CC BY
15
THE STATE OF INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL IN THE CONDITION OF TRANSFORMATIONAL ECONOMY OF UKRAINE
© 2015
T.V. Ponedilchuk, candidate of economical sciences, assistant professor of chair "Enterprise economics, finance and financial and economic security" Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Pedagogical University, Uman (Ukraine)
Abstract. The importance and role of intellectual capital were analyzes in the article. The essence of the concept of "intellectual capital" as the knowledge, skills and experience of employees, which have a direct impact on the organization development and ensure its economic stability and competitiveness, was discovered. The state and characteristics of the intellectual capital formation in the conditions of transformational economy of Ukraine were studied.
Keywords: intellectual capital, knowledge, human resources, human capital, intellectual property, competitiveness, intangible assets.
УДК 336
БАНКИ, УПРАВЛЕНИЕ МИРОМ И СОЦИОКИБЕРНЕТИКА (Статья основана на событиях в Греции и отдельных материалах из YouTube)
© 2015
Дж. Равен, доктор психологии
(Эдинбург, Шотландия)
Подготовка статьи к публикации: О.Н. Ярыгин (Тольяттинский государственный университет, Россия)
Аннотация. С современной точки зрения, очевидно, что, если ветер бросает наши лодки на скалы, то нет никакого смысла в организации массовых демонстраций «бороться ветер». Также нет смысла следовать указаниям тех, кто считает себя имеющими власть вмешиваться в мистические силы, которые контролируют человеческую судьбу, и приносит в жертву богам наших детей. Вместо этого необходимо осмыслить «силу» и показать, что она может быть измерена, отображена и использована. По аналогии, эта статья утверждает, что немногое может быть достигнуто путем организации массовых акций протеста в борьбе с банками или следованием указаниям современных жрецов, которые утверждают, что знают, как вмешаться в политико-экономическую систему. Вместо этого, необходимо осмыслить социальные силы и показать, как они могут быть отображены, измерены и оседланы.
Тем не менее, значительная часть информации, которая когда-то считалась лишь мнением теоретиков заговора, и которая, в значительной степени формирует наше понимание того, как работает политико-экономическая система, не только была проверена, но и получила дальнейшее развитие. В данной статье кратко обобщается ряд тревожных, но малоизвестных фактов о функционировании «финансовой» системы и, в частности, о так называемом «долге». Это заставляет рассмотреть сеть взаимодействий даже глубже, чем «теории заговора» о работе Федерального резервного банка США, Всемирного Банка и Соединенных Штатов Америки как 'UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Inc.'. Даже будучи верной лишь отчасти, эта информация создает важный контекст для наших попыток подтолкнуть деятелей, пытающихся управлять событиями в фоновом режиме, к тому, чтобы вместо этого сосредоточиться на концептуализации, отображении, измерении и поиске способов использования социальных сил, которые в подавляющем большинстве случаев определяют поведение индивидов и общества.
Ключевые слова: банки, долг, схема Понци, общественное управление, социокибернетика, государственное управление, явные и скрытые цели системы, социологические функции системы образования, движения «Occupy», «органическое» управление, бессмысленные работы, иерархия, право собственности на мир, мошенничество, ростовщичество, вымогательство, антикризисное управление, греческий «долг», финансовый кризис, Совет по международным отношениям, Новый Мировой Порядок.
In a question/answer session following a lecture by Jonathon Porritt in the early 1980s I suggested that he had failed sufficiently to emphasize the many problems which lurk behind widely accepted notions about the efficiency of the so-called "market process". This prompted a member of the audience to catch me after the talk and insist that I acquire a copy of a small pamphlet entitled The Money Trick1.
As I followed this up I found myself drawn deeper and deeper into an understanding of the, at first unbelievable, process whereby banks create, by simple ledger entries, money they do not have and then lend it to "borrowers" at nominal rates of 6 to 15%. This process has now become "well known"2.
Less widely recognized are the following: (i) given that, in most cases, the "lender" did not have even a fraction of the money that was nominally "lent"3, the true rate of interest on the "loan" is infinity4, (ii) since the lender acquires a lien on (demands security for) these vast "loans" of fictitious
1 Institute of Economic Democracy. (1982).
2 See e.g.Grignon (2007), Graeber (2011), Corbett (2014).
3 At one time banks were required to have one ninth of the loan (fractional reserve) in their coffers. But this is no longer true of the most important "loans", e.g. to international companies and governments. See eg my New Wealth of Nations or Grignon (2007) or Corbett (2014).
4 This follows from the simple arithmetical process of dividing any number by zero.
money (often to governments and secured by national assets) those who own the "banks" will inevitably end up owning the world in the event of a collapse of the financial system, (iii) as a result of changes in the banking regulations, it is no longer just banks who are creating this vast mountain of fictitious money but also the finance divisions of corporations like General Electric5, (iv) a huge proportion of the funds "borrowed" are used as collateral to secure borrowing of further fictitious money which is in turn invested in schemes to make still more money out of borrowing and lending fictitious money: i.e. in a huge Ponzi scheme, (v) this Ponzi scheme ("financialization of the economy") now generates more than 50% of GNP, (vi) the vast private "debts" required to finance this Ponzi scheme have soared astronomically in the past decade, whereas government debt has hardly increased at all (and such increase as there has been has been that required to "rescue" the banks), (vii) it was this private debt, not government debt, that was somehow lay behind the 2008 financial crash, (viii) attributing that crash to government debt and demanding that governments sell assets to reduce their debts merely accelerates the process whereby the banks and international corporations6 end up
5 who create and lend it so that customers [mainly governments] can buy their products.
