The

Principles

Global
Social
&
Economic
Interdependency

Michael Byrnes

The Q Principles | i
ii | The Q Principles
 The

Q
Principles

Global
Social
&
Economic
Interdependency

Michael Byrnes

The Q Principles | iii

 © Michael Byrnes, 2008
michael.byrnes@gmail.com

iv | The Q Principles
 Contents

Rationale & Vision of Change  1

The Evolutions of Economics  3
Lessons from Nation-building  13
Global Crises, Global Solutions  15
The Threat to Democracy & Democratic Capitalism  20
No Longer Victim, the Freedom to Invent our own Futures  21

Principles of Interdependence  23
Rise of Individualism & Authentic Identity  24
Concept of Interdependency  29
Balancing Wealth & Responsibility  32
Quantum Value & Interdependency: Vision  35
Quantum Value & Interdependency: Transition & Process  61

Our Human Nature: Livelihood  71

About the Author  73

Appendix A  75

The Q Principles | v
 Rationale & Vision of Change

The Q Principles outlines the philosophical, economic, and operational underpinnings to

a new form of global economics and social interdependence. If Adam Smith provided the
framework for such paradigms as division of labor and national economies, and if John M.
Keynes provided the framework for debt-based international development and government
intervention in the affairs of local and cross-border markets, and if Milton Friedman provided
the framework for free markets (unrestrained by governments) which recognized corporations
as ‘artificial citizens’ and that markets themselves (rather than governments) were the more
natural determinants of moral and ethical behavior—then this paper explores the more
organismic quantum-level potential within a new form of individual and community self-
restraining capitalism which seeks to democratically balance the benefits of wealth with the
responsibilities of social interdependence on a global scale.
This paper is based on the author’s larger work, Hands & Brains Unbound: Revealing the
Illusion of World Order & the Revolution Ascending. The larger work explores two general
themes: firstly, a bleak assessment is made of geopolitical systems of world order via the
author’s nine-year on-the-ground case study of nation-building1 and its failing economic
consequences in Bosnia-Herzegovina; and secondly, two alternative, geoeconomic-based
international development models are presented in both philosophical and economic terms.
Herein, the social, economic, and philosophical observations and concepts originally
explored in Hands & Brains Unbound shall be expanded and explained for more general
audiences. Where the larger work was a complex series of empirically-based arguments
regarding the geopolitical nature of world order, The Q Principles more directly presents
the essential vision and possible road map for any future implementation of a new global
socioeconomic model.
From a particular point of view, several of our economic, environmental, even political
foundations appear no longer to be capable to sustain effective control—and hence, power—
over increasing parts of the global populations. Whether the profound global challenges
impacting us all are defined in terms of environmental sustainability, resource supply, or wealth
gaps between rich and poor, the global nature of the challenges are now clear and unavoidable.
It is precisely this global impact of environments, supplies, and economics which provides
us all with a seemingly insurmountable task: to find a sense of commonality or universality
throughout exceptionally diverse social, political, and economical communities. To only
briefly highlight the growing litany of crises global communities are now facing:
• Limitations of energy resources
• Climate change & ecosystem security
• Food and water shortages
• ‘Baby boomer’ burden on pension funds and health care systems
• Disarray of financial and banking systems
• Severe imbalances in world trade values
• Widening gap between rich and poor
• Burgeoning global gray market and organized corruption activity
• Increasing nation-state failures

1 Nation-building refers to the process of constructing or structuring a nation using the power of the state,
particularly foreign states (bilaterally, or multilaterally). This process aims at the unification of the peoples within the
state so that it achieves social, economic, and political stability and sustainability. Nation-building is considered a ‘soft
power’ tool of the interstate system, and utilizes various forms of tactics to assist a state achieve self-sustainability,
such as World Bank/IMF lending, the use of diplomacy to impose various reforms, and the like.

The Q Principles | 1
 However, not all people may agree that the above challenges are so severe so as to warrant
some type of dramatic change to existing social, economic, or political systems. To view only
three examples of how divergent opinions and agenda impact decision-making processes (and
these examples will indeed bear relevance to this paper’s presentation of a new form of global
economics and social interdependence):
Firstly, relating to environmental security, national leaders such as Václav Klaus, President
of the Czech Republic, view policies being proposed to address global warming are not
justified by current science and are, in his view, a dangerous threat to freedom and prosperity
around the world. In his book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles, President Klaus argues that the
environmental movement has transformed itself into an ideology that seeks to restrict human
activities at any cost, while pursuing an impossible utopian dream of a perfectly “natural”
world. The supposed threat of human civilization against a fragile Earth has become an article
of faith, especially in the realm of global warming activism.
“The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity at the
end of the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st century is no longer socialism,” writes Klaus. “It
is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.”
In June of 2008, the United States Senate was forced to shelve negotiations for another
year on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, which would regulate carbon dioxide by
setting a cap on emissions and allowing emitters to trade carbon allowances. Most Republican
senators questioned the reality of human-caused climate change or ignored the climate threat
entirely and repeated the conservative party’s talking point that the bill would raise gasoline
and electricity prices for the consumer and manufacturer. A National Journal poll in June 2008
found that only 26 percent of GOP Congress members, while 95 percent of Democrats believe
“it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the earth is warming because of man-made
pollution”.
Secondly, relating to financial markets, many view the crisis presently engulfing the U.S.
housing market and its associated credit liquidity shortage (which have also impacted much
of the European banking sector) as mere ‘market adjustments’. Whilst millions of Americans
are struggling with mortgage payments and foreclosures, coupled with a apparent recession
(which some view as being potentially similar in global impact to the Great Depression of the
1930’s) now looming throughout the U.S. and other global markets, former U.S. Senator Phil
Gramm (and a vice-chairman of UBS Investment Bank, a financial services company based in
Switzerland) famously decried:
You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession. We have sort of become
a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of
competitiveness, America in decline.

And thirdly, relating to nation-building, in April 2008, Richard Holbrooke, chief architect
of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement and a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations,
wrote in an opinion piece, Lesson from Dayton for Iraq, that the ‘federalism’ styled government
infrastructure established in Bosnia-Herzegovina would serve as a good model for Iraq.
Many diplomats and aid organization personnel throughout the international community
mirror this positive assessment of the ethnic-based governance framework now in place in
the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Republika Srpska ethno-political entities. One of the
major reasons this positive assessment of Bosnia-Herzegovina appears to be shared is due to
the fact that the ethnic killings have ended—and this lack of killings, then, becomes one of the
primary benchmarks of success. Yet, if one were to look under the surface of this fairly limited
definition of success, it would be discovered that Bosnia-Herzegovina, and many nations like
her, is economically, socially, and politically, a failed state.
The nuances of nation-building and the day-to-day economic development of states such
as Bosnia-Herzegovina are most likely not well understood by many. But this example of
divergent opinions and agenda is important to briefly explore in relation to conceptualizing a
new form of global socioeconomic interdependency. From an economic perspective, the per

2 | The Q Principles
capita GDP of Bosnia-Herzegovina, even after the international community’s US$ 7 billion in
aid over the past 13 years (the largest international aid funding in per capita terms than any
other nation in human history), is only US$ 3,240—roughly 35 percent lower than the US$
5,000 minimum needed for sustainability (as determined by OECD). With an unemployment
rate of over 45 percent, more than 37 percent of the Bosnia-Herzegovina economy is comprised
of gray market2 activity. Corruption is simply the norm for essentially the entire population
of Bosnia-Herzegovina. School teachers sell textbooks and passing grades, and politicians sell
everything from real estate to product distribution rights. A dangerous and resilient nexus has
formed between governments and organized corruption networks and has become entrenched
throughout the entire Balkans region. Ethnic cleansing is continuing—economically—as
ethnic groups force each other from specific neighborhoods and commercial property. From
a human perspective, in the earthy reality of the day-to-day, most Bosnians are trapped in a
non-functioning state and economy explicitly orchestrated by organized crime networks. For
those that have not already left their home soil, the day-to-day in Bosnia is not democracy,
nor is it society, but has been reduced to mere survival of the individual lost in a jungle of
corruption and still-continuing ethnic cleansing. For a more detailed assessment of the
nation-building process in Bosnia-Herzegovina, see Case Study of the Balkans3 (Byrnes, 2008,
and previously published in the Geneva Post Quarterly, November 2006).
As we attempt to conceptualize a new form of global socioeconomic interdependency,
it is important to understand how developing states have in the past reacted to participating
in global economic markets, and how we may learn from previous mistakes that may have
occurred.
It is because our essential definitions of success and failure, right and wrong, even
conservative and liberal are so exceptionally diverse, that to gain consensus around any
presentation and implementation of alternative ideas about global economic and social systems
is profoundly challenging. Thus, this paper must clearly and soberly declare as its conceptual
starting point to even consider a new form of global economics and social interdependence
the following five personal and professional influences:

1  The Evolutions of Economics

Our present economic systems should be viewed not as static and permanent institutions
established with some pre-determined and everlasting sense of purpose, but rather as an
evolving series of short-term responses to shifts in local and world affairs.
Economics version 1.0
From our earliest beginnings of western civilization, the mainstream formation of wealth
was controlled by elite landowners, monarchs, and religious institutions and their leaders. As
the great plagues spread throughout Europe, Asia, and the Middle East throughout the 14th
to 19th centuries—reducing human populations by 30-60% in regions—the serfs, or slaves,
that survived these waves of plagues commanded increased rights, including the right to sell
surplus food production. The largely agrarian and surplus trading economic systems lasting
to the mid-19th century might be referred to as Economics version 1.0.
Economics version 2.0
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776), bolstered by the Industrial Revolution (late-18th to
mid-19th centuries), established the rationale that political economies bound and strengthened
the international power of nation-states4. Smith formed the three-tiered foundation of free
market economics: division of labour, pursuit of self interest, and freedom of trade. Economists
and social scientists have long debated the benefits and drawbacks of the particular concept
of division of labor. Clearly, the major benefit of division of labor is that production can be
organized more efficiently, which then increases the corporation’s margins of profit. As will
2 Trade of legal products-services through unofficial or unauthorized distribution channels.
3 www.scribd.com/doc/3457238/Case-Study-Hands-Brains-Unbound-v1-1-41308.pdf
4 The concept of nation-states was itself a newly emerging phenomenon, resulting from the Westphalia
Treaties of 1648, which largely removed the Catholic Church from direct power on the state level and internationally.

