Whole-Economic-Human— A Response

John Elder, a long time friend, wrote a comment to our post—Whole-Economic-Human: The Next Marketplace Paradigm—

This is our response.

My concern with Game Theory is that it is almost always take place in an unnatural environment — i.e. a prefabricated, academic, experiment-structured environment — and I say almost because I don’t know if any situation wherein a spontaneous exchange between participants is truly spontaneous as it might occur outside the game theorists lab.

So the problem is — does Game Theory really reflect what actually can take place out in the world and the marketplace?

 In the current debate over waterboarding, for example, those who support it point to the Army’s training use of it in order to pre-condition soldiers, should they be captured, what they might expect. This is the same experiment-structured environment because the soldiers are not in enemy hands, they know they will not die, they know they are being exposed to torture techniques for their own good. All well and good.

But what happens when the enemy really wants to kill you and may do so even if you give them what they want?

I’m not suggesting the training should be stopped, just contextualized and not generalized as a true measure of what to expect in the real un-structured occurance.

Our objective is to infuse elements into the overarching description of commerce that are real in the non-experimental world: feelings, fears, hopes, envy, delight, deceit, reward — all that which makes us the humans that we are and is at play, mostly unconsciously when we go out into the world and especially when we go out into the market place.

Just go to this Wikipedia page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory

about Rational Choice Theory and you’ll find formulas that look more like physics formulas than something representing day-to-day human beings.

As academic economic theory elevates these formulae to such a high a status, their view of the marketplace is equally as abstract and devoid of what actually happens in actual real lives.

As ex-therapists our framework is the internal life of sellers and buyers. That is as much a part of economics as anything, perhaps even more important than formulae, and traditional economics keeps the inner life of people as far at a distance as it can.

It’s time for a joining.

 Because It IS All in the Connection,

Judith and Jim

To deepen your appreciation of co-creativity, care, consideration, and community, be sure to get your copy of our new book The Heart of Marketing: Love Your Customers and They Will Love You Back (Morgan James Publishing, May 2009)