FTC-Global

Four Major Transformations of Modern World?

by Cary Ussery

Interesting and thought provoking. Of course, as a somewhat informed and thinking liberal, I don’t agree with all the assessments and conclusions. Let me give some perspective from someone who does not have the credentials, information or experience to hold a stick to Herb Meyer.

To comment on what Herb Meyer said, I find it interesting that little attempt is made here to tie these trends together. Do we not believe that enormous military effort is being expended in an oil-rich area at the same time that China is emerging and Russia is growing financially from oil revenue? Also, there are assumptions here that seem a stretch. One of the biggest questions facing us in this day and age is are we really in a cultural and/or religious war? Is Islam attacking Christianity? Are Christians attacking Islam (something no-one seems to consider)? Terrorism does not seem to be an organized attempt by those in power in greater Arabia to fight back the West. Rather it is a set of radicals not tied to the current power structure trying to fight the existing power structure in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the power structure there was put in place by the West and is sustained by massive underwriting of these governments in exchange for below market pricing on oil. What would the Saudi royal family do without oil revenue? They would have to address the significant gap between rich and poor in their countries, massive unemployment (where do you think terrorists and suicide bombers come from) and a reliance on money from natural resources rather than actual development. Contrast this with the growth of the Far East economies (Japan, Korean, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc.) following World War II where they could not rely on selling natural resources. Also, there is a long history of tribalism that causes significant undermining of any attempt to resolve issues on a regional basis. These same problems have been happening in Africa which has been at constant war and genocide based on traditional tribal rivalries.

Anyway, let me posit my own four ’trends’ and see if they have any bearing on these same issues from a different perspective.

1. The break-down of the colonial empires and economic control during the 20th century coupled with the rise of new economic and population centers.
2. The shift in science from a predictable, rational universe (Newtonian mechanics) to a probability-based science (particle physics and relativity) and the subsequent loss of faith in Science.
3. A shift in business from complete vertical integration to business eco-systems and specialization.
4. The over consumption of natural resources, non-sustainable agriculture and industrial manufacturing.

I have a day job, so let me just outline this thinking to see if it raises your own thoughts.

Colonial Breakdown

During the 17th to the 20th century, the world was divided into territories occupied or created by largely European countries who rose to power through a combination of agricultural, military and organizational strength. This was helped at the time because other major powers (China, Islam and India) were largely isolationists cultures who were large enough to focus on their own internal growth and issues. Interestingly, an analogous thing happened during the Roman empire expansion but Rome chose to keep ’countries’ segregated by their traditional tribal lines. Because Europe had multiple countries trying to expand (Holland, England, France, Spain, Italy, and later Germany), partitioning into countries was done somewhat arbitrarily and was based on geographic delineators rather than tribal delineation. This happened early on in South America, Africa, etc. The Middle East was the last of these where countries like Iran, Iraq, Jordan, etc. were largely created in the 20th century mostly based on the Sykes-Picot agreement during World War I.

To make a long story short, as European influence left these regions, traditional religious and tribal breakdowns started to come into play and created power struggles within these ’created’ countries. Iraq is a great example where the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis traditionally have their own regions (Turkey, Iran and Saudi respectively).

We also see during the 20th century major devastation and war between WWI and WWII and other major conflicts including the revolution in Russia and China and the resultant purging of the populations. Europe was devastated in blood and treasure and had to abandon the colonial ’empires’ they had created. This ’terror’ on the world at large helped lead to a rebirth in religion as people struggled for answers to why the world was so cruel. It also led to a move to create empire through economic control rather than occupation (hence the rise of the American empire through aggressive economics and military subsidization).

Irrational Science

This area was also coupled by a period of incredible revelations and discoveries in science including relativity, evolution, quantum physics and DNA. All of the sudden we discovered that things were not easy to measure, were more probabilistic than deterministic and, in general, were downright weird. Unfortunately, the 20th century will also go down in science as creating more questions than answers and moving science away from being understandable by the general populace. Where things had seemed predictable, rational and ’controlled,’ science now offered unpredictability, irrationality and chaos. For a general population, already surrounded by major changes in technology, industry and education, and living in an increasingly complex and chaotic world, a return to the structure, simplicity and sense of community of religion. However, religion is reknowned for creating an "us vs. them" mentality as people can’t internalize religion as a ‘methodology’ but want to view it as ’absolute faith’ and ’truth’.

New Business Eco-System

It is natural as knowledge increases and mankinds ability to create complex systems increases, that the production of work-products and services get more complex. This is a microcosm of civilization in general, where we went from small groups to organized tribes to cities to feudal states to nation-states to countries and to macro-civilizations (Europe, US, USSR, etc.). As a people, we are constantly finding ways to pull together increasing number of resources directed toward ever complex and over-arching goals. We have also learned more about economic systems and market dynamics that increase the need for partnering to create successful endeavors. Sure this means that the traditional view of a ’company’ and it’s ’workers’ has changed and it means that we have to shift our understanding of where traditional services like health care, infrastructure, etc. come from. Certainly in this country, early in the last century this burden was placed on government (quite frankly companies with monopolies had little incentive to provide it themselves). From 1930 to 1980, the burden was increasingly shared by companies who could afford to do it because of consistent economic growth. There was also the realization that a consumer economy required healthy consumers who could afford some non-essential spending on goods (we should remember this as we bemoan the increase in spending capability world-wide which we also rely on to create new consumers). It is true that there has been a recent shift that requires more creativity. As companies grow smaller and their overall economic strength shifts over time, there has been an increased move to allow workers to accumulate these benefits through different companies (401K, health care, etc.) and to move their retirement and other benefits with them. This is good and shows a place where government can do good. However, there is also a shift toward removing these benefits or never providing them to low wage, unskilled labor; the reality, however, is that providing emergency services to these people costs far more than providing pro-active, preventative services (retirement accounts that grow over someone’s work life reap more rewards than welfare, preventative health care reduces the costs of surgery and emergency health care).