The Q Principles | 3
be discussed in greater detail later in this paper, a major drawback of division of labor is that
people (employees) are expected to fit neatly into a corporation’s ‘pigeon hole’, rather than the
employee being viewed as a greater vessel of
experiential and imaginative value. It is also
within this Economics version 2.0 that the
‘limited liability company’ was introduced
(generally attributed to the German law
of 1892, authorizing the Gesellschaft mit
beschrnkter Haftung, or GmbH). The
limited liability company (LLC) is a hybrid
business structure that is a cross between
a partnership and a corporation. Under
an LLC structure, business owners are
protected from suffering personal liability,
and profits and losses are passed directly
to owners without taxation. The LLC, as a
corporate organization structure, was introduced in large part because access to investment
capital was exceptionally limited. In modern economic markets, however, access to capital
is no longer limited—yet, large portions of the global markets maintain the outdated LLC
structure. The limited liability company remains to this day the preferred organizational
structure of wealth generation—its almost exclusive purpose to generate and protect wealth
as opposed to balancing the benefits of wealth with the responsibilities of social wellbeing and
sustainability.
Economics version 3.0
In 1936, John M. Keynes published his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,
which directly challenged the economic paradigm of the version 2.0 era. In the foreword
to General Theory, Keynes argued that “the
theory of aggregated production, which is the
point of the following book, nevertheless can
be much easier adapted to the conditions of a
totalitarian state than the theory of production
and distribution of a given production put forth
under conditions of free competition and a large
degree of laissez-faire.” Indeed, Keynes well
understood the greatest threat to capitalism was
totalitarianism (then on the rise throughout large
portions of world populations, in part due to the
intolerable desperation caused by the global
Great Depression). Thus, Keynes established
the rationale that government intervention
(rather than exclusively free markets) could best
develop internal and cross-border economic
markets so as to maintain aggregate demand and
stable employment conditions. Consequently,
the Bretton Woods system (the World Bank Destitute pea pickers in California, mother of seven
which provides debt-based funding to nation- children, age thirty-two, during the Great Depression in the
states and the International Monetary Fund 1930s. Dorothea Lange, U.S. Farm Security Administration,
U.S. Library of Congress.
which sets foreign currency trading standards)
was established to facilitate multilateral relations.
State governments then implemented waves of production subsidies and protectionist import
tariffs which were designed to bolster trade within geopolitically-defined ‘friendly’ states.
Internally, consumption amongst the private sector was amplified by the large-scale utilization
of credit.
4 | The Q Principles
 Beginning in the 1970’s, Milton Friedman and other monetarists pushed back slightly the
notion that governments should directly influence the fundamentals of internal and cross-
border markets. Although the U.S. Federal Reserve system and European Central Banks
began to limit their intervention efforts to primarily controlling the volume of currency
circulating throughout the markets, Friedman’s essential vision of unrestricted markets was
largely debased by western governments which limited the use of regulatory oversight within
internal markets while often expanding protectionist measures with respect to cross-border
markets. This has allowed the corporate sector to operate largely with impunity (internally
and internationally), evading whenever possible any larger responsibility to the community or
society at large. Friedman ideologically placed the corporation above direct accountability to
the moral standards of society by arguing the company was an “artificial person”. Friedman was
strongly committed to the notion that government as a self-protecting institution was largely
incapable of making strict moral distinctions and that the “invisible hand” of the market itself
would more naturally adapt to moral distinctions of society (this concept will be addressed
later in this paper). In short, by relegating the responsibility of determining moral distinctions
to the invisible hand of the market—without at the same time, providing the tools to the
producing and consuming private sector to determine and adapt to an increasing list of moral
distinctions—has resulted in a ‘win at all costs’ and ‘winner take all’ social and economic
system throughout western markets. This ‘absolutism’ (some refer to this as social Darwinism)
can be heard and felt in Senator Gramm’s sentiments that “We have sort of become a nation
of whiners...”, or in the George W. Bush administration’s aggressive stance to not intervene
to help protect the environment (its open opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, the Lieberman-
Warner Climate Security Act, and its resolute dilution of the Environmental Protection Agency,
etc.); rather, these sentiments explicitly support the notion that companies should be free
to generate wealth no matter the cost to society. To the absolutists, there are no excuses
allowed at all; all individuals must not only work to gain wealth, but must also possess the self-
righteous ego to exploit any and all levers of power so as to accumulate wealth for absolute self-
preservation and self-aggrandizement. As found in any form of extremism, the self becomes
the center of the universe.
The expansion of the military-industrial complex throughout the Cold War era essentially
provided a massive institutionalization of the Keynesian model of ‘aggregate demand’—
where governments and militaries became the
largest consumers, which thus provided security
and a long-term budgeting outlook to economic
markets on a global basis. This globally militaristic
economy (and its congenital geopolitical
apparatus), then, provided societies on a global
scale a certain definable foundation for security,
growth, and common understanding of ‘the
rules’ of world order (including distinguishing
the makers and followers of the rules of world
order). The companies which directly innovated
and produced for the military-industrial complex
enjoyed the benefits of long-term contracts,
disinclined regulatory oversight, high profit
margins, and government-brokered international
sales. In return, employee-taxpayers received job
security and rising salaries. The middle class had
finally broken free of the dismal depravity of the
industrial urban centers and come into its own.
The American Dream of the middle class (not Propaganda poster, c. 1950, expressing optimism for the
“American Dream” & affordable housing for the middle
only for the U.S., but also for much of war-torn class.
Europe after World War II): affordable housing.
The Q Principles | 5
 With the rise of suburbia would come our dependence upon the fossil fuels burning
automobile and a constant increase of living standards. The mantra of the times: war is good
for the economy. Even today, the role of government intervention in the affairs of U.S. states’
economics cannot be underestimated. As an example, according to a 2008 study by the
University of Alaska’s Institute of Social and Economic Research, a third of Alaska’s jobs can
be traced to federal spending, and specifically, these funds originate from military-specific
expenditures. Relating to private sector consumption, consumer debt-based consumption
expanded exponentially due to the secure growth outlook maintained by the Cold War.
Although investment capital was increasingly available, the limited liability corporation first
established in 1892 remained the norm for corporation organization throughout this Keynes-
Friedman hybrid era. By the end of the Cold War era, publicly listed shareholding companies
had evolved into ‘branded’ tools for wealth creation within financial markets often with
greater focus than from consumer markets. This can be illustrated by looking beyond our
day-to-day assumptions relating to shareholding. Firstly, to view the notion of active versus
passive ownership of corporations: when Berle and Means published their landmark study, The
Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932), there were, almost literally, no institutional
owners of stocks. Nonetheless, they warned that:
The position of ownership has changed from that of an active to that of a passive agent,
(with the) ‘owner’ of industrial wealth left with a mere symbol of ownership, with the
power, the responsibility, and the substance of ownership transferred to a separate group
(the corporate managers) in whose hands lies control.
Institutional investors as a group now own about 66 percent of the total of U.S. stock.
Individual owners, who held virtually 100 percent of all shares when Berle and Means’ book was
published in 1932, now constitute just 34 percent of the total. Sea change is an understatement;
we have truly witnessed a revolution in stock ownership since the 1930’s. Furthermore, a
remarkably small group of institutional managers now dominate the ownership market; the
largest 100 managers alone hold 52 percent of all shares (Bogle, 2005). This relative handful
of leviathan investors have the genuine power to exercise dominion over the corporations they
own. And this causes even the definition of passive ownership to change: that even though
institutional investors as a passive ownership bloc may not exercise direct influence in the
day-to-day decisions of a corporation, their very unity as a bloc and their control over massive
amounts of capital does substantially influence the corporation’s decision-making process.
Yet, individual investors rarely impact a corporation’s decision-making process—
specifically because individuals operate as individuals rather than as a bloc of common
interests. Furthermore, when society as a whole is motivated to influence some form of change
within a specific company or even industry, society tends to utilize the institutions of special
interest groups and government regulations rather than of collective action via shareholding
blocs. As will be discussed in greater detail later in this paper, one of the reasons for individual
shareholders not self-organizing and operating in ‘activist blocs’ was, in the past, due to a lack
in organizational and communication tools. The emergence of the Internet (and its various
tools and applications), however, introduces a potent tool for individual shareholder self-
organization and activism.
The actual ground-breaking shift in individual shareholding—which provided the
individual with the financial and operational capacity to daily participate in the affairs of
financial markets—occurred on May 1, 1975, when the New York Stock Exchange abolished
fixed commissions. This set the stage for the emergence of discount brokerages and for
individuals to afford the costs of regular stock trading. However, quite rapidly, these individual
shareholders became ‘re-institutionalized’ into managed mutual funds (again managed by the
same financial institutions already exercising increasing power over the corporate sector—
now with even greater amounts of money supplied by individuals).
Only 10 years ago, few European households invested in stocks and most of their financial
wealth was held in the form of liquid, safe, but low-return assets. By the end of the 1990s,
however, a much larger proportion of investors now hold stocks in their portfolio. About
6 | The Q Principles
 50 percent of households in the U.S. and Sweden, and over 33 percent in the UK invest
directly or indirectly (through mutual funds and other managed investment accounts) in
the stock market. In the Netherlands, Italy, France and Germany the proportion is between
15 and 25 percent.5
Table 1.  Institutions have one single investment motivation, whereas individuals have many.
Institutions Individuals
Profit seeking
Tool for pension benefits
Impact on taxation
Profit seeking
Age
Education
Social priorities

Finally, the questions become: if companies are already passively owned, then who are
the passive owners and what are their motives? Can the composition of passive owners shift
from institutions to individuals acting in activism blocs? Can these individual-based activism
blocs undertake new motives? Will individual shareholders possess the will, discipline, and
tools to balance their desire to seek profits (and thus provide for the sustainability of aggregate
demand) with the responsibilities to protect social, moral, and environmental sustainability?
These questions will serve as the philosophical beginning point for this paper’s exploration
into establishing a new form of global socioeconomic interdependence.
The era from World War II to the end of the Cold War—spanning from the devastation of
the Great Depression, to the rise and fall of the military-industrial complex, and then to shifts
in corporate shareholding structures—might be referred to as Economics version 3.0.
Economics version 4.0
The end of the Cold War in late 1989, however, spontaneously burst the global
militaristic economic bubble. Quite suddenly, the long-held market leaders of the military-
industrial complex found themselves without the security of limitless long-term government
contracts. As an advisor to the U.S. National Economic Commission (1988-1989) and the
U.S. Congressional bill H.R. 101 (1989)6, I had the fortune to witness both the government
conceptualization and the corporate denial that the military-industrial ‘gravy train’ was coming
to an end. In personal discussions with various defense contractors, corporate executives
resorted to absolute denial that their long-held government contracts were going to rapidly
decline. Over the following five years, as an example, Martin Marietta (now Lockheed
Martin), then located in Littleton, Colorado, was forced to dismiss about 5,000 employees (50
percent of its Littleton workforce) specifically due to reduced government contracts and its
corporate inability to convert its business model to innovate and produce for civilian markets.
The importance of the dramatic reduction of the military-industrial complex in relation to
macroeconomic systems should be clear: firstly, the Keynesian principles of governments
maintaining ‘aggregate demand’ was weakened by the ending of the Cold War; and secondly,
the question arises how to then maintain aggregate demand from civilian production and
consumption.
And this is precisely where local, national, and global markets now find themselves:
because civilian markets are erratic and short-term focused (one day, consumers focus on
luxury items such as iPhones® and holiday travel, whilst the next day, they focus on utility
items such as housing purchases and medical care), the corporate sector is presently operating
in alternating states of denial and short-term reaction rather than being focused on long-
term growth and sustainability. This, then, begins to reveal how utility and luxury were once
5 Household Stockholding in Europe: Where Do We Stand and Where Do We Go?, Luigi Guiso, Michael Haliassos,
Tullio Jappelli, 2002.
6 The Defense Economic Adjustment Bill (H.R. 101), sponsored by Representative Ted Weiss, established
to convert military facilities for civilian use by having civilian plans blueprint-ready before military cutbacks were
announced as a consequence of the ending of the Cold War. Particular focus was given to personnel retraining,
relocation assistance, income supplements and job search programs. The bill also served as an explicit warning that
defense contractors would also need to convert their business models to increasingly serve civilian markets.