6 An account of the way in which the Greek government has been
owning the world, (ix) this Ponzi scheme has created a huge amount of work as "financial advisers", contract writers, lawyers, call-centre operatives, etc. who then spend their incomes on products and services the production, utilization, and disposal of which makes huge profits for those who own transnational corporations but are wreaking havoc on our habitat.
But now I have stumbled on another assertion about the banking community which, if true, is still more disturbing.
It is the purpose of this article to review this assertion and explore its implications.
But first I would like to say more about where we had got to before this "discovery" the true nature of the money trick was only one of the many surprising things I discovered in the course of writing my book The New Wealth of Nations1.
One of the conclusions these findings collectively pointed to was that we, the peoples of the world, do not have an economic problem. We have a public management problem8.
This conclusion was deeply unpopular - perhaps because of the frustration with the workings of bureaucracy and acceptance myths about the efficiency of the marketplace9 - a fact which perhaps explains why I have had such little success in promoting any discussion of alternative public management arrangements10.
Nevertheless, as it happened I had, by that time, in an effort to draw more general conclusions out of my quarter-of-a century's involvement in studies of the educational system, tried11 to map the network of mutually supporting feedback loops which deflect the system from its manifest goals. The result - which I would now call a systemogram - highlighted two main problems: (i) the nature of the governance process deployed to manage the system, and, (ii) the pressures and constraints stemming from the sociological functions (such as allocation of position and status) which the "educational" system performs for society12.
Reflecting on the former led me to try to come up with a kind-of a design for a less hierarchical, more organic, management system having multiple feedback loops between numerous decentralized cells concerned with experimentation, evaluation, and learning. (It was obvious that a pervasive climate of innovation and learning was needed in order to find ways of dealing the host of multiple and inter-related problems I had identified.)
In working up The New Wealth of Nations, recognizing that the so-called "market process" does not, and cannot, fulfill this function (as Adam Smith had hoped), I then revised and extended what I had learned from studying the educational system in such a way as to generate an alternative image of a learning society .. ie a society which
forced to sell huge quantities of real assets to international corporations in order to secure further loans of fictitious money to repay equally fictitious "debts" (of no benefit to Greece) will be found in Dearden (2015). As the Greek government's own enquiry (Konstantopoulou, 2015) into the "debt" shows, the process is fraudulent (in that no money has been lent, did nothing to help Greece, and went straight back to the West to finance activities in the lender's economy), usurious (and thus illegal and criminal), and extortionate in that the loan was forced on Greece by the threat of closure of its banks and exclusion from the Eurozone.) The process parallels the way the fictitious "need" to reduce the (tiny) government debt in the UK has been used as an excuse to force through the sale of assets, impose privatization of services, and drive down wages and security, including pensions. Indeed, as I have argued in Raven (2014) the whole manufacturing of the 2008 "crisis" is best understood as yet another example of extremely effective world management to gain the ownership of the world via the creation of "crises". (see Klein, 2007)
7 Raven, J. (1995)
8 Although not stated in these terms, this conclusion is strongly supported by the comments Robert Reich makes in the course of his film Inequality for All. He repeatedly emphasizes that what is happening in the world economy is not determined by scientific/natural laws but laws made by men and therefore capable of being changed.
9 The huge bureaucracies involved in the workings of international corporations remain largely invisible.
10 One of my lifetime achievements turns out to have been the fact that I was the only speaker to be booed in the heady days early in the formation of the British Social Democratic Party (when it was widely hoped that it would breathe new life into the country).
11Following the work of Gareth Morgan (1986)
12 Raven, (1994)
would innovate and learn without central direction ... to that offered by Adam Smith13.
We also attempted to sketch the network of feedback processes which appeared to contribute to our continual move, despite everyone's desire to do the opposite, toward a society (organized on a single-factor ["hierarchy of ability"] basis) which is going to destroy our habitat and thus lead to our extinction as a species.
Since I wrote The New Wealth of Nations I have become more familiar with the systemsthinking world of sociocybernetics14 and discovered the work of Bookchin15 and Graeber16. Bookchin and Graeber have emphasized the positive feedback loops whereby the emergence of hierarchy depends upon the creation of senseless projects (such as building pyramids, castles, churches, and armies) which recursively justify both the senseless work involved in executing them and the appointment of managers to oversee the work. In other words, hierarchy depends on the creation of senseless work which contributes little to quality of life but does end up destroying our habitat and thus our chances of survival as a species17.
Mapping, measuring, and harnessing the network of social forces which lie behind this thus emerges as an urgent task.
