The silent catalyst for economic (in)efficiency
When your machine is clunky, do you add more cogs or more oil?
All problems - social or economic - are directly or indirectly caused by one culprit: the human psyche.
Consider any social issue, and you'll likely trace its roots back to imbalances in the human psyche. When a human being feels unloved, violence ensues (one agreed upon theory of violence); this gives us news such as a TikToker’s jealousy and appetite for revenge murders his ex and her friend, leaving a child parentless1. When a human being’s greedy with limited empathy, they’d trade in anything that makes them money, including illicit things such as drugs or humans, which in turn becomes a machine for breaking families apart.
Not only is the human psyche responsible for social problems, it’s also responsible for every economic problem I can think of.
Cases of financial misconduct, such as using client deposits to fund political agendas or extravagant impulses, can often be attributed to a person's craving for power2. The 2008 crash? Almost unanimously labeled to be the work of greedy men in their fancy suits, and the lack of motivation for government officials to properly examine vulnerabilities in their financial market. Labor productivity? Organizations such as Google, AmEx, US Air Force and more all cite substantial productivity gains from giving emotional intelligence training or incorporating emotional intelligence scores in their entry assessments.
So if stuff like greed, power lust, laziness, personal motivations or insecurities lead to so much of the world’s problems, then why are government interventions not addressing the human psyche as the wild, yet silent, catalyst for all societal or economic in/efficiencies?
This is evident for interventions aimed at increasing economic efficiency, that have the majority of its items dedicated towards building infrastructure, improving money circulation, incentivizing global trade amongst others (don’t cite me yet, this is an armchair observation); while all governments have considerable investments in human capital, few incorporate values or emotions as a core agenda item.
There are many challenges obviously to why the case is yet impractical. One might argue that the government’s role and policy reach is limited and certainly cannot play a parental role, how can a government fix mommy or daddy issues? It’s also clear that measuring imbalances in the human psyche is a flawed process nowadays, e.g. there is no bleepo-meter for sociopaths as they’re the best at feigning normalcy.
You can argue a lot of other points too, but there’s a simple intervention that governments can foster: a mandated, portionable emotional intelligence curriculum throughout all primary, secondary, tetriary, etc stages of education. The education system is flawed when we consider its role in satisfying the labor market’s needs, teaching students programming at a young age is definitely something that would prep them in a relevant way, but teaching them emotional intelligence - the most important skill that would set them up to be productive resources wherever they go - is certainly more relevant to the labor market. Emotional intelligence can then be the silent catalyst for economic efficiency.
Another possibility for government intervention is brewing in the horizon: neural engineering. Already, scientists managed to erase PTSD symptoms from rodents using laser tech by targeting respective areas in the brain. And as neuroscience evolves as a discipline and identifies more of the mechanics of the brain, we will one day be able to alter more neural networks. What if governments laid hand on ‘brain-fixing’ machines, where a person goes through obligatory therapy to identify any psyche problems and fix them with neural tech? Of course that’s a Black Mirror episode for you; can you imagine your chances in the marriage market if you haven’t gone through that therapy? Or the possibility that you won’t be able to travel to some countries without a ‘brain-fixed’ clearance attached to your passport?
I’m not addressing other core components of the human psyche here, such as values and principles. It’s a more complex topic and way less straightforward than emotions - which already has developed management literature ready to be indoctrinated.
P.S. I have always entertained a sci-fi fantasy: what if we could create a Gattaca-like selection mechanism for babies with high empathy and minimal imbalances? It would make for another Black Mirror episode.
P.P.S. I tried to use GPT4 to write this for me, but all in vain. Nonetheless, if emotional intelligence a silent catalyst for economic efficiency, large language models will be a loud one.
The Abulaban tragedy
e.g. The FTX Bankruptcy Case, 2022