Replying to LO28203 --
Regarding Don Dwiggin's question: "which were the primary essentialities
that were impaired within Enron to allow things to get as bad as they
did?"
To which I partially commented:
"... (the stockmarket)... is a system of ownership distribution that
encourages people to buy things they know little or nothing of in order to
make money. As much money as possible as soon as possible."
AM de Lange writes:
I wonder if anyone can say it more powerful? Aha, now you have let the cat
out of the bag. Is it wholeness or is it sureness?
My comment:
I think both will work. The reason I put it under wholeness is that the
design of the system itself through the rules governing it, as they are
legistlated ignores wholeness. I mean the connection of these rules to the
the human psyche in terms of greed, the desire for quick reward, a
tendency to gambling etc. and then all this carries with in in terms of
incentives to companies' management. I regard wholeness in this sense as
more important than sureness, because it is the lack of wholeness that
makes people ignore other ways of spending their money as you indicated in
your statement (by the way what happened to basic necessities?):
> "I have not thought much about it, but I think there are principally
> four ways in which a person can use money:
> * investing it in money making system (bank, stock market)
> * spending it on possesions to make one's life more luxurious
> * investing it in a self-managed, self-employed enterprise
> * give it to the poor to relieve some of their needs.
> This list has a curious ordering. Going down the list less money will
> be left over, but more spiritual worth will be gained. Encouraging
> people to follow one of the four blindly without pointing out that
> there are three others choices telling about its identity, is for me a
> sure sign of impaired sureness."
Point well taken, but one may also argue that the problem that the
stockmarket was supposed to address "how do we encourage capital flow?"
not "how do we get people to spend their money wisely?" This made them
ignore the wholeness of the impact of answering this question i.e. your
other 3 categories (probably out of greed again), and the bag of
incentives that it carries with it to society as a whole. That is, even if
they had been aware of the other types of spending to encourage, I don't
think the decision would have been any different. I prefer to stick to
wholeness thus far.
To my previous statement
> >No long term strategy "excuses" accepted. This
> >again pushes window dressing and short term
> >thinking in management. It is the concept of the
> >stock market itself that is the problem. It
> >encourages a "me now" mentality at all levels.
At responds:
> I cannot help but to see in this part an impaired sureness ("identity-
> context").
> Tell me if I am wrong. I think of picture of some model
> posing on the beach. But actually the picture of the model was
> taken in a studio and then fitted into another picture taken of the
> beach. We are told with this picture that the identity of the
> person's experience is related to the beach. But actually we are
> fooled into it by changing the context of the model from that of
> the studio to that of the beach. This seamless altering of sureness
> (especially with computer programs) has become the most
> important job in the magazine industry.
My comment:
I suppose the model could be the annual report and other glossy
presentations of the stockmarket and its members (?), i.e. these publicity
stunts pose for something that isn't real, or at least not complete.
If that is the case.... Absolutely, but the problem behind this lack of
sureness is the concept of the stockmarket, namely that it allows people
to invest in things they nothing of. Not only allows, it makes it
extrememly difficult to actually achieve sureness (about what actually
goes on behind the scenes) for whose who would like to do so - unless you
are a major shareholder. This comes back again to the original problem the
stock market was supposed to address: easy finance. Easy finance can be
achieved by the application of the stockmarket as it is today. So it was a
solution according to those who set it up and are maintaining it, but it
generates a myriad of problems in other areas that they don't care about
all that much. This is why I feel wholeness is the major issue.
Terje
--"Terje A. Tonsberg" <tatonsberg@hotmail.com>
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