Let's Focus on Means, Not Outcomes

Alas, sometimes the Fourth of July serves as a reminder that freedoms have become less certain than they once appeared. Political ideology has especially been damaging for personal liberties, as it increasingly focuses on outcomes instead of means. If Democrats once appeared as though the party most responsible for struggles over governmental redistribution, that has changed. It is disconcerting that Republicans who once advocated for wealth creation on the part of all citizens, continue to shift toward a deterministic and essentially outcome based stance.

Any time a nation decides to limits means of production to the province of special interests, it may eventually be in danger of losing both economic and political freedoms. Organizational hierarchies for knowledge based means, have led to supply side realities which left little room for reform from within. Yet sharing the means of production is quite a different concept than it once was. Unlike the traditional manufacture of discretionary goods, much of knowledge based production is non discretionary. As a result, individuals have lost much of their freedom to participate in activities which - instead of being largely a matter of choice - are often basic requirements for living a normal life.

Outcomes for knowledge based endeavour, also tend to be couched in terms of access and cost. Is there a difference? Not as much as one might imagine, because they are both about supply side outcomes rather than means. Tim Taylor recently noted the distinction, perhaps in hopes that dealing with healthcare policy in terms of cost rather than access might bear fruit. Nevertheless, cost and access in this instance are inextricably linked, making them all the more difficult to internally resolve.

Again, nothing can really be done without ultimately addressing the limits of today's knowledge centered production. Likewise, the desire to slash public spending for education and healthcare, in hopes that private enterprise will step in to fill the void, misses the fact that the supply side would still be faced with a constrained equilibrium, in terms of the extent to which it can fully compensate human capital investment seeking entry. Production means have long since determined marketplace outcomes for the organizational patterns currently in use. Unfortunately, these patterns have inadvertently led to a devaluing of human capital potential at a global level, even though that would scarcely have seemed possible before the recent era of high skill services dominance.

Since the product of time and place are scarce and don't readily scale, today's time based product providers needed to create revenue for income and overhead costs by limiting supply. Otherwise, it would not have been easy to fully function in the high value equilibrium generated via centuries of tradable sector wealth. Importantly, these earlier hierarchies were an understandable approach, which also worked reasonably well for a long time and for much of the populace. However, as services sector activity has come to dominate the economy, fewer individuals are now monetarily compensated at a level they can still access high skill services as currently constructed.

Consequently, greater means of production potential will need to be restored to those with limited sources of income, so they too will be able to participate in and contribute to a knowledge based economy. By creating new patterns of organizational means, full participation in a modern economy could once again become possible for the vast majority of citizens. For the sake of freedom and liberty, let's focus on restoring means, instead of struggling over restricted outcomes.