The REAL Wealth Of Nations (A Review and Critique) Chap 1–3

In what follows I will seek to steel man the core ideas and concepts from each chapter of Riane Eislers “The Real Wealth Of Nations” and then offer my critiques.

Note: Please note this is a rough draft so please excuse spelling and grammar errors.

Chapter 1–3 Summary

Chap 1 — The need for a new economics.

Eisler begins her book by pointing out that there is a real disconnect between economic theory and models, and the actual lived experiences of average people. Both capitalist and communist systems, because of their lack of accounting for a broader spectrum of human needs, have failed to address many chronic problems that threaten individual human flourishing in and even the survival of our species.

At the heart of the deficiencies in classic economic models is a lack of value or measurement given to the development of human potential, these activities are given the broad title of caregiving. This lack of development of human potential and flourishing through proper valuation of care and caregiving hinders the growth of our most important economic asset- human capital. And thus we increasingly find our self in the world of alienated and under developed human beings.

Classical economic models have operated under an assumption that mankind must be viewed as a creature pursuing their self interest, and thus economics is framed as a competition, where dominance rather than partnership, becomes its highest virtue. Our traditional economic models, therefore, have largely ignored aspects of the economy that are critical to sustaining human life and flourishing. Traditional economic maps include market factors, government factors and illegal economic factors but fail to account for: life sustaining sectors like the household economy, the volunteer community economy and the economics of our natural resources. Unless the economic map includes all 6 to these sectors it will simply be inadequate for measuring actual economic progress or regress.
The reality is that the economy emerges from various social and cultural forces that can be changed. Economic systems are not an inevitability. Therefore, we should think carefully about how they are constructed. What determines economic value is what we value, and we should value human flourishing. The integration of a broader conception of economics takes into account the development of human capital through caring oriented policies and practices will produce a better society and more economic output. To produce this better economic system to study what produces human flourishing and implement policies, and practices that focus on the development of human beings (a.k.a. caregiving) and develop economic models that properly account for the non-paid but essential caregiving work that is done. In summary these six foundations need to be established in order for a more caring economy to emerge:

1 A full spectrum economic map
2 Cultural beliefs and institutions that value caregiving
3 Caretaking economic rules policies and practices
4 Inclusive economic indicators
5 Partnership model social structures.
6 An evolving theory of economic partnerism

Chap 2 — Economics through a wider lens.

In our modern world uncaring economics are resulting in stagnating wages for people in lower classes, huge disparities in wealth and an ecological situation that is heading toward disaster. Our current situation is unsustainable and thus we must start to look for alternatives to tradition ways of thinking about economics. To change economic systems we need to change the social systems they emerge from. Social systems are deeply influenced by language. Language and categories form how we think about society and traditional categories (left vs right, socialist vs capitalist, east vs west etc) have been show unable to handle chronic problems of poverty, war, and ecological degradation. Traditional economic frameworks don’t take a broad enough look at the social impact on economic systems. Thus, Eisler explains how she brings to bare an analytic lens from her sociological training that widens the scope of economic evaluation. She says she explores the broader economic picture via the lens of two competing social dynamics: domination based social systems vs partnership based social systems.

Domination systems are those that focus on top down control of societies through force and fear. The domination model sees people as untrustworthy, that “soft” qualities will not work in governance or economics, that caregiving is irrelevant to economics and that selfishness will lead to the greatest good for all. The result is powerful people at the top using force and fear to get people in line and misalignment of incentives where people value being aligned with the powerful instead of aligning with their authentic human needs. Traditionally both capitalism and communism use domination dynamics and the results have been war, ecological degradation and a failure to address poverty.

In contrast, Partnership systems focus on relationships for mutual benefit. They arise as people share mutual feelings of empathy and trust and base themselves around hierarchies of actualization rather than domination. Leaders inspire and empower and take input from all levels of the hierarchy and the focus is everyone realizing their highest human potentials.