The Q Principles | 7
defined in military, government, and national security terms, as opposed to our still emerging
definitions of utility and luxury in civilian terms. As something so simple, integral to society,
yet profoundly misunderstood as is the concept of maintaining aggregate demand, the world
now finds itself attempting to somehow survive the ‘perfect storm’ of a multitude of global
crises (ranging from mortgage and financial markets collapses, environmental sustainability,
dwindling resource supplies, or widening wealth gaps between rich and poor). Keynes
intellectually struggled with how to stem capitalism’s most profound weakness: democratic,
consumer-driven markets simply have exceptional difficulty to maintain aggregate demand
specifically because consumer-driven markets are erratic and ever-changing. Keynes well
understood that authoritarian societies were vastly more capable of maintaining aggregate
demand, and the Cold War era military-industrial complex was as close to authoritarianism
as the democratic West could reasonably become. This is why a nation such as China can
now begin to directly challenge the long-held economic dominance of the West. In less than a
generation, China has lifted 300 million people out of poverty. Just as western Europe and the
U.S. gave life and standing to the middle class, so goes China and its peoples. Equal to the West’s
post World War II economic revival, China (and to somewhat lesser extents, Russia, India,
and Brazil) has accomplished a remarkable feat
of human determination... and authoritarian
Capitalism’s most profound management. In a recent television news series
weakness: democratic, by U.S. journalist Ted Koppel, focusing on
consumer-driven markets simply China’s brand of capitalism, he observes: “the
hungry masses will go to any distance and do
have exceptional difficulty to anything to improve the lives of themselves
maintain aggregate demand— and their families”. In China, wasting resources
specifically because consumer- is not a consideration; everything is recycled:
driven markets are erratic and bricks, mortar, steel, etc. The Chinese
ever-changing. government is determinedly focused on raising
living standards and generating wealth (even if,
along the way, a few civil liberties are denied).
Some may call the Chinese government a benevolent dictatorship, but consider this: some
may define western democratic governments, either behind the scenes or even blatantly, as
beholden not to the economic efficiency and growth of the whole of their respective national
economies, but to the profitability and accrual of power of elites and their special interests.
And socially, as we now attempt to endure a nexus of multiple global crises in this
post Cold War state of Economics version 4.0, societies are beginning to sense that moral
determinants of human and corporate behavior are requiring some new type of definition and
some new type of institutionalization. Over the past few years, concepts such as Corporate
Social Responsibility (CSR) have grown in importance, and yet serious questions are only just
beginning to surface regarding the social responsibility of the individual consumer (should
individual consumers be held responsible to reduce their own carbon footprint or dispose
in a safe manner non-recyclable products, as examples). And these emerging sensations
from society regarding moral attitudes and priorities merely exacerbate the challenges of
maintaining aggregate demand in any kind of fashion that allows democracy to operate more
efficiently, yet not cross the line into authoritarianism. How does a society, which has virtually
known nothing but progress via the expansive utilization of credit, shift from ‘living beyond its
means’ to ‘living within its means and the means of the environment’?
If we were to step back and view the blurring lines between society, the corporate
institution, and the geopolitical underpinnings to western governance, we might see the
geopolitical system and its inherent logic of world order is attempting to play ‘catch-up’ to, and
infiltrate itself around the progressively stateless nature of economics. At stake in the centuries-
old geopolitical contest is nothing short of the politics of identity, territoriality, and hegemony.
Some economists and social scientists are beginning to consider Adam Smith’s concept of
nationalized economies (and perhaps, too, the concept of the nation-state itself) soon being
8 | The Q Principles
replaced by stateless economies and smaller, interdependent communities. At the forefront of
the stateless nature of economics is a core matrix of issues, including the transnationalization
and collaborative stakeholder composition of innovation, production and consumption. The
infamous spark that obviously ignited the astonishing rise of the stateless economy is the
Internet—which some recognize as emerging into its second generation and are now calling
it ‘Web 2.0’ or the ‘Hypernet’.
The collaboration process now enabled by Hypernet technologies is already driving the
creation of new forms of organizations (corporate and social) which think and act using self-
organization rather than hierarchy. Hierarchical organizations invariably are slow to respond
to issues so as to continually protect the personal interests of those that occupy the hierarchy.
Global markets, however, because the immeasurable inputs originating from multiple
demographics, industries, communities, etc., increasingly place two types of pressure upon
the corporate organization: (a) changes in the market now occur so rapidly that corporations
need to respond in ‘real time’, which does not allow for hierarchical self-protectionism; and (b)
because it is now the consumer which drives what and when goods and services are produced,
the corporate relationship to the consumer is no longer of simple merchant, the corporation
and the consumer are bound into a reciprocal relationship—which again does not allow for
hierarchical self-protectionism. Thus, the essential question arises: to whom is a corporation
loyal? Its shareholders? Or global consumers (who may also be global shareholders)?
Table 2.  Internet versus Web 2.0 - a Hypernet empowering collaboration (source: Digital 4Sight)

INTERNET (1.0) HYPERNET (2.0)

Convergence – common enabling Divergence – fragmented
Technology
platform interlocking Webs
Access PCs, dial-up as needed Smart devices, wireless, always on
Scale Millions of end-points Billions of end-points
Penetration Sporadic, intrusive Ubiquitous, quiet computing
Computing Universe Cyberspace Physical space
Networks Managed, hub-and-spoke Ad-hoc, peer-to-peer
Networks of data, global digital
Information Islands of data
nervous system
North American, European and limited
Demographics Global, cosmopolitan
Asian-Pacific

Self-organizing systems provide several advantages over hierarchical systems in certain

circumstances. Firstly, they are more adept at managing complexity and handling anomalies
and exceptions as a consequence of intelligence and decision-making power being distributed
throughout the system, enabling innovation and production to occur organically. Even the
rationale inherent to the act of power distribution vastly liberates the conventions of egoism
and self-protectionism to the new conventions of market reciprocity and interdependence.
Secondly, like the Hypernet itself, self-organizing systems are capable of defending against
local failure: if one ‘node’ in the network fails, the system itself will not collapse. Finally, self-
organizing systems are more scalable—they tend to grow exponentially rather than linearly,
and thus freer to contract when needed. And as will be addressed in greater detail later in this
paper, it is the very scalability of self-organizing systems (its ad hoc growth and contraction
patterns) that confronts the labor force with a double-edged sword. On one hand, innovation
and production is made more fluid and responsive to the market (the consumer), whilst on
the other hand, the consumer (which is also the laborer) is subject to ‘boom and bust’ swings
in the expansion/contraction of labor necessities. As Charles Leadbeater notes in We-Think,
modern economics is beginning to blur the line between corporations and society:
The way we organise ourselves in the future will not just be an extension of the industrial
era, corporate organisations we have become used to — with their hierarchy, targets,
divisions, civil wars and myriad humiliations for workers and consumers alike. A growing
band of organisations in the future will resurrect ancient ideas and meld them with new

The Q Principles | 9
 technology. One such resurrection is the idea of the “commons” a feature of village life for
centuries: a common resource, like a wood or grazing land, held in loose, self-regulated
shared ownership for villagers to graze their flocks on.
Thanks to low cost technology many more consumers can become producers at least some
of the time. Good ideas will come from amateurs as well as professionals. Innovation will
not just flow down a pipeline, from experts working in their labs and studios, to passive
consumers waiting in the line. Innovation is a social, cumulative and collaborative activity;
ideas will flow back up the pipeline from consumers and they will share them amongst
themselves. That is why the next big thing will be us: our power to share and develop
ideas, without having to rely on formal organisations to do it all for us.7

Figure 1.  Emerging Types of Online Communities (source: ZDnet)

Social Networks: Individual Private Communities

Organization

Grassroots Communities: Bottom-up, Autonomous

Organization

Customer Communities: Top-down, Jointly-Owned

Amidst all the global crises now unfolding, corporate and geopolitical institutions are
coming under increasing pressure to adapt to these emerging trends of self-organization,
collaborative networks, and the meteoric rise of individualism. The dawning realization that
individualistic self-determinism and ad hoc communities possess a self-evident nature in and
of itself is now forcing global civilizations to contemplate the notion that the objectives of
geoeconomic interdependence essentially contradicts the objectives of geopolitical world
order. Depending on how global civilizations cope with their seemingly inevitable transition
to statelessness—and due almost entirely to the very anarchic nature of an infinite number of
minds and values inherent in the act of innovation—world order is closer than ever before to
imminent collapse. We stand at the threshold.
Thus, we come to understand that post Cold War Economics version 4.0, itself, is fraught
with multiple and diverse definitions, objectives, and transitional challenges. Version 4.0 is
presently unstable—vulnerable to so many pressures.
Capitalism & social well-being: contradictions or mutually beneficial?
Definitions of economics have evolved over time to include human activity, advocating a
shift toward the modern view of economics as a study of man and of human welfare, not only
of money. Alfred Marshall in his 1890 work Principles of Economics wrote, “Political Economy
or Economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of Life; it examines the part of
the individual and social action which is most closely connected with the attainment and with
the use of material requisites of well-being.” This welfare definition was still criticized as too
narrowly materialistic. It disregards, for example, the non-material aspects of the services of
a firefighter, an artist, or a discoverer of a life-saving drug. Not surprising, each individual
political process and state system of governance possesses diverse views of how to balance
these material requisites of well-being. The U.S., in particular, tends to adhere to a capitalism-
7 Charles Leadbeater, We Think: mass innovation, not mass production, 2006 (www.wethinkthebook.net).

