A New Paradigm for Political Economy
The Sophistication of Self-Preservation | SSP
In the history of civilized societies, spanning about 12,000 years, when our species, Homo sapiens, began to transition to sedentary societies…producing their own food and adapting to changing surroundings. A couple of predominate forces have been instrumental in shaping and propelling them forward. The first is innovation, as societies had to adapt to changing environments, they also had to innovate, first to survive before they could thrive. These innovators understood that the only way to secure their future was to master their environments. For that reason, the management of societies based on knowledge, and intelligence has been essential to the preservation of humans over time. Therefore, societies had to become more sophisticated to compete effectively for scarce resources against other competitive groups or societies. Strategies and tactics had to develop and utilized intelligently, so, innovation and entrepreneurship began to naturally take hold. Times might have changed but the fundamentals of nature have not. Accordingly, the coupling of innovation and preservation is the Sophistication of Self-Preservation | SSP!
Taking on change with intuition and ideology instead of scientific, quantitative thinking approaches only ensures the certainty of failure. Without intelligence and sophistication, innovation becomes perilous, especially when decision-making is left to ideological constructs and ego. So it would make sense to have a useful disciplined mechanism for leadership to make important decisions through in the management of their political economy.
Innovation, for all the value it brings, always disrupts cultures and traditions — past ways of doing things. Transformation comes with uncertainty and volatility, it forces us to face uncomfortable truths. So if we are not able to exercise honesty amongst ourselves and take responsibility for our past outcomes, then the victimhood and dependency culture will prevail over us. We must first change ourselves, and our thinking before we can change our existence. People, governments, and societies must all buy into the inevitability and gains that transformative change brings.
Natural selection dominates human existence — survival, progress and prosperity are all evolutionary choices about natural selection. The more adaptive societies are to changing worlds the more likely they are to survive and pass on those “genes” intergenerationally. And so, establishing a proven system to manage change ensures our species’ prosperity.
After all, is said and done, the central purpose of humans remains self-interest/self-preservation and economic value creation is the common denominator of it all. Leaders of political economies have a moral responsibility to think of their people first before thinking of their own political outcomes. They must develop inclusive growth agendas, recognizing the value of innovation but balancing that against the risk of triggering citizens’ fear of being left behind. If not, people can become insecure, anxious; adverse to change, and even work against their own best interests. They become desperate and unable to think rationally. Emotion can be a show-stopper for progressive governments’ transformative growth agendas.
Real change is relative to the amount of technology made available to us, and coupled with how we use it will determine a country’s prosperity curve. Technological advancement is the mighty variable in it all, so if there is no “operating system” around managing the political economy, desired outcomes only become wishful thinking. Whether we recognize it or not, the quantification and quality of our existence are directly tied to our decisioning.
As developing countries evolve, they reach a certain point where the realization sets in, about the activities and policies they have come to rely on. That they no longer work. Worse, in the digital era, these past failed policies act as an enormous drag on advancement. This is what is called strategic inflection points. Points where leaders must make critical survival-based decisions…about how to transform and become competitive enough to leapfrog onto the global wealth curve.
The job of leaders is to successfully implement economic policy and put transparent systems in place to take their countries through these critical inflection points. Reenergizing the country, facilitating collaboration with enterprises, luring global investment, cultivating new capabilities, leveraging existing competitive advantages through technology, and strengthening the democratic process. These are crucial transitional points for countries with ambitious sustainable growth goals.
The pace of technological change and its impact on societies everywhere has dramatically increased over the last two hundred-plus years — since the past industrial revolutions. Now, in the last 10 years, innovation and transformation have been geometrical, multiplying at an exponential rate of change. So bold new innovative thinking based on science and optimization, supported by historical data is required. Rigorous fact-based decisioning and relentless iteration is the most viable path forward.
Therefore, to go forward prosperously, governments must apply a new disciplined paradigm for political economy management, combining the sophistication of self-preservation with innovation. Striving to create inclusive, bottom-up entrepreneurial-led governments is the way to building a dynamic and sustainable future for developing nations.
Douglas Blackwell’s ai — applied intelligence management solution for political economy, comprises AI-powered research capabilities with computational engines that will identify emerging innovations, trends and optimization, identify risks, and zero in on growth opportunities. The goal is to select and manage the ideas and systems that have proven to show the highest utility potential across all probable future worlds. The ai approach doesn’t entertain high-risk ideology and emotional decisioning — it specifically seeks maximum utility.
Strategy formulation is about winning and a winning strategy must be formulated through intelligent ecosystems, determining what is true and what is not true about building successful societies. Leaders must put aside their personal beliefs and biases, and ideologies, quiet the ego; survey the landscape, and stick to the scientific process. Only then can we move to develop a winning playbook. And our decisions will have a higher mathematical probability of success if driven by logic, which is coherent and empirically warrantable.
Therefore, governments must lead with courage and invest in their own political economy and country capacity and capabilities, first and foremost; and not be fearful of risk-taking. In the end, leaders/governments must build bottom-up entrepreneurial cultures, to rise to the formidable globalization challenges of this century.
And here are five critical things that they can move to build on…
- Leadership, vision, strategy, capacity-building, authentic and entrepreneurial-driven knowledge-based economies
- Innovate internalized engineering of policy, processes, governance, self-disruption and self-determination
- applied intelligence — decisioning system — technology and knowledge-based ecosystems for learning, measurement, and performance
- An inclusive agenda — responsibility and accountability; transformation with minimal displacement and suffering
- Adoption of a new political economy paradigm — mandating transparency
Our future society can be an advanced and prosperous one, that continues to reinvest in its own capabilities; creating exponential economic value…riding the global wealth curve to sustainable prosperity and authentic happiness for its people. A highly educated and skilled, technology-driven, innovative and entrepreneurial middle-class workforce, responsive to continual transformation, never satisfied, breaking the dependency culture and building for a sustainable and inclusive future.
