Dear Dr. Wolff
I have seen you a couple of times on AlJazeera and always enjoyed your analysis. You are not alone in the AlJazeera community of academics that seem to make sense, and it is good to see you there.
I finished my academic studies more than 50 years ago but I have many little bits of experience in a lots of disciplines and in a lot of places. My formal training was in engineering before economics and subsequently accountancy. And then they invented computers which made my slide rule obsolete.
Back in the 1970s I made the observation that OPEC had engineered the biggest economic event in all of history when they established their oil cartel. To my surprise the 'fall out' from this was quite modest, and explained I think by the rapid response and creativity of the international bankers who built a whole 'petro-dollar' economy that helped money center financial organizations prosper as they never had before.
30 or 40 odd years later we now have a financial dollar economy that has done very well accumulating wealth for investors on top of a largely dysfunctional real economy. As a former corporate CFO I see performance related to metrics and incentives, and in our modern world all the metrics and incentives are wrong. A typical Bloomberg News program will talk about profit, GDP growth and stock prices thousands of times, but never talk about what I refer to as valueadd which is what is adding to quality of life.
A few days ago a progressive economist suggested that it was time the Occupy Movement took on the task of occupying economics departments and business schools in order to get a conversation going about what needs to be done to sort out the issues that are making society and the economy very unstable. I think such a conversation could be immensely productive.
I am old and disgusted at the state of the economy ... but fundamentally an optimist. Technology is millions of times more powerful than when I was a student, but the structures of society and the economy pretty much where they were hundreds of years ago. The issues have changed and the solutions need to change. I start off with the premise that economic activity should be to satisfy needs and use the minimum of resources to do this ... build up from this and the world can be amazing. The problem with this model is that the 'need' for military power and military related profit diminishes dramatically, which makes such a model highly undesirable for a big segment of the global power elite!
Again thanks for your contributions to AlJazeera. They are appreciated!
fraadm@newschool.edu
mfwolff@aol.com
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Peter Burgess
Meaningful Metrics for a Smart Society
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and this is the reply I obtained
