It looks to me that you are talking about a behavioral economics approach to this, and I fully agree with that perspective Mr. Hermann. The fundamental problem with the approach of the article, is simply that neither a top-down approach (nor a bottom-up approach for that matter) to economic solution will work any longer. Global interdependence seeps down through all levels, and the politics--read in behavioral terms as an external attitude of naturally resulting from human ego--follows suite.



It must be understood that what Peter Drucker already foresaw as a global layer of nonlinear equations was added to the lower tiers of economic realities, is coming at us with a vengeance--mathematical chaos. In our linkages with politics, the social and cultural, the family "unit," and even nature--biochemical, trans-species, general ecology, and climate--this complex has led to vast cross-components coming out of the woodwork, in addition to the direct second-order, tertiary, and higher-order attrition.



When any communal system of independent members in nature reaches the crises of run-away chaos, success is achieved only by an altruistic re-ordering of the system and this new mutual responsible entity grabbing the Murphy's Law bull by the horns and taming it. Our own coronary system and general body homeostasis is such a success story of worst nightmare chaos becoming our best friend in mathematical control. The key is not vertical or lateral management, but fractal entity control -- from the international governmental and corporate entity, down to the local community and business, and the individual entrepreneur, worker, and family member. In short, we will require a true "Family of Humanity."



But it won't work through a chain of managers as "Who guards the guardians" will rapidly decay a chain of command per what works best for the individual in the mind and heart of the individual--rats fleeing a sinking ship and all. The information of the necessary mutualism is stored in the system, not in an individual manager nor the chain of command. Approaching chaos, everybody, is a lynch-pin, and the overwhelming entropy make any classic management a hopeless juggling of evermore water balloons until catastrophic failure.



As to the matter that you can't change human nature--of course you can't, but you can use it. However, only now is it possible to do so in the correct way. Only through an integral education will the egoism of individual, and net-egoism of groups, be directed to see that in the present world--it is mutual responsibility that is its best interest, "its" true power. Communism, and now capitalism, are both failing in essence because the former ignored the dominant reality of human egoism--imagined that it only lay with some special capitalist class that could be eliminated--and the latter though it could be put in a black box and controlled for everyone's benefit.



Tragically, the present debate among economists--including that presented in this article--continues to ignore the underlying psychological reality here.



Behavioral economics is the key, but most specifically, a fractal one--to all levels, beginning with an education toward integration supported by societal values of mutual responsibility. The power mass media bred to sell us so successfully on non-existence "needs" and desires in the name of consumerism, can surely be redirected in the cause of establishing a sable global society and economy--if we can muster the will to do so.

