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FOREWORD

I would like to introduce this book with the following text written by Jim Williams of the Williams Inference Service based in the USA.

Paradigm

‘The word, paradigm, comes from the Greek word paradeigna. It means pattern; how you see reality.’

Dr Steven Covey said that a paradigm is the way you see the world:

‘It’s your worldview. It comes out of your frame of reference. If you really want to make significant improvements – huge, quantum increases – change your frame of reference (your paradigm). If you want to make minor improvements, then change your behaviour or your attitude.’

The metaphor Dr. Covey uses is a map. A traveller to Chicago is given a map of Detroit that is mistakenly labelled ‘Map of Chicago’. After several attempts to find his customer, he phones complaining that he can’t seem to get oriented. The customer gives him advice – ‘Try harder. I can sense that you are giving up. Change your behaviour.’
With renewed vim, the traveller drives twice as fast and gets lost twice as fast. Again, he telephones. The customer gives him more advice-‘Get a positive mental attitude.’
He still has the wrong map. Conscious work on his behaviour and attitude will not help until he makes a paradigm shift closer to the reality of Chicago.

Worldviews are dangerous when change makes them inappropriate. So many paradigms of the industrial age are now obsolete because we have entered the electronic information world. So many financial paradigms have been changed because of Financial Deregulation in the 1980s.
Extreme capitalism has given enormous wealth to the few, but democracy gives votes to all. It is inevitable that if overall wealth is not increasing and the few are not paying for votes, the world’s democracies will become more popularist.

• What does this mean in respect of the change from capitalist economic policies?
• Can capitalist countries control their capitalists?
• Will the 1st world countries be able to afford to house and feed the poor and employ the unemployed?
• Is it the beginning of the end for 1st world dominance?

New worlds need updated maps and different economic theories. That’s where I come in.

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