• Free Markets Need ‘High Consciousness’ Individuals
Posted by Ron Robins on February 1, 2008
Adam Smith in 1776 said in his “Wealth of Nations” masterpiece that prices in a free market are as if determined by an ‘invisible hand.’ This invisible hand in free markets exists due to innumerable individuals voluntarily buying and selling goods and services by mutual consent. Such exchanges are at prices and quantities unhindered by monopolistic, oligopolistic or governmental influences. I believe that this ideal can only be optimally attained when individuals are fully free and fulfilled within themselves, enjoying higher consciousness.
Critics of free markets today, such as Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Economics Laureate, say that true free markets can only exist if pertinent knowledge is fully and equitably distributed among all market participants. Now he says since this is rarely the case ‘free markets’ usually need some form of government regulation. This is a popular proposition, witness the increased US Federal Reserve’s tightening of loan standards for sub-prime mortgage loans. (I refer again to this below.)
But suppose markets can be made more efficient and uniform in the way knowledge about them is promulgated? Today, we have the internet. This allows for the mass transmission of knowledge. As the internet becomes increasingly ‘dense’ in terms of knowledge and society ever more sophisticated in its use, the argument about knowledge in any given market not being widely disseminated becomes less plausible.
Another criticism which I see regularly and is particularly apt, say in regard to the sub-prime mortgage mess, is this: That many individuals lack the knowledge and/or intellectual ability in distinguishing fact from fiction when making purchases, and therefore need ‘protection’ by the government or some other party. Were there no means of counteracting this insufficiency in individuals, those proposing such intervention would have a valid point. However, there is a way of counteracting this human insufficiency and that is because our individual and collective consciousness is now undergoing an extraordinary transformation where these deficits are being righted. This development is a core premise of this Enlightened Economics blog, integrating the knowledge of consciousness into economic theory.
The new evolving theory of Enlightened Economics will demonstrate that as higher consciousness permeates society, individuals will have the required insight and intellectual facility for optimal purchasing decisions, without much need, if any, of government regulation. Thus, with individuals enjoying higher consciousness free markets can rise to their optimal state and produce affluence and fulfillment for all.
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© Ron Robins, 2008.
Enlightened Economics 
GDAEman said
We have a ways to go, but that’s the right direction.
There is some hope though:
Cultural Creatives
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Ron Robins said
GDAEman — I agree, in talking to Paul Ray in 2002 about the growth of what he defined as Cultural Creatives — http://www.culturalcreatives.org/ — he said they would likely become the majority of the US population by 2020-30. They are somewhere around 25-30% of the US population now, probably a little higher in Europe.
(Quoting from the Cultural Creatives website, “… they’re also driving the demand for:
· ecologically sustainable products and services, and concern for the whole planet.
· to insist on authenticity, personally, at work, in business & politics.
· bringing women’s issues into public life.
· doing the news differently, to see the big picture, and first person stories, and good news too.
· bringing spirituality into American life.”)
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