SUPPOSIN': ABUNDANCE, CHOICE, and ACCOMPLISHMENT

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

Supposin’ that we developed an economic model and instead of using the standard economic trilogy of scarcity, choice, and cost, we used abundance, choice, and accomplishment. What if we actually worked into our model the possibility that the cost factor could be shifted because the consequence of our choice function did not necessarily eliminate the utilization of the next highest two or three other alternatives?

In our traditional economic model we presume that everything is scarce because it has at least two alternative uses for the resource. We then presume that the cost of our having chosen one of the alternative uses is the lost opportunity of utilizing one of the other next highest alternatives. What if . . . the abundance of the resource eliminated, or at least minimized the consequence of the choice to such a degree, that a positive accomplishment, or multiple accomplishments, could be realized rather than a negative cost? The whole paradigm would change!

The example of George Washington Carver comes to my mind. Born into slavery in 1864, he became an inventor, scientist, botanist, and professor at Tuskegee University for 47 years. The South had become a one-crop cotton culture. The soil had become depleted and the boll weevil was spoiling any cotton that could be grown. Carver creatively took up the challenge to introduce alternative crops to the land to pump needed nutrition into the ground as well as into the farm families’ tummies

Mr. Carver started with the lowly peanut. He invented 145 different uses for the peanut, including cosmetics, dyes, paints, plastics, gasoline, and nitroglycerin. He also came up with 105 food recipes using peanuts. Sweet potatoes and soybeans then caught his attention. Products from just the sweet potato included: wood fillers, dyes, breakfast foods, molasses, glue for library books, vinegars, coffee, after-dinner mints, lemon drops, and orange drops.

George Washington Carver told Raleigh Merritt, one of his biographers, that he was merely scratching the surface of scientific investigations of the possibilities of the peanut and other Southern products. (1) Fortunate for Mr. Carver, there was no one from our generation present to persuade him that there was such a thing as insufficiency, lack, or scarcity. He really believed that the economic trilogy should be abundance, choice and accomplishment. It makes me not only wonder how many more items would be on our local grocer’s shelves had Mr. Carver lived another fifty years, but also, can you imagine what he could have accomplished with the new technology just from the gleanings of the NASA discoveries? You would have had a difficult time convincing him that we live in a culture of shortage and zero sum economics!

There was another historical character that comes to my mind who tried to convince his culture that abundance should be at the very heart of their economic thinking. He found out, however, that folks that make up cultures don’t necessarily respond positively to the good news of abundance. He experienced that there are a lot of people on this earth who are pretty much stuck somewhere between ignorant and stupid and would rather resort to coveting, lusting after, and stealing what someone else has in their possession than to personally experience the concept of abundance, choice, and fulfillment.

There was a certain rabbi in the area of Palestine who traveled teaching and explaining the old Jewish scriptures. With his very presence, he reminded the common people and leaders of their historical inheritance and traditions. At the time they lived in a land occupied by conquerors and controlled by financial restraints and taxation. In fact, the rabbi had been born on a trip where his parents were registering for a census and a new tax that would become more tribute to the conquerors.

The people who heard the rabbi were already familiar with the past heroes of their culture. They were aware of the abundance of creation. They knew the story of how wealthy God had made their early patriarch, Abraham (Gen. 13:2), and how God had promised Moses: the Lord will grant you abundant prosperity (Deut. 28:11). God had promised them through their hero Isaiah: Instead of shame and dishonor, you shall have a double portion of prosperity and everlasting joy (Isa. 61:7). The sometimes wealthy old guy Job had reminded them, this is the way he (God) governs the nations and provides food in abundance (Job 36:31) and Haggai had cleared up the question as to who really owned all the earth’s wealth, the silver is mine and the gold is mine declares the Lord Almighty (Haggai 2:8).

