The
Steady-State Theory
Written October
14, 2003
Alla rondo
I always thought that each of us has something in which we excel. We should find it and spend the rest of our lives doing to the best of our ability that which we were meant to do. Perhaps I've been naïve.
Before the 20th century, children usually grew up learning the family business, often farming. When they became adults, they became farmers. Or if the family business wasn't for them, they'd learn some other trade. They became schoolteachers or doctors or shopkeepers or whatever, and they practiced that profession for the rest of their lives.
However, it doesn't always work like that nowadays.
A friend of mine earned his MBA degree and joined a public accounting firm, which provided auditing services to other corporations called clients.
If I correctly recall his explanation of public accounting, new employees were known as Junior Auditors and had a certain range of duties. After a couple of year's experience, they became Senior Auditors and took on some management responsibilities. The best Seniors eventually were promoted to Managers, and the best Managers became Partners in the firm.
Of course, the firm needed many lower-level workers but only a few Partners. So it seemed logical that employees would rise to the level that suited them best and then remain there. A typical auditor might spend 40 years as a Senior, becoming very good at his job.
But my friend said that this wasn't the case. In public accounting, a Senior who failed to make Manager within a few years was expected to resign! He then typically would have to find a position in the audit department of some client corporation and start trying to climb that ladder.
I always thought that each of us has something in which we excel. We should find it and spend the rest of our lives doing to the best of our ability that which we were meant to do. Perhaps I've been naïve.
My manager once said, "The boss doesn't want you people to get comfortable."
"Nice guy!" I replied.
Of course, what the boss meant was that the employees shouldn't become complacent and self-satisfied, lest they stop trying so hard.
When the struggling Pittsburgh Pirates were getting into clubhouse disagreements last June, general manger Dave Littlefield approved of their fighting among themselves. "When you're not winning," he noted, "you don't want happy people."
So is this our ideal? Unhappy workers arguing with each other, uncomfortable in their positions, fearful of losing their livelihoods?
Wouldn't it be better to be motivated not by fear of unemployment but by pride in your work? Wouldn't it be better to be relaxed and confident, your skills matching the demands of the job, your expertise growing year by year?
I always thought that each of us has something in which we excel. We should find it and spend the rest of our lives doing to the best of our ability that which we were meant to do. Perhaps I've been naïve.
It always seemed to me that an ideal corporation would be stable and well-established, boasting of "serving your needs for over a century."
But the reality today is that a corporation needs to show its stockholders a good return on investment. A business that doesn't grow, preferably by at least 10% every year, is in trouble. If you aren't moving forward, you're moving backward.
So corporations can't leave well enough alone. They're always looking to acquire other corporations.
Often, those new acquisitions aren't a good fit with the original firm's mission, which results in all sorts of problems. And someday there will be no other corporations left to conquer; how do you grow then?
I always thought that each of us has something in which we excel. We should find it and spend the rest of our lives doing to the best of our ability that which we were meant to do. Perhaps I've been naïve.
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From the March
1940 issue of The Atlantic:
The English
and French claim they are right in fighting to maintain their
possessions and their ethics, and the status quo of their last
victory. The Germans, on the other hand, claim the right of an able
and virile nation to expand — to conquer territory and
influence by force of arms as other nations have done at one time or
another throughout history.
— Charles A. Lindbergh
Political
leaders worldwide champion the suicidal notion that human numbers
should go on growing as they did during the second half of the
twentieth century. It is commonly supposed that, if we fail to
maintain that pace, the world's economies will collapse.
...Social welfare architectures resemble Ponzi schemes: they
work best when each generation outnumbers the last. Arguably,
human beings have never figured out how to operate a thriving society
whose economy and population don't grow by a percent or so each
year. But we're going to have to learn.
—Tom
Flynn
Editor,
Free
Inquiry
Since
its inception, the U.S. has relied on population growth to keep its
economy pumping. New generations of native-born Americans and
immigrants enter the work force; they produce goods and services and
then spend their income, in a cycle that drives supply, demand and
growth. They also pay taxes that fund programs like Social
Security and Medicare. Over every 50-year period in U.S.
history, the population has grown at least 50 percent, sometimes by
far more.
But that's about to change. Americans now have fewer children than past generations did. And depending on levels of immigration, the country's population may plateau in the coming decades.
Historically, people have fewer kids as they become wealthier and gain more access to birth control. Fertility rates have declined for decades, and most rich nations now fall below the so-called replacement rate of 2.1 babies for every woman. A world with a shrinking population is very different from what humans have ever seen. Since the Industrial Revolution, countries have leveraged high population growth to bolster their economies and government programs. Soon, they will no longer be able to do so.
—German Lopez for the New York Times
We
have created a system for growth that depended on our building more
and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more
factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause
more and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to
buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more
money to build more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that
would employ more and more Chinese....
We can’t do this anymore.
“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children,” said Joe Romm, a physicist and climate expert who write the indispensable blog climateprogress.org. We have been getting rich by depleting all our natural stocks — water, hydrocarbons, forests, rivers, fish and arable land — and not by generating renewable flows. “You can get this burst of wealth that we have created from this rapacious behavior,” added Mr. Romm. “But it has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate....’ Real wealth is something you can pass on in a way that others can enjoy.”
—Thomas
L. Friedman
March
2009
The
Hasegawa family has been operating a snack shop, Ichiwa, outside a
Kyoto shrine for 1,020 years. By putting tradition and
stability over profit and growth, Ichiwa has weathered wars, plagues,
natural disasters, and the rise and fall of empires. Through it
all, its rice flour cakes have remained the same.
“If you look at the economics textbooks, enterprises are supposed to be maximizing profits, scaling up their size, market share and growth rate. But these companies' operating principles are completely different,” said Kenji Matsuoka, a professor emeritus of business at Ryukoku University in Kyoto. “Their No. 1 priority is carrying on.”
Japan is home to around 140 businesses that have existed for more than 500 years. To survive for a millennium, Naomi Hasegawa said, a business cannot just chase profits. It has to have a higher purpose. Family precepts have guided many companies' business decisions through the generations. They look after their employees, support the community and strive to make a product that inspires pride. For Ichiwa, that means doing one thing and doing it well.
—Ben
Dooley and Hisako Ueno in the New York Times
December
2020