kinds of wants somehow never come true whatever
they do ... apparently someone else does NOT want it...
They learn 'how to get what you want' and 'to want no more
than you can get' as two sides of the same coin.

We do things because we want things. We want things that give our
existence meaning.
Any possible action has a (superficial) instrumental meaning: it
is (or is not) a way to get something we want.
The metaphysical question 'how can we know what we should do?'
can thus be split into 'how can we know what we should want?' and
'how can we know how we can get what we want?'.
The first sub-question is still metaphysical. My answer is still
that we can only know what we should want by attaching meaning to
possible wants.
The second sub-question can be reduced to the non-metaphysical
question 'how can we get what we want?', IF we assume (as our
culture does) that we experience our wants independently from
what we can get. If that assumption is true, we can determine
experientially whether we have got what we wanted. Any
possible 'way to know how' to get what we want is then
falsifiable: just try it (that 'way to know how'), apply the
results (the knowledge) and if we don't get what we want, it
apparently was a wrong way.

We not only do things because we want things, however. Most of what we do is
involuntary. Usually we do not attach meaning to a want before doing
something that gets us at it. We do not answer prospectively 'why should I
do it' but retrospectively 'why did I do it'. We do not act, but we behave
and rationalize our behavior afterwards.
Even our actions, the things we do do with prior motivation, are
more often than not motivated with avoiding things we don't want
rather than getting things we want.
Our inability to choose between all the things we could want, often makes us
choose a course of action that leaves open as many options as possible. Just
making money for instance, or saving for possible future wants what we don't
really want now. For money is a way to make other people do what we want
them to do.
And last but not least, for lack of really wanting something
ourselves, we often take for guidance what other people have
got, supposing that if they (apparently) wanted it, it must
be worth wanting. Homo sapiens, 'the knowing human', has always
been a predominantly social animal, knowing relatively little
individually and drawing heavily on collective knowledge about
what we should want and how we should get it. Historically
the main 'way to know WHAT to want' AND 'way to know HOW to
get it' has simply been to copy other people's behavior and
motivating our actions with the help of whatever stories are
available about why people (or Gods ...) want things.

On the other hand even if we do something involuntary this
behavior is driven by differences in quality between behavioral
options. We often do experience quality in what we do after we
have done it even if we haven't consciously wanted it previously.
Reflexes (e.g. closing your eyes when something comes to close)
are an extreme example. Prospectively motivated actions are only
the other extreme with a lot of retrospectively rationalized
behavior in between.
Prospectively motivated action is the best guarantee that we get
what we want, but if we usually don't really know what we want
(apart from avoiding some things, leaving options open and
keeping up with the Joneses), why bother...

Most of what we do therefore forms patterns of values very
similar to the patterns we experience in the instinctive behavior
of related animals or patterns of values that are more distinctly
human but equally irrational.

Want, defined as unsatisfied wants, is a rather elusive phenomenon...

It is against this background that I want to develop my economic thinking
and my political economy, a system of ideas about how we organize that the
members of our society get what they want and how we should organize it.
Such a system of ideas should establish four things:
1) How can we know what people want?
2) What is the present economy, i.e. in what (organized) way do
people now get what they want?
3) What should the economy be?
4) How can we change (where necessary) the present economy?

3 HOW CAN WE KNOW WHAT PEOPLE WANT?

How can we know what people want if they hardly know it
themselves?
The answer is either very depressing or very simple.

The depressing answer is that we can't know it, so we can't organize for
others that they get what they want and we have to leave it largely to
themselves to do so. There are a few things we can do collectively.
Governments that look after the interests of their citizens rather than
after those of the ruling elite usually already do them:
a) Protecting people from malevolent others (among themselves or external to
the collective).
b) Enhancing everyone's options when there seems to be enough
agreement on the general direction in which options should be
enhanced (e.g. mobility, telecommunication, education, health
care etc.).
For the rest we will have to leave it to people themselves to
determine what they want and to get it if they can.

As people usually don't act rationally and just behave in line
with the crowd, we should be quite pessimistic about the quality
they will experience in what they get when left to themselves.
Moving with the crowd gets them stuck in involuntary and constrictive
patterns of behavior that lack meaning.
Avoiding what they don't want usually gets them into situations that
are less fearsome but little more attractive.
Trying to enhance their options in the most obvious way often blocks options
that on hindsight were more attractive. E.g. love, peace, nature etc. can't
be bought with money and are often adversely affected by trying to make as
much money as possible.
Having got what others got before them, people often discover that it has
become far less worth wanting now that everyone has it. Moreover, they
discover that some others have gone on and have got something new which is
much more worth wanting because of its newness.