10 | The Q Principles
based logic that is somewhat extreme in its priority to protect the wealthy class, whilst
placing a much less priority to protect the disadvantaged classes (as a recent example, the
devastation of the South Gulf States from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, embarrassingly exposed
a substantial ‘neglected’ class of America’s population). Many of the European and Asian states,
however, tend to weight the same capitalism-based balance more toward the protection of the
disadvantaged (often at the expense of corporate growth). More subtle aspects of capitalist-
leaning states still struggling with finding the right balance between wealth and welfare can
be seen in the various debates relating to education, health care, insurance, criminal justice,
taxation, gun control, mass transportation, and even tobacco. Many non-capitalist-leaning
states (generally, autocratic and theocratic states), tend to structure the largest portions of
their civilizations upon an imbalanced hybrid of idealism and materialism (weighted toward
idealism).
Since the late 1940s—even as we have not yet completely understood the previous
examples of balancing wealth with social welfare internal to states, nor more fully reconciled
our material selves with our ideal selves (and consequently, the tender balancing of religion
and secularism)—another and exceptionally composite layer of social well-being has been
evolving: global human values (external to states, and impacting internal state policies of
others, the basis to Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis). Extreme examples of
this might relate to issues of genocide, human trafficking, militant extremism, or organized
corruption specifically sanctioned by state governments. But more subtle examples might
relate to issues of child labor, women’s rights, crime and punishment, environmental protection,
normalization of corporate and consumer laws and policies (product safety standards and even
consumer product returns), stem cell research, even education (as corporate supply chains
expand globally, human resources require a common basis of education, knowledge, and
experience). Weighted against these issues of global human values, however, is the Westphalia
Order notion of state sovereignty.
Developing states in particular are often not supportive of these global normalizations
due to the fact these normalizations tend to economically benefit the power states, whilst
limiting or even diminishing the developing states’ capacity to compete in global markets. As
to be expected in a geopolitical world ordering system, this reluctance to normalize economic
and social processes on a global scale, most often leads governments of developing states to fall
back on conventional ‘us versus them’ tools and emphasize their specific differences in cultural
identity and hide behind the flag of state ‘protection’ by:
• Undertaking oppressive measures so as to retain control over the state’s limited wealth
generation capacities;
• Becoming victim to organized corruption networks filling existent vacuums;
• Becoming victim to civil unrest and/or militant extremism; and
• All of the above.
Even power states, themselves, are often loathed to be held accountable to the growing
list of global human values. Two example of this might include: firstly, particularly U.S.
citizens (but citizens from other power states as well) are reluctant to curb their output of
global warming emissions (such as personal vehicle use and manufacturing energy use); and
secondly, particularly the U.S. is reluctant to be held accountable to international standards
of criminal law, specifically relating to issues such as crimes against humanity, etc (the U.S.
consistently refuses to ratify the Rome Statute and to be held accountable to the International
Criminal Court, as an example). Sovereignty is the justification. And yet, increasing
populations of developing states rapidly destroy vital forest reserves (generally, to expand
agriculture) or construct office and residential buildings with unsafe materials and standards
(and often, after a natural disaster, the International Community—via citizens’ tax dollars—
provide humanitarian and reconstruction funds to these communities). Or even more cruelly,
a government leader from a developing state undertakes a policy to deprive a certain segment
of the state’s population (generally, ethnic-based) of certain human rights. Sovereignty is the

The Q Principles | 11
protection. Modern history is replete with examples of multilateral failures, from the inability
to stop genocide in Rwanda, to the inability to enforce the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty
with respect to states such as India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea.
International relations and geopolitics have for centuries limited the scope of sovereignty
within political and militaristic terms, and have not systemically included the precepts of
economic sovereignty of a peoples. These economic precepts have been left to the heretofore
‘invisible hand of free markets.’ But as the modern era demonstrates, free markets are not
really free, and never really have been. They are heavily influenced and even manipulated by
larger geopolitical objectives of world governments (and their exploitations of material and
human resources) as well as the largely internal balancing of wealth of the elites and welfare
of the masses.
In the theory of economic history associated with Karl Polanyi, an expansion and deepening
of the market is followed by political intervention. The expansion of market is the first
movement and the societal response the second movement. Polanyi described this
process as the Great Transformation, the title of his famous book. An institutionalised
balance as a dialectic outcome of these two processes can be called a Great Compromise
(Hettne, 2001). The Bretton Woods system that emerged after the Second World War was
in fact such a compromise. Using a Polanyian term, John Ruggie (Ruggie, 1998) labeled
this system embedded liberalism, more precisely defined as transnational economic
multilateralism combined with domestic interventionism.8
However, as various multilateral institutions (such as the U.N. and Bretton Woods
system) have attempted to address diverse instances of inter-civilizational compromises,
the primary missing ingredient has largely been the unifying precepts of mutual beneficence.
Value generation, national and transnational, is no longer an exclusive right and responsibility
of a state government (the traditional interlocutors of the geopolitical process). The new
interlocutors—the interlocutors that the Bretton Woods system and the International
Community are ill-prepared to assist—are individual private sector corporations and the
new knowledge-based labor these corporations employ, relative to both large and SME
corporations as well as the emerging ad hoc collaborative communities, and all transnational
in their potential.
The greatest challenge facing Economics version 4.0: how to initiate a new Great
Compromise. How to maintain aggregate demand and thus stable economies; whilst at
the same time, balancing the moral determinants of society, including those of personal
responsibility and environmental security. As we consider the profound global challenges
impacting us all—defined either in terms of economic security, environmental sustainability,
resource supply, or wealth gaps between rich and
poor—the global nature of these challenges most
likely predetermines for us that these issues cannot be
managed within presently existing geopolitical systems
and institutions. The inherent objective of the politics
of geography is to create and defend distinctions of one
nation over another; to balance power between states as
opposed to seeking interdependencies between all states.
The global challenges now facing the entirety of the
human race will ultimately require a radical new form of
global economics and social interdependence—focused not on division or even geography,
but on diverse unity and the uncharted territories of our human imagination.
The intention of The Q Principles is to present the philosophical, economic, and operational
vision to one possible variation of a future Economics version 5.0—a variation specifically
conceptualized to provide a global process for diversity to organismically experience unity.
This version 5.0, then, is potentially the foundation upon which a new Great Compromise
can be initiated.
8 Global Governance in the 21st Century: Alternative Perspectives on world order, Edited by Björn Hettne and
Bertil Odén, 2002.

12 | The Q Principles
 2  Lessons from Nation-building
For nine years beginning in 1997, I had been a sometimes witness, sometimes participant
in the birthing process of Bosnia-Herzegovina. From this unique and often unsettling
perspective, I was provided the rare opportunity to peel away a multitude of layers of skin from
the systems and logic of world order—just at the moment in which world order impregnated
this post-conflict nation-state. It is in these critical first years of nation-statehood that
weaknesses, even disfigurements of world order first writes itself into the heritable code of
a civilization. No matter how objective my intentions were, I have to admit that over the
nine years, I clearly came to identify with the ‘common Bosnian’. My friendships were almost
entirely with local mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters—most of them living in or near
abject poverty, or struggling to keep their businesses afloat, or plotting to escape to a ‘normal’
country. It is from the perspective of the common Bosnian that the sometimes grotesque,
sometimes threatening, offspring of the international community’s nation-building efforts
can be truly seen for what it is: a failure.
Consequently, I could arrive at no other conclusion than: the conventional tools of
a geopolitical process of world order are not simply failing, they are actually empowering
organized corruption and massively ineffective economies on a global scale. And this can
only serve to limit or even destabilize more developed markets in the years to come. Thus,
the relevance of the nation-building case study to envisioning a new form of global social and
economic interdependency is multi-fold:
Misconceptions of ethnic conflicts
To many in the general public, when they view weakened states such as Bosnia-
Herzegovina, Iraq, and others, they often perceive it is the ethnic differences that apparently
divide populations. On the surface, it appears that Serbs, Croats, and Muslims—or Shias,
Sunnis, and Kurds—are entangled in some fundamental moral conflict of ideals. But when
one looks under the surface of these assumptions, it is found that more material aspects
influence ethnic conflicts. From Interventions & Civil Conflicts (Patrick M. Regan, 2002):
fractionalization is not an inherent aspect of a diverse society, but rather a function of the
relative distribution of resources. When resources are maldistributed in ethnically diverse
societies there will generally be higher levels of fractionalization. From State Failure Task Force
Report (University of Maryland, 2000): ethnic war remains the most common form of armed
conflict within states today. For countries where certain ethnic minorities are subjected to
significant political or economic discrimination, the odds of a new ethnic war were more than
ten times as high. Lower levels of material well-being are associated with a greater risk of
ethnic war. International isolation also increases the risk of ethnic war. Indeed, there may
exist fundamental civilizational differences between peoples (Shias and Sunnis; Muslims
and Christians, etc.), but these differences are tangibly magnified by economic imbalances
between peoples. Relating to Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as the 1991 break-up of Yugoslavia,
tensions between local peoples was not the inherent reason for conflict, but rather the massive
internal economic collapse that occurred post Cold War was the primary stimulus for inter-
ethnic tensions.
Misconceptions of democratization
As demonstrated by the University of Maryland State Failure study as well as this author’s
case study of Bosnia-Herzegovina, simply installing a democratic or partially democratic regime
is unlikely to produce political stability. Elections themselves do little to ensure the stability
of democracy. In fact, the major democratic institution found to be most strongly associated
with instability in partial democracies is some form of executive or legislative elections. What
seems to distinguish the more stable democracies from the unstable partial democracies is
not the occurrence of elections but the presence of legislatures that are genuinely effective at
making laws and constraining executive authority. In 2001, Timothy Garton Ash observed
the following about the West’s vulgar interpretation of democratization:
But one of the things that went wrong in the 1990s was what I call by analogy with
The Q Principles | 13
 vulgar Marxism, vulgar Huntingtonism. I mean by that the extraordinary influence and
misinterpretation of Sam Huntington’s book The Clash of Civilizations to be taken as a crude
cultural determinant: if you had Western Christianity, the Renaissance, the Reformation,
the Enlightenment, you are predestined to democracy; if you had Eastern Christianity
or Islam, the Ottoman or Russian empires, you are doomed to dictatorship. This crude
cultural determinant seems to have been a pernicious influence on a lot of Western policy
approaches to the region.
The dominance of global gray markets
As the consistent rise of global gray market activity and the growing nexus between
governments and organized corruption networks clearly demonstrates, unless and until all
states possess both the will and capacity to participate in global economic markets, western
markets will increasingly be in jeopardy from massive economic losses as well as civil unrest
and militant extremism. As the following table illustrates, global losses to the gray markets
in 2003 totaled an astounding US$ 12.7 trillion—roughly one-quarter of the world’s total
production output.
Table 3.  The global dominance of gray markets (source: Schneider, 2004)
% GDP in US$ Billion
% of Total
2000 2003 Gray Economy (2003)
Central & South America 34.2 41.5 1,748 14
Africa 33.9 41.2 793 6
Transition states 31.5 37.9 1,281 10
South Pacific Islands 31.7 33.4 3 0.03
Asia 20.9 26.3 2,553 20
Communist states 19.4 21.8 1,636 13
OECD states 13.2 16.8 4,748 37
Unweighted Avg 33.6 35.2 12,762

