[RC] Rethinking Capitalism (was: memes)

[Dr. Ernie Prabhakar]

Hi Billy (and welcome, Dave!),

On Jul 17, 2005, at 8:58 PM, Avesland at aol.com wrote:
> However, corporate cultures are internal. Only rarely (Amway. etc)  
> is there
> an attempt to export a business culture to the general population.

A fascinating comment.   To be sure, if you are talking about  
"conscious attempts to export a complete business culture to the  
entire population", then examples of such are few.

However, that is not what *I* am talking about.   If you accept a  
marketing-driven definition of business (hey, its my job :-) then  
*all* business is about transferring what Dave calls an "embodied  
belief structure" -- a piece of corporate culture -- from the  
producer to the consumer.   In this view, the marketer -first- sells  
the meme, then the sales person cements it in place with a product.

In fact, this process is fairly blatant with the iPod.   The so- 
called 'halo effect' (parodied/defined here: http:// 
www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/708.html :-) is all about  
customers buying Apple's story about a) what is good design, and b)  
how valuable it is.  Once customers accept that story about an iPod,  
they are much more likely to accept the very similar story about the  
iMac.

The key, as Dave implied, is that Apple employees 'drink their own  
kool-aid' (vs. merely eating our own dog food :-).   That is, the  
story told to customers is *exactly* the same as the one employees  
tell themselves and each other -- i.e., it is continuous with, and a  
direct manifestation of, corporate culture. That is what makes the  
story 'authentic' rather than a 'fraud,' to use Seth Godin's  
terminology.

To be sure, this is very different than the typical transactional  
model of producers competing with consumers in a zero-sum gain.    
That is because traditional economic theory is almost entirely  
focused on *equilibrium* models, and ignore innovation because it is  
too hard, and therefore presumed irrelevant.

Bumpkus. It is like only doing anatomy on dead bodies, and then  
declaring medicine the art of preserving corpses.   Real business,  
like a live human, is something similar in structure but quite  
different in function.

To that end, here are two alternative formulations of capitalism that  
I've generated recently, which attempt to bring the essential  
business functions into their proper relationship with each other and  
the outside world.  It is probably a larger worm-can than I intended  
to open, but here goes.

-- Ernie P.

A. Transcending Reality:  An Emotionally-Driven View of Value Creation

I believe:

a) after mere survival is assured, material things bring happiness  
primarily because of the emotional story they enable

b) thus, happiness ultimately comes from character, not consumption

c) capitalism incents switching from constrained to less-constrained  
sources of happiness

d) given a finite population, and infinite time, it is always  
possible to find more creative sources of happiness that depend less  
on scarce resources

B.  Transcendent Communities: A Relational Model of Business Processes

Pastoral capitalism builds business value via a yin/yang process of:
Discipling Reality : Engineering/Operations
Nurturing Community: Marketing/Sales
Rewarding Character: Management/Human Resources
Enforcing Humility: Board/Executives

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