Psychoeconomics: globalization, markets, crisis
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But we need these calculations more for the psychological, intuitive, sacred prompting of a very important year in the turning point of the crisis of 1929-1933: 1940 arrives.
To confirm the reasonableness of a similar conclusion, let us examine the chart of change in these years of unemployment in the U.S. –
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/US_Unemployment_1910-1960.gif
The total number of unemployed in 1933 reached 17 million people, which was a quarter of the country’s entire workforce. So how can this year be considered the year the crisis ended?
But in 1939, qualitative reforms began in the U.S. economy and the pre-crisis level of industrial production was reached. However, American economists themselves are better able to speak about this. “Government policy adopted after the Great Depression gave birth to a new economic order… During the war, government expenses reached an unprecedented level. The country utilized all of its production capacity and hired practically all working-age Americans. And although most of its energy was directed at satisfying military needs, the total level of production met the requirements of the society. By the end of the war most Americans who had lived through it found themselves in a more lucrative condition than before the war, and the Great Depression, undoubtedly, was over.” (see: [1], pp. 28-29).
A profound meaning is to be found in these words. What is full employment of the population, a full workload of industry? This is a time when resonators and domain experts are at the center of attention and everyone depends on them. Previously much, if not all, depended on “knocking out” orders, and on the system of selling the manufactured product (social motivators sell), on the preferences on the part of the government (the social motivators likewise tackle those), etc. During the war, in a period of full occupation and a guarantee of almost automatic sale of what was produced, the professional skills of those who can produce, namely the professionals and domain experts, come to the foreground.
A similar periodization of the Great Depression coincides with the opinion of many leading contemporary American economists: 1929-1939. This is important, since in acknowledging the analogy between the Great Depression and contemporary processes in the economy, it is psychologically easier and more scientifically precise to approach designating the date of end of the recession (?) that began in 2008.
Thus, the crisis, which it is common to designate as the crisis of 1929-1933, in fact stretched to the beginning of World War II. For the U.S. this was a crisis in the system of socioeconomic relationships, which usually precedes the accession to power of the resonators.
It is similar to the crisis in Rome during the reign of Nero, and to the crisis in the U.S.S.R. at the beginning of the 1990s, and to hundreds of similar crises which have passed, are passing, and will pass into history with the appearance of the third-generation elite in combination with strengthening the hysteroidal personality traits in workers and the economically active population, and when it is not possible for this elite to manage the system of socioeconomic contradictions by understanding the essence of what is taking place and adopting preemptive decisions. The defensive reactions of the elite or those who imitate them become an impediment on the path of responsible reforms. This is further exacerbated by the fact that upon departing from the historical stage, the third-generation elite is not in a condition to change its psychotype in the immediate situation and capture the leadership from the resonators or simply from sensibly thinking people.
This is one of the reasons that the successful elite should know how to change its psychotype to its opposite, in a pendular way. This is necessary for following oscillatory changes of the population’s psychotype and successfully managing them also through psychological mechanisms and through personal example, and not simply through reasoning or military strength. Since, when the psychotype of the elite does not “click” with the psychotype of the basic mass of the populace, the elite is simply dethroned. Naturally this process is preceded by that of the elite losing their usefulness for the people and their control over surplus production and financial flows.
In crises of this type the role of the hysteroid personality increases sharply. This manifests itself in multiple facets.
First, in changing the motivational base of making decisions from the main subjects of economic activity (excluding resonators). The motives of economic behavior become more short-term. The role and significance of the emotional component grows. The irrational component in motivation grows.
Second, the growth of defensive reactions when making decisions. People to a smaller degree than usual begin to go along with the arguments not of dispassionate contemplation, but emotional impulses, the impulses of the unconscious.
Third, as a rise in contradictions between the conscious and unconscious, which makes people’s behavior illogical and complicates managing them by means that usually provide a good effect in a relaxed atmosphere. In this way it is a stressful situation – it is not clear what specific people’s reactions will be. Hence, beyond the framework of a given crisis, the assessment of the measures taken from today’s point of view may radically depart from that offered by participants of the given process.
Fourth, managing people typically requires emotional intervention, psychotherapeutic methods on the government scale. In this regard, the management decisions and behavior of Franklin Roosevelt during the crisis do not seem illogical at all. He would have needed to manage hysterical people with appropriate methods.
Roosevelt found himself in a situation in which exiting the crisis would have been without the support of the soundly thinking elite. This is a fact that Franklin Roosevelt himself acknowledges, speaking directly to the nation and blaming the Washington advisers for their incompetence. But this his adversaries would also admit in describing the atmosphere that had formed in government institutions and Roosevelt’s retinue. Could anything really have been done with the hysterical elite? And Roosevelt did about as much as he could. He prevented the bloodshed that had previously accompanied the shift of the third-generation elite. But he could not stop the elite from making sometimes unthinking decisions. Thus, the destruction of food products at a time when people were hungry was clearly an illogical step, aimed at average Americans, while protecting the interests of merchant princes and the banks that gave them credit. And Roosevelt talks about this frankly.
The elite did everything the way the third-generation elite had done for centuries before this. It did not change its psychotype, it did not increase production efficiency, but rather increased the degree to which it exploited its subjects. And the elite made a decision to eliminate food products. This decision came to fruition not during Roosevelt’s rise to power, but under Herbert Hoover. Roosevelt could not do anything about this. But he did the main thing – he did not allow bloodshed and created the conditions for a new elite to transition to power gradually. Ultimately, here the war “helped”. Authority at the beginning of the crisis of 1929-1933 was with the elite, the Federal Reserve, the bankers and the wholesale merchants. This power remained with them after the crisis, but more realistic people came into power. And some knew how to become more moderate after what had happened. A certain part of the elite was able to change its psychotype. In the period after World War II, the U.S. was already being managed by the first-generation elite.