State failures & the role of economic participation

At present, 107 states are economically considered failed states (less that US$ 5,000
per capital GDP). What have conventionally been viewed as geopolitical ‘power states’
(generally, OECD states), these power states previously influenced and maintained the larger
elements of international relations and world order through a subtle mix of hard and soft
power tools—soft power tools primarily being the economic influences of multilateral IFIs
(International Financial Institutions) and specific nation-building exercises. However, as a
consequence of the post Cold War cessation of the maintenance of aggregate demand and
the further decentralizing aspects of the modern rise of the SME role in economic markets,
multilateral IFIs and nation-building have proven largely ineffective as soft power tools. In
short, without effective soft power tools to work in concert with hard power tools, OECD
states will experience increasing difficulty in maintaining world order.
Two practical examples of this soft power inefficiency: (a) recent market expansion
activity by the Chinese and Russians have often resulted in cross-border investments and
lending programs that purposefully circumvent the Bretton Woods institutions (and their
various governance policies); and (b) the Bretton Woods institutions possess little to no
involvement in the global mass movement of capital relating to private philanthropy and
workers’ remittances. According to the Index of Global Philanthropy 2008:
• Private giving and investment now accounts for over 75 percent of donor countries’
entire economic dealings with developing nations;
• Official Development Assistance (ODA) is now a minority shareholder in the growth
and development of poor countries;
• In the U.S., private philanthropy, along with remittances, to developing nations
constitutes four and one-half times official aid abroad.
As a consequence of the growing ineffectiveness (and privatization) of soft power tools
originally designed to assist in the maintaining of world order, an ever growing list of nation-
14 | The Q Principles
states are vulnerable to fundamental economic failure, rampant corruption, and adverse
influences from external states. Of particular concern, in socioeconomically weak states, gray
market economies have virtually replaced legitimate markets. These economically weak states
are not only threats to their own internal security, they are direct threats to regional and even
global security. In modern, post Cold War terms, it could be argued that international relations
and world order are no longer objectives which can be facilitated or coerced by power states.
Rather, it can be ultimately observed that civilizations arise and decay as a direct consequence
of their essential economic—not political—relevance to the larger world.
The lessons from nation-building quite clearly demonstrate that conventional tools of
geopolitics are no longer effective in maintaining aggregate economic demand or fundamental
world order. With respect to local and international economic markets, if government or
military-industry sectors no longer maintain aggregate demand—then, who or what is to
undertake the responsibility of maintaining aggregate demand so as to provide some form of
stable footing for socioeconomic sustainability and world order?

3  Global Crises, Global Solutions

As the preceding sections have illustrated, the crises that now challenge our environments,
economic markets, and societies, are by definition: global. As millions of homeowners in the
West are increasingly threatened
with foreclosures, and as hundreds
of millions of global unemployed go
without food, a question arises: are
the homeowners and the starving—
continents and cultures apart from
each other—actually related in their
struggles?
As ‘globalization’ occurs, neither
corporations, markets, communities,
nor even governments can operate
in isolation from one another. A
243,353 U.S. foreclosure filings in one month (April 2008) polluted river system from one region
can finally be seen directly impacting
water resources and health standards in another region. Shifts in housing markets in one region
can finally be seen directly impacting credit resources and unemployment gains in another
region. And yet, we continue
to frame solutions to complex
and global challenges within
our local contexts.
At the Internet site
perotcharts.com, Ross Perot
(U.S. businessman, founder
of EDS and PerotSystems,
and U.S. Presidential
candidate, 1992 & 1996)
introduces the reader
(intended for U.S. readers) to
a slide presentation to warn
“the American people must
wake up and face the reality
that promises made in the Eating Dirt to Survive
past will soon bankrupt this A2008. market vendor sells mud cookies at the La Saline market in Port-au-Prince, Jan. 25,
The cookies are made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening. (Ariana Cubillos/
nation.” AP Photo)

The Q Principles | 15
 The United States faces large and growing budget deficits mostly due to an aging population
and rising healthcare costs. Unless we solve the problems caused by entitlement spending,
there will be little money left to do anything else in the future. Over time, our standard
of living, our national security, our standing in the world and the value of our currency
could all be threatened. The sooner we confront these issues, the better. This presentation
explains the problems.
The slide presentation is 35 slides in length; 31 of the 35 slides illustrate and define
present-day trends in U.S. fiscal policy, ranging from showing trends in government spending
and aging populations to defining the differences between mandatory and discretionary
spending. Slides 32 and 33 provide a summation of the earlier slides, and warns: “Current
fiscal policy must be changed: the status quo is not an option”.
Figure 2.  Slide 9 of 35 of perotcharts.com

Slide 34 states: “There are no easy answers. Ultimately, there are five options. None of
them are pain-free.”
• Restructure existing entitlement programs
• Raise payroll taxes and/or income taxes
• Borrow more money each year to make up the shortfall
• Cut discretionary spending even further
• Enhance economic growth
The final slide 35 states, in part, “Without solving the entitlement problems, there may
be no resources to meet new challenges that do not even exist today”. As much as Ross Perot
may certainly be concerned about the state of the U.S. economy, his framing of the challenge is
faulted in four profound ways. Firstly, Mr. Perot spends 34 out of 35 slides attempting to explain
what he believes is the crisis now facing the U.S. economy, but only 5 bullet-points providing
what he believes are the ‘options’ available to American citizens. This seems both deficient and
indolent. Most people are certainly already aware a crisis is worsening; what people need are
answers. Secondly, by explaining the crisis is most heavily influenced by entitlement spending
(social security, medicaid, medicare) seems to minimize in the extreme any society’s essential
social well-being simply so that a budget can be brought back into balance. Thirdly, the only
real solution which addresses both the short-term and long-term sustainability of economies
is one which addresses the long-held Keynesian problem of maintaining aggregate demand
for the private sector. And fourthly, the solution that finally addresses maintaining aggregate
demand, by definition, will not be limited to U.S.-driven aggregate demand, but rather, will

16 | The Q Principles
include globally-driven aggregate demand.
Former U.S. Vice President, Al Gore, has over the past several years undertaken a personal
crusade to warn the global community about the mounting dangers relating to climate change.
Yet, in mid-2008, Mr. Gore presented a specific challenge not to the global community as a
whole, but to only the U.S.: to commit to producing all U.S. electricity from renewable sources
like solar and wind power within 10 years in order to end its dependence upon carbon-based
fuels. Again, Mr. Gore’s well-intentioned strategy is profoundly ineffective in two major ways:
firstly, any dramatic shift in how any particular society produces and consumes energy is
certainly going to require substantial costs (corporate and personal investments in renewable
technologies), and unless other nations equally agree to convert to alternative forms of energy,
and bear the transition costs, the U.S. would be at a substantial economic disadvantage and
less able to compete in economic markets. Although the Gore plan is a worthy and honorable
moral solution, and would certainly contribute to the environmental security of the planet, the
U.S. economy would be in tatters and this would also impact global markets quite negatively.
Secondly, global warming is not something which can be resolved by one nation or region; it is
a global problem requiring global (and rapid) solutions. And this exposes a central challenge
with respect to global issues: how to stimulate diverse societies, cultures, and governments to
undertake a collective stand in addressing these global challenges?
Political and regulatory methods
Conventional methods of managing social change on a national basis in democratic
societies is for the general public to appropriate to government the fundamental responsibility
to impose some form of regulatory premise for change (such as imposing taxes on carbon
usage, or tax deductions on alternative energy investments). Elected government officials,
however, are most often loathed to be the bearer of bad news, and seek to delay for as long as
possible any negative consequences associated with societal change. Furthermore, whether
the issues relate to renewable energy or seat-belts and automobile safety, the corporate sector
is well-experienced in applying its special interest pressure upon elected officials, further
delaying substantial changes so as to maximize profits. Autocratic societies, however, can
be much more efficient in designing and implementing society-wide change. China and its
hosting of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing has dramatically altered the debate regarding the
positives and negatives of centralized and authoritarian governance. In what scientists are
calling the single largest attempt ever made to improve air quality, scores of heavily polluting
factories were shut down and some 2 million vehicles were removed from roads across Beijing
and a substantial portion of northern China. In the democratic West, this draconian measure
(no matter its intentions for the greater good) could not have occurred. With respect to
governments (democratic or autocratic) and their approach to stimulating economic growth,
the following two general observations can be made:
Firstly, relating to global markets, even if a particular government was committed to
stimulating economic growth by, as an example, reducing regulatory oversight and tax
burdens—ostensibly allowing corporations to better compete in the global markets—other
governments are likely to intervene and place import restrictions and other market protectionist
measures into the markets. Western markets have for several generations been benefited by
their adroit use of global negotiating institutions, such as the World Trade Organization and
the Bretton Woods institutions. But with the rise in economic and negotiating power of China,
India, Russia, Brazil, and others, the conventional power of the West has been profoundly
weakened. As the recent (2008) collapse of the Doha round of trade talks has illustrated,
China and India were instrumental in the trade round’s breakdown. Charlene Barshefsky, the
U.S. trade representative in the Clinton administration, observed the inefficiency of the WTO
model:
The model of this kind of ‘global round’ is simply no longer viable. They are irrelevant.
You have trade surging around the world—in financial services, information technology,
telecommunications—and everything gets held up for years because you are arguing about
farm products.
The Q Principles | 17
 As mentioned earlier in this paper, China and Russia have increased their economic
activity throughout many regions of the world (particularly in search of oil and other scarce
resources), and as a direct consequence of their generally untied investments, an increasing
number of nations are no longer compelled to blindly accept the regulatory oversight which
comes attached to World Bank and IMF dealings. New players often bring new rules, and
often bring no rules. A recent opinion piece by David Brooks (Brooks: Missing Dean Acheson,
August 1, 2008), Brooks succinctly defines the problem of global order in the post Cold War
era:
Ever since the Berlin Wall fell, people have looked at the way Harry Truman, George C.
Marshall, Dean Acheson and others created forward-looking global institutions after World
War II, and they’ve asked: Why can’t we rally that kind of international cooperation to confront
terrorism, global warming, nuclear proliferation and the rest of today’s problems?
The answer is that, in the late 1940s, global power was concentrated. The victory over
fascism meant the mantle of global leadership rested firmly on the Atlantic alliance. The
United States accounted for roughly half of world economic output. Within the United
States, power was wielded by a small, bipartisan, permanent governing class.
Today power is dispersed. There is no permanent bipartisan governing class in Washington.
Globally, power has gone multipolar, with the rise of China, India, Brazil and the rest.
This dispersion should, in theory, be a good thing, but in practice, multipolarity means that
more groups have effective veto power over collective action. In practice, this new pluralistic
world has given rise to globosclerosis, an inability to solve problem after problem.
Secondly, relating to government stimuli focused on job creation, it is clear that democratic
governments have few options available. In the past, governments have utilized their militaries
and government administration agencies as near endless job creation resources. In a post
Cold War world, however, oversized militaries and wasteful bureaucracies are increasingly
unjustifiable as well as unsustainable. At present, government subsidization of various
industries appears to be the only remaining tool of governments to directly influence economic
markets. But this form of government intervention in the affairs of economic markets seems
to contradict the fundamental notion of free markets.
Free market methods
Conventional free market methods of managing social change have been simply to allow
‘price’ to determine the course of markets—and hence, society. If carbon-based fuel climbs to
a price that begins to become uncomfortable for consumers, then four conventional options
are up to the consumer to decide:
• The consumer can consume less.
• The consumer can increase his/her personal wealth by working harder, longer, and/
or smarter so that fuel again becomes affordable.
• The fuel producer increases output so as to lower prices (this might include as the
George W. Bush administration advocates, to open oil and gas drilling into previously
designated environmental protection zones).
• Entrepreneurial stakeholders can develop and bring to market alternatives which
possess the pricing capacity to compete with fuel-based markets.
Certainly, reasonable persons might very well agree that all four of the above options
possess some amount of reasonableness and veracity. Certainly, with respect to reducing
consumption, consuming less fuel is a worthy objective. Many of us needlessly drive our cars
to the local grocery just down the block, when we could as easily walk or bicycle these short
distances. But what about manufacturing plants? If they reduce their fuel consumption, they
produce less for us to consume, and that reduces employment opportunities (which causes
another set of crises relating to unemployment).
With respect to working harder, longer, or smarter, if the issue of fuel price was replaced
with, say, holiday prices, it might be reasonable that individual consumers could more