The simple answer is to just make them want what you want them to want.
How to do that? Create or pass on stories that attach meaning to
what you want them to want.
'Special' things, that can't be easily got, can often more easily be sold as
worth wanting than ordinary things. Apparent ability to organize
satisfaction of wants often makes people more effective in making others
want something.

People who want other people to want something and who organize satisfaction
of that want, let's call them 'political economists', can do so for
different reasons. They can do so to get something for themselves in return
or they can do so to contribute to a better world. These possibilities do
not exclude each other, however. Reasons given may be retrospective
rationalizations of actions that were motivated differently prospectively or
even of (involuntary) behavior.
Even economists who pretend to be apolitical, who only want to
explain how people get what they want and/or to instruct those
that know what they want how to get it, may turn out to be
political economists in disguise. By creating stories explaining
how people get things like 'wealth', 'a higher GNP', 'more
profit' etc. and neglecting to create stories explaining how to
get things like love, peace, nature etc., economists make people
think that the first are more worth wanting than the last.

4 WHAT IS THE PRESENT ECONOMY

For most of human history political economy has been the
exclusive domain of political and religious leaders.
A basic fact of economics is, that almost anything people want
can be got more easily if (more) people co-operate. (More
co-operation does not imply larger scale organizations! The best
way of getting a lot of things is organizing people in a lot of
small scale organizations that are usually self-sufficient, but
that collectively back up each other if need be.)
Leaders organize co-operation. A leader tells or shows people
what they want and how to get it, if ... they co-operate in a
specified way. For most of human history being member of the same
society meant following the same leadership.

The oldest form of economy is organized around (real or symbolic) family
relationships. Genealogy provides meaning. To belong or not to belong, that
is the question. Reciprocity is normative. You help someone else who needs
help because you are related. Receiving help strengthens the relationship
and enhances the obligation to do something in return in the future.
Leadership often correlates with age and a male gender role, because it
requires building a web of reciprocal relations with oneself as the 'spider
in the web'. Older males are in most societies in the best position to do
(or have done) so.

The defining characteristics of such primary societies (e.g. nuclear
families) is that there is supposed to be no choice whether one 'belongs' or
'doesn't belong' to a society. 'Given' characteristics decide who 'belongs'
and who is to be excluded from the benefits of 'belonging'. These benefits
include access to communal resources and sharing in the results of pooled
labour. Pooling labour and allotting roles, primarily according to age and
gender, allows for (limited) division of labor, specialization, economies of
scale and satisfying some wants that can hardly be satisfied alone (like
hunting mammoths). Primary economy can consist (simultaneously) of families
(all living relatives), clans (people whose ancestry can be traced to the
same remembered ancestor), tribes (people who trace their ancestry back to
the same symbolic or mythological/legendary ancestor), nations (people who
deduce from common history, language etc. that they must have common
ancestry) and theoretically even of humanity as a whole.

A second form of economy originates (in addition to the primary form, not
necessarily instead) wherever leaders enlarge their influence beyond those
who automatically 'belong'. They do so by monopolizing some kind of power.
This power can be of different types. It can be magical, the ability of
shamans to manipulate fear for that which is not understood. It can be
military, based on weapon technology and on the ability to mobilize and
organize people against other people. It can also be democratic, based on
the convention to let a popularity contest determine who gets for a couple
of years the law enforced right to tell others what to do (within
restrictions). Coercive relations are added to family (like) relations.
Additional meaning is provided by supposed virtues like 'nobility',
'culture' (in a strict sense) and 'civilization'. To deserve power or to
deserve subjection, that is the question.

Enlarging society by those in power by coercing extra subjects into
cooperating allows for the pooling of more resources, more division of
labour, specialization, economies of scale etc. The norm is 'fair'
distribution of the costs (e.g. by taxes) and benefits of enlarging society,
i.e. distribution in proportion to virtue. Leaders recruit the resources
needed to exercise power (and mostly so from those who 'deserve' to be taxed
heaviest). They use -wherever possible- the benefits of their exercise of
power to consolidate their position by maintaining and enhancing their
power. That requires giving their subjects what they want, at least those
they depend on for their power.