The people along the routes of the itinerate rabbi from Bethlehem north to the Sea of Galilee knew about the writings of their beloved psalmist and former patriarch, King David. But they needed to be reminded of his words regarding provisions, sufficiency and abundance. It had been the psalmist who had written:

• The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. (Ps. 34:10).
• . . . but you brought us to a place of abundance.(Ps. 66:12)
• He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. (Ps. 1:3)
• In times of disaster they will not wither; in days of famine they will enjoy plenty. (Ps. 37:19)
• Our sons in their youth will be like well-nurtured plants, and our daughters will be like pillars carved to adorn a palace. Our barns will be filled with every kind of provision. Our sheep will increase by thousands, by ten thousands in our fields; our oxen will draw heavy loads. (Ps. 144: 12-14)

Their history included stories about when their leader, Moses, had led them out of Egypt’s captivity and they had no food. Their God had supplied manna, a food that fell on the ground like morning dew. When they had no water, springs of fresh water came gushing out of the solid rocks to quench the thirst of over a half million people. For the next 40 years their shoes never even needed repair, because they simply never wore out!

But that was in the past. That was just history. Now they got up each morning to encounter occupying troops in the intersections of their towns. They were in need of a refresher course and new proof of the old but enduring economic laws of an eternal economy. The weariness of the day had beaten them down until they were beginning to believe again in the old rumors of scarcity, insufficiency and lack. Even some of their own people, like Zacchaeus, had begun to believe in scarcity and zero sum economics and had joined the occupying troops of the conquerors and were actually cheating their own people by collecting more taxes than were due and stealing the difference for themselves. Something new needed to happen.

Next Week: Potential Resource

(Research ideas from Dr. Jackson’s new writing project on Cultural Economics) 

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

SUPPOSIN": A WORLD OF ABUNDANCE

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

Supposin’ we were to design an economic model based on abundance rather than on scarcity, insufficiency, and lack. What if our new trilogy sounded more like: abundance, choice, and accomplishment? What if we applied our laser focus of intelligence, creativity, and energy on inventing and discovering a world of abundance? What would you imagine that new paradigm would look like?

In 1960, when I was a freshman in college, Dr. Maxwell Maltz published his book, Psycho-Cybernetics, A New Way to get more Living out of Life. He claimed that imagination sets the goal picture that activates and guides our automatic achievement mechanism. You may live your life in a world that does not seem perfect, but the doors of opportunity are not all shut and the new frontiers are not all closed. That strongly held imagination, he felt, can essentially determine what we become, because we begin to take courage to bet on our ideas, calculate the risks, and act on our visions and dreams.

When I first read Maxwell Maltz, I responded by thinking, well sure, how else would anything come about, unless someone would first have an idea, then would become convinced of its possibility, and then would risk what it took to see the idea or dream come to pass? Were that not the case, we would never have heard of pendulum clocks, steam engines, cameras, zippers, Velcro, or peanut butter.

But the scary part of the ordeal is that the person involved ultimately determines what is imagined. You can imagine good things, beautiful things, and things of discovery and abundance, or you can allow yourself to imagine bad things, sad things, and things of scarcity and shortage. Then it is natural to set into motion actions of fulfillment that are consistent with your image.

If you believe all is lack, insufficiency, and shortage, the tendency will be to hoard, covet, and redistribute what someone else has for your own advantage. That kind of focus squelches invention and positive discovery and encourages greed, entitlement, and selfish expansionism. It is a closed economy, a zero sum game, and the person must strategize to take his fair share of what presently exists.

I have come to believe that the doctrine of shortage promotes bondage. The doctrine of abundance promotes freedom. One of the weaknesses of the economic model created by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky, was that they saw the wealth of the Czars as a thing . . . a pile of stuff. They figured that if they could get their hands on it they, as the politburo, would be able to distribute it according to their dictates and all would live happily ever after. There was nothing included of growth, investment, positive incentive, rewards, enterprise, discovery, or multiplication of production for sustainability. It never dawned on them that production was wealth and income paid the bills.

Years later, when the pile of stuff –the Czar’s wealth– was all gone there was only one option feasible for sustainability: they continued to become what they had thought about all the time. They resorted to military expansionism where they raped and pillaged their neighbors, like Central Asia, and took their stuff to continue to pay the bills.

Another idea Maxwell Maltz talked about was how our own strongly held self image and imagination will essentially determine what we become. I recall how that line of reasoning struck a note of truth with me, because our dad used to caution his three creative boys by telling us, “be alert, because you will ultimately become what you think about all day long.”