18 | The Q Principles
seriously weigh their priorities (work, work, work... or play, play, play?). But fuel is prioritized
by society differently than any personal well-being which might be gained via physically and
emotionally relaxing during a holiday. Work (which most often requires some type of fuel) is
generally valued more highly than personal well-being. And when these two often conflicting
social objectives of work and well-being are specifically presented to societies for hard choices
to be made, social and personal conflicts naturally arise. The conventional free market option
to work harder, longer, or smarter is, by definition, an indirect and after-the-fact method to
managing societal priorities and changes. Is it possible for society to more directly and with
intentional forethought negotiate societal priorities and changes?
With respect to increasing production output of such necessities as oil and gas, three
issues come to the fore: firstly, increasing production output does not produce immediate
impact throughout the market (price reductions)—years, perhaps decades are required for
the market to gain the benefits from increased production and for prices to finally be reduced.
Secondly, the issue of peak oil9 will ultimately require near total abandonment of carbon-based
fuels at some point in the near future. And thirdly, the notion that reduction of fuel price at
the expense of environmental protection and sustainability again raises the question of how
society can avoid being forced to make such stark choices as fuel price over environment, and
more directly negotiate societal priorities and changes.
Finally, with respect to market-based alternatives to carbon-based fuels, this option
certainly appears as the most forward-thinking and sustainability-focused of the four.
However, multiple obstacles face even this progressive option. Firstly, as the earlier example
of the military-industrial company, Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin) illustrates,
corporations are often loathed to alter their business models—even when faced with drastic
market changes such as reduced government spending or reducing oil and gas resources.
Martin Marietta then considered itself primarily a defense contractor; it would not then
consider itself a global private sector producer of aggregates, cement, chemicals, aerospace, and
electronics technologies (and thus, being forced to venture out into a much more competitive
private sector market rather than be content and secure with its less competitive government
contracts). In much the same way, oil companies have for generations considered themselves
merely oil companies, rather than the wider view of becoming energy companies. The stock
markets in particular tend to react negatively to any substantial shift in corporate business
models, considering lengthy lead-in times and seemingly unanswerable questions of future
consumption and pricing trends. Thus, a combination of denial, greed, ego, and stock market
pressures tend to discourage established market players to seek societal-changing business
models. Secondly, when faced with introducing into the markets alternative technologies and
business models capable of societal change and competing with conventional technologies and
business models, entrepreneurial stakeholders (smaller companies and/or forward-thinking
individuals) are at a serious disadvantage. Altering a society’s consumption habits of, as an
example, diet (low fat or fat-free foods), requires only a change of habit from the consumer;
dietetic food is still packaged and marketed in similar ways to non-dietetic foods. Altering a
society’s consumption habits of energy consumption, however, will require profound changes
throughout the entire supply and value chains operating within economic markets—ranging
from the redesign of automobiles to the redesign of transportation systems and even city
design. Logically, it becomes difficult to conceptualize that small entrepreneurial ventures
can amass the financial and political resources to influence such far-reaching societal change.
When applied to global and major societal foundations, conventional free market methods
to manage societal change—if viewed objectively—have proven largely ineffective. Their
overall ineffectiveness, however, should not be misinterpreted as being irrelevant or unworthy.
As will be shown later in this paper, any new alternative to managing societal changes will likely
contain the best portions of various options. The larger question becomes: how to integrate
9 Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum production is reached, after which
the rate of production enters terminal decline. If global consumption is not mitigated before the peak, a world energy
crisis may develop because the availability of conventional oil will drop and prices will rise—and as has been recently
demonstrated, the rise is both rapid and substantial.

The Q Principles | 19
multiple, diverse, and sometimes even conflicting options into a global process which provides
individuals, communities, and nations to effectively balance the essential market requirement
to maintain aggregate demand, whilst at the same time, to maintain the moral considerations
and diversity of any society?

4  The Threat to Democracy & Democratic Capitalism

As the examples utilized thus far in this paper have illustrated, democratic institutions
and methods as well as democratic capitalism itself remain as Keynes long ago observed:
Box 1.  The post-crisis method of change
The Cuban economy, heavily dependent
on economic aid from the Soviet Union,
suffered significantly following the end
of the Cold War. The nation lost half of its
oil imports, and 85% of its international
trade economy.
Blackouts were frequent in its oil-fed
electric power grid, up to 16 hours per
day. The average daily caloric intake in
Cuba dropped by a third.
Cuba began a slow recovery focused
not on finding new energy sources, but
on rejecting consumption in favor of
sustainable growth.
Local organic produce was grown
out of necessity, bio-pesticides and
bio-fertilizers were developed as
petrochemical substitutes, and Cubans
incorporated more fruits and vegetables
into their diets. Since they couldn’t fuel
their aging cars, they walked, biked,
rode buses, and carpooled.
Whether the issue is the Chinese communist
party implementing environmental reform
policies or Russian President Vladimir Putin
re-nationalizing oil companies from powerful
oligarchies, it can certainly be argued that
autocratic states have proven more effective than
democratic capitalist states in achieving larger
movements of societal change.
As Box 1 illustrates, when societies are
forced to react to dramatic shifts in market
economics, the societal changes can be both
abrupt and distressing. However, as Box 2
illustrates, when societies assume a proactive
and forward-thinking approach to managing
economic transitions, societal changes may
still be difficult, but they become much less
draconian and distressing for society at large.
Societal change within democratic states,
often inefficient in balancing aggregate
demand with the moral considerations of
society. Keynes’ original solution then in
1936 was to establish aggregate demand vis-
à-vis government intervention (which would
also play a leading role in managing the moral
considerations of democratic capitalism at
least on a cross-border basis via the Bretton
Woods institutions). Due to the post Cold
War era wide dispersion and multi polarity of
power, hegemonic institutions are no longer
realistic to consider. Autocratic states such as
China and Russia have shown over the recent
past that substantial societal changes are more
efficiently initiated and implemented (even
if considered draconian or impeding upon
fundamental human rights)—and thus they
have become competitive in global markets.
Box 2.  The proactive method of change
Sweden has assumed a world leadership
position by undertaking an ambitious
goal to achieve a completely oil-free
economy by 2020.
Motivated by climate change and rising
oil prices, the Swedish government says
it intends to replace all fossil fuels with
renewable alternatives before climate
change undermines national economies
worldwide and diminishing oil supplies
force excessive price increases.
In 1970, 77 percent of Sweden’s energy
came from oil, but by 2003 that figure
had fallen to 32 percent. Renewable
sources account for an average 6
percent of energy consumed by nations
in the European Union while renewable
sources supply 26 percent of Sweden’s
energy needs.
The people of Sweden are pioneering
solutions and setting an example for the
rest of the world to follow.

20 | The Q Principles
because of our dependence upon often archaic and lethargic institutions, is both difficult to
execute as well as a potential threat to the overall competitiveness of the democratic state
within international economic and political arenas. Thus, this is where democratic societies
and democratic capitalism now find themselves: on the edge between socioeconomic
deterioration potentially similar to the Great Depression of the 1930’s, and establishing a
radically different socioeconomic logic and process intentionally designed to be forward-
thinking and sustainability-focused. How might democratic societies and democratic
capitalism not merely survive, but reinvent themselves so that human dignity and curiosity
can be provided the best opportunity to flourish as a matter of choice rather than through
force?

5  No Longer Victim, the Freedom to Invent our own Futures

James Burke has spent a lifetime observing that civilizations erect, then maintain,
institutions and ritual around what they believe are certain ‘truths’ revealed by ‘knowledge’—
and these institutions and ritual serve the primary purpose to preserve conformity and
obedience within society. In his work, The Day the Universe Changed, Burke observes the
following:
We are what we know. And when knowledge changes, then, so do we.
One of the examples Burke uses to illustrate how civilizations change relates to Copernicus
and Galileo and their observations that the earth rotates around the sun, rather than the
converse as previously indoctrinated by the Ptolemaic-influenced Catholic church. Based on
the previous reasoning, the earth was at the center of a uniformly structured universe, and the
church had further reasoned this Earth-centric positioning was as a result of a divine plan, a
divine purpose—thus, Man’s ‘purpose’ of life was to see himself as the center of God’s orderly
creation, and act obediently to God’s Laws (with earthly authority centralized in the church).
But when the knowledge radically changed to reinterpret the structure of the universe as being
non-uniform, solar-centric, even random, the doctrines of the church specifically designed
to maintain conformity and obedience, as well as the church’s central authority, were in one
breathtaking moment challenged by the new knowledge gained through a telescope. But not
only was the institution of the church irrevocably altered by new knowledge, the very identity
of the human species changed: instead of being at the center of creation and the universe,
humankind was forced to adapt to the idea Earth was just one of billions of planets, the human
species was just one of innumerable species, and that it was surrounded by chaos. Burke makes
two relevant observations:
The way we view things now, comes from the past. Many of the institutions and attitudes
we have originated in the past—born of different answers to different questions, in different
times with different problems. But they continue to exist, still operate—modified, but
basically the same. Still affecting us, like living fossils. Even in a world of constant change
like ours, many of those systems that control, organize our view of things, the way we do
what we do—are outdated. So why do we keep them?
We are reaching the stage where it is not a matter of what novelty and change the future
will bring next—but what kind of future we care to invent.
In a similar manner, might we view the nexus of crises now facing the planet not as a
burden, but rather as a new opportunity to intentionally transform the very identity of the
human race away from its constant focus on the separateness of civilizations and our single-
mindedness of the accumulation of financial wealth, to a more organismic interdependence
between civilizations and to view our human selves not as tools of value, but value itself. What
kind of future do we care to invent for ourselves?
•

The Q Principles | 21
 The preceding pages have attempted to outline a fundamental rationale of why radical
changes to global socioeconomic foundations are important to consider. And although
civilizations have often reinvented themselves so as to survive into the future—change for
a specific purpose—might we also consider another reason for change: to simply consider
that if the ‘blackboard’ could be wiped clean, what type of social and economic system would
the human race truly desire? Thus, perhaps this is the real starting point to any imagining of
alternative global relationships: plain and simple curiosity.
Above all else, it must be said that humankind’s greatest honor is to somehow live
upon and with this Earth with, as Abraham Lincoln once hoped, the better angels of our
nature. The following sections will now outline and explain how global social and economic
interdependency can be achieved.

