Applying economic concepts in psychology
Ilya Shambat
when someone is being unfairly compensated, falsely advertised to,
stolen from, or slandered and injured in order to keep them in a raw
deal. This essay will show some situations where economic concepts can
be applied to social and interpersonal issues.
Economics of Abuse and Protectionism
In climate of freedom, people go to places or situations that are good
for them. The place that is good for people will have more people
wanting to enter than wanting to leave. The place that is bad for
people will have more people wanting to leave than wanting to enter.
The better the place, the less oppressive it has to be for the people
to be in it. The worse the place, the more oppressive it will need to
be in order to keep people from leaving.
The greater the legal, moral, psychological, economic, political or
physical barriers are made to keep people from leaving, the greater is
the evidence of the destructive character of the arrangement. A place
that has worked out a livable lifestyle will not need to keep people
from leaving, and those that do leave will be replaced by a greater
number of people coming in. Whereas a place whose arrangement is
destructive, oppressive, or injust, will need to do everything that it
can to keep the people born in it or lured into it from going
elsewhere. Thus, we see such done by the worst places in the world -
places such as Afghanistan, Iran and the former Soviet Union - and the
worst places in the First World - places such as right-wing small
towns and conservative Muslim and Christian communities - and not done
by places, such as New York, San Francisco, Melbourne, Montreal,
Paris, and Amsterdam, where life is good and whose people have no
reason for trying to escape.
The same is the case with families and relationships. A person who's
good to his partner does not need to fear his partner leaving him; and
if his partner does leave him, there will be others who are willing to
take her place. Whereas a person who's bad to his partner has every
reason to fear her wanting to get away. The more done by the person to
control, oppress or undermine his partner, the greater the evidence of
the arrangement being a raw deal for the partner, the more rightful
she is in seeking to leave the arrangement. And the more obstacles put
in the way of people seeking to do that - either by organs official or
unofficial - the greater the evidence of a large-scale injustice
contained in the arrangement.
Abuse and oppression are therefore not only an injustice in itself,
but also evidence of a greater injustice. Abuse is an attempt to
reduce the value of the person in order that the person acquiesce to a
raw deal, as oppression is to keep the person in an unfair and
wrongful place. The worst abuses are either done by the people who do
not deserve to be with the other person in order to justify being with
her when one knows that one does not deserve her, or by those who want
to treat the partner like trash whatever her value relative to one's
own. In both cases, we see evidence of injustice. And in both cases,
the partner is right for seeking to leave the relationship.
The same is the case for societies, communities, families and
religions. The worse the lot in which such put people, the more they
will need to do in order to keep people from getting away. Whether
this be done through overtly oppressive and brutal tactics or through
the more subtle, more manipulative and less easily evidenced tactics,
is a matter of tactical sophistication but not of characterological
difference. The more we see done of this, whatever the tactics, the
greater the evidence of the wrongful quality and wrongful character of
the societies, communities, families or religions involved.
In the same way as trade distortions such as tariffs and quotas need
to be put in place where the domestic producers are not competitive
with foreign producers, so do distortions to people'snatural search
for better deal need to be put in place where they are being treated
injustly. The less competitive the domestic producer, the more trade
distortions must be put in place to keep people buying from the
domestic producer instead of from more efficient foreign competitors;
the worse the deal for people, the more artificial obstacles must be
put in place to keep them from leaving. This is as true for collective
and individual levels both. And in both cases what we see is sure
evidence of the unjust and wrongful quality of the arrangement.
Societies that are terrible for women - such as ones run by Islamists
- will need to do everything in their power to deceive, beat down,
disenfranchise, and sabotage women in order to keep control of them.
And the person who's not willing to treat his wife right will likewise
need to do the exact same thing. The more we see of this, the greater
and more apparent the evidence of injustice and wrongfulness of the
arrangement. And the greater the reason for people who care about such
things as justice and rightfulness to help those at the receiving ends
of the arrangement's injustice and wrongfulness to either escape or to
better their lot.
Happiness Growth and Expectation Inflation
When a country has more monetary wealth, there are two paths that it
can take. One is known as economic growth - of money being invested
into producing real wealth. The other is known as inflation - of the
money losing its value, things becoming more and more expensive, and
the gain being squandered.
The same applies in human happiness. When state of affairs of any
person improves, the two paths possible are happiness growth and
expectation inflation.
