In case I haven't successfully demonstrated this point yet, I want to explain more fully why I continue to link together words that come from different disciplines:
1. 'Homeostasis' or 'homeostatic balance' comes from biology, medicine, and psychology. It was created by the author and doctor Walter B. Cannon in his classic book written in 1932: 'The Wisdom of The Body'.
2. 'Dialectic' comes mainly from Hegel and his classic book 'The Phenomenology of Spirit (Mind) written in 1807. But the word 'dialectic' is also commonly used in relation to Marx's 'Dialectic Materialism' (in contrast to Hegel's 'Dialectic Idealism'), and the word 'dialectic' in philosophy is also commonly used in relation to Socrates' (and/or Plato's) various different dialogues, questions, and debates with other characters in which Socrates/Plato sought to get to a particular 'truth' or at least 'deconstruct' a 'false truth'.
3. 'Democratic' or 'Democracy' comes from politics and political philosophy relative to a particular form of government 'for the people and by the people' -- a form of government that subscribes to the ideas of 'equal rights' and -- 'homeostatic balance' between different 'groups of people with their own narcissistic or altruistic special interests' and with 'homeostatic balance between 'the individual and the State' and with 'homeostatically balanced justice' as opposed to 'narcissistically biased and power-based justice'. All of this is 'ideal' of course and any 'practical form of democracy' invariably fails and/or comes short in a myriad of different ways as 'power dialectics' and 'narcissistic dialectics' dominates over 'democratic dialectics'.
In addition, there are always concerns over how as a 'democratic idealist' we might be able to make democracy more 'participative' and more 'transparent' and more 'accountable' as opposed to 'representational' -- which often turns out to be 'non-representational' and 'non-transparent' and 'non-accountable'. People being people -- and politicians being politicians -- there is an everlasting danger to democracy that the people 'in control of the government purse strings, the government cash register -- the billions and billions of taxpayers' money -- are going to abuse that money and give too much money to the people at the top of the 'socio-economic-political hierarchy' and not enough money to the people at the middle and/or the bottom of the socio-economic political hierarchy.
The same principle holds true for any privately run business. We have seen this with AIG. The so-called 'leaders' at the top of the AIG hierarchy continue to walk away with multi-million dollar 'bonuses' and severance packages -- for doing a horrible job of managing their business while the people at the middle and the bottom of the AIG hierarchy -- in addition to the American taxpayers -- continue to get 'shafted' for money that keeps 'disappearing' out of the top 'funnels' and 'back doors' of AIG bank accounts.
What this suggests -- both in government and in private corporations -- is that there needs to be a 'separation of monetary powers' (in a John Locke sense) and a 'dialectic democracy' between the top of an organization and the bottom of the organization -- whether publicly or privately owned and/or managed. This would help to prevent such 'narcisssistic transgressions' as the reason Conrad Black is in jail -- and the reason there should probably be one or more top AIG executives there as well. And this is without talking about the possibility of their having been any 'government involvement' with the types of unsrupulous and horrendous business decisions that were made leading up to the crash of Wall Street last year. One is tempted to say 'you reap what you sew' or 'What goes around comes around' -- but in the crash of Wall Street and the top American financial institutions, no one has had to reap what they sewed, or take the brunt of the pain and suffering that has been bestowed on the rest of the American people -- i.e., 'Main St.'
There needs to be a stop to these 'unGodly executive bonuses' that are bankrupting companies across America while their perpetrators walk away Scot-free. Personally, I think that all 'executive bonuses' should be made illegal unless they are tied to a percentage of salary basis -- and this percentage is shared equally among all company workers according to each individual's respective salary. Otherwise, these excecutive bonuses become just another form of 'executive stealing' -- of 'white collar crime' among the owners and/or CEOs and/or managers of businesses -- whoever is controlling the cash register.
I'm not even saying that someone like Conrad Black is a bad person -- I am just saying that anyone controlling a cash register is susceptible to human narcissism dominating human ethics unless there are cameras and/or watchdogs overlooking who is dipping into the till and how much they are taking out, and for what purposes. Wherever you get secrecy and non-transparency around a cash register or a corporate or public bank account -- you are quite likely to get either 'white collar' and/or 'blue collar' 'stealing'. Quite simply, you are throwing too much human narcissistic temptation at people who will eventually succumb to this temptation. Added to this 'conflict of interest' is the fact that owners, CEOs, managers -- indeed, all public or private leaders will find all sorts of different justifications to 'pacify their sense of ethics' -- assuming they have a sense of ethics in order to simply grab a 'bigger piece of the money pie' -- particularly, when they believe no one is auditing them.