The defining characteristic of this second form of economy compared to the
first form is the enforcement of social boundaries (however they are
defined: geographical, ethnical etc.). 'Secondary societies' can also have
different sizes. Because of the need of leaders to monopolize power in order
to stabilize their position, the coexistence of several overlapping
secondary societies is never stable however. It is most stable if the size
of coexisting secondary societies is clearly different (e.g. local and
national) and if the type of power their leaders exercise is clearly
different (e.g. religious versus military).

The third form of economy is added by a new type of leader (not political or
religious any more): the entrepreneur. It is organized with exchange
relationships. Productivity provides additional meaning. To produce (value
for others that entitles you to remuneration) or to depend (on others for
your livelihood) that is the question. Fair dealing (equivalent exchange) is
normative.

The defining characteristic of this third form of economy compared to the
second form is, that an economic leader, an entrepreneur, does not (pretend
to) lead (and organize the satisfaction of wants for) a society as a whole.
The boundaries of the social group that is led by an entrepreneur are not
clear-cut. That group normally consists of employees, but it can also
contain suppliers, customers or others that enter into exchange
relationships with the enterprise. Strong economic leaders make others
dependent on what they produce (or on the income they provide by buying
other people's labor or products). It is the inequality of the mutual
dependence of exchange partners that determines relative power over what the
other can get and thus the limits of what he/she will want. An enterprise
that is the only source of employment in a region or almost the only
producer or buyer of a particular type of goods or services has a lot of
power over the wants of its (potential) employees, customers or suppliers.
Additional ways in which an entrepreneur can make others want what he/she
wants them to want are advertising and standardization, among others.

'Tertiary societies' contain a lot of overlapping and complementary groups
organized by different economic leaders. The boundary of such a group lies
between those who are dependent but only for a few wants and those who are
not dependent at all on their leader. With the rise of tertiary societies
political economy is not the exclusive domain of political and religious
leaders any more.
'Tertiary economies' can pool even more resources, enable more division of
labour, specialization, economies of scale etc. than secondary ones, because
co-operation doesn't depend on the ability to feel a sense of 'belonging
together' with those one co-operates with anymore.

The fourth type of economy is organized by ideological leaders. It is
organized with relations of membership and contribution. Common goals and
common interests provide additional meaning. To convince (others that your
way of reaching goals or serving interests is the best way) or to follow
others, that is the question. Contributing to the best of one's ability to
common goals and interests is normative.

The defining characteristic of this fourth form of economy compared to the
earlier forms is the voluntary choice to 'belong' or 'not to belong'.
Ideological leaders make their followers identify with their group by
convincing them. 'Belonging' or 'not belonging' to groups depends on the
strength of identification with their common goals and shared interests.

'Quaternary societies' contain even more overlapping and complementary
groups. 'Belonging' to different groups at the same time is enabled by
complex, multi-layered identities. Boundaries are even less clear-cut. They
can be determined by asking whether someone contributes or not to the common
goals and shared interests, however little.
'Quaternary economies' can pool even more resources, enable more division of
labour, specialization, economies of scale etc. than tertiary ones, because
people can participate in several different roles at the same time. One can
be a specialist in one field and in other fields a layman, who can only
follow what others propose to contribute to reaching common goals and serve
shared interests.

Our present economy is of course a mix of all these forms.

5 TO WHAT EXTENT DO PEOPLE GET WHAT THEY WANT?

Measuring to what extent people satisfy their separate wants is pointless if
wants are so elusive. The best way of measuring to what extent people get
what they want is to ask people how content they are.

History gives the impression that each type of economy sometimes created
fairly contented populations ... and yet, at least by the time the next type
of economy appeared, they were sufficiently dissatisfied with their old type
of leaders to give a new type a try. The historic sequence of types of
economy suggests therefore, that each type of economy breeds the very type
of want it cannot satisfy.
In a primary economy an increasing number of people want to be free from the
limitations (supposedly) deriving from the characteristics they are
(supposedly) born with.
In a secondary economy an increasing number of people want to be free from
coercion.
In a tertiary economy people increasingly want independence.
And in a quaternary economy more and more people want to be free from being
brainwashed into wanting what other people want them to want...

