Re: who/what is to blame

["Marasigan . Vicente" <vic@pusit.admu.edu.ph>]

On 30 Dec 1998, Roberto Verzola wrote:
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> I do think though that it is very important to determine WHAT caused
> the fiasco. This list is in fact devoted towards trying to pinpoint
> what we call the flawed mindsets which led to the fiasco, so that we
> can correct them as we confront the crisis. 
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My octogenarian mindset has this flaw, namely, that this present
generation, like the Titanic, can no longer change course rapidly
enough to avoid the iceberg completely. But there will be some
survivors and these are still in grade school or high school.  They
must now be taught more mathematics and computer engineering and
economics and - yes - morality. (Morality sees the corporate gain-max
mindset as flawed.)  By 2030, our young people will be in executive
positions and they can begin rebuilding the global economy on more
intellectual and moral foundations.

(For more details, please go to the GKD mail archives and command its
search engine to look for the 16 occurences of the word "lonergan",
the name of one man I know who studied the flawed mindsets that
prevailed in the 1929 fiasco called the Great Depression and kept at
it to his death in 1984.  These 16 GKD posts failed to attract
interest, and I admit I now have a one-track mind about mindset
remediation.  It is about time that Lonergan's constructive and
wholistic insights be translated into a networking and interactive
computer program for facilitating collaboration at making global
decisions. A simple computer game can perhaps be constructed for our
grade-schoolers to learn economic decision-making without ending in a
recession or a depression or a crash.)

I just came back from scanning your interdoc-y2k 105.  I agree with
most of the points you make.  I hesitate on what you call
"quantification fetish."  I certainly prioritize quality over
quantity.  So do mainline economists.  But Lonergan saw how their
quantification of economic parameters left much to be desired because
such quantification has now become extremely complex.  But with
present high-speed computers with capacity for interactive networking
among decision-makers, I have hopes that our young computer geniuses
now in grade school will outsmart us octogenarians 3 decades from now.

Vicente Marasigan