The principle of 'dialectic-democracy' goes beyond the principle of 'democracy' mapping out more ideas than are generally stated when we simply talk about democracy. In a similar fashion, the concepts of 'narcissistic dialectics' and 'power-dialectics' are different than the concept of 'democratic or egalitarian dialectics' and so too the concepts of 'Narcissistic Capitalism' and 'Power-Capitalism' are quite different than the ideas of 'Dialectic-Democratic Capitalism' or 'Egalitarian Capitalism' or 'Narcissistic-Altruistic Capitalism' or 'Win-Win Capitalism' or 'Wall Street-Main Street Dialectic-Democratic Capitalism' or 'Washington-Wall Street-Main Street Triadic Democratic Capitalism'.
If all these billions of dollars of 'stimulus packages' keep going from Washingto to Wall Street -- the perpetrators of this problem in the first place -- who on Wall Street is going to learn anything. They are just going to keep doing the 'same old, same old' -- with a little more 'discreetness' and 'non-transparency'. Executives will keep giving themselves multi-million dollar bonuses if and/or when they can even when they are running losing businesses -- or even at the corporate and Main Street expense of turning a 'winning business' into a 'losing one' by funneling out gross amounts of money from the top end of the businsess into private bank accounts before it ever gets to the middle and bottom of the business -- and/or to the business's expenses.
Bad, toxic, narcissistic, one-sided contracts between a business and a customer (such as many telephone contracts and private fitness contracts) and/or between a business and an employee, and/or between a business and a private contractor (such as driver) should be outlawed and made illegal unless there is a public legal official to oversee the 'egalitarian, dialectic-democratic' nature of the contract and the fact that a 'toxic' contract is not being coerced or cajoled onto customer, employee, or private contractor.
Landlord-tenant laws need to support the idea of a 'dialectic-democracy' where neither side can dominate and overpower the other.
'Union contracts' can be just as toxic as 'executive bonuses'. Union contracts can destroy a business just as fast as executive bonuses can -- especially in this time of 'Global Capitalism' and 'free trade'. If companies like General Motors and Ford and Chrysler have huge union contracts to blue collar workers that are 3 or 4 or 10 times higher than the type of wages that car companies in Japan and/or South Korea are manufacturing -- and the quality of the foreign cars may actually be better -- what is going to happen to the North American Car business? Gee, look which North American car companies are bankrupt? This does not mean that we need to pay North American Automobile Workers $3 an hour. But it may mean that we need to find some sort of acceptable compromise between $3 an hour and $50 an hour. Indeed, this throws a whole new light onto the concept of 'free trade' to begin with and what it has done to North American business.
In a century of increasing globalization and Global Capitalism, the whole principle of 'free trade' has basically conspired to 'essentially kill North American Manufacturing Businesses. And indeed all types of North American businesses, including many service industries. With all due respect to India, I call Bell Canada the other day because I have a technical problem with my business telephone -- and I am talking to a call operator in India. Why? Because wages are significantly cheaper in Indian than they are in Canada -- enough -- enough to replace a Canadian workforce with a foreign workforce across the Atlantic Ocean on the other side of the world. A cheaper side of the world. Everything -- and every country -- is reachable in a market of 'Global Capitalism'.
And now we know why for hundreds of years America and Canada both had 'tariffs' and 'protectionist policies'. And perhaps also we can see why 'Corporate Owners' would be -- and still are -- in favor of 'Global Capitalism' over 'Regional or National Capitalism'. If I am looking at a union workforce that is demanding 30 or 40 or 50 dollars an hour -- as they stay on strike -- and I can move my company with less expense and greater long term profit -- to Mexico or China or Korea and pay the workers there $3 an hour or even $7 or $10 an hour, gee that is a hard decision. Or if I own a business in the Southern States like New Mexico or Texas, then for the same $3 an hour, I can 'import an illegal worker' from Mexico and then 'lobby' Washington to turn a 'blind eye' to this huge influx of illegal immigrants who are 'cheapening the American workforce'. Similarly too, if I was an owner of a huge technical conglomeration that needed 'smart engineers' and I could/can 'import a foreign engineer on a work visa' and in the process, save thousands and thousands of dollars over what it would cost me to hire an American engineer, gee, if I am thinking of the ultimate 'profitablity' of the business, again, that is a hard decision.