History also gives the impression of a gradual growth in average complexity
of identity of people and thus in range and diversity of wants. Leaders are
forerunners in this growth. Leaders need more complex identities than
followers: On top of being able to identify with their (potential) followers
they have at least as extra want either a better world or a better deal for
themselves.

A good impression of the range and possible development in human wants is
given by the 'hierarchy of needs' theory of Maslow as presented in 1943
(http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm) and refined in his
later work (according to
www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadhb.html):
1. Physiological - food, water, shelter, sex.
2. Safety - feel free from immediate danger.
3. Belongingness and love - belong to a group, close friends to confine
with.
4. Esteem - feeling of moving up in world, recognition, few doubts about
self.
5. Cognitive - learning for learning alone, contribute knowledge.
6. Aesthetic - at peace, more curious about inner workings of all.
7. Self-actualization - know exactly who you are, where you are going, and
what you want to accomplish. A state of well-being.
8. Self-transcendence - a transegoic level that emphasizes visionary
intuition, altruism, and unity consciousness.

As said before: Most of the behaviour that gets people what they want (or
not) is involuntary. Their identity, their set of (conscious) wants, guides
only a relatively small part of their behaviour. If asked whether they are
content with what they get, people have to invent on the spot most of the
wants they need to compare it with in order to conclude on their relative
satisfaction. This lack of conscious motivation behind most human behaviour
is the main leverage available to leaders to lead their followers. Provided
you do not tell your followers to want things that require too much
deviation from their normal involuntary behaviour, giving them meaningful
wants induces them to do as you tell them in order to get those wants.

6 WHAT SHOULD THE ECONOMY BE, CONVENTIONAL VIEW

This subject makes the difference between mere economic thinking (how DO we
organize the economy) and political economy. Politics being the way in which
we create (or at least influence) the future of a society as a whole.

A conventional view of what the economy should be can be found on the Human
Development Report (HDR) Website of the United Nations Development Program
(UNDP):
'Human development is about much more than the rise or fall of national
incomes. It is about creating an environment in which people can develop
their full potential and lead productive, creative lives in accord with
their needs and interests. People are the real wealth of nations.
Development is thus about expanding the choices people have to lead lives
that they value. And it is thus about much more than economic growth, which
is only a means -if a very important one -of enlarging people 's choices.

Fundamental to enlarging these choices is building human capabilities -the
range of things that people can do or be in life. The most basic
capabilities for human development are to lead long and healthy lives, to be
knowledgeable, to have access to the resources needed for a decent standard
of living and to be able to participate in the life of the community.
Without these, many choices are simply not available, and many opportunities
in life remain inaccessible.

This way of looking at development, often forgotten in the immediate concern
with accumulating commodities and financial wealth, is not new.
Philosophers, economists and political leaders have long emphasized human
wellbeing as the purpose, the end, of development. As Aristotle said in
ancient Greece, "Wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking, for it is
merely useful for the sake of something else."

In seeking that something else, human development shares a common vision
with human rights. The goal is human freedom. And in pursuing capabilities
and realizing rights, this freedom is vital. People must be free to exercise
their choices and to participate in decision-making that affects their
lives. Human development and human rights are mutually reinforcing, helping
to secure the well-being and dignity of all people, building self-respect
and the respect of others.'

[End of quote]

Enumerating and compiling statistics about all the things people can do or
be in life and setting the highest (apparently) achievable limits as goals
(like the UNDP HDR's do) is not really a way to describe what the economy
should be. It tells us very little about how we should organize the
realizing of those goals.

Even making 'freedom' our goal in economics and seeking more capabilities
and more rights as means to realize that goal, misses the point that
'freedom from' want will always elude human striving if the origin of want
and wants is not recognized. Without wants we have no identity and our
existence has no meaning without wanting ever new things. 'Freedom to'
choose and the right to create one's own life is pointless without wants or
even without own wants, not copied from others.

The analysis of the origin of want and wants and of our present economy
suggests that:
1) Peoples' needs and interests should not be taken as given. People can be
and are influenced by what others want and by what others want them to want.
2) Having more capabilities, more choices available to them and more rights
to exercise them, people often do not choose and act wisely. More often than
not they leave the choices to leaders of diverse kinds, who not only take
into consideration the well-being of their followers but also -and often
disproportionately- that of themselves.
3) More often than not people involuntary behave like everybody else,
following 'normal' patterns of behaviour, because their sense of identity
and ability to act independently is limited to a small part of their lives.