22 | The Q Principles
 Principles of Interdependence

We now stand in front of a clean blackboard, chalk in hand. If there might be a single
notion that could serve to allow us to consider the part visceral, part rational sketching of some
new form of social and economic interdependence which the human race as a whole could
truly find benefit and honor, that notion would have to be intention. Are we to sketch some
new version of a socioeconomic foundation based on the intentions of favoring or protecting
one group over another (whether national or ideological, or in retribution), thereby again
placing the focus of wealth in the weary arenas of conflict, control and power? Or is it possible
to sketch a new underpinning that forever escapes these old arenas, and provides a radically
distinct intention to global socioeconomic relations? Is it somehow practical to value wealth
not as the primary substance of economics, but rather us as the primary substance of value?
Adam Smith believed that while human motives are often selfishness and greed,
competition within the formalized space of free markets would tend to benefit society as a
whole by keeping prices low, whilst still providing an incentive for a wide variety of goods and
services. Thus, it could be said that Smith’s construct of free markets possessed the intention
to systemically compensate for often negative human motives. Karl Marx never trusted the
invisible hand of free markets to act as an effective counterbalance to negative human motives.
Since labor was viewed as nothing more than humiliated and exploited raw material for the
production of elitist wealth in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, Marx’s construct
of economic production possessed the intention to systemically counterbalance the elitist’s
motives (wealth) with organized labor’s motives (honor), and thus prevent the elitist’s
accumulation of capital becoming totally unrestrained. To Smith, free markets were to keep
the majority of society in a reasonable form of equilibrium. To Marx, social ownership was
the foundation for equilibrium.
Indeed, global and national economies have always experienced great ebbs and tides,
ranging from closer states of equilibrium within the West in the mid stages of the Cold War,
to massive concentrations of wealth within a small percentage of the national and global
populations just preceding the Great Depression of the 1930’s and now present in today’s
economy. Again, as Keynes observed and as history persistently demonstrates, achieving
wealth distribution equilibrium within the constructs of classical economics, seems nearly
unattainable unless governments intervene in some manner so as to maintain aggregate
demand. Thus, this paper explores the potential for a new construct of global socioeconomic
foundations to be envisaged possessing the following four intentions:
1. Instead of developing an economic system that presupposes humankind’s negative
motives which the system itself then attempts to compensate for these negative
motives, the first intention is to develop a socioeconomic foundation that directly
and clearly makes incarnate the life intentions of diverse societies (both noble and
disruptive)—thereby requiring these diverse societies to directly choose, a priori,
their larger moral and material intentions in advance of entering the market place.
Essentially, to place the burden of a preconceived sense of accountability directly onto
the shoulders of all peoples to balance, moment-to-moment, the benefits of wealth
generation with the responsibilities of sustaining social well-being and environmental
security. This new socioeconomic foundation is not an ideology of market and world
order to which all must conform—but rather is a tool to reveal the deeper intentions
of diverse societies, a translator of sorts.
2. Celebrating that the world is comprised of diverse cultures, societies, and economies,

The Q Principles | 23
 the second intention is to develop a socioeconomic foundation that inspires
vulnerable interdependence of livelihoods and peoples, rather than adheres to the
self-centeredness of separateness.
3. The third intention is that the incentive to innovate, produce, or consume does not
originate from some external source (access to inexpensive capital, government
subsidies, favorable tax or credit incentives, etc.); rather, the incentive originates
from within each one of us. We, not markets, could embody significance. Our
own personal senses of imagination and industry—coupled with our personal
responsibilities of maintaining our larger moral determinants—could be the guiding
force of any incentive.
4. The fourth intention is that local, national, and global economies are knowledgeably
and operationally capable to consistently adapt to ever-occurring market shifts, and
thus, maintain aggregate demand.
These four intentions, then, provide the starting point in exploring how the organismic
processes of global socioeconomic interdependence might be conceived and eventually
operate. First to explore: the individual.

1  Rise of Individualism & Authentic Identity

The rise of individualism

John M. Keynes served as the British treasury delegate at the post World War I Paris Peace
Conference ( January 1919). Although he was hand-picked by then British Prime Minister
David Lloyd George, Keynes was adamantly opposed to British and Allied policy being written
into the Treaty of Versailles which was placing so many demands on reparation that, in his view,
enforcement of the reparation process would lead to the economic ruin of both Germany
and Europe as a whole. He ultimately resigned his position and published The Economic
Consequences of the Peace (1919), in which Keynes correctly predicted that the staggering
reparations levied against Germany would goad that country into economic nationalism and
a resurgence of militarism. In portentous parallel, the principle of national self-determination
was first proclaimed by Woodrow Wilson at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, but it soon
became clear that this national right (“might makes right”) could and would be soon extended
well beyond nationalism and to ethno-cultural, even individualistic self-determination, and
this pragmatically troubled policy-makers of the day. Robert Lansing, then U.S. Secretary of
State, as an example, recalled his concerns:
The more I think about the President’s declaration as to the right of self-determination, the
more convinced I am of the danger of putting such ideas into the minds of certain races.
It is bound to be the basis of impossible demands on the Peace Conference and create
trouble in many lands. What effect will it have on the Irish, the Indians, the Egyptians,
and the nationalists among the Boers? Will it not breed discontent, disorder and rebellion?
Will not the Mohammedans of Syria and Palestine and possibly Morocco and Tripoli rely
on it?10
However, in the post Cold War era, the explicit separation of national citizen and corporate
employee and the ‘social citizen’ has now become quite blurred—due in large part by the
corresponding weakening of orthodox governance institutions and rise of individualistic self-
determination:
• Globalization. Demilitarization, transnationalization and supply-chain constructs
of corporations (meaning, an employee’s loyalty to nation, corporation, or self is an
often movable line, weakening formal State authority, particularly, but not exclusively,
in less economically stable regions). On one hand, if governments throughout the
West are often reluctant to impose formal regulation upon the corporate sector
(say, environmental protection regulations), then certainly, governments in less
economically developed states will find it exceptionally difficult to impose regulatory
10 The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Narrative, Robert Lansing, 1921

24 | The Q Principles
 restrictions upon the corporate entity responsible for creating much needed jobs.
On another hand, employees often and pragmatically side with the corporation so
as to maintain salary incomes, thus weakening the social and environmental fabric of
the ‘commons’. Indeed, in an August 2008 ABC News poll (U.S. media broadcasting
company), nearly two‐thirds of Americans now put a priority on “finding new
sources of energy” over improving conservation—a significant shift since 2001.
Furthermore, the demilitarization of economies exacerbates the long-standing
challenge of socioeconomic stability and sustainability relating to the production of
utility versus luxury goods.
• Collaborative networks. Semi-corporate and non-corporate ad hoc collaborative
innovation and production networks11 have produced what many refer to as Internet-
facilitated ‘stateless’ economies (meaning, loyalty is often given to a project or even
ideal rather than nation, corporation, or self—authority is generally shared within the
‘commons’). Obviously, but not exclusively, collaborative networks appear to operate
somewhat like a counterbalance to the emergence of self-interested individualism
and corporatism encouraged by globalization.
• Individual stockholding. As corporate stockholdings have evolved to include increased
individual participation from average citizens, the corporate institution is theoretically
vulnerable to event- and issue-driven collective action of individuals (although, to
date, this is still largely unrealized by the individual due to a lack of collective will and
coordination).
• Corporate & consumer responsibility. Increasingly, society (in the main, represented
by special interest groups) is growing stronger in its insistence the business sector
adopt ‘Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)’ obligations in exchange for the
consumer’s continued loyalty. CSR is, in the main, a non-legal obligation entered
into by individual corporations—the ethical obligation being the corporation agrees
to abide by sometimes specific and sometimes non-specific standards of ethics so
as to consider the larger interests of society by taking responsibility for the impact
of their business activities, in relation to its customers, employees, shareholders,
neighboring communities and the environment. Whilst conventional government
regulations attempt to legally compel businesses to abide by certain standards, many
legal loopholes to regulations exist, and thus CSR is generally a non-governmental
method to both fill these legal gaps as well as hold businesses accountable throughout
the transnational space where state-specific laws and regulations may not yet be
normalized (standardized). There are two sides to the responsibility partnership,
however: the business and the consumer. For some time now, consumers often
communicate via consumer surveys they want to be socially responsible when it
comes to their purchase of food, clothing, office supplies, and the like. But these
noble sentiments are often not reflected in their actual purchasing habits. In fact, a
number of corporations have seen their efforts to specifically innovate, produce and
market socially responsible products fall short to produce discernible market traction
because consumers failed to purchase them in any significant numbers. Consequently,
various corporations and public interest groups are increasingly working together to
encourage the consumer sector to adopt ‘Consumer Social Responsibility (CnSR)’
obligations in exchange for the business’ continued commitment to innovate, produce
and market socially responsible products. Thus, CSR and CnSR are modern era
tools which are progressively eroding sovereignty away from orthodox institutions
(governments and corporations) and aggregating sovereignty to individuals
(sometimes represented by special interest groups).
• Privatization of foreign aid. As mentioned earlier, private giving and investment
now accounts for over 75 percent of donor countries’ entire economic dealings
with developing nations. Obviously, this trend tangibly diminishes the orthodox
11 See Appendix A for examples of these collaborative networks.

