So Trump just did the ridiculous and won the US Presidential elections. This seemed impossible probably to billions of people across the world and also to what seemed like the majority of Americans until just before the election results came out, but- it is what it is. Trump is loud, rude, cut-throat and all the things that we see as improper in people. Why we see these things as improper is open to debate and I will try and give both sides to the debate later on, but the bottom-line is that a large majority of intellectuals- including almost the entirety of academia were wrong in saying that Trump would be a disaster for the economy- he has received a thumbs-up from the financial markets across the world.
Almost all major global stock indices are up, following election
results including the Dow Jones Index (considered the benchmark index in
the US) which opened at a record high after the election day. Although the markets have been famously wrong on a few occasions, it is known to be correct at evaluating the medium to long term impact of events and decisions (given the current data publicly available) and this is well accepted by academicians as well. What this means is that Trump was probably the right choice, if the US voters wanted to increase productivity and job growth- and thus, for once the 'populist' choice was the right one. I'm personally anti-Trump of course and what I mean by that is that I
personally behave in a way quite the opposite of how Trump behaves; and
help and support other people like me, but the problem with this world
right now is that a larger proportion behaves more like me than like
Trump.
There can be no question that Trump represents more 'evil' in the traditional sense of the word than any other President the US has ever seen, forget Hillary. He has openly made outright racist, sexist, bigoted remarks and is still very proud of being what he is. However, all evil things that we have words for in English- are things that reside in all of us. It's just that Trump has more of these 'evil' traits than most of us and in more intensity. This guy is a bit of a catastrophe from a social sciences point of view, but as a student of economics - such a guy is an absolute gem. If we had a society where everyone was 'good' and people were always fair and nice to each other, it would be a society which lacked motivation, purpose and life itself. Such a society would probably be better than a society where everyone was evil (it might be a close call though) but wouldn't come close to a society with a healthy mix of good and evil. Japan's last 20 years of zero growth is probably an example of the limits of Japanese culture which places high importance on doing good (Without the Yakuza and co., their economy probably would've done worse) . Good and evil are not desirable or non-desirable things - they are just things, and most adults realise this. What we have had over the past few decades, with the never-before-seen levels of globalisation and technology - is an exaggeration of the benefits of good. And as we have seen, letting the nice-guy academicians who have no concern for human emotions get out of control- resulted in the second biggest financial crises of the past hundred or so years. By the way, Trump is not all-evil; I'll come to that later.
We are going through an economic and social cycle and currently the cycle favours human emotions. Fear, greed, hatred and the other emotions Trump represents are all perhaps non-desirable human emotions but are human emotions nevertheless and we shouldn't underestimate their importance. These emotions have already shown their power in Britain, Russia, several parts of Europe and now the US, apart from developing countries where they've always been strong.
Being an economist at heart, I prefer not to think of good and evil in the traditional sense that social sciences define them. Good behaviour is associated with kindness, honesty, hard-work, empathy etc. These are behaviours which are sustainable in nature and help you avoid inner as well as outer conflicts. However, these are not the only emotions we have. If a society is filled with too much good, it would develop laziness and inaction. It would all be just too boring. Productivity would plummet. To avoid this, we should have a slight dose of relatively evil emotions such as greed, jealousy, selfishness and laziness which are non-sustainable and focus on the short-term. Take the greatest leaders of people that we have seen - and you will see in them very wide spectrums of emotions and behaviour. They would be capable of great levels of kindness and honesty but at the same time they would be capable of great levels of jealousy and selfishness as well. This helps them balance out short and long-term trade-offs and more importantly, connect with large groups of people.
The world is probably too complex for academicians to understand. This is because we don't fully understand human nature yet, and humans are in control of the world right now. Humans learn better by observing patterns around them rather than by reading books and listening to experts, and thus academicians are by-default poorly positioned to understand humans. They would have to admit their shortcomings first in order to move on and study humanity. Trump understands humanity better than most academicians and as I said earlier Trump is not all-evil. He has one good characteristic in plenty, and that is the virtue of hard work. Trump is a successful businessman and so naturally knows by learning through patterns he has seen, the best and easiest way to make a lot of money. You can be very evil and very hardworking at the same time and still make for a fairly good leader. Especially in the current environment where people have been nice to each other for too long and were disappointed with the results (financial crises and rapidly increasing inequality with the richest 1% holding 38% of wealth in the US) . Good behaviour is submissive by nature and you need a little bit of evil- and the current scenario, a lot more evil than normal to bring a little spice, to get rid of the boredom and to kick the economy into action by spreading the seeds of entrepreneurship.