In the first case, the person joyfully embraces the improvements and
becomes a happier person. Remaining grateful and appreciative for what
he has that he did not have previously, he exists in a happier
mindstate. Any new improvements are likewise met joyfully and
appreciatively. And the improvements are never taken for granted, but
are appreciated in each case, resulting in ever greater happiness of
the person.
In the case of expectation inflation, the person takes the new state
of affairs for granted and begins to expects it. Instead of becoming
happier, he requires more and more positive conditions to sustain the
basic mental state. Sense of entitlement grows, requiring more and
more to meet ever-growing expectations and making happiness ever more
remote. The improvements are inflated away to feed the growing
expectations. The demand grows out of control, necessities grow beyond
all measure, and more is required to sustain basic level and more
still for any level of happiness.
Both phenomena take place at the individual level as well as the
collective. The current state ofexistence of most people in the First
World would have been unthinkable to most people in history; and yet
many take it for granted. Frequently it becomes worthwhile to show
such people how life is elsewhere and how it has been before they have
sufficient appreciation to value the life that they have and the
efforts of hundreds of millions of people who made it possible.
One case of expectation inflation, taken to a thoroughly absurd
extreme, can be found in the Australian men of father's lobby
persuasion. My friend Dean, who has traveled to over 100 countries,
wrote that Australia is the best place in the world to live. And yet
Australian men of father's lobby persuasion blame the suicide rate
among Australian men on feminism. This suicide rate cannot be based on
political or economic conditions; otherwise most of the world, where
political and economic conditions are nowhere nearly as good as they
are in Australia, would have much higher rates of sucide. Nor can it
be based, as Australian father's lobby types claim, on feminism;
otherwise there will be far more suicide among men in America, where
feminism is far more strident, more powerful and more extreme. The
only possible explanation is that these men have absurd expectations
of life - expectations that have inflated so far from reality that
they cannot be met in the real world. If their expectations cannot be
met in Australia, then they cannot be met anywhere, and the only
solution is for these men to be made to know how good they have it by
comparison to what people face in the rest of the world and also what
was faced by their ancestors. Which may also give them appreciation
for the liberal ideals and efforts of millions who made it possible
for them to have the life that they have here.
Only then - when the overly-inflated expectations are shown for the
folly that they are - can people develop the appreciative state of
mind that is required for actual happiness. It is then that happiness
can grow. And then these same people can become contributors to
happiness of their families and of their country rather than its
detractors. Which will be a far superior use of their resources than
whining about feminism in one of the First World's least feminist
countries,or taking away women's rights still further in a country
known for violence against women, strident male chauvenism, and
aggressively atrocious treatment of wives.
For happiness of people at both individual and collective level, it is
necessary to encourage happiness growth and confront expectation
inflation. In this the good is not wasted but is appreciated, and is
affectuated improvement both in human condition and in people's
experience of life. And then it in fact becomes a worthwhile endeavor
to put in work to improve human condition, knowing that it will not be
taken for granted but rather benefit people, and will not be inflated
away into bloated sense of entitlement but rather lead to happiness in
people who live and are yet to live.
False Advertising and the Culture of Insincerity
Another economic concept that's useful in human interaction is the
concept of false advertising. In relationships, this problem becomes
formative to destructive relationships, and a culture of insincerity
results therefrom.
The false advertiser presents a genial front and acts nice and
reasonable. Then when he has found the woman, and she is his, he turns
into a monster. The people cannot believe that he does the things that
he does, because according to the impression he gives to them he is a
nice person. And the person against whom the perpetrator commits his
abominations is blamed for all things that result, and is attacked
even further if she tries to leave the perpetrator.
In business, advertising as one thing while having a different product
is known as false advertisement. It is a crime, and one that is
severely punished. But in relationships there is no clause about false
advertising. Instead, the person at the receiving end of the
abominations is blamed for all things, and is blamed even further if
she tries to go on her own.
This of course results in tremendous ongoing hypocrisy and
insincerity. And it is a hypocrisy and insincerity that requires for
its perpetuation a destruction of sincerity wherever it can be found.
Thus, the sincere woman is entrapped; the sincere man is seen as being
fundamentally criminal. And it is through this attack on sincerity
that the culture of false advertising and insincerity goes on.
