The convergence between the domains of politics and economics is undeniable: in most questions of politics the deciding factor is increasingly economics; economic sanctions have become a tactical tool in the political arsenal, corporations finance parties, countries provoke wars for economic gains, etc.
When considering how this is possible (and we should consider this seriously), we mustn’t forget that all converging tendencies have a vantage point that reflects a position of power and an INTENT that provides context for the converging areas.
When it comes to the specific domains of business and politics, the actors below this vantage point are operating oblivious to this vantage point. The top players, who otherwise have tremendous power of influence to a lesser degree, the players below them completely, but it’s safe to say that all actors who are on the front lines, all the public characters are clueless. The faces of those who represent the vantage point are not known even to the “elite” minority decorating the cover pages of magazines and news sites. The latter pursue their agendas blindly to such a degree, that they are not aware that these agendas are not theirs: they merely act as mediums, spreading influences that they passively identify with and which they are emotionally tied to. It’s their passion as they say.
Today this is much easier to recognize than it was 50 years ago. It seems that being so obvious is precisely what makes it easy to hide the agenda. By being huge, the elephant remains invisible in the store; and although small and insignificant, the mice is getting on the nerves of everybody.
One example of “acting under the influence” is when people in the business domain cross the line into politics (the pseudo opposition between political parties is another example). Not when they run for president, proposing to treat the country as a company, but when they remain active in the business domain and simply spread political ideologies. Many topics serve as opportunities to do that, the refugee crisis is one of these.
We use two examples to show this in practice, including some tools of manipulation.
In this example Tomas Sedlacek, a Czech economist exhibits this tendency when he completely disregards (implicitly denies) the mechanical nature of the crisis. Mechanical because the migrants (almost always treated indiscriminately, as a homogeneous mass, irrespective of their country of origin and motivation) target Western Europe not by accident but by external motivation: they are moved by agents.
The rest of the story in the article (not written by Sedlacek, but about him) follows the classical recipe of manipulation: mix a little lie into a lot of truths or keep quiet about the essential matter and talk only about the substantial: the migrant crisis is not a financial but a moral question: well, it’s true that it’s not a financial question.
They are from a war torn country, we must help them: “If a person is dying next to you, do you go back and ask an economist whether it pays to be good or not?”: sure, if the person is dying next to me, I must help them (if I can), but this is not the situation here on any level. If there was war in Poland for example, the Czechs or the Germans should definitely help the refugees (there is a war in the Ukraine, but no refugees are flooding the neighboring countries like Poland, Slovakia or Hungary for example; some sources say that some do target Germany, but curiously Germany refuses them).
“These are questions for philosophers. but we ask economists, because they’ve become the high priests of our age.”: this is true (as long as we don’t refer to modern philosophers building their careers in academia) so one must wonder why he (an economist) feels qualified to make statements, like “Europe does need the migrants from both an economic and a security point of view“, or that this is a spontaneous EU enlargement and that “in the past, enlargement has always been celebrated and it has brought prosperity” where he’s mixing growth as the result of sovereign acts with instigated upheaval.
He draws analogies from TV shows and video games (an indication of his targets) and then goes on to venture an individualistic interpretation of a passage from the Bible, reaching a low point in the end implying judgement on Jesus “They have no wives or children of their own. So they love people from a certain distance” , showing a complete lack of understanding of the doctrines of not only the Catholic tradition but also that of all big Traditions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and many others (religions based on Sofia Perennis never propagated the sentimental interpretations of love that is typical to our age).
He argues correctly that it is not good that economics took over the role of ethics and that the dominance of an economics discourse is a threat: again mixing in some truths.
The other one is from Prof. Günther Faltin whose work in entrepreneurship we truly respect (just as much as the work of Tomas Sedlacek in economics). Prof. Faltin’s concept of entrepreneurship is that the deciding factor in launching an enterprise is the concept and that the concept should be beneficial to the community. He encourages everybody to go ahead and solve problems and contribute to an ecosystem of people doing what they are the best at and enjoy the most. He exhibits some negative meta-views we outlined in our book but the overall message and focus must be appreciated and supported.
He also felt compelled to use the topic of mass migration to spread destructive views: while his idea of people doing what they are good at (in our terminology: performing their organic function) is better than a sentimental “we must love everybody” pseudo-dogma, it fails to consider that organicity must extend to the state as well (only an organic state is capable of integration) and similarly to Sedlacek, he also disregards the artificial nature of the migration. This latter is a grave mistake because it propagates the idea that economics is in fact a principle of integration: this view is one of the main reason why the state is no longer organic. When organicity is a no factor, entrepreneurship is nothing more than a bunch of business cliches, leading to absurdities (inherent contradictions), as is clear both from his and Sedlacek’s statements. He tries to explain this in this piece.
These two examples (out of many) show how highly educated and influential people who otherwise do valuable work in their field are passive mediums of destructive tendencies, driving agendas that they don’t own, inadvertently contributing to a crisis they intend to solve.
PRAKHSIS CLASSICS - Navigating the irrational 