But, in the last month or so, I have stumbled on something else which, on the face of it, suggests, on the one hand, that it is still less likely than it was before that anything worthwhile would come of an attempt to do this and, on the other hand, underlines the importance of doing it.
Whereas, as Grignon18, among others, had argued, that the emergence of the "financialized economy" in which the banks and Trans National Corporations will end up owning the world can, with difficulty19, be seen as an outcome of a self-perpetuating and self-extending (autopoietic) process stemming from the bankers' initial and accidental discovery that they could lend more money than they had on deposit20 (similar to the autopoietic extension of the so-called "educational" system) without any need to posit a conspiracy, it is much more difficult (though not impossible) to maintain that the other assertions which have recently come to my attention about the establishment and workings
13 Note, however, that, as envisaged by Smith, the market process does, importantly, include a mechanism for distinguishing more from less intelligent developments. Indeed, Smith's central objective was to devise an alternative to hierarchical systems of government in which decisions are taken by "committees of ignoramuses". So far as I can see, there are no more grounds for faith in the mass populism of the internet than in the most widely accepted interpretations of "democracy" (dictatorship by the majority).
14 Cybernetics involves the study and design of the guidance and control systems of animals as well as machines. It is important to note that the networks of feedback loops which control the internal functioning of organisms are mostly non-hierarchical and mostly outside the nervous system. So sociocybernetics becomes the study of the largely hidden feedback loops which guide the functioning of society ... and the design of better ones. I have to say that I have not found the work of any of the authors I read subsequently more helpful than that of Gareth Morgan (1986). But I have found some of the discussions I have encountered at meetings of the Society for the Advancement of Sociocybernetics (SCiO) and Research Committee 51 (Sociocybernetics) of the International Sociological Association very helpful. One of these led to acquaintance with Dynamic Systems Modeling and especially the work of Jay Forrester (1971/1995).
15 Bookchin (2005)
16 Graeber (2013, 2014)
17 There are endless publications pointing to this conclusion, but a summary will be found in Part I of Raven (1995) and more recently in Raven (2014a).
18 Grignon (2007).
19 The difficulties include such things as the way the banks arranged to have Abraham Lincoln shot in order so as to scupper his plans for interest-free money creation by the state so as to avoid having to pay the banks interest on this fictitious money.
20 As we have seen, one outcome of this process will inevitably be that the 18 private banks who, through a cascade of linked ownerships, own the so-called Federal Reserve bank (and most TNCs) will end up owning the world. One's faith in this "self-generating", no conspiracy, perspective is, however, seriously challenged by the fact that members of the Council on Foreign Relations, who are the very same people that own and control the central banks and TNCs, have unashamedly declared their interest in using the banking system they control to establish a "New World Order" which they themselves would run (see, for example, Corbett, 2014, for a brief account of the composition and activities of the CFR).
of the confederation of international banks that is known as the Federal Reserve System came about without such conspiracy21.
Although I have only recently come across the assertion22, it has apparently, for some time, been claimed that the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Inc. does not exist as a federation of states but is a private corporation owned by the Federal Reserve banks and legally incorporated (registered) in a plot of land deliberately established to be outside the jurisdiction of any state. In this, I have been even more surprised to discover, it mirrors the situation which exists in relation to the Corporation of the City of London (in which the Bank of England is located). It turns out that this pocket of land has never been incorporated into the United Kingdom and is not subject to English law, and especially modern banking law. This is why banks and corporations registered in the City of London are not subject to UK tax law and are therefore able, from there, to locate and manage many of their activities from within "tax havens" created within dominions still owned by Great Britain, such as the Cayman Islands.
Because it is not incorporated within any state, both its own dealings, and those of the Federal Reserve Bank, with the American states which constitute the American federation, as well as the rest of the world, are dealings in foreign countries - and thus outwith the scope of state and national legislation. Of particular importance from the point of view of the management of the world economy, this ploy enables the "Fed", the World Bank, and the IMF to evade national laws relating to such things as fraud and usury in relation to lending. In this way it enables them to avoid prosecution for charging interest on lending money they do not have and for, for example, "repossessing" houses and state assets in which they actually invested nothing23.
This assertion has been disputed24. But, if true, it is of the greatest possible importance from the point of view of working out how - i.e. through what institutional arrangements - the Greek government (and others) can pursue their (correct) allegation that the situation into which they have been trapped via the creation of financial crises leading to "rescue" packages involving bank lending has been achieved by means that are fraudulent (in that they
21 It is actually extremely difficult to say exactly what the term "conspiracy" implies. I devote Chapter 11 of The New Wealth of Nations to trying to clarify the matter. I give several examples where a network of forces contributed to an outcome that no one wanted but, having happened, could easily be attributed to a conspiracy. Then there are examples whereby someone, or some persons, unknown, for unknown reasons, intervened in an otherwise public process to divert the course of history. Then there are cases whereby some private meeting(s) of a group of people result in the presentation - or misrepresentation - of proposals which will have known, but undisclosed, effects to the benefit of the proposers are presented as being to the benefit of some other or wider group that does not have access to the information needed to challenge what is being said.