The Q Principles | 25
 authority of the State in matters of foreign relations (politically and economically).
Increasingly, intervention in the economic and political affairs of developing states is
originating not from within the formal constraints of the Westphalia interstate system,
but from an often ad hoc and stateless reservoir of individuals and corporations. In
this privatized construct, who is accountable to whom?
• Globalization of gray markets and organized corruption networks. As mentioned
earlier, global losses to the gray markets in 2003 totaled an astounding US$ 12.7
trillion—roughly one-quarter of the world’s total production output. The impact
of this illegitimacy cannot be overstated; an increasing percentage of the global
population is operating in a morally unrestrained manner, no longer responsible or
responsive to community, state, and social considerations. Not only does this weaken
any remaining authority of the State, it strengthens the social Darwinism notions
of “win at all costs”. Further, as David Brooks observed: “multipolarity means that
more groups have effective veto power over collective action. In practice, this new
pluralistic world has given rise to globosclerosis, an inability to solve problem after
problem”.
We are beginning to witness in this modern era orthodox institutional holders of
authority and power diminish in their ability to maintain both political and economic order
(both nationally and globally), whilst at the same time, the individual and the corporation
becoming less exclusively dependent upon formal government institutions and both evolving
deeper and deeper into the self-centered fog of social Darwinist intentions. Undeniably,
Robert Lansing’s predictions have finally come true; self-determinism has indeed spread into
the uncontrollable fathoms of all peoples and their sovereignty-seeking minds. Three and
a half centuries ago, the Westphalia Order’s defining declaration of sovereignty to be held
exclusively within the nation-state is now, by its very inheritors living in this modern age, being
challenged by the tidal wave of individual sovereignty. Perhaps the unintended consequence
of self-determinism may very well be the individual becoming unresponsive to larger social
restraints and the unraveling of social order.
Although on one hand, the individual is progressively provided the ability to contribute
his/her economic value via a plethora of other options—from self-employment to ad hoc
collaborative communities, and from local to global markets—the individual, on the other
hand, rarely is provided the tools or process to consciously weigh the newfound benefits of
individualistic self-determinism with the responsibilities of self-restraint. These tools and
processes were in the past generally imposed upon society by governments (often because
there existed some ideological glue to society—a common national enemy, a common nation
goal, a common religion, etc.).
A substantial global shift has now occurred which challenges any and all governments
(democratic and autocratic) to consistently wield power without some form of national
enemy, goal, or religion to effectively solidify individuals into a common social direction. If the
choice is between anarchy and draconian methods used to maintain social and political order,
how will the world’s governments act in their choosing? Is the dynasty of geopolitical nation-
state governance now beginning to decay? And if so, what type of governance are we likely to
inherit, or even create for ourselves? Are we to revert to the economic stability inherent within
militaristic economies, and thus create new enemies simply for the sake of economic stability?
Is socioeconomic chaos something to fear or embrace? Before any alternative to geopolitical-
based governance for societies and individuals is introduced so as to better balance benefit
with responsibility, it is important to briefly view the concept of authentic identity.
Authentic identity
Politically, socially, economically, and perhaps even spiritually, much of humankind
has lost sight of its authentic identity. The second half of the twentieth century brought the
emergence of large-scale sociopolitical movements—Black Civil Rights in the U.S., ‘First
Nations’ indigenous peoples throughout North America, feminism as well as gay and lesbian

26 | The Q Principles
liberation throughout much of the world, for example—based in assertions of the injustices
imposed upon particular social groups. These sociopolitical movements are animated by and
promote a philosophical body of literature that engages questions about the nature, origin and
futures of the diverse identities being defended. Identity politics as a means of individual-to-
group organization is animated by certain social groups perceiving themselves oppressed by
either the state or society at large. Iris Marion Young, in Justice and the Politics of Difference,
1990, posits that the very identity of certain individuals makes them particularly vulnerable
to cultural imperialism (including stereotyping, erasure, or appropriation of one’s group
identity), violence, exploitation, marginalization, or powerlessness. Hence, the application
of identity politics purports to reclaim, re-describe, and transform the larger definitions and
practices of group membership.
Charles Taylor, in Sources of the Self: the Making of the Modern Identity, 1989, argues
that the modern identity is characterized by an emphasis on its inner voice and capacity
for authenticity. However, the politics of difference is caught in a paradox, as Sonia Kruks
observes in Retrieving Experience: Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics, 2000:
What makes identity politics a significant departure from earlier, pre-identarian forms of
the politics of recognition is its demand for recognition on the basis of the very grounds
on which recognition has previously been denied: it is qua women, qua blacks, qua
lesbians that groups demand recognition. The demand is not for inclusion within the fold
of “universal humankind” on the basis of shared human attributes; nor is it for respect “in
spite of” one’s differences. Rather, what is demanded is respect for oneself as different.
As William Connolly observes in Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political
Paradox, 2002, any claim to identity by exploiting the politics of difference cannot avoid the
self-made trap to organize itself around a constitutive exclusion:
An identity is established in relation to a series of differences that have become socially
recognized. These differences are essential to its being. If they did not coexist as differences,
it would not exist in its distinctness and solidity. Entrenched in this indispensable relation
is a second set of tendencies, themselves in need of exploration, to conceal established
identities into fixed forms, thought and lived as if their structure expressed the true order
of things. When these pressures prevail, the maintenance of one identity (or field of
identities) involves the conversion of some differences into otherness, into evil, or one
of its numerous surrogates. Identity requires differences in order to be, and it converts
difference into otherness in order to secure its own self-certainty.
The irrationality of identity politics, then, produces two consequences:
• What has been presented as authentic identity to the individual or group is in fact
already defined by its opposition as other, or nominal identity (acting or being
something in name only, but not in reality). Attempting to reclaim such an identity as
one’s own merely reinforces its dependence on its opposition, and further reinforces
an oppressive hierarchical organization of society.
• Any sociopolitical movement animated by its pronouncement of separateness so as
to somehow ultimately gain inclusion essentially confuses the concepts of uniqueness
and significance—and by so doing, minimizes its opportunity to contribute that
uniqueness and significance to the whole of society. This notion will be discussed a
bit later in the text.
Aside from highlighting identity politics and its irrational manifestations, the task here
is to peer below nominal identities so as to gain insight into the authentic or actual identity
of the person. Many individuals within a society often misinterpret what is and what is not
the cultural identity of their civilization and even their own personal identity. Consequently,
individuals are extremely reluctant to objectively review their personal interpretations of
cultural identity in fear their long-held interpretations might be erroneous—which perhaps
could invalidate both their individuality and their ‘place’ in the group. From time to time,
societies may propagate a ‘tradition’ as a symbol of cultural identity, but again, these may
be nothing more than nominal identities. Even in post-modern applications of spirituality,
The Q Principles | 27
Andrew Cohen (founder and editor of What is Enlightenment? magazine and web site, and
spiritual teacher) observes:
Where spirituality is, more often than not, made to order for the individual, where it’s every
man or woman on the path for him- or herself, many of us find ourselves exploring the
innermost reaches of our consciousness in the midst of some truly dubious assumptions. I
don’t believe that the clarity and liberation of mystical insight is a free ride. I am convinced
that the awakening of the spiritual impulse in our own hearts and minds is actually an
evolutionary trigger—an urgent whisper from the Self to Itself, God’s quiet voice imploring
us to relinquish our attachment to our culturally conditioned ignorance, our materialism,
and our pathological narcissism.
The borders between self-determinism, evolving identities, and even narcissism and self-
righteousness are exceedingly narrow. If we are to better comprehend these subtle borders, it
is necessary to explore a possible universal definition of authentic identity.
If the labor shortages caused by the reoccurring waves of the great plagues throughout
the 14th to 19th centuries can be seen to begin the economic and political process of freedom
for the common individual, then the Protestant Reformation perhaps began the common
individual’s spiritual freedom. Whereas previously, a peasant may have labored primarily to
survive—any leisure time spent in relaxation or prayer with family and friends—increasingly,
peasants began to reduce leisure activities to appropriate additional time to produce surplus
goods to take to market. With common people not simply accumulating wealth as a means to
survive, but seeking to acquire wealth as an end itself, the German theologian, Martin Luther,
and the French theologian, John Calvin, were careful to not specifically support the concept
of capitalism per se, but still to provide theological guidance to those acquiring wealth. Both
Luther and Calvin rationalized labor and wealth in two practical ways: firstly, they rationalized
free enterprise by arguing that certain men are imbued with the spirit of adventure and
acquisition, and this was the correct spirit. What has often been called the Protestant Work
Ethic essentially advises to work hard; be thrifty, sober, and abstain from frivolity; save what
has been made; and reinvest any profit in order to increase wealth. The second theological
application to labor and wealth was what Luther termed a person’s calling or life-task. Whilst
some individuals seemed covetous, slothful, and amoral, others seemed to work happily in
their lifetime, accomplishing much and in the right spirit. Thus, a person’s life-task is the
fulfillment of duty in worldly affairs—and this life-task is the highest form of moral activity
the individual could assume.
Throughout the generations, spiritual mystics throughout all the major religions have
refined the notion of calling or life-task to include something much more subtle. All persons
are prone to misconceive what they believe to be their calling because what a person ‘hears’ in
his conscience is still only the ego, the subjective voice of the human self. To truly hear God’s
divine voice, all that is ego must first die (mystics refer to this as the death of self). Thus, as
the ego-self dies, two things happen: firstly, the ego-self that had believed that it possessed a
purpose, a meaning, is replaced with the selfless realization that all life is sacred, that it is the
individual’s participation in the whole of life, not the solitary existence and purpose of the
individual that is divine. Secondly, in this selfless and participatory state, the individual is
finally able to see him/herself something like a prism, taking light emanating from others in
life into the uniqueness of their own prism’s aperture, and reflecting the entangled light back
into life.
Thus, each individual life becomes no longer imbued with a single purpose, but is both
free and duty-bound to interact from one moment to the next, from one entanglement to the
next—a significant part and interdependent reflection of the whole. Significance, then, does
not emanate exclusively from the individual, but from the individual participating within the
whole. Finally, an individual’s authentic identity is universally defined: to be both vulnerable
and contributing to significance.

28 | The Q Principles
Figure 3.  Authentic identity is a synthesis of others & self

Vulnerable to inputs
from others
Output (thought and action)
is Authentic Identity
Synthesis of
Inputs & Self

In keeping with the second intention of this paper—to develop a socioeconomic

foundation that inspires vulnerable interdependence of livelihoods and peoples, rather
than adheres to the self-centeredness of separateness—we must now begin to define how
interdependency works, and how this vulnerable interdependence helps to animate authentic
identity. As will be seen, authentic identity becomes a primary path leading to individual
and group significance. The output of this authentic significance, then, is measured in both
economic and social terms.

2  Concept of Interdependency

The Classical View

The concept of interdependency finds its roots in Ibn Khaldun’s12 great work, The
Muqaddimah (Prolegomena, or Prologue), 1377, where he established a vital understanding of
socioeconomic relationships that define conflict, and its opposite, union:
Know, then that the difference between people arises principally from the difference in
their occupations; for their very union springs out of the need for co-operation in the
securing of a livelihood.
Essentially, as multiple studies of nation-building