Insincerity, for its continuation, requires further destruction of
sincerity wherever it can be found. Thus, any true feeling, any true
idea, any true existence, comes under vicious attack. And the result
is a putrid swamp of falsehood and viciousness and hypocrisy that
ensnares all the living. And then this swamp claims for itself the
sanction of religion or of morality.
For this abomination to end, it becomes requisite to see all false
advertising for what it is, and to instead demand truthful portrayal
of self, of feeling, and of attitude. And then one more obstacle to
truth and justice will be removed, resulting in a more truthful
society and a more honest way of life.
Intercultural Relationships and Gender Fairness
Everybody thinks that they know what is justice, but what they
conceive of as justice is different from place to place. The just-
world hypothesis of different people in different places and times
conceive of completely different kinds of justice. And it is by flux
between people and places that any meaningful concept of what is
justice can be attained.
In Muslim and rural Indian cultures, it is seen as justice that man
bludgeon the woman into being his dog and kill her if she disobeys in
the slightest. In American feminist culture, it is seen as justice
that a woman treat men like garbage, get a coworker fired for sexual
harrassment if he tells her she's good-looking, deal with all women
who are nicer and prettier by abusing and sabotaging them and
destroying their careers and relationships, abuse and emasculate any
relationship partner, screw exes in court out of every cent they can
get, claim that anyone who objects to such conduct is a misogynist or
a bimbo, and aim to destroy as many men and beautifulwomen in one's
life as one can and then claim oneself strong or smart or spiritual or
a true servant of woman's cause. Both sets think that they are right
and that what they are doing is justice. With such extremes in the
world claiming themselves to be justice and righteousness, the way to
arrive at any realistic notion of the preceding is for the real-world
mechanism of people choosing each other based on how they are willing
to treat each other to balance out whatever is believed in their
respective homelands - and create a more informed conceptions of
justice and a more balanced just-world hypothesis in every component
part of the world.
It is ridiculous for Islamists in Middle East to claim to be speaking
for justice; in Middle East, Islamists are the injustice. The same is
true for the Dworkin-McKinnon types in United States. The in-good-
faith feminists have a real point about behavior of men in Middle East
and many other parts of the world (and some in the West), and
Islamists about behavior of the not-in-good-faith ones among American
women. But they both have much less of a point at home. On their home
turfs, they apply a grossly imbalanced conception of justice pursuant
a grossly slanted just-world hypothesis to shape the country's concept
of justice into gravely distorted forms that lead to grave
mistreatment of people - women or men - who have done the least to
deserve it.
A positive match is created between men and women whose just-world
hypotheses are a positive-sum situation. A man from a feminist
culture, whose just-world hypothesis would be seen at home as slanted
toward patriarchy but in most of the rest of the world would be seen
as fairly matriarchial, and a woman from a patriarchial culture, whose
just-world hypothesis is seen in her own country as feminist but would
be seen in a feminist culture as patriarchial or equalist,have just-
world hypotheses that are better than complementary and that therefore
can create among them a positive-sum situation. Take a woman from the
patriarchial culture, and put her together with a man from the
feminist culture, and we see people who stand to treat one
anotherbetter than they've ever been treated by other gender at home.
As intercultural flux allows people to make matches based on what they
see in each other and how they are willing to treat each other, is
checked the wrong in each culture that caused the imbalance, and the
graver wrong that is the mistreatment of either women or men in
relationships in pursuit of that false concept of justice. And this
creates a real-world mechanism toward creating social justice between
men and women, as well as toward a goal that is just as important:
Creating relationships between men and women where both parties
appreciate one another and treat each other in a manner that merits
their vows of love.
The global social injustice will be solved at least in part by large-
scale intercultural, interracial and international flux of people for
love and marriage. Bringing together the men from cultures where the
concept of justice is an extreme of feminism with women from cultures
where the concept of justice is an extreme of patriarchy - even people
from cultures whose concepts of justice are not as extremely off-
target but still noticeably apart - will bring together people who can
appreciate one another, treat each other better than they are treated
at home, and be seen by each other as positive influence and an
improvement upon what they had to deal with. It will also create a
real world check-and-balance upon the tendency of societies - all
societies - to go injust in one or another direction at the expense of
one or another group.
There were many people for a long time who believed that economic
justice around the world would be achieved by Communism. In fact
global capitalism did a much better and faster job by allowing
billions of people in places like China and India to rise out of
poverty using their own efforts with global market for their goods.
