The Trap
Could a President Obama set us free?
What is the “The Trap“?
It is a three part film by Adam Curtis, broadcast by the BBC in March 2007.
Curtis’s narration concludes with the observation that the game theory/free market model is now undergoing interrogation by economists who suspect a more irrational model of behaviour is appropriate and useful. In fact, in formal experiments the only people who behaved exactly according to the mathematical models created by game theory are economists themselves, and psychopaths.
For the last 50 or so years we have been badly led astray by “the game theory/free market model”. It has become a rigid political dogma strictly adhered to by the majority of Republicans, champions of unregulated free market capitalism, the neoconservative proponents of “The Project for the New American Century“, and the far right. It has been supported by a brilliant propaganda program, as documented by Curtis, that has suppressed critical thinking and turned too many Americans into one dimensional consumers. It was not an accident that right after 9/11 we were urged to simply “Go Shopping”. See here and in 2006 as well.
Can Obama get us out of “The Trap’ with a new model? “The game theory/free market model” has been too well used to justify the current gross excesses of our present “Gilded Age II”. I suggest that we must break free of the gilded age and its dogma. Only if we can reclaim our freedom, will we be able to have any hope of dealing successfully with Global Climate Disruption, Peak Oil, and the end of cheap money. Why? Because this will require very high levels of cooperation and altruism in support of the common good, all values denied by the entrenched dogma of “the game theory/free market model” and the trap it has caught us in.
2 comments permalink | Jock Gill | Democracy, Economic Justice, Empowerment, Politics, Propaganda
For another critique of Homo economicus, please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus#Criticisms
Criticisms
Homo economicus bases his choices on a consideration of his own personal “utility function”. Economic man is also amoral, ignoring all social values unless adhering to them gives him utility. Some believe such assumptions about humans are not only empirically inaccurate but unethical.
Consequently, the “homo economicus” assumptions have been criticized not only by economists on the basis of logical arguments, but also on empirical grounds by cross-cultural comparison. Economic anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins[5], Karl Polanyi[6], Marcel Mauss[7] or Maurice Godelier[8] have demonstrated that in traditional societies, choices people make regarding production and exchange of goods follow patterns of reciprocity which differ sharply from what the “homo economicus” model postulates. Such systems have been termed gift economy rather than market economy. Criticisms of the “homo economicus” model put forward from the standpoint of ethics usually refer to thís traditional ethic of kinship-based reciprocity that held together traditional societies. They typically tend to view the egoistic and amoral behavior of “homo economicus” as unethical conduct that may be functional within a competitive market economy but is not in line with, but fundamentally running against human nature and ethics.
Economists Thorstein Veblen, John Maynard Keynes, Herbert Simon, and many of the Austrian School criticise Homo economicus as an actor with too great of an understanding of macroeconomics and economic forecasting in his decision making. They stress uncertainty and bounded rationality in the making of economic decisions, rather than relying on the rational man who is fully informed of all circumstances impinging on his decisions. They argue that perfect knowledge never exists, which means that all economic activity implies risk.
Empirical studies by Amos Tversky questioned the assumption that investors are rational. In 1995, Tversky demonstrated the tendency of investors to make risk-averse choices in gains, and risk-seeking choices in losses. The investors appeared as very risk-averse for small losses but indifferent for a small chance of a very large loss. This violates economic rationality as usually understood. Further research on this subject, showing other deviations from conventionally-defined economic rationality, is being done in the growing field of experimental or behavioral economics. Some of the broader issues involved in this criticism are studied in Decision Theory of which Rational Choice Theory is only a subset.
—— snip
Additional speculation:
We are now almost a generation and 1/2 into the era of so called Digital Natives and almost 1 full generation post the fall of the Berlin Wall. In addition, we have also, for example, been moved and entertained in a sustained and powerful way by Harry Potter promoting altruism, cooperation and the common good.
In a sense, doesn’t Harry stand for everything tit for tat game theory/free market dogma rejects and denies?
A great deal has changed since we were told to dive under our school desks and kiss ourselves goodbye. And a great deal has also been forgotten of life in the Cold War era.
So can we say that perhaps a meta issue in the Obama campaign is that it rejects the Cold War’s game theory constructs and the worst of the social and economic values that developed in reaction to that tremendous fear? Is it possible that McCain & Clinton are perceived as yesterday’s technocratic cold warriors. Are they both trapped, along with the ghost of Robert McNamara, in “The Fog of War”?
Is Obama’s “Yes, We Can”, a call for collaboration, cooperation and altruism if nothing else, a positive alternative that resonates with all who are tired of the narrow and pessimistic view of human nature embedded in game theory and unregulated free market capitalism?
Is Obama saying there is more to life? A richer view? Doesn’t art, for example, offer up proof of a far richer view of life? Doesn’t the soldier who throws himself on a grenade to save his fellows prove that humanity can do far better than limit itself to the impoverished views of game theory? Perhaps it is that fundamentalist religions are also holding out for and protecting, in their way, a far richer view of humanity than that offered by the technocrats and their beloved, but paranoid, game theory? Is game theory, in the end, pathological and a false ideal?
Jock