by From Hardy Hanappi and Real-World Economics Review For human societies, contrary to other species, the direction of their development is always co-determined by the way that their members produce a shared interpretation of their environment in order to achieve a common goal[1]. How to find a commonly shared view of our global society has become increasingly difficult in the decades since 1945. One reason certainly is the development of the global production system itself, which rapidly became so sophisticated and interwoven that even the most powerful global actors only can see a very small part of it. In most respects economic dynamics – those depending on different, semi-institutionalised market mechanisms – became intertwined with political dynamics – those where profit was to be
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from Hardy Hanappi and Real-World Economics Review
For human societies, contrary to other species, the direction of their development is always co-determined by the way that their members produce a shared interpretation of their environment in order to achieve a common goal[1]. How to find a commonly shared view of our global society has become increasingly difficult in the decades since 1945. One reason certainly is the development of the global production system itself, which rapidly became so sophisticated and interwoven that even the most powerful global actors only can see a very small part of it. In most respects economic dynamics – those depending on different, semi-institutionalised market mechanisms – became intertwined with political dynamics – those where profit was to be made by simple exertion of power, or the threat to use it. The concept of political economy currently experiences a roaring revival. A second reason for our age of alienation is the surprisingly fast evolution of our global communication infrastructure. The possibilities to communicate whatever an entity is able to express have vastly surmounted the capacities of entities to understand the content of messages. Indeed, messages became disentangled from content and message exchange has replaced understanding[2]. Social careers follow successful message exchange, even so-called “losers” cement their position by appropriate messages. The emerging global noise has led to a chaotic confusion of singular opinions[3], streamlined only by media-imperia controlled and controlling current local political tsars.
Each crisis strikes because the limits of a dynamic process of political economy are not understood and thus could surprise the human species[4]. Local agents still follow their uninformed, message-driven activities; short-run incentives dominate whatever the missing long-run perspective would demand. While humanity in many respects already is one living material body, there is no co-ordinating brain.
In what follows five different important topics for a vision of our possible future are discussed: (1) world government, (2) democracy, (3) diversity, (4) alienation, (5) global brain. The sequence is not arbitrary but follows a red thread, as should become visible.
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https:// http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue94/Hanappi94.pdf[1] It is the use of human language (also used for thought processes), which allows seeing a sharper borderline towards the non-human animal kingdom, compare (Chomsky, 1968).
[2] Marshall McLuhan has been the prophet of this development: “The medium is the message” (McLuhan, 1967).
[3] Compare (Hanappi and Egger, 1993).
[4] Even the spread of a pandemic in the end is only possible because of the dense trade interactions in our global political economy.