Having said that Trump is probably the best thing for the economy and the job market as a whole, he isn't the answer to everything. As Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy famously jokes, even if you had the answer to the meaning of life - you wouldn't probably know what the question is. Life is all about variety and it's just a matter of time before the good people strike back with vengeance- with more globalisation, trade, peace-treaties and technology! Also, unlike the case with societies, maximising only productivity and wealth will not result in individual welfare since we have different and constantly evolving individual utility functions in which money is just one of the attributes; thus as individuals we should just focus on what we love doing and try and get a reasonable amount of money at the same time. But if there's a small lesson we can take from all of this, it is to be in touch with our human emotions.
There can be no question that Trump represents more 'evil' in the traditional sense of the word than any other President the US has ever seen, forget Hillary. He has openly made outright racist, sexist, bigoted remarks and is still very proud of being what he is. However, all evil things that we have words for in English- are things that reside in all of us. It's just that Trump has more of these 'evil' traits than most of us and in more intensity. This guy is a bit of a catastrophe from a social sciences point of view, but as a student of economics - such a guy is an absolute gem. If we had a society where everyone was 'good' and people were always fair and nice to each other, it would be a society which lacked motivation, purpose and life itself. Such a society would probably be better than a society where everyone was evil (it might be a close call though) but wouldn't come close to a society with a healthy mix of good and evil. Japan's last 20 years of zero growth is probably an example of the limits of Japanese culture which places high importance on doing good (Without the Yakuza and co., their economy probably would've done worse) . Good and evil are not desirable or non-desirable things - they are just things, and most adults realise this. What we have had over the past few decades, with the never-before-seen levels of globalisation and technology - is an exaggeration of the benefits of good. And as we have seen, letting the nice-guy academicians who have no concern for human emotions get out of control- resulted in the second biggest financial crises of the past hundred or so years. By the way, Trump is not all-evil; I'll come to that later.
We are going through an economic and social cycle and currently the cycle favours human emotions. Fear, greed, hatred and the other emotions Trump represents are all perhaps non-desirable human emotions but are human emotions nevertheless and we shouldn't underestimate their importance. These emotions have already shown their power in Britain, Russia, several parts of Europe and now the US, apart from developing countries where they've always been strong.
Being an economist at heart, I prefer not to think of good and evil in the traditional sense that social sciences define them. Good behaviour is associated with kindness, honesty, hard-work, empathy etc. These are behaviours which are sustainable in nature and help you avoid inner as well as outer conflicts. However, these are not the only emotions we have. If a society is filled with too much good, it would develop laziness and inaction. It would all be just too boring. Productivity would plummet. To avoid this, we should have a slight dose of relatively evil emotions such as greed, jealousy, selfishness and laziness which are non-sustainable and focus on the short-term. Take the greatest leaders of people that we have seen - and you will see in them very wide spectrums of emotions and behaviour. They would be capable of great levels of kindness and honesty but at the same time they would be capable of great levels of jealousy and selfishness as well. This helps them balance out short and long-term trade-offs and more importantly, connect with large groups of people.
The world is probably too complex for academicians to understand. This is because we don't fully understand human nature yet, and humans are in control of the world right now. Humans learn better by observing patterns around them rather than by reading books and listening to experts, and thus academicians are by-default poorly positioned to understand humans. They would have to admit their shortcomings first in order to move on and study humanity. Trump understands humanity better than most academicians and as I said earlier Trump is not all-evil. He has one good characteristic in plenty, and that is the virtue of hard work. Trump is a successful businessman and so naturally knows by learning through patterns he has seen, the best and easiest way to make a lot of money. You can be very evil and very hardworking at the same time and still make for a fairly good leader. Especially in the current environment where people have been nice to each other for too long and were disappointed with the results (financial crises and rapidly increasing inequality with the richest 1% holding 38% of wealth in the US) . Good behaviour is submissive by nature and you need a little bit of evil- and the current scenario, a lot more evil than normal to bring a little spice, to get rid of the boredom and to kick the economy into action by spreading the seeds of entrepreneurship.
Having said that Trump is probably the best thing for the economy and the job market as a whole, he isn't the answer to everything. As Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy famously jokes, even if you had the answer to the meaning of life - you wouldn't probably know what the question is. Life is all about variety and it's just a matter of time before the good people strike back with vengeance- with more globalisation, trade, peace-treaties and technology! Also, unlike the case with societies, maximising only productivity and wealth will not result in individual welfare since we have different and constantly evolving individual utility functions in which money is just one of the attributes; thus as individuals we should just focus on what we love doing and try and get a reasonable amount of money at the same time. But if there's a small lesson we can take from all of this, it is to be in touch with our human emotions.
No comments:
Post a Comment