I know no conventional view of what the economy should be that takes this
into account.

7 WHAT SHOULD THE ECONOMY BE, ALTERNATIVE VIEW

The best available way to organize that people get what they want is
obviously by maximizing the fourth form of economy, organization by shared
goals and interests, and minimizing organization by 'given' characteristics,
by coercion and by dependence.
The maximum extent of organization by shared goals depends on the complexity
of identity people can achieve. Everyone at least has to think about which
groups they want to belong to and more people than in 'earlier' types of
societies have to be (ideological) leaders themselves to organize these
choices.
Leaders and followers should not be separate 'classes' of people, however,
even though the distinction is necessary to enable the pooling of resources,
division of labour, specialization, economies of scale etc.. Separation
breeds discontent among the 'following class'.

The type of want that is bred by quaternary economy, not to be brainwashed
into wanting what other people want you to want, can only be satisfied by
educating people to grow more complex identities and be more conscious of
what we do. Educational institutions as we know them now won't do, however.
At present educational institutions are among the institutions most
characterized by the distinction between leaders (teachers) and followers
(pupils). They are much better at making people accept brainwashing and
become habitual 'followers' than at helping them to do without. We will have
to re-invent 'education' if we want it to free people from brainwashing.

Changing the organizing principle of quaternary economy (shared goals and
interests) to solve the brainwashing problem may not be necessary. It is
probably only if we allow the distinction between leaders and followers to
escalate into a full-scale class-division. At the moment no other organizing
principle is anywhere in
(my) sight. A possible candidate derives from the ability of (some) people
to 'participate' in each other's thoughts and experiences and to experience
being an indistinguishable and inseparable part of whole. Who can feel
brainwashed if one's brain is experienced as inseparable from that of
others?

Highly complex identities imply that people can feel connected with a lot of
different types of other people and at a lot of different levels of
aggregation (local, regional, national, global). That enables maximal
pooling of resources, division of labour, specialization, economies of scale
etc. without neccesitating uniformization of wants for everyone. Everyone
can belong to a unique set of groups and communities that all organize
satisfaction of different wants.
Being more conscious of what they do enables people to plan and organize
their world themselves into a more meaningful whole, into a world ever
closer to what they want. Conscious action reduces involuntary dependence on
others.

8 HOW CAN WE CHANGE THE PRESENT ECONOMY INTO WHAT IT SHOULD BE?

The key to reorganizing how people get what they want in order to increase
their contentment is involuntary patterns of behavior.
Involuntarily following leaders and copying other people's behavior cannot
simply be substituted by a fully conscious economic system, however. The
limited (capacities to grow) complexity of identity and (to increase)
conscious
activity of the people involved doesn't permit jumping from primary or
secondary economics to quaternary economics or from primary to tertiary
economics. The transition to a next form of economics can only be made when
dissatisfaction with the former one has increased sufficiently for people to
try a new type of leaders. As said before: such transitions are usually not
substitutions anyway, but additions of new types of society and leadership
and gradual changes in the balance between the different types.

Changing the economy therefore requires identifying wants that are less then
optimally satisfied by involuntary patterns of behavior and leading people
in a
new way to satisfy them in a different way. The tactical way is to present
these wants as new wants, but confrontation with leaders formerly organizing
the satisfaction of comparable wants cannot always be avoided.

Back to the title: 'economics of want and greed'. Until now I have only
dealt with 'wants' and 'want'. 'Greed' refers to a statement that always
strikes me as profoundly true: 'Our fear and our greed are destroying our
future.'
Fear is the result of trying to change people's involuntary patterns of
behavior that are satisfying real wants. They don't know yet what they will
get instead and cannot consciously work it out, because of the unconscious
way in which they satisfied these wants before.
Greed is what motivates leaders who do not relinquish their leadership when
a better way presents itself to satisfy the wants of their followers which
they are presently organizing. As said: 'political economists' who want
other people to want something and who organize satisfaction of that want,
can do so to get something for themselves in return or to contribute to a
better world. The first (not necessarily conscious) drive constitutes greed
once that way of organizing satisfaction of that want can be superseded.

Both fear and greed are what political economists who want to contribute to
a better world have to deal with. The way to do so is given by the opposite
of the former statement:
'Our trust and our selfless commitment are building our future.'
Not necessarily trust in leaders of course...
Wim Nusselder (comments welcome at wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
November 2003