And it is international flux for purpose of marriage that has real
possibility of doing the same for social justice - while also creating
many marriages along the way where people have genuine appreciation
for one another and treat each other in commensurate way.
Global economy made it possible for international business to move
across borders to find people who want to work and know how to work,
and for people to move across the borders to find employers who
constructively use and rightfully reward their endeavor. This resulted
in over a billion of people rising out of poverty in less than three
decades and businesses having better and more affordable products that
benefited consumers and business itself. By similar mechanism, the men
and women being free to move across borders to find people who would
treat them better than they are treated at home results in tremendous
improvement in people's relationships, as well as improvement in
gender fairness.
But far more importantly, it creates a real-world incentive for people
in all societies to treat their partners - men or women - in rightful
manner, for knowing that there are other people around the world who
would treat them well if they do not. And this breaks the stranglehold
of local oppressors and thugs - both thugs of muscle and thugs of
morality - who want to keep one or another group in their cultures in
shackles so that they can be guiltlessly and without consequence
mistreated.
Protectionism - attempt by rich countries to create walls against
international products - has been described as bullying and extortion.
The consumer is being extorted, and the working people around the
world are being bullied, by the rich country attempting to protect
unearned privilege of some of its workers at everybody else's expense.
The communities that want to deny their citizens the right to make
interracial, intercultural or international matches, are likewise
using extortion and bullying to protect unearned privilege - such as
the unearned privilege of Middle Eastern or rural Indian men to treat
women like cattle, to throw vitriol in their faces, and to execute
them in case they do not obey their every idiotic command. Like
tariffs and quotas of the protectionists are used to maintain economic
imbalance, so the violence, moral thuggery, and oppressive laws, are
used to sustain social injustice. And just as in case of
protectionism, where the greater the economic imbalance the higher the
obstacles that are required to sustain it, so the greater the scale of
violence, moral thuggery, and oppressive legislation, the greater the
social injustice and the graver the system abuse.
There are many people who falsely claim that protectionism is more
moral than global economy. It is not; it is bullying and extortion
against one's citizens and against the world to protect unearned
privilege. The same is also true of efforts by any local entity at any
level to keep people from marrying people external to itself. If a
country or a community constructs walls against intercultural, inter-
ethnic or international marriage, then it is performing bullying and
extortion against its own citizens and against the rest of the world,
in order to keep its citizens chained to partners who want the
unearned privilege of treating them like trash.
The greater the scale of economic imbalance, the greater the need for
protective barriers. And the greater the scale of social imbalance,
the more artificial barriers are required to keep it in place. Thus,
the greatest amount of violence, threats, moral bludgeoning, character
assassination, psychological abuse and oppressive legislation will be
expected to be, and is, done by the communities that are the most
gravely injust and abusive - and to the least extent by the
communities that are the least abusive and least injust.
It takes more barriers to keep people from leaving a raw deal than it
does to keep them from leaving a fair deal. From this follows that the
greater the obstacles placed by the culture to women or men finding
partners elsewhere, the greater the systemic injustice that they
embody. The more abuse, violence, legal oppression and moral
bludgeoning is directed against one or another group, the greater the
injustice that is perpetuated against them. The greater the actual
need for intercultural, interracial or international flux in order to
rectify the imbalance.
The people are bullied into lives they would never have chosen if they
were aware of the true range of options before them, and are kept
there by oppressive laws that want to make a commitment based on
inadequate knowledge and false advertising life-long. That state of
affairs is falsely regarded as being moral. It is not moral state of
affairs; it is a state of affairs based on systemic injustice. The
disadvantaged are kept to inhuman treatment and denied relationships
with people who would treat them better, and the people around the
world are kept from partaking of what they have to offer, all in order
to defend unearned privilege of the wrongly advantaged class to abuse
the oppressed.
Thus, the people who are against intercultural matches in cultures
such as the Muslim scream about tradition and morality. The real
reason they are against such matches is that they want to abuse women
as much as they want to abuse women, and for the women to have no
other options but to put up with living hell that is life as a woman
in Middle East. The people who attack such matches in feminist
cultures claim all kinds of silliness as well. The real reason is that
they want to treat men like trash, and for the men to have no
possibility but to take it. In both cases, the resistance to
international relationships is a result of systemic wrong that leads
to systemic imbalance. And it is this wrong that is checked and
balanced by the real-world mechanism of people being meaningfully free
to choose their partners in parts of the world that are not formulated
by the same systemic imbalances and the wrongful mistreatment of one
or another gender that these imbalances create. Like barriers to trade
being evidence of artificially maintained economic imbalance, these
actions are evidence of artificially maintained imbalance in the
society.
