Utility Maximization – Where We Go Wrong

Perhaps our real problem as a species, from an economic perspective, is a poor definition and a poor cognizance of our actual utilities, given our biological, sociological, and environmental needs.  Would anyone say that the French or Russian or Chinese or Iranian aristocrats truly maximized their utility when they took so much from their societies that the societies themselves rose up and eliminated them?  I’m not inclined to say so.  I think we’re headed on a similar collision course with history of our corporate and political leaders continue on their same near-sighted, artificial, and narrow definitions of success and utility maximization.

Utility is going to be different for each person and position within a given society.  It is also something that is partially constructed socially and partially experienced endogenously within ourselves.  Just because something amasses you more material or financial wealth doesn’t mean that it is you’re actually “winning” at anything.  Just because several people or society itself may have told you what you wanted doesn’t mean that it’s really good for you as an individual.

A business person’s motivation to maximize financial profits and material wealth is contradictory and, sometimes, mutually exclusive to maximizing their actual organic, sociological, and environmental needs as living beings.  Yet through a combination of genetic, socialization, and psychological factors they choose financial wealth over their own physical, social, and environmental health.  They seem to clearly mistake and misunderstand their own self interests relative to the larger social, economic, and environmental picture of the universe that is around them.

A governing member of society’s motivation can be found in maintaining, preserving, and extending their relative power and influence within the given society.  However, we see here again that these governing members frequently mistake temporary relative power over people to long term longevity and a lasting positive influence on peoples’ lives.  Without this positive influence on peoples’ well-being and quality of life, they then preside over relative hovels of societies or else, get removed from office all together in more proactive societies.  Again, the key to achieving utility maximization is misunderstood, even in the public realm where traditional notions of utility maximization aren’t present.

In short, maximizing relative power and influence, along with pure financial profit are not keys to maximizing human utility on any planet.  They should not be used in determining those things which we need to crave for our health, well-being, and quality of life in this universe within the context of our larger society, economy, and environment.  Those who don’t see it like that are probably suffering from some sort of socially induced hallucination that could be an enabling factor in allowing them to fight, kill, and even die for the sake of things that we don’t really need and shouldn’t really want as human beings.  How does the maximization of utility in these traditional senses lead to true utility maximization if they ruin lives, well-being, and whole economies and societies?

Just a thought.  Hope it helps.

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A Preliminary Game Theoretic Outline of the Social Contract in the Present Tense

In game theory, it is in the absolute interests of each aspect of society to maximize their utility.  However, if any side goes too far with their demands, or gains too much in the process of playing the game, they’re less likely to adapt, change, or be responsive to the larger social and ecological environment.  The seeds of their destruction are sown in their influence over the other, unless they voluntarily work to check their own appetites relative to the environmental and social constraints that are placed upon them.

Rich people can be rich.  Powerful people can be powerful.  However, their wealth and power is derived from the actions and implicit or explicit consent of those beneath them.  Each side can hurt the other, and result in a net loss for all sides involved in the long term (which becomes the short term all too soon).  It is therefore better for the presently powerful to check their own wealth, power, and actions relative to the ecological and social environments in which they find themselves, from the perspective of defining their own interests.  Otherwise, they’re going to be consumed by the public or environment as a result of their carelessness and poorly chosen and interpreted priorities.

In short, it doesn’t pay in game theoretic models of the social, economic, and environmental complex to be entirely small-self-serving (as defined in maximizing your own personal utility at the expense of others who are around you).  Those moves and actions are not actually self-serving in the grand scheme of things, and are more likely signs of pathological behavior for the individual and evidence for a diseased brain state within the individual or group of individuals who exhibit those kinds of tendencies, behaviors, and attitudes.  Cooperation, two-way dialogue, open and honest communication, active listening, and genuine care for and about other people and the larger world around you are actually behaviors, attitudes, and perspectives that will increase personal utility greater than anything that small-self games and strategies can accomplish.

This is the science behind human relations and power dynamics.  It is informed by my observations on history, current events, and personal experience.  I testify that this is how the world has worked, is working, and will always work from now, until the end of time, and beyond. I testify that this is the way things work in this or any successful universe, regardless of how you slant, tilt, or filter the data.  You can either accept this for how it is, or you can perish as a leader, leadership cadre, or as an individual or group of individuals within a society.  There is no reason to listen or keep those negatively effective and self-damaging practices around for anyone’s sakes.  Those who do insist on keeping these practices are more than likely mentally ill and are in need of receiving treatment, care, and a skeptical ear than influence, obedience, and authority.

Happy Labor Day.

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China-Russia is a match made in heaven, and that’s scary

See on Scoop.it – It Comes Undone-Think About It

Putin’s trip to Shanghai could mark the start of a strategic realignment comparable to the tectonic shifts that began with President Richard M. Nixon’s visit to China in 1972.

Eli Levine‘s insight:

But they each have their own interests at heart.

Bear and dragon historically have not a comfortable bed fellow made.

This is why we need to ease up on them both, so that they’re not feeling so penned in against the West and able to accumulate so many smaller players around them.

What does this look like?

It means stopping with the obnoxious name calling against Vladimir Putin (c’mon, it’s an easy give that doesn’t cost you anything on the strategic level).

It means not encouraging Chinese students to “break the rules” (something that does not at all translate well into Chinese culture).

It means maintaining a level of civility (which is free) while working with two very powerful and very respectable societies who are presently governed by people whom we may not like (but who still carry reasonable amounts of support from their general publics, if you looked at what their publics are thinking and saying about them on the actual level).

