what tectonic trends drive the world

In 2004 I gave a talk at the Australian Institute of Management (AIM) in Perth Western Australia on the four key driving forces in the world. Looking back on this talk I can see that these forces have intensified since 2004.  Three are big wave forces and one is a newly emerging force with the potential to become the key driver of transformational change at the most profound level of human development.

The three big wave forces are in order of importance and influence:

1. Beliefs and values: Liberal democratic market capitalism. This orthodoxy has spread Iike a virus throughout the world to such an extent that a leading commentator, Fukuyama, wrote a book some years ago very prematurely pronouncing the end of history due to this orthodoxy having swept the world leaving no other competitors. Given Islamic orthodoxy and the emergence of China it can be said that the global orthodoxy is‘market capitalism’.  . China an emerging economic and social giant is still a developing country, a communist state embedded in a very old Confucian value system which is experimenting with a State run market system. China is a country with a fascinating and historically unusual mix of attributes that provides fertile ground for future surprises at all levels – economic, social, political and environmental.  China has the potential to transform the world through its unprecedented scale of production, distribution and consumption.  I am optimistic about China as it has the potential to develop not just as most commentators focus on, a new economic but a social system informed by spirit.  The Australian Government’s recent strategic defence policy paper that identified China as a future threat was not a positive and mature contribution to creating an environment for an intelligent cooperative relationship with China.  Historically China has not shown any external aggression even during its world dominance from around the 7^th to 15^th centuries.  Its dominance of the seas  did not result in the all too often arrogant, brutal, greedy and short sighted colonisation of new lands “discovered” by, for example, various European nations and Britain.
2. Demography: The scale and growth of global population, its age and global distribution. This has historically been the key determinate of economic, political, social and environmental outcomes and will continue to be so in the future for the human species.  The explosion in world population over the last 100m years from 1 billion to close to 7 billion and 9 billion by 2050, is the determinant of the explosion and exponential growth in almost every other economic, social and environmental aspect of human society over that period. Yet we generally tend to arrogantly  dismiss or don’t even consider that we are all dependent on each other and that, for example, the rise in the value of our houses is almost totally due to the increase in population – what can be called the impersonal kindness of strangers. Governments place various fees on property transactions like stamp duty with no other motivation other than raising revenue. In a way that most people will not notice or care- that is with no integrity or transparency.  Much like banks impose their range of fees on bank transactions and services.  These sneaky actions bring in funds for their budgets and these funds disappear into the overall revenues or shareholder didvidends and are spent by Governments as they see fit through a government appointed bureaucracy. In terms of transparency and  integrity an evolutionary structure is required. Governments must ( or community advocates)  must explain the reasons why at the most fundamental level property prices rise to the community and allow the community to determine a certain percentage of the annual rise in their property value to be provided to a community fund they set and manage.  This community fund would distribute these funds based on annual priorities set by the people who contribute to the fund. This would be voluntary and if necessary initially mandatory. In this way people start to be directly involved in taking real action and taking responsibility for their actions.  
3. Efficiency: In economics efficiency is a value that underpins market capitalism. The objective of efficiency is the minimisation of costs, and the maximisation of revenues and profits.  This value has  become an subconscious societal virtue and is the driver behind the  secondary trends of competition (or lack of it as a result of the global financial crisis), globalization, cost cutting and  productivity that has a myriad of tertiary trends emerging from it like R&D, technology, organisational structure, capital investment to mention a few. It is ubiquitous – it is everywhere and it has entered into the regular vocabularies of most societies to cover and justify a multitude of activities. The concept of efficiency is mainly and commonly applied in an individual or company context. That is very small, limited, bounded and personal context. Rarely does efficiency extend into nation or world centric contexts and never into a consciuosness or spirit centric context. In the consciousness centric context humans primarily engage with that part of themselves that is the intelligence and energy inherent in Big Bang. This sense of self is beginnging to emerge in culture.  

Newly emerging force

1. Expanding human consciousness: This is an emerging trend that has the potential to create a new belief and value system. The Evolutionary economist website is a part of this emergence. We have visionary philosophers and spiritual thinkers like Andrew Cohen, Ken Wilbur, Deepak Chopra and many others pushing the leading edge of this new emerging wave of consciousness towards a higher level of culture that expresses a deeper moral and ethical way of how we all treat and get along with each other.  How we see and conduct economics is an integral part of our culture.