Psychoeconomics: globalization, markets, crisis. Николай Игнатьевич Конюхов
an effective economy that manufactures nutrition products and articles of daily necessity, the population of the prosperous countries of the West will be divided into two social aggregates. Some produce and thus have higher standards of consumption, while others just consume. But since they consume dependently, then they will be forced to comply with lower standards of consumption. With each passing year, those who consume will be penetrated by a dependent psychology. Their strength of character will fall, expectations of what the powers-that-be should do for them will grow. Classical democracy (the power of the majority) in this case leads this sort of country to decay, or else one way or another power will transfer not to the strong, but to the weak; not to the producers, but to the consumers …
Such a division is also possible by country or groups of countries. There will be some countries that are capable of effective production, and there will be others whose capacity is weakened. Incidentally, this division is already evident on the map of contemporary Europe.
Social conflicts will grow. Under pressure of the expectation of the majority, no power, whether on the right or left, will be able to reform the national economy. The power structure will totally cease to meet the objective need for firm control of the country given the updated demand for orientation toward the obtainment of distant goals (involving several periods of presidential rule) to avoid the catastrophic consequences of the development of socio-economic processes. This is the sociopsychological and political basis for a possible contraction in the domain of the development of democracy and the transition to another structure of state management, to other regimes.
Periodical uprisings, insurgencies and even forcible provisional seizure of power may become permanent in some European countries, as they now appear to be in some African countries. However, each successive power will not be able to fulfill the obligations taken on, and will be swept away by the subsequent outrage of frustrated citizens. In such a situation objectively a significant portion of the population will be more interested not in democracy and the freedom of the individual, but in order. There are generally more than enough people who agree to undertake such unconstitutional functions. The law enforcement agencies can also undertake these functions. Management according to the example of Pinochet in Chile may seem in new conditions acceptable for the majority.
The availability of the example of successful social development in China sharply strengthens the position of the movements and parties on the left.
The elite of all countries will be found under the influence of cyclically repeating psychoeconomic and social-psychological changes. What has been described belongs to the more unwelcome combination of a type of elite and the economically active population.
But while this has not yet happened (and this may not happen with appropriate preemptive decisions), the psychoeconomic changes in the US that were characteristic for various stages of development of that country, under globalization will now appear in many countries of the world.
Currently there are significant differences in the rates and phases of psychoeconomic changes in the developed countries and the BRICS countries. And for now the psychoeconomic changes in the US and China are in relative antiphase. Nevertheless, the general tendency of globalization is related to synchronization of psychotypological and psychoeconomic changes in the world. In any case, change in the opinion of participants in the market when buying stock or material and non-material assets is becoming synchronized. The change of the psychotypes of the economically active population is also gradually being synchronized.
This synchronization most of all concerns those who buy stock or material assets. If the profit from such purchases becomes an important source of the existence of the entire country, then the culture, the entire country will move toward the culture of the financial establishment, toward hysteroid values.
If material production brings the main profit for now, then in a given country two cultures will form and co-exist. One among those people whose profit is derived primarily in the world financial market. This will be a circle of people oriented toward the culture of the world financial establishment. But at the same time there will exist in this country some portion of the elite, the economically active population, that is oriented toward the culture of the resonators, the organizers of actual production, to the culture of working people.
Meanwhile, the two cultures will co-exist in the leading countries of the world. One is oriented to the culture of the leading country (countries) of the world. It is accepted to call its representatives in national business the “comprador bourgeoisie.” Meanwhile it is common to call members of the business elite who are oriented toward the internal economy the “national bourgeoisie.” They form a distinct culture.
And this is not just values and behavior, this is culture in the broadest sense of the word – culture of production and trade, material and spiritual culture.
But if this is so, then the psychoeconomic processes that were observed in the US in relation to the occurrence of the psychoeconomic crisis should be reflected in the statistical data on the development of the world economy, both of individual countries and of the world as a whole, if it is on the path of copying the culture of the leading country.
This is true. Debt is increasing in most of the world’s countries that copy the economic relations of the US. The growth of debt for most countries in relation to the entire GDP and the psychoeconomic principles that derive from it are of the same type.
The similarity of the trend of many of the economic processes in the US, with world psychoeconomic processes merely suggests that they have a common determinant. We daresay that it is generally related to the psychotype of the economically active population and the agents of economic activity. Informed by the passions of the social motivators with hysteroid traits, they think about maximizing their profits with a tactical plan, that is, obtaining income here and now, with little foresight into strategic consequences.
Thus, extremely high prices for housing caused homeowner debt to grow, and the demand for housing dwindled for many years. Extreme prices for supplied goods led to the debt of governments and corporations and this began to disrupt the world economic order…The same people who made decisions on a massive scale about the growth of prices of delivered goods, raw materials, and services, they “hiked up” prices so that to purchase such goods became unprofitable or unjustifiably expensive… And this leads to the growth of debt of countries, corporations, households, to their destruction, to the fall in the profit of those corporations that purchase more through international trade than they sell. Thus, Japan, distinguished by the diligence and high level of professionalism of its workers, suddenly became a large international debtor at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century.
Many of the charts that reflect various economic processes, but which have a psychological constituent, seem to agree.
This also affects the growth of debt. The economic bases of Reaganomics – the growth of debt while curtailing the cost of credit – began to show up in all countries that copied the culture of the leading country of economic development.
Thus, globalization led to synchronization of many economic and psychoeconomic processes and phenomena, to the leveling in the price of raw materials, goods and services throughout the world. This found not only a factual, but also a legal implementation. The requirements of the WTO are the same for its members and boil down to establishing world prices for raw materials worldwide. But this leads to strengthening the influence on the effectiveness of national economies of those factors that can’t be measured, weighed or made an object of negotiation. One of these most important factors is professionalism, the psychophysiological mechanisms of people in behaving and triggering nervous impulses. People’s psychophysiological, psychological, and intellectual patterns exert a significant influence on the growth of workforce productivity and on the social division of labor.
But on the whole, globalization creates the conditions for leveling of prices for basic goods and services, for forming a uniform culture, both material and spiritual. From the rules of the financial market to the latest fashion trends.
With relatively uniform prices for raw materials and services, the quality of the workforce, its main value, becomes an increasingly decisive factor in the higher rates of development. Countries where historically there were the advantages in the quality of the workforce make breakthroughs