System Failure? Look Upstream: Dealing with our economic problems at their Wall Street roots

[marmar]

from YES! Magazine:




System Failure? Look Upstream
Why it's important to address our economic problems at their Wall Street roots.

by David Korten
posted Jan 25, 2011


Many years ago a wise Canadian colleague, Tim Brodhead, explained to me why most efforts to end poverty fail. “They stop at treating the symptoms of poverty, such as hunger and poor health, with food programs and clinics.” They never ask the obvious question: “Why do a few people enjoy effortless abundance, while billions of others who work far harder experience extreme deprivation?”

I realized it was the same lesson my business school professors had drummed into my head in my student days. “The visible problem—a defective product or an underperforming employee—is a symptom of system failure. Look upstream to find and fix the problem at its source. Step back and look at the big picture.”

Tim summed up his observation with a profound lesson, “If you act to correct a problem without a theory about its cause, you inevitably treat only the symptoms.”

I soon found myself asking a yet larger question: “Why does our economic system consign billions of people to degrading poverty, destroy Earth’s ecosystem, and tear apart the social fabric of civilized community?”

It turns out that the consequences of acting on a bad theory based on a false premise can be even worse than acting without a theory. Indeed, it can lead to collective self-extinction. Cultural historian Jared Diamond tells of the Viking colony on the coast of Greenland that perished of hunger next to waters abundant with fish; it had a cultural theory that eating fish is not “civilized.” ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/system-failure-look-upstream

[xchrom]

1. there should be a dozen senate and house hearings on it. nt

[raccoon]

2. One more puts this on Greatest...c'mon yall! (rec'd) nt

[girl gone mad]

3. k & r

ty, marmar.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. Marmar..thank you for the introduction to YES Magazine!!!

K&R

edit to add: Frances Fox Piven was required reading in the School of Social Work at the U of Washington when I was there. She wrote Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare.
She argued that government provides aid for the poor to control political unrest and to control labor.
Conversely, government removes aid for the poor for the same reason.
I recommend her book. It is as valid today as back then.

What I noticed in all my years as a Social Worker was that all the "efforts" to help the "poor" were based on a trickle down pattern of "aid" which went from Federal Administrations to State Administrations to County Administrations to City/town programs, employing great numbers of people who had to administer the programs and write grants for more money to administer the programs, while the massive numbers of people who needed the services got maybe 5 cents of every dollar budgeted.Counting and accounting FOR that 5 cents employed even more people who reported from the city to the county to the state to Feds.

Essentially, Piven says, we NEED to keep poor people poor.

Which is why the right is mad at her. She looks upstream and sees naked emperors.

[marmar]

5. You are welcome, dixiegrrrl.......

It's become my favorite magazine.