22 I first stumbled, by accident, across one, and then a series of, You-tube videos in which these assertions were made. Some of them lasted well over an hour. Unfortunately, I did not keep a list of them partly because I did not know where the trail was leading and partly because I wanted to check some of the assertions that were being made. (It is possible that the following might take the reader to one of the videos involved https://www. youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3696DEA6F27A3688)
Yet I did not know how to retrieve, and refer others to, the relevant sections of the videos without playing them all the way through again and noting what it said on the timer at the point at which the assertions were made. Fortunately, David Chassels came to my rescue and sent me links to transcripts of some of these or related presentations. Unfortunately, the transcripts do not cover everything that was said in the lectures. Those that are available are Griffin (2007) and Guliani (2004).
23 The thesis actually goes far beyond this. It is claimed that the Constitution of the United States is actually inoperative because the need to raise money to cover the debts incurred by the civil war and the freeing of slaves led to the declaration of a state of emergency in which the constitution was to be set aside for the duration of the emergency and that that state of emergency has been perpetuated ever since by the need to raise money to pay for subsequent wars. Disputable though this may be, there is no disputing the fact that "the economy" as we know it would not exist without the activities of the industrio-military complex. Without it there would be virtually no debts ... but also very little employment of the conventional sort. The vast bulk of taxation goes toward paying the interest on debts incurred in that process.
24 Griffin (2007)
involve no transfer of real money and will not deliver the promised benefits), usurious, and extortionate (in that they were forced on Greece by threatening death and destruction) and therefore seriously illegal (criminal) by any standards25. However, interestingly enough, if it the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and the Federal Reserve Banks are, indeed, private corporations (as distinct from governments or government agencies) they are open to being sued.
Even if this extraordinary assertion is not true, the possibility that it might be true somehow makes my claim that it might be possible to stem our plunge toward extinction as a species by seeking to conceptualize, map, measure and harness the hidden social forces at work seem less plausible. For, in a sense, these forces are right here in front of our eyes ... and, in a sense, clearly visible through the works of such people as Susan George26 and Naomi Klein27and Naomi Klein28.
On the other hand, it is also true that the drift to hierarchy, centralization, and command and control had been happening long before the emergence of modern capitalism, banks, and bankers29. As Bookchin showed, at every choice point in history, we have moved from societies that were more organically organized toward centralization and hierarchy despite endless demonstrations of the destruction that such organizational arrangements wreak on most, if not all, individuals - and habitat in particular. Not to mention endless demonstrations of the viability and benefits - to society, individuals, and habitats - of more organically organized arrangements. All of these have eventually been eliminated by a seemingly inexorable onward march of hierarchy. Are some people just so much better at systems thinking than others that they are better able to work out how to advance themselves (and the sub-set of the community to which they belong) than others? Or is the explanation to be found elsewhere, just as the behavior of the planets and other moving objects is to be found, not in the will of the gods or the nature of the moving objects30, but in the laws of physics. Only when the latter had been understood was possible to design the cybernetic (governance) systems that made it possible to have sailing boats that could sail into the wind and interplanetary missiles.
As I see it, Graeber31 has shown that the recent attempt by the Occupy movement to stem the tide and create a more satisfying and sustainable society in America has been met,
25 See Konstantopoulou (2015) for a clear statement of the claim and see Reich (2015) for a detailed account of the process as enacted by Goldman Sachs.
26 George, S. (2010)
27 Klein, N. (2007)
28 I have to confess that I find myself to be utterly schizophrenic about this matter. I flip from a quest for explanations grounded in social forces into "explanations" couched in conventional "psychological" and "sociological" terms. Thus, at times, I find explanations couched in terms of the operation of undesirable human traits - the adulation of authority, greed, an insatiable desire to be one's brother's keeper and insist on imposing one's own values and beliefs on others by force (see Raven, 2006) - irresistible. Despite widespread assertion that many of our problems stem from a lack of "systems thinking", I am regularly struck by the opposite. Someone, or someones, devise complex schemes to orchestrate wars, financial scams, conquest, and control of political and financial structures. If "proof by example" is needed, Robert Reich (2015) has shown how Blankfein and his team at Goldman Sachs worked out how to make a fortune for the bank by first helping the Greeks to hide 2% of their "debt" and then doubling it (charging $793 million for their services), and then devising a "rescue" package in the form of a "loan" of 2.5 billion (fictitious) Euros. But then there is the counter thought: single-factor intervention in poorly understood complex systems almost always has counterintuitive and counterproductive effects and thus, in a sense, illustrates Adam Smith's claim that the decisions are taken by committees of ignoramuses. But, then again, who cares about these unintended and undesirable effects? And how to take steps to avoid them? These are fundamental questions that sociocyberneticians and systems thinkers more generally need to address.
29 Bookchin (2005). Graeber (2011) has also shown that the creation of debt with the resulting arrangements for subjugation, control, exploitation, and extortion has also proceeded and accelerated over many thousands of years.
