Intermediaries Are Losing Power and Failing

 

Of course making that adjustment is easier with a few million dollars to cushion the shock. Rick Waggoner will not lose his home any time soon but he has lost his position in the grander scheme of things. The world is changing and we seldom see those changes coming. The fundamental basis of our economic system, consumerism, is failing.

 

The rise of Industrial capacity, the auto industry included, replaced the agrarian economy that preceded it. The transfer of wealth based on industrial production replaced a more survival oriented economic model based on small land holdings. Now we are grappling with the next paradigm shift.

 

We have been hearing about the new economy for years but it still does not exist in any well-defined model. We are faced with the task of replacing the consumer-based model of the world economy with something entirely different. What that will be is still only rarely discussed in the halls of power. For the next few years the focus will be on how to prop up the old model.

 

The reason consumerism is doomed is the failing basis of the model. That model assumes sufficient wealth can always be created from limited resources to expand the world economy. This system has grown out of the bounty of nature, which is being sorely tried by the expansion of consumerism into whole new populations.

 

We have neither the resources nor the capacity to manage that expansion. The enrichment of intermediaries like Mr. Waggoner at the expense of the total system of wealth creation and distribution has reached unsustainable heights. The recent destruction of wealth held by the middle class is one symptom of the failure of the consumer economy.

 

Management is the process of educated and trained intermediaries attempting to support the current economic model. Our nation depends on the success of those managers for its economic sustenance. Management has failed as a force for change in many industries. The managers are now all too often merely enriching themselves at the expense of the system.

 

It remains to be seen if we can evolve the consumer model into something more sustainable or not. If we fail in that endeavor we will suffer the pangs of a revolutionary change in our social system and economic model. Revolution is seldom pretty or kind. However, if we fail to adjust, the big picture of the world will eventually force that adjustment on us or our children.

 

The failure of the intermediary is a theme that resonates throughout a society organized into large groups. Bigger businesses, bigger cities, bigger nations and a much bigger world population have been created by the consumer model. Intermediaries manage all of this and the managers are failing. The center cannot hold. That is the problem we face today and the one that must be solved if most of human civilization is to survive into the next century.