Who cares if they’re not liberal Democracies like we are?  Neither society has ever organized themselves in such a manner, and neither will.

Technically the only reason why we get our sad semblance of democracy over here is because the English feudal system was more decentralized, and we were founded from that burgher stock, unlike the French or Spanish models and colonies).  We’ve also had new revolutions of thought and sentiment that have barely impacted the roots of our biological being (hence the conservatives in all of our societies who still insist on monarchical or aristocratic-like rule).

So, rule number one in basic social interactions: don’t judge, don’t assume, don’t put your own sensibilities on people who honestly will never be like us.  You’re not going to save a sovereign society from themselves, unless there is MASSIVE support for those changes within a given society that will defy the bullets and prisons of the people who lead in a persistent and constant manner.  Even then, they’ll only organize themselves along the old logic and sensibilities, QED, they will never have liberal democratic systems of governance like we do in this country.

You should instead RESPECT others, ACKNOWLEDGE their interests at the very least and TRY to find REASONED MIDDLE GROUND IN BETWEEN their needs and yours.  Otherwise, you’re only going to antagonize and alienate them from yourself and cause them to hunker down together in opposition to us (which is exactly what’s happening right here between these two rivals).

A bad peace is forming between Russia and China.  I’m sure that both will act intelligently so as to not step on each other’s respective paw and tail deliberately.  However, this is no real friendship between the bear and the dragon (we need to remember this).

Therefore, let them make their agreement that’s bound to run afoul of one of their interests someday, and focus instead on righting our own positions vis a vis the entire rest of the human society who is NOT going to be Western.

What arrogant people are these who run our society who believe that they can change these old systems and logics, especially using the methods that they’re using?

Think about it.

See on blogs.reuters.com

The Democratic Party’s Future Is Awash in Dark Money | VICE United States

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Amid talk of a left-wing revival inspired by populists like NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and US Senator Elizabeth Warren, corporate titans from finance to natural gas to big retail to telecom are trying t…

Eli Levine‘s insight:

Oh, Democrats.

You can’t have your money and your seats at the same time.

One has to be sacrificed in order to save the United States from imploding.

The other will only hasten the economic, environmental, social and, more to the point, political implosion of the US.

Twits….

Think about it.

See on www.vice.com

The Danger of al-Qaeda and Conservatives

The Danger of al-Qaeda and Conservatives

This is why/how we have to be very serious about the causes and the methods of al-Qaeda.

 

They are a fringe in some respects of Islamic/Arab culture.

 

But they’re not a stupid fringe, like ISIL.

 

That’s what makes them dangerous to us, because they’re appealing to a larger social base than just the insane and bloodthirsty.

 

If the US and the West doesn’t shift its course with regards to the larger Arab/Islamic world, we could easily be swarmed by them and risk more attacks like September 11th, due to the popularity and support that al-Qaeda could enjoy.  The only way to beat an insurgency is to find out what their fighters’ motivations are and then, work to get rid of their motivation to fight.  This would mean changes to our policies, attitudes and actions with regards to other people in order to cut at the core of what’s actually causing them to lay down their lives and set aside their comforts.

 

This doesn’t mean that it will get rid of all the fighters.

 

Conservatives of all stripes endanger diplomacy.

 

They’re the ones who back track on agreements, make it impossible to hold dialogue and, generally, behave in an anti-social manner, regardless of the culture that they come from.

 

But combat isn’t going to solve the problem, and it may make it worse by increasing the number of people who join from what would otherwise be more moderate backgrounds.

 

If this more benevolent tact is what al-Qaeda is doing, then it is in the American’s interest to be hosting a dialogue, however indirect it may be, with the al-Qaeda militants.

 

The only way that this conflict is going to end, is if something changes in the political/diplomatic field.  Military victories won’t stop them in actuality, and some of our policies in the Middle East are counter to what’s in our actual interests in spite of how our current government members are perceiving it.

 

It should be emphasized, though, to the al-Qaeda militants that it is as futile to make the West be more Islamic, just as it is futile to make the Islamic world be more Western.  Just because we back away from an unwinnable war, does not mean that we are surrendering or are less willing to fight to protect our people and homeland.There are lessons that we can learn from each other, but differences must be respected and accepted.

 

But, this will never be enough for the conservatives on either side of this conflict.

They will be the ones to break the arrangements that the progressives/liberals work so hard to accomplish.

 

They will be the ones to say “this isn’t enough, we want them to be all like us.”

 

And that’s just the way that it works in their brains.Just watch.

 

Think about it.

Markets vs. Businesses

 

Markets vs. Businesses

It’s important to separate the concepts of market and business (because the two are not the same).  Market health is better for a society than business health, even though business health plays a contributing role in producing market health.  Business health can be antithetical and mutually exclusive to market health (such as when businesses behave as extractive, small-self serving tools for their owners’ private, personal and small-self reason.

This is/has not been the traditional line of thinking in the world of economics.

And it’s partially how our economic policies have become so skewed in favor of the private corporations, executives and financiers that we’re on the verge of systemic collapse, if not environmental collapse as well.

The environment comes before the society and the economy, because without it, there is no chance for the other two to be around.

The society comes before the economy for the same reason.

And the economy grows out of the combination of the society and the environment in such a way that it must be tended to by the gardener government such that all aspects don’t kill the others off.

Think about it.