Millennium 2 (or more precisely the period 1000-2008)was a strange one.
questions on norman macrae's last articles, xmas 2008, welcome chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk -in fact remembrance parties started 2010 continue to this day round his extreme concern that subprime could distract from the decade that need to value changing education with a plurality of cultural curiosity not hitherto mediated.
Whilst Norman's last public birthday party was spent in Saint James with Muhammad Yunus and young-in-heart friends of valuing women as much as men, sadly Norman never got to meet World Record Jobs Creator #2 Sir Fazle Abed
Whilst Norman's last public birthday party was spent in Saint James with Muhammad Yunus and young-in-heart friends of valuing women as much as men, sadly Norman never got to meet World Record Jobs Creator #2 Sir Fazle Abed
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With so many advances in human knowledge but not necessarily progress in lasting peace and goodwill to all.
Lets explore a few timezones of millennium 2. Please note even in 2018 there is as yet no common agreement on how to measure the intangibles valuation of human relationship networks (or how to map local to global value chains in way that all costs and risks are transparent to those who will suffer most on the ground whenever professional subprime).
The one thing we should urgently be able to see if we look outside : global connectivity's rapid acceleration now reveals worldwide consequences (eg climate) which play out irreversibly within a generation or two, instead of several centuries.
STARTING MILLENNIUMS 4TH QUARTER
Between 1748 and 1776, Scot Adam Smith lost the battle to return freedom to the way Britain was the first nation to be pivotal to the way that world trade was to be designed for nearly two and half centuries of Industrial Revolution.
In his 1748 book on moral sentiments - many call the first book on economics - adam explored a local community model. In the world of 1748, unless you lived by water most people didnt travel more than 15 miles from were they were born. Effectively everyone knew of each other. A trader might cheat some of the people some of the time but he would get found out, lose his local reputation. In that way it was communally in his interest to make every trade a win-win one that built trust through every value exchange he connected. Similarly financial services should be designed around multiplying such local goodwill
Adam Smith, Science & Human Nature by Professor Skinner
(To understand smith's ideology of free markets, you do need to read his won words. Many twentieth century academics have been sponsored to reinterpret what he said to match particular vested interests that some may feel bring terms such as freedom of speech and of markets into disrepute. Nonetheless as Keynes clarifies, increasing only economists design what future is possible for peoples and their place - savings have exponential consequences and as parents we take a collective "civilisation" responsibility to mediate how money flows wisely)
Adam's second book discussed a second loop to some extent conflicting with his community rising book- to what extent did a nation's size give it an advantage. Adam knew full well that Scotland had failed as a nation. It had been too small to lose half of its peoples savings in one overseas venture that most of them didnt know had been commissioned until it failed. The result the hostile takeover of Scotland by England (euphemism the United Kingdom). In fact London designed taxation policies so that by 1850 over half of scots could not sustain a livelihood in Scotland. Scots emigrated becoming a majority diaspora nation.
However Adam's main argument in his book was that although england's first move advantage with steam engines had added to its power to colonise it would be best to anticipate that America would become a larger market. Instead of dictating trade in the empire's interest why not negotiate free trade and freedom of America. As history shows, the Brits failed to do this. Henec the declaration of independence as USA fought to free itself of British control and declared every american's right to be a free and happy entrepreneur.
Colonialism, the control of world trade, seems to have emerged as an accident from 1500 as Europeans discovered they were not landlocked- ie there was a new continent to the west which became known as america, and that the far east east including india and china could be reached by sailing round Africa. Before this discovery, the main world trade market was the silk road which reached out overland connecting Europe Asia all the way to China. Marco Polo was one of the must famous reporters of this chain of local markets. Taes facilitated win-wins across cultures and exchanges as they took up to 7 years to complete a journey from Europe to China. Most of the wealth and civilisation of the world of the first half of the second millennium depended on being linked in to this world trade route. And the end destinations such as venice in europe (surrounded with its own sub-trading routes across the med sea) and typically Hangzhou in China offered evidence of how win-win market trades developed places.
As ships and navies from 1500 started replacing the overland silk road, they tended to arm themselves so that when they reached ports they could dictate trades. Remember too that unless you were a captain, sailing round the world wasnt a popular job, violence was needed to pressgang sailors. And this pattern spiralled it became colonisation - essnetially where an empire country controlled trade around its own interests. The consequence, whether deliberate or not, was that the colonies lost the ability to self-select trades that developed their peoples. In other words trade became win-lose where once across the silk road it mainly been win-win. And the infrastructure empires built was often only for their controlling needs not the native peoples mobility.
It is possible to argue that the 20th c world wars root causes was that the human race could not be sustained by two exponential structures
colonisation
the pursuit by big nations to get bigger by extracting more carbon energy than their own country possessed either through colonisation or by going to war. notably a country like Germany which had been landlocked on its south and so not a participant in colonisation had to feed its desired to get bigger by taking the iron and coal from neighboring places needed for building ever more powerful machines.
And as we humans raced towards this dead end, investing in 1000 times more human connectivity can be questioned as both a huge opportunity and a huge threat- what professional marketers used to SWOT.
Strength and weaknesses openly appraise where your history/culture of human endeavor has brought you to, Opportunities and Threats map back the future shocks of whether you compound hi-trust or low-trust exchanges going forward be these with other people or nature's environment.
The second half of the 20th century needed all the human foresight we could muster to be question against two unprecedented accelerators- investing in tech of communications and going green. Oddly one of these we have all raced into without questioning the media (digital isnt social just because west coast billionnaires claim it so), the other our governments in richest western nations have failed us on with stories that treat mother nature as little more than a game of devil take the hindmost. (Our point is : as far as we know nature controls the rules of which species becomes the next dodo, man doesnt make natures rules but would be wise to legislate ahead of their consequences)
THESE ARE EXCITING TIMES
What we therefore argue is that those nations that grew after world war 2 (with the exception of carbon rich territories) are those that innovated produce that offered win-win trades harnessing connectivity- eg japan's quality systems applied to microelectronics and to engineering supertrans and starting up the east's superports by applying such innovations as containerisation and the advances in construction machines
RECOMMENDATION FROM THE ECONOMISTS FIRST CENTURY AND HALF OF END POVERTY MEDIATORS
To world record job creatir, belt and roiad mapamkers and those who want to understand where economics is designed "inter-generationally" around trading transparency, trustflows ands winw-ns friends of valuing youth economies recommend the wporls of adam smith, JB Say, james wilson, wallter bagehot and the last chpater of keynes on the general theory of money.
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