In our home as boys, we were never allowed to say “I can’t.” The shortage thing was not an option. If we used that line as an excuse for not doing what we were told, we were given the opportunity to go no farther with what we were doing until we had gone through the exercise of figuring out ten ways, instead of one way, to make it happen. I remember my brother Bill walking through the house with his shoe flapping. Our dad instructed him to tie his canvas tennis shoe so that the tongue wasn’t flapping and his shoe would stay on properly.

Bill made the mistake of saying he couldn’t because he had lost the long shoe string. Thereupon, the two of them sat down and figured out ten different ways to bind up the shoe to keep the tongue from flapping. They solved the problem by using string, wire, bailing twine, an old piece of electric extension cord, and six other ways to tie the shoe. Then our dad would always end up such a session by telling us that it would be far easier on us if we would simply find one good method to take care of the shortage in the first place, rather that needing to go through the experience of finding out how to solve the problem ten different ways after saying “I can’t.”

I became an ardent believer that our imagination will ultimately determine who we are and what we become. Insufficiency can become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Next Week: Abundance, Choice, and Accomplishment

(Research ideas from Dr. Jackson’s new writing project on Cultural Economics)
 

© Dr. James W. Jackson  

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

SUPPOSIN': WHAT IF?

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

My research for the Cultural Economics writing project has forced me to do a lot of focused thinking. In the last thirty weekly postings I have tried to faithfully present the principles of traditional economics.

Together, we have thought about enterprise, production of goods and services, the concept of money, and who controls the money system. We have investigated banking and its fractional reserve system, and the Federal Reserve System with its control of the money supply. We have discovered the cause of inflation and how we monetize the Federal Debt. We have even looked at the cycles of business recessions and the phenomenon of serious economic depressions. Following our discussions about Keynesian economics, we continued by studying the trilogy of scarcity, choice, and cost and the tragedy of zero sum economic thinking.

I am very eager to get into discussing the idea of how every occurrence of major transformation in this old world takes place at the intersection of culture and economics. We will be taking a look at the ideas of land, labor, capital, and the entrepreneur in relationship to traditions, institutions, families, and individuals. That is at the very heart of cultural economics. But wait a minute. Before we go there, I feel compelled to take a bit of a bird walk to share some things I have been seriously considering lately. And I would like to discuss some of them before we move on.

You will notice at the bottom of all my recent postings it says Research ideas from Dr. Jackson’s new writing project on Cultural Economics. I have been able to freely share concepts and traditions with my reader-friends, fully realizing that some of the issues will never make it into the new book. They may simply add to the collection of paragraphs that end up on the floor of the editing room. But being able to send up trial balloons of ideas into the atmosphere of reason and discussion is pretty stimulating.

C.S. Lewis used to walk about ten miles a day while he was teaching at Oxford University. He used that time to contemplate, dream, and imagine. Suppose there were a world like Narnia.

Suppose it had animals in it. Suppose God wanted to redeem that world as he has ours. Then suppose he had his Son take on an earthly form such as a lion and enter this other world as He did ours.

C.S. Lewis used to refer to his mental “what if” propositions as Supposals. For example, using animals like a lion that would talk, and a witch, and kids entering into another world through the doors of a wardrobe, would be a Supposal. 

Lately, I have been doing some Supposin’ of my own. As a worldwide observer, I can see how the traditional views of the cultures, economies, and behaviors of the present inhabitants of earth have set into motion some very sad consequences. In our previous discussion we talked about how the unquestioning acceptance of the scarcity, choice, and cost trilogy has promoted the expectation of absolute insufficiency, lack, and scarcity of everything. In my opinion, that acceptance has led to fallacious conclusions regarding reality.

Supposin’ . . . what if? What if that premise of insufficiency, lack, and scarcity was not factual or true? What if it was wrong- headed thinking? How would that affect our lives and the lives of our friends? How would that affect our communities and nations? How would that influence the phenomenon of poverty in the world? What if we changed our very paradigm and based our economic model on the concept of abundance and not shortage?