30 Prior to Newton, if objects moved or changed direction it was because they were "animated", i.e. because of their internal properties. After Newton it was mainly because they were acted upon by networks of external forces which could nevertheless the mapped, measured, and harnessed.
31 Graeber (2014)
not just by a combined massive reaction on the part of the banks, trans-national corporations, governments, and other vested interests, but by a systemic reaction - a reaction of a system as a whole - as distinct from the prolific, but discrete, reactions of its constituent parts32.
In other words, it is not true that we understand the forces at work and who the enemy is, who to fight.
It is not true that, as Corbett claims, we need to join forces to "fight the banks".
It is true that, if we are to survive as a species, we urgently need to dismantle our economic system, our chemical intensive agriculture, our oil-based economy33. We do need austerity ... but not the kind of austerity that is currently being talked about: we need a form of austerity which, without destroying our habitat34, delivers long, high-quality, lives (which, incidentally, do not depend on the material goods we strive so hard to produce35).
The way forward will not, as most of those associated with the degrowth movement seem to think, be found by fixing this or that so that we can go on pretty much as we do now. All their good ideas will be eliminated by the onward march of hierarchy unless we understand the forces responsible for this phenomenon and work out how to intervene in and harness them.
One cannot fight the wind which crashes our boats against the rocks. It is no good shouting at ships' captains or politicians or sacrificing our children to the Gods. We have to conceptualize "force", and show how it can be measured, mapped, and harnessed by putting keels on our sailing boats and redesigning the sails and the rudder.
By analogy, we now have to conceptualize social forces, identify how they operate36 and work out how to harness
32 I am deeply grateful to Aidan Ward for a powerful illustration of the difference between the two. A human body is made up of numerous cells and endless interacting processes (most of which by-pass the brain - ie they are not hierarchical). But, by and large, if one wishes to influence a human being, it is best to address the whole body - to speak to it or imprison it -not to address the individual cells or processes of which it is composed. Aidan speaks of the "Gestalt flip". Instead of seeing all the components one by one, as one could do when viewing the furniture in a room, one sees the whole. The body has emergent properties not located in the cells or the relationships between them. It can sing and dance and shoot to kill. A bank or military-industrial complex has similar emergent properties. But how to think about, conceptualize, a wider system that reacts as "America" did to Occupy? How to influence it? How does it spawn banks and police forces? What are the key feedback loops in its internal organic sociocybernetic system? How does it maintain itself? What are the sensors through which it collects the information needed to respond to its environment?
33 The evidence to support these claims was brought together in Raven (1995, 2014).
34 It is important to note the way in which Darwin's concern with the survival of the fitting - the way all the thousands of grasses and flowers and millions of species that constitute a meadow grow and develop and support each other in their micro-environments - has, given our cultural preoccupations, been corrupted into the concept of the survival of "the fittest".
35 See Marks et al (2006) for examples of societies that approximate this ideal.
36 Bookchin explicitly ducked the task of working out how the seemingly inexorable onward march of centralization, hierarchy, command-and-control (all seemingly associated with the creation of endless senseless work), came about. He simply asserted that it arose from a "self-organizing" process. Our first response to this has to be to say that the phrase "self-organizing" is an understatement. The processes are self-elaborating and self-extending, in a word "autopoietic".
To take an everyday example for illustrative purposes. I remember the first Director of Education being appointed in my home town. Everyone wondered what he was to do. Before that there was just a central office paying salaries and then schools, teachers, and head teachers operating within central government proclamations about how to cater for the three types of mind identified by the Greeks and allegedly confirmed by the latest psychological research. Now, 70 years on, the staff, offices, and pay of the administrators, inspectors, specialists, advisors, and enforcement officers of this central agency cost more than the total for schools. It is "obvious" how this came about. Bit by bit the staff of the Department usurped the responsibilities of teachers and head teachers and, to ensure that there would be no "failing" schools or pupils, prescribed what teachers should do every 10 minutes of every day and checked up on them via check-lists, inspectors, and centrally generated and scored tests first of pupil attainment and now of an extraordinary culture-bound concept of "well-being". Now the bureaucrats are into generating parallel mandates for what parents must do to promote the development of their children's (hierarchically-defined) "ability" and (centrally-defined) "well-being", hoarding them into compulsory parent-education classes, sending inspectors into their homes and fining and imprisoning them if they do not follow the state's prescriptions.
them.
Just as we had to progressively redesign the cybernetic system of our sailing boats we have to redesign the governance system we deploy in an effort to manage our society.
We have made a start. We have sketched out an alternative response to Adam Smith's quest for for an image of a cybernetic (viz governance) system which would enable society to innovate and learn without central direction. And we have a (less good) preliminary sketch of the network of social forces which perpetuate the creation of senseless work . though not of the elaboration and perpetuation of hierarchy37. The problem is to find a way of continuing with the task, the magnitude of which is huge38 in comparison with current budgets for social research39.