Adam Smith, where are you now when we need you? What do you have to say about 'Global Capitalism'? Does the homeostatic (democratic-dialectic) balance of the 'invisible hand' of the 'free market' of Capitalism still work in an environment of Global Capitalism? Or has the 'invisible hand' of North American Capitalism also gone global -- leaving thousands and thousands of North American workers unemployed and lurching in the ditch?
As a taxi dispatcher I see and hear individual drivers come into my office every day and 'lobby' for orders. Or they 'lobby' for orders over the phone. They are supposed to 'book' for them on the dispatch radio. But in tough economic times -- even more so than usual -- I have drivers that are phoning me and saying they are not making money and cannot pay their taxi bills, let alone their private, home bills.
Part of this, as I say, is because of 'tough economic times'. But part of this is also 'bad business decisions'. I have seen at least three large Toronto Taxi companies take a 'huge financial bath' becasue of their belief in the future of 'full computer dispatching'. Think differently. Collossal losses in customers and business have generally been the result. 'Personalization' and 'good personalized service' is usually the name of the game in any service business. Computers do the opposite -- depersonalizing everything and everyone. Customers recall their orders to calltakers who don't know who or when the driver will service the call, so they pass these calls to dispatchers who really can't say anything different because 'the computer is dispatching'. Drivers can 'throw back' calls they don't like without accepting them. Orders sit for 20 or 30 minutes without anyone booking on them. To speed up the process, the only choice a dispatcher has is to 'cheat' and either 'verbally dispatch' the order or 'give the order out on the phone to a driver the dispatch knows is in the area. Meanwhile, customers get lost to competing taxi companies who are still at least partly using 'verbal dispatch' and sevicing their orders within 10 to 12 minutes which has been the 'norm' of the industry for some 60 years or more. Oftentimes, newer is not 'better'. Computers are only as good as the way they are programmed, the speed at which they work, the fewer times they 'crash', and within the 'limits of their capability for functionally and efficiently programmed judgment'. There are some forms of human judgment that simply cannot be programmed.
'Monopolies' are still a problem for any 21st century 'dialectic-democratic' government. Or a growing problem. In the taxi business, we have one corporate, commercial insurance business that has a monopoly on the industry. There are no limits on the potential for 'restricting' drivers, adding 'insurance surcharges' to the insurance of riskier drivers, and doing anything and everything else that any type of monopolistic company is capable of doing when it has control of the whole industry with no 'free market competition'.
'Bottlenecking inefficiency' is a huge problem for modern businesses -- red tape, bureaucracy, unanswered voice mail, answering machines and/or messages that never take you to a 'live person', 'decisions' that land on someone's desk -- and stay there for weeks or months, or forever... 'Decentralized' management has this advantage over 'Centralized' management -- the former is closer to the scene of the 'live action' and therefore is more closely in touch with all the intricate dynamics that are needed to go into a speedy and quality decision-making process -- necessary to prevent a needless, and business-suffocating 'bottle-neck' while badly needed decisions have to go to 'head office' and may take endless days or weeks or months -- or never -- coming back.
We need to develop a 'bottom up' form of Capitalism in 'homeostatic-dialectic-demcoratic balance' with the usual 'top down' form of Capitalism where the bottom is 'marginalized' and 'suppressed' and treated as if it basically 'does not exist'.
This is a starting-point of what I mean by 'Dialectic-Democratic Capitalism' -- or at least my particular brand of 'DGB Dialectic-Democratic Capitalism'.
Perhaps, hand in hand with this, the whole concept of 'Globalization', 'Global Capitalism' and 'free trade' has to be re-thought.
It is causing a huge homeostatic (dialectic-demcoratic) imbalance in North American business, industry -- and Capitalism.
We have just touched the surface of this problem in this industry, again, a starting-point for perhaps many future essays.
Enough for today.
-- dgbn, July 17th, 2009
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are still in process...