Domination dynamics still control how we think about economics and thus our indicators like GDP still account for the production of bad things like cigarettes as good or count the costs of cleaning up an ecological disaster a new positive in GDP. Meanwhile caring policies and programs are not even tracked as positive economic indicators and government programs designed to facilitate care are labeled as “nanny state” by a culture that still is dominated by a masculine bias. Hence we see flat wages, men seeking to take away women reproductive freedoms and a wealth distribution that sees the top 10% owning 91% of Americas wealth and thus have massive control over the economics systems and policies. Furthermore, unless we change course, climate change could very easily bankrupt the world economy by the end of the century. Thus, Our unsustainable American system needs to be radically altered to avoid not only the climate crisis but our chronic economic problems like hunger, poverty, wage stagnation and poor working conditions. We must support both social, institutional and policy changes that move us away from domination systems and toward a more caring economy that accounts for what really produces human wellness and development.

Chap 3- It Pays To Care- in dollars and cents

Many companies (Like SAS, Johnson and Johnson, KPMG etc) have shown that investing in generous caring programs for their workers has been very financially lucrative. The ROI on caring has been immense. Caring companies focus on caring not only for their employees but their community and the environment. Some people believe the business world is still a dog eat dog world and fail to realize that mountain of evidence that exists showing that companies that invest in care see a great ROI.

A good business and economy will realize that the wealth of a nation is not really so much in the goods they produce but in the quality of life of its people. Yet some Americans want to slash budgets in healthcare and childcare and ignore the evidence from Nordic countries that show how such programs are beneficial both socially and economically. And not only are the benefits missed but we incur deep harm to children and families and the environment when we don’t invest in their care.

So why don’t we change despite the mountains of evidence that we should? We don’t because we are deeply entrenched in a culture that devalues caring because it is feminine. We still live in the legacy of a culture that puts a premium on the “Domination” masculine model of economics that puts a premium on investing in things like War and weapons over things like health, education and welfare.

Chapter 1–3 Critique.

Points of Agreement

• The Devaluation of the feminine: First off there is no doubt that Eisler is correct that feminine traits like caregiving are undervalued by certain segments of our society today. However as I will point out she misdiagnoses the cause and solution to this problem.
• The impact of culture on economics: Eisler rightly points to the fact that economics are not really ultimately controlled by economic policies but rather economic policies and practices emerge from more fundamental things like social values.
• Partnership over domination: There is no doubt that domination is a short term strategy that does not work well long term for any social relationship. Cooperation and high levels of trust can work miracles in social groups on all levels.
• Taking care of workers: It’s almost a truism in modern business that your most important asset is your employees and when a business takes care of its assets it is more efficient and profitable.
• Economics should be people focused: GDP should not be the sole measure for if your society is doing well. Economics should always be a means to the end of helping people.

Points of Disagreement.

