Provocation 282. Governing the whole.

We have an ensemble of corporations making the crucial decisions about the future. Unfortunately each corporation wants high walls between its operations and impacts on outside realties so it can maximize production “efficiently”. But  efficient means free from outside interference that can slow down or limit profit making. The trouble is, taken all together the actions of such isolated corporations does not, cannot, add up to systemic solutions that include secondary effects outside the walls.

For major issues, such as climate and population, we need organizations whose responsibility is for  the whole. “The government” should have that role but the government is controlled ny the corporations through their financing of Congress. Government had that role till the English landholders organized against the King in order to further the enclosures which the king opposed.

Modeling “management of the whole” without becoming a police state is an open agenda for economists if they would be willing to take it on.