All of this may sound bad enough, but it is also important to remind ourselves of one other, very important finding from our research. What passes for "education" consists primarily of involvement in activities which are entirely senseless from the point of view of promoting the development of talent and competence ... but are extremely valuable from the point of view of inculcating a willingness to compete at senseless tasks and in such a way as to generate acceptance of the notion of a hierarchy of "ability" linked to social position and willingness to follow the dictates of authority.
All this would seem to constitute a sufficient explanation of a particular autopoietic process. So it raises the question of whether there is any need for any deeper sociocybernetic understanding. Is there any need for any explanation except for the lust for power on the part of some and distrust in the goodwill and competence of others? In short, is there a need to posit any specifically sociological as distinct from psychological processes?
In this context it is useful briefly to mention the work of de Jouvenel (1945/48). He has contributed an extraordinary detailed account of how the processes promoting centralisation, bureaucracy, and hierarchy, which are collectively termed "power", have operated and evolved over the centuries.
It would seem that power has been progressively wrested from the people by a range of managerial types who claimed to be able to intervene in more and more of the network of hidden forces which primarily determine people's quality of life but are generally beyond their control.
The process starts with people who claim they can intervene with the gods to control the weather and those who are actually able to better ward off attackers.
Continuously, more and more people are dragooned into devoting their energies and lives to supporting these people, who then become more dictatorial in their pronouncement demanding an ever greater proportion of the ordinary people's resources.
In due course, the people rebel. But they quickly appoint new leaders to help them fight both their previous oppressors and those of their fellows who take advantage of the situation to advance their quest for power, gory, or possessions.
But these new leaders quickly become even more oppressive and coercive of the people than those have overthrown. Except that this is now done in the name of, and with the support of, the people themselves.
Vastly more people are conscripted into, and die in the causes of, "the peoples' armies" and "the common good" than the deposed king could possibly have dreamed of.
They murder, dispossess, and acquire the resources of, ever more "enemies" ... even enemies within their own ranks.
The expectation is created that it is the authority's responsibility to right all wrongs instead of the public themselves being expected to at least contribute to that.
Once "the authority" becomes a parliament elected by popular mandate, there comes a flood of demands to fix every conceivable wrong experienced by every member of the population. Individual "parliamentary representatives" are so flooded with demands to do something about everything that they have no time to think about anything. The resulting situation unleashes a swathe of pressure groups to put pressure on the representatives to advance the cause of one sectional interest or another (rather than advance the general public good). All of this leads to demands for conformity to authority rather than the release of a climate of diversity, experimentation, and innovation.
I am sorely tempted to summarize more of de Jouvenal's observations but enough has been said to justify my making one more point.
Here we have a classic positive sociocybernetic feedback loop (or spiral) whereby a problem generates a "solution" which exacerbates the problem.
But the question is: "Why does that spiral only advance toward centralization, command-and-control, and destruction of habitat instead of toward more 'organic' arrangements which would enhance the quality of life of all and reduce the destruction of habitat in such a way that our species would have at least a chance of survival?" What are the social forces behind this?
37 Raven (2014).
38 In one sense, as Luciano Gallon has pointed out, the task is to transform the sociogrames we already have into dynamic systems models of the kind developed by Forrester. That would be an enormous task in itself. But, more importantly, the attempt to do so should lead us to recognize the importance of so-far neglected variables.
39 Note that both the development of radar itself and the work needed to conceptualize physical force and demonstrate the value of so-doing were conducted, as it were, "under the radar". No one in their senses would have
And, even then, we would not have "solved" the problems, any more than Newton prevented sailing boats crashing against the rocks. We would only have better tools to facilitate evolution toward a dimly glimpsed, but as yet unknown, destination40.
REFERENCES
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2. Bosch O.J.H., Nguyen N.C., MaenoT., YasuiT. (2013) Managing Complex Issues through Evolutionary Learning Laboratories Systems Research and Behavioral Science Syst. Res (2013) Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/sres.2171. http:// www.business.adelaide.edu.au/research/specialisations/ systems-design-complexity-management/documents/ managing-complex-issues-through-evolutionary-learning-laboratories.pdf
3. Corbett J. (2014). Video: Century of Enslavement: The History of The Federal Reserve https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=waetWPG_W7o. Transcript available at https://www.corbettreport.com/federalreserve/.
4. Dearden N. (2015) Greece is about to be completely dismantled and fed to profit-hungry corporations. The Independent, Wednesday 12 August 2015. http://www. independent.co.uk/voices/comment/greece-is-about-to-be-completelydismantled-and-fed-to-profithungry-corporations-10452068.html
5. de Jouvenel, B. (1945/1948). On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth. Translated by J.F.Huntington. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
6. Forrester J. W. (1971/1995). Counterintuitive Behavior of Social System: An introduction to the concepts of system dynamics, discussing social policies and their derivation from incomplete understanding of complex systems. Original text appeared in the January, 1971, issue of the Technology Review published by the Alumni Association of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All figures are taken from World Dynamics by Jay W. Forrester, Pegasus Communications, Waltham MA.