• Radical Change IS NOT needed: Does Eisler realize that the most successful anti poverty program in human history is leaving people alone and letting them trade freely without government intervention (aka capitalism). Since the global trade and capitalism really expanded in the mid 20th century global poverty has fallen from around 70% to less than 10% in the course of just 60 years. THIS IS INSANE. In 50 years we have done what humans have been trying to do for tens of thousands of years. Eislers book implies that capitalism just is not cutting it and in fact our economic problems are so bad now we need to reinvent our entire social and economic way of doing things. This is an ANTI TRUTH. This sort of insane fear mongering is unwarranted but is common amongst ideologically processed intellectuals. The data just does not support her implications that we are in a special time of economic crisis.
• Government = Domination: I don’t think Eisler realizes what government is. Government is not based on voluntary association/cooperation. Governments force people to do things they would not do on their own. They create laws, not suggestions for cooperation. This is the definition of top down domination. She continually talks about caring “policies” but government does not CARE if you want to participate or not in its mandates. Is it caring to force people to do what you think is best for them? The moment Eisler appeals to the force of the state to force people to comply with her vision for what a caring society looks like that is top down domination, not mutual voluntary partnership. Essentially, every tyrant in history thought they were doing what was best for their society, but what made them a tyrant was their willingness to force people to get with the program.
• Capitalism is not a system: Eisler refers to capitalism as another system among many. However, Capitalism (where industry and goods are owned by private individuals and voluntarily exchanged) is not a “system” it’s what happens when you leave people alone. Its summed up in the idea “thou shalt not steal”
• Capitalism = Partnership: Because capitalism by definition must involve voluntary exchange it is by definition people entering into partnerships for mutual benefit. So if she is striving for partnership dynamics rather than force and fear, she is talking about capitalism and not government force and fear controlling the market via “caring policies” by “caring” bureaucrats who don’t pay for the “care” they distribute.
• Crony-Capitalism is not capitalism: Crony-Capitalism (the government giving special favors to companies) should never be conflated with capitalism itself as crony capitalism is when the state interferes in free market exchanges. Eislers does not make this distinction and her critiques of capitalism are nearly always issues with crony capitalism.
• Economics is not a total social system: Eisler (like Marx) seems intent on reimagining and reframing economics into a totalizing system that acts as the measurement not just of goods and services produced in a society on an objective basis but as a sort of standard by which we can judge the goodness or badness of a society. However, this sort of modeling based on subjective and ideological criteria gets into all sorts of philosophical issues about what constitutes a “good society”. Whose standard are we to use? The modern secular humanist standard? The Christian Standard? The Islamic Standard? Or just whomever happens to be in the majority? Better to stick to objective metrics and use economics to evaluate the goods and services produced by a society with the understanding that of course GDP does not measure a societies goodness or badness, just its economic output in terms of goods and services.
• The “Caring” Tyrant: There are only 2 ways to get people to do anything. You can coerce them to do something they don’t want to do, or you can persuade them so they do want to do it. It’s the difference between rape and love making. If Eisler wants to use persuasion convince people to voluntarily implement more caring programs into their families, communities and businesses I am all for it. However she does not seem to have any issue using the state and its dominating force and coercion to bring about her version of the “good society” if people don’t find her arguments persuasive.
• Equity is Cancer: Eisler just seems to assume that equity is a good thing and we should include it as part of the “caring economy”. However she obviously has either never read Thomas Sowell or ignores him intentionally because as he points out, you never get equity if you give people liberty because people are not equals in their skills, abilities or interests among many many other things. The only way you can get equity is by doing the “caring” work of forcing people to do things they would not do if they were free. And I don’t get the impression that Eisler is only planning on using persuasion to get people to be more caring.
• Her Marxist lens: It was interesting when Eisler admitted that she brought a particular lens to her analysis of economics from her sociology training. It’s also unsurprising that this lens is obviously rooted in marxist critical theory (which has dominated sociology dogma for the past 50 years) which explicitly frames social interactions as power dynamics of oppression. Its not hard to see how her framing of domination vs partnership is drawing from this oppressor vs oppressed way of viewing the world. And like other marxists the idea is to foment social change against oppression via all types of social institutions both governmental and social. I had a hard time not seeing her ideas playing the same tune as “the long march through the institutions”
• Insane claims: I almost fell out of my chair when I saw that she actually wrote down the words “Communism did help to reduce absolute poverty”. Like seriously… she should tell that to the 10 million Ukrainians starved to death in the breadbasket of Europe during communism. The words were so ignorant as to be offensive. Her rhetoric spoke of communism and capitalism as if they were both on similar levels in their effects for good and bad. It was disgusting. She also uncritically parroted climate catastrophism as if it was undisputed fact and used it as an impetus for people to embrace radical changes to our social order. She also made insane claims based on sketchy studies like those that claimed (in our country with an obesity epidemic) that 1 in 10 people in the US suffer from hunger.
• Assumptions and Arrogance: One of the worst things in her book has been the way she blithely talks about complex topics without engaging with the complexity or other sides arguments. For example, she seems to assume that the reason business owners don’t institute more “caring” policies is because they are either more ignorant than her about the ROI or that they are not as caring as her. This arrogance is not just gross morally its insane. Does she really think she knows more than tens of thousands of business owners who spend every day looking for ways to maximize ROI? On one hand they are so greedy they don’t care about people, but on the other hand they are so stupid they don’t realize that they could satisfy their greed better if they were more caring? Or perhaps she does not know what she is talking about and there are SIGNIFICANT COSTS and the ROI is not always there, especially in super competitive industries. So much of her book is just preaching, not argument. And worse she assumes that if people don’t agree with her obviously being right it must be because they are morally flawed.

I could go on but that will do for now. Ultimately, the book thus far is mostly based on bad assumptions, bad data and arrogantly assuming social engineering and central planning are needed to save the world from an impending doom. A classic sort of book for an academic with roots in neomarxist social theory.