Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

An excellent find! Thanks for the link!

We are currently experiencing a global economic flap triggered by a relatively small percentage of dumb housing financial transactions in America and England. That is our current generations' lab demonstration of economics centered 'six degrees of separation' hidden relationships among separated sectors and regions of linked core and new core regions and the poorer nations with which they are involved.
It will be interesting how long it takes the public to 'get it,' if they ever do, and how long it takes to forget the insight.

Two writers that portrayed overall 'six degree' relationships that can be understood by non-economic or political science geeks are Fernand Braudel in the past and Barbara Tuchman in more recent books. Her Proud Tower work in particular illustrated how pre-WW I ignorance of the overall consequences on people from evolving major economic and political relationships were establishing conditions for crises. It would only need an accidental proximate cause as trigger.

Capitalism is a hot button word that triggers over simplified ideological oriented thinking from the left or right. Unfortunately 'free' market economy is a phrase that also causes too many people including political and business leaders to perceive the situation in an over simplified way. Real broad economic markets with all their overall relationships are hard to understand, and they then change ... both cycles and evolutions.

As market economies emerged, the Rome centered catholic church was at first given the task of helping those displaced by the transition from feudal to Renaissance economic, social and political relationships. Later Protestant communities decentralized that role and placed it on local community families as their moral obligation. Then we moved to towards more 'efficient' government and large private institutions. So how come we can't deal with all this growth of domestic homeless and gangs, and the collapse of so many gap societies? Hmm!

Tuchman and Braudel and even old Adam Smith can help us understand more of the implications of market economies and the opportunities and 'threats' to be monitored by modest minded leaders and teachers.