Why Traditional Recession Tactics Are Doomed To Fail this Time - Umair Haque
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must 11
could 2
perhaps/maybe 0
fail 1
If he is at least a bit right, then businesses will naturally converge to these ideas, without requiring deep rational inquiry (the rationalism will be limited to: "those guys are doing something new and it's working, so let us also do it").
Let's see some data, some real research.
What shall replace the old world is unclear. I don't know "the right answer". No one does. Those of us who will step to the plate are going to improvise an answer (or more appropriately, answers) to the many emerging problems and get some right, some wrong.
When I read a piece like this, I have to take it as exactly what it is. A proposed solution, or set of solutions. He's offering ideas, and they're worth consideration and debate, but it's not worth debating whether they're "right" in a platonic ("communism works on paper") rather than pragmatic sense, because the present and future are unprecedented.
*Edit: I recommend a book called Deep Economy that does a much better job of explaining why these were good ideas worth investigating.
Put another way: show us some data, models, or research that he's wrong.
Put another way: assume he's right about everything. What are the implications for your business?
etc
HTH
Read up on game theory, network econ, information econ, financial analysis, and modern art criticism...it's totally spiritual!
I also think that the point is well taken that it can not be on the backs of other countries. The more people in the world with disposable income, the more people there are to sell to. When so much of the world is in near poverty and has 0 disposable income, the entire consumer focus of so many of our companies seems a bit silly.
There is a cooperation problem here, how do you prevent other companies from free-riding and reaping the value your company injects into society without adding any of its own?
Cooperation between human actors works because of an instinct for fairness. If we want the cooperation at a more macro scale, we're going to need a cultural sense of fairness to go along with it. I suppose we're seeing this now when walmart plays ads about how earth friendly it is, but we're certainly only a small fraction of the way there.
"Tomorrow's sources of advantage aren't like yesterday's. They're not built on being able to exploit, dominate, or coerce more strongly than others -- they don't result from being harder, better, faster, stronger. They're about exactly the opposite: being softer, better able to fail, having the ability to be slower, gaining the capacity for tolerance and difference."