Supposin’ that instead of spending all our time choosing between alternatives that presume our resources to be either hopelessly limited or gone, we would use our intelligence, creativity, and energy inventing and discovering the world of abundance.

Europeans began using a black shiny rock called coal as energy to cook their food, warm their houses, and produce steam after Marco Polo brought a sample back with him from China. When I was a small boy, my mom used to read me the story about young John D. Rockefeller and how he went to his neighboring state of Pennsylvania in order to check out a new industrial discovery that was called oil. While inspecting a field where the oil had surfaced and had formed a sticky black pond, it was necessary for John and his partner to cross a rickety wooden plank bridge. Half way across, the plank broke and John plummeted into the oily slush below. Covered from head to foot, he scrambled to solid ground. “I see,” said John’s partner, “that you have plunged into this oil business head over heels.” John D. Rockefeller not only established an oil refinery near there, but went on to discover and invent uses for oil, and eventually became president of the Standard Oil Company and, at that time, the wealthiest man in the world.

Who said you could burn coal in the first place? Who said you could use oil as energy? Who knows what great discovery or invention is just around the corner that could change our world as we know it today? Only one thing is known for certain: if we so completely buy into the notion of shortage, depletion, and zero sum behavior, so that we fail to pursue the universe of possibility and opportunity, then we will by default become the ultimate losers.

I am looking forward to sharing in the next few weekly postings some ideas about shortage vs. abundance. I would welcome your ideas and insights, and you can help me by contacting me at press@winstoncrown.com. Who can tell, perhaps all of those paragraphs may not end up on the floor of the editing room after all.

Next week: Supposin’ a world of abundance

(Research ideas from Dr. Jackson’s new writing project on Cultural Economics)

© Dr. James W. Jackson  

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

 

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

CULTURAL ECON.: THE WEAKNESS OF THE TRILOGY

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

We just finished discussing the economic trilogy of scarcity, choice and cost. Resources are considered scarce when they have at least two alternative uses. Something is scarce because we can figure out more uses for an item than there are items. Our wants and desires are limitless, but resources are limited. Ultimately, we must make choices. And the costs of those choices are the forgoing of the next highest alternatives. When we say yes to one alternative, we say no to the other. That is the cost we experience. It is a lost opportunity cost that may or may not have anything to do with dollar amounts on price tags or bar codes. It has, however, everything to do with life.

There would be no such thing as the study of economics as we know it were it not for the trilogy of scarcity, choice, and cost. Economics is a discipline that recognizes and assumes the ultimate proposition that basically everything is scarce and we need formal mechanisms to help us make our choices by more clearly recognizing and accepting the lost opportunity costs incurred.

The trilogy of scarcity, choice and cost is the bedrock premise of economics as we know it.

Individuals are exposed to the basic principles of economics from the cradle. Mommy is the supplier of food; baby is the demander or consumer. Baby, however, is the supplier of peace and quiet and mommy is the demander of peace and quiet. Each learns quickly the terms of the barter. The young child even learns early on that price is the ratio of product values, and that credit for future favors can be purchased in the present and used later.

The scarcity, choice and cost situation pops up very early. “Do you want mommy to continue to rock you?” Baby nods yes . . . “then, stop crying.” “Do you want mommy to put you in your bed?” Baby emphatically shakes head no . . . “then, stop crying.” At a later stage mommy sets out two outfits of clothing on the bed and says, “Today, you get to choose which outfit you want to wear.” “Which toy do you want to take with us in the car?” “Do you want to go to the store with mommy or stay at home with grandma?”

Later on, we teach our kids how to play such games as Monopoly. A little later yet, someone else teaches our kids how to play poker. The games are based on scarcity, choice, and cost. There are only so many houses, so many hotels, and only so much money with the Monopoly game. There are only so many cards and so many options in Poker. One person wins . . . at the expense of the other.

Both games include a striking similarity: . . one player ends up with “more” only as another player ends up with “less.” They are “zero sum games.” The only way one can gain is at the expense of someone else. It is like an apple pie: if one person eats more another person gets less.