7. George S. (2010). Whose Crisis, Whose Future? Cambridge, England: Polity Press.
8. Graeber D. (2011). Debt: The first 5000 Years. New York: Melville House.
9. Graeber D. (2013). On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs. Strike! Magazine. August 2013. http://strikemag.org/ bullshit-jobs/
10. Graeber D. (2014). The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis a Movement. London: Penguin Books.
11. Griffin G.E. (2007) Is the United States Government a Corporation? If true, so what? http://www. freedomforceinternational.org/freedomcontent. cfm?fuseaction=US_corporation
12. Guliani L. (2004). The United States Isn't a Country -It's a Corporation!http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/us_ corporation.htm
13. Grignon P. (2007). Money as Debt. Animated video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqvKjsIxT_8 Money as Debt 2 (2009). Animated video: http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=l_IgcmsqnVM
Money as Debt 3(2011). Animated video: http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=rxZhtGeRa-M
14. Institute of Economic Democracy. (1982). The Money Trick. Melbourne, Australia: Heritage; Sudbury, UK:
funded Newton asserting that there is somewhere an equal and opposite reaction to the force of the wind on the sails . and that it is . where? . in the sea . and it can be harnessed by . what? .adding a keel to one's boat!
40 An important application of Dynamic Systems Modeling to map the network of social forces operating in a particular situation, identify nodes at which intervention would be most likely to be effective, implement those interventions, monitor the results, and initiate a further round of action will be found in the Evolutionary Learning Laboratories developed by Ockie Bosch and his colleagues (2013).
Bloomfield Books.
15. Klein N. (2007). The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. London: Penguin Books.
16. Konstantopoulou Z. (2015). Executive Summary of the report from the Debt Truth Committee. http:// greekdebttruthcommission.org/wp/?tag=zoe-konstantopoulou
17. Marks N., Simms A., Thompson S., & Abdallah S. (2006). The (Un)happy Planet Index: An Index of Human Well-being and Environmental Impact. London: New Economics Foundation. http://repository.liv. ac.uk/1488426/
18. Morgan G. (1986). Images of Organization. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
19. Raven J. (1994). Managing Education for Effective Schooling: The Most Important Problem Is to Come to Terms with Values. Unionville, New York: Trillium Press. www.rfwp.com ; Edinburgh, Scotland: Competency Motivation Project, 30, Great King Street, Edinburgh EH3 6QH. http://eyeonsociety.co.uk/resources/fulllist. html#managing_education
20. Raven J. (1995). The New Wealth of Nations: A New Enquiry into the Nature and Origins of the Wealth of Nations and the Societal Learning Arrangements Needed for a Sustainable Society. Unionville, New York: Royal Fireworks Press www.rfwp.com; Edinburgh, Scotland: Competency Motivation Project. http://eyeonsociety. co.uk/resources/fulllist.html#new_wealth
21. Raven J. (2006). Undesirable Human Traits? http:// eyeonsociety.co.uk/resources/uhts.pdf
22. Raven J. (2014). Crisis? What Crisis? pp. 90-156 in Mulej, M. and Dyek, R.G. (eds) Social Responsibility - A Non-Technological Innovation Project. Bentham Science Publishers. Extended and modified version (and links to Russian translation) available at http://eyeonsociety. co.uk/resources/cwc.pdf
(Translation of this article in Russian language as «Кризис? Какой кризис?» was published in Russian scientific journals: Parts I and II - Azimuth Of Scientific Researches: Economics and Management/ Азимут научных исследований: экономика и управление.
2014. № 4(9), СС. 81-95; Part III -Azimuth Of Scientific Researches : Pedagogy and Psychology/Азимут научных исследований: педагогика и психология.
2015. № 2(11), pp. 87-101; Full text - Baltic Humanitarian Journal/ Балтийский гуманитарный журнал. 2015. № 2(11), pp.84-111. - Editor's note)
23. Raven J. (2014). A Quest for Contributions (Time or Financial) to Research Aiming to:
(i) Make a socio-cybernetically-based (or, put another way, Dynamic System Model-based) contribution to our quest for a design for a governance (viz sociocybernetic) system which will better serve the needs of society than current forms of democracy and public management.
(ii) Map (and find ways of harnessing or intervening in) the network of invisible social forces which have the future of mankind and the planet in their grip. http://eyeonsociety.co.uk/resources/quest_for_ contributions.pdf
24. Reich R. (2015) How Goldman Sachs Profited From The Greek Debt Crisis. Published in The Nation, JULY 16, 2015; http://www.thenation.com/article/goldmans-greek-gambit/
THE BANKS, WORLD MANAGEMENT AND SOCIOCYBERNETICS (A paper prompted by events in Greece and chance encounters on YouTube)
© 2015
J. Raven, Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology
(Edinburgh, Scotland)
Prepare an article for publication: O.N. Yarygin (Togliatti State University, Russia)
Abstract. From a modern perspective it is obvious that, if the wind is crashing our boats against the rocks, there is no point in organizing mass demonstrations to "fight the wind". Nor is there any point in following the instructions of those who present themselves as having the power to intervene with the mystical forces which control human fate and sacrificing our children to the gods. Instead it is necessary to conceptualize "force" and show that it can be measured, mapped, and harnessed. By analogy, this article argues that there is little to be gained by organizing mass protests to fight the banks or following the instructions of the modern priests who claim to know how to intervene in the politico-economic system. Instead, it is necessary to conceptualize social forces and show how they can be mapped, measured, and harnessed.
