🚀 go-pugleaf

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Thorstein Veblen, the institutionalist economist from the turn of the
century (who coined the phrase 'conspicuous consumption') argued that
there are two kinds of economic actors: predators and engineers; in
somewhat dated but still fascinating books like 'Instinct of
Workmanship' and 'The Engineers and the Price System' Veblen argues
that the free market economy, whose power structure derives from
feudalism, has substituted financiers for jousting knights and
engineers for rank and file serfs.  According to Veblen,
the value system of fear is based on high social regard for predation
as opposed to production---we teach students to maximize present
value, which implies fear because fear, tied to predation, is much
quicker than the development of long term, productive relationships.
Trust is slower than violence hence is not present value maximizing.
Can we really expect small business owners to drive fear out of the
workplace when a huge portion of our economy for the past 40 years has
been devoted to manufacturing nuclear bombs--and another huge portion
is based on taxation, which is by definition coercive hence dependent
on fear?

Many small business owners (and I am one as well as an
academic) are themselves subject to multiple forms of predation: the
taxpayer, the regulator, the banker, all of whom threaten
their livelihood.  Perhaps it is wrong to blame executives for fear in
the workplace when they themselves live under tremendous stress and
fear, which in turn (most would agree) is welfare maximizing for
society.  Perhaps global competition is the chief hope to drive fear
out of the workplace--since productive values seem to have won out in
the global marketplace in recent years, perhaps there will be a
continuing trend toward productivity.