Over the years our culture has bought into the economic concept of scarcity, choice, and cost to such a degree that it has become an axiomatic factor of life. There is only so much and there is nothing more. We really have accepted that we live in a closed economy. If you have something it is because someone else does not. You took it away from someone else or you wouldn’t have more.

Throughout the years of being involved in the world of business and economics, and even in my writings about the subjects, there has repeatedly been a subtle gnawing in my subconscious that something was not fitting together correctly. Just because you can deal with the issue of scarcity, choice, and cost, doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no more available than we have chosen to see and utilize.

All scientific thought involves simplification of reality. The real world is far too complex for even the most sophisticated computers to handle, to say nothing of the human mind. So, scientists resort to using models instead. Models use simplified assumptions about some aspect of the real world. Those models, however, are always based on assumed conditions that are simpler than those of the real world, assumptions that are necessarily false. A model of the real world cannot be the real world. The trilogy of scarcity, choice, and cost is a wonderful mechanism to be used for what it was designed. But its assumptions are not veritable reality.

The study of economics as a formal discipline is relatively new. Adam Smith wrote An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776, the same year our nation was founded. That’s pretty recent for a disciplinary science. But economic models and handy tools, like production possibility curves and other two dimensional graphs based on scarcity, choice, and cost, have been so helpful that, in my opinion, we have slipped over the edge in our thinking to believe that everything must fit the scarcity model. That is both sad and dangerous. Just because the rooster crows before the dawn does not mean the rooster wakes up the sun.

It becomes very easy to presume that the reason we have an abundance of poor people in the world is because we have a few other people who have grabbed a huge portion of the pie and left everyone else without. The assumption that everything is based on the concept of a closed economy, where all resources are deficient or depleted, will tend to promote the idea of a zero sum economy. That is a circular trap. That is a scary weakness.

If we allow the convenience of the neat model of, scarcity, choice, and cost to persuade us that the zero sum economic concept is true, then our later decisions will be adversely skewed. No longer will we employ creativity and imagination to discover new and additional resources for our problem solving, but, rather, spend all our efforts on trying to make do with only the limited resources with which we are familiar.

We will fall into the trap of thinking that all the gas, oil, and energy resources are owned and controlled by dubious charlatans in the Middle East, and one day in the future we will simply be without those resources. We will start trying to figure the cost to be experienced when the scarcity finally catches up with us, rather than becoming motivated and excited about the world’s largest deposits of potential energy actually having been deposited in basins bordering North Dakota. Or better yet, perhaps a whole new and different concept for energy is just around the corner of being discovered. If we live within the world of scarcity, choice, and cost alone, it will surely become a self-fulfilling prophecy and everything, indeed, will become truly scarce.

The net result of scarcity is poverty. The net result of poverty is dependency.

After traveling in over 150 countries of the world and observing the cultures and economies, I have come to believe that the problem of scarcity can be overcome and the cycle of poverty can be broken. One effective strategy has been the phenomenon of microcredit. In 2006, The Nobel Peace Prize went to Muhammad Yunus for his work providing microcredit to the poor.

The idea germinated in Bangladesh in 1976 with the Garmeen Bank delivering small loans at low interest rates to rural poor. The program became a popular tool for economic development throughout the third world, and sparked a revolution in micro-entrepreneurship. The newly created enterprises generated employment, and the efforts began to create and grow new and real wealth. Today seventy-five percent of all microcredit recipients worldwide are women who are now given a chance to establish a sustainable means of income. Growing the enterprises increases disposable income. That leads to more economic growth and development. The results of the model are just exactly opposite of the zero sum economic idea.

The new business owners of the micro enterprises don’t have more because someone else in the village has less. Others in the village, in fact, also end up with more. Everyone starts to become “better off.” What a glorious experience it is to see the power of debilitating poverty being reversed, and people who have been held down by governments and tradition being given an opportunity to become part of the solution rather than the problem.

The economic trilogy of scarcity, choice, and cost is a wonderful mechanism as long as its use is not allowed to slide into zero sum economic thinking.

Next week: Supposin’ . . . What if?

(Research ideas from Dr. Jackson’s new writing project on Cultural Economics)

© Dr. James W. Jackson  

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

 

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com