The more we see done of all or any such things, the more the intended
or the accomplished injustice, the more apparent is the injustice
perpetuated by the partner who does these things.
Which means that abuse in relationships is more likely to be done not
for the things that are wrong in the partner, but for things that are
right in them. And the greater the amount of any such violence, the
more we see the injustice that one commits or intends to commit.
In the same way as global economy provides a way for workers around
the world to rise out of poverty - and for entrepreneurs to have
access to people who are willing and able to work effectively - so do
international matches allow a way for women from cultures slanted
against women and men from cultures slanted against men to create
matches with people from whom they can expect better treatment that in
home societies, and whom they likewise will treat in ways better than
they are treated at home. The women from cultures where women treat
men right but are mistreated by men in their own homeland - and men
from cultures where men treat women right but women do not treat men
right - find in each other better treatment than they could hope for
in partners from their own communities. Not only are beautiful matches
created, but social imbalances are rectified, and people in the
communities are shown how truly loving, mutually appreciative and
mutually respectful relationships can be made real. In this are
created two positives, and rectified many negatives. The positive of
mutually appreciative, mutually positive matches and positive
influence that they exert on the disadvantaged group in society - and
the negative of the wrong that creates social imbalances and the
abusive ways that maintain the wrong.
Thus international relationships therefore work for freedom, fairness,
and good treatment by men and women of one another in relationships.
And that is a valuable and meaningful good toward which it is worthy
to aspire for men and women around the world.
Zerkon
> An economist knows when someone is being unfairly compensated, falsely
> advertised to, stolen from, or slandered and injured in order to keep
> them in a raw deal.
No they do not just know this. Most economists today do not even 'know'
people. They know numbers and algorithms they want to think represent
people.
> Thus, we see such done by the worst places in the world - places such as
> Afghanistan, Iran and the former Soviet Union - and the worst places in
> the First World - places such as right-wing small towns and conservative
> Muslim and Christian communities - and not done by places, such as New
> York, San Francisco, Melbourne, Montreal, Paris, and Amsterdam, where
> life is good and whose people have no reason for trying to escape.
Thus, what we see is either blind bigotry or more candyland images of
places never experienced. Assigning 'worst places on earth' is based upon
what exactly certainly not a reasoned comparison. This is pandering to
prejudice and dehumanization under the guise of empathy.
For the life of me I can not figure out what is more insipid. This
dressed up "Liberal" hypocrisy or the raw stupidity and ignorance of the
FOX "Conservative".
> Societies that are terrible for women - such as ones run by Islamists
Which is why we kill them all.
Oh, btw..
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-marshall30jan30,0,510658.story
http://www.alternet.org/story/39377/
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=3977702&page=1
Ilya Shambat
> On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 04:26:51 -0700, Ilya Shambat wrote:
> > An economist knows when someone is being unfairly compensated, falsely
> > advertised to, stolen from, or slandered and injured in order to keep
> > them in a raw deal.
>
> No they do not just know this. Most economists today do not even 'know'
> people. They know numbers and algorithms they want to think represent
> people.
Obviously you haven't studied the subject.
> > Thus, we see such done by the worst places in the world - places such as
> > Afghanistan, Iran and the former Soviet Union - and the worst places in
> > the First World - places such as right-wing small towns and conservative
> > Muslim and Christian communities - and not done by places, such as New
> > York, San Francisco, Melbourne, Montreal, Paris, and Amsterdam, where
> > life is good and whose people have no reason for trying to escape.
>
> Thus, what we see is either blind bigotry or more candyland images of
> places never experienced.
Nope, been to many of these places. Know more about them than do you.
> Assigning 'worst places on earth' is based upon
> what exactly certainly not a reasoned comparison.
Yes it is. I know what they do in right-wing small towns, just as much
as I know what they did in USSR.
> This is pandering to prejudice and dehumanization under the guise of empathy.
No, it is telling like it is. Once again, I know many of these places.
> For the life of me I can not figure out what is more insipid. This
> dressed up "Liberal" hypocrisy or the raw stupidity and ignorance of the
> FOX "Conservative".
You don't like either side, how about create your own.