Nevertheless, a great deal of information which was once believed to be merely opinion held by conspiracy theorists, and which greatly informs our understanding of how the politico-economic system works, has not only been verified but further elaborated. This article briefly summarizes a range of alarming but little-known facts about the workings of the "financial" system - and "debt" in particular. It then goes on to review a network of even deeper "conspiracy theories" about the workings of the US Federal Reserve Banks, the World Bank, and the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Inc. Even if only partly true, this information provides an important context for our attempts to push the actors who appear to control of events into the background and instead focus on conceptualizing, mapping, measuring, and finding ways of harnessing the social forces which overwhelmingly determine individual and societal behavior.
Keywords: banks, debt, Ponzi scheme, public management, sociocybernetics, governance, manifest vs. latent goals of systems, sociological functions of educational system, Occupy movement, organic management, senseless work, hierarchy, ownership of the world, fraud, usury, extortion, crisis management, Greek "debt", financial crisis, Council on Foreign Relations, New World Order.
УДК 338.45;332.01
ЭКОНОМИЧЕСКОЕ ОБОСНОВАНИЕ ИНВЕСТИЦИОННОЙ ПОЛИТИКИ РЕГИОНА
© 2015
А.Н. Рехтета, преподаватель кафедры финансов и кредита
Николаевский национальный университет им. В.А. Сухомлинского, Николаев (Украина)
Аннотация. В статье исследованы механизмы формирования и реализации региональной структурно-инвестиционной стратегии экономического роста. Рассмотрен методический подход к повышению эффективности реализации инвестиционной политики региона. Рассмотрены современные источники, механизмы и инструменты финансирования инвестиций которые могут быть использованы украинскими регионами в процессе своего развития.
Ключевые слова: инвестиционный климат, уровень инвестиционной привлекательности региона, инвестиционный потенциала, инвестиционные региональные риски, инвестиционный потенциал хозяйствующего субъекта, инвестиционная емкость региона.
Постановка проблемы в общем виде и ее связь с важными научными и практическими задачами. По мнению экспертов, украинская экономика достигла предела роста в своем нынешнем состоянии. Для качественного прорыва необходимо дальнейшее развитие институци-альных реформ и резкое увеличение инвестиций для структурных преобразований в экономике.
При крайне низком уровне социального развития регионов, необходимость инвестиционных вложений в инфраструктуру и освоение территорий очевидна. Наличие в экономике значительного объема несвязанных финансовых средств подрывают экономическую стабильность и увеличивают риски коррупции. В этих условиях повышаются требования к качеству разработки программ социально-экономического развития регионов. Только эффективное взаимодействие органов власти региона и бизнеса обеспечит выявления «точек» роста на территории, обеспечивающих, в целом, повышение качества жизни населения.
Анализ последних исследований и публикаций, в которых рассматривались аспекты этой проблемы и на которых обосновывается автор; выделение неразрешенных раньше частей общей проблемы. Изучению и обобщению проблем региональной структурно-инвестиционной стратегии экономического роста посвящены фундаментальные исследования ученых-регионалистов, в частности глубиной и широтой охвата изучаемых проблем характеризуются научные работы А.Н. Алимова, А.И. Амоша, С.И. Бандура, П.П. Борщевского, В.М. Гейца, Б. Данилишина, М.И. Низменных, С.И. Дорогунцова, Л.М.
Зайцева, Т. Заяц, А.А. Епифанова, В.Ф. Евдокимова, И. Куценко, И.И. Лукинова, А.С. Лисецкий, Ю.П. Лебединского, Ю.В. Макогон, А. Мазура, В.К. Мамутова, В.Ф. Столярова, Л.П. Симоненко, А.П. Сологуб, М.И. Фащевский, В.И. Пилы, В.А. Поповкина, М.Ф. Тимчука, Л. Чернюк, М.Т. Чумаченко, В.Ф. Филипенко.
Научные достижения ученых имеют большое значение. Однако, проблема управления региональным развитием требует дальнейшего исследования, так как в корне изменились внутренние и внешние условия функционирования региональных систем, приобретает новое значение и трансформируется управления региональным развитием, ориентируясь на обеспечение комплексности и экономической эффективности.
Формирование целей статьи (постановка задания). Основной целью статьи является исследования механизмов формирования и реализации региональной структурно-инвестиционной стратегии экономического роста.
Изложение основного материала исследования с полным обоснованием полученных научных результатов. В экономической системе устойчивого развития Украины ведущая и важнейшая роль принадлежит регионам. Эта роль реализуется через функции организации воспроизводства качественных ресурсов методами обустройства территории и развития инфраструктуры. В настоящее время сформировалось два подхода к решению проблем развития экономики региона - экономико-географический и воспроизводственный. Первый подход является традиционным, развит экономистами-географами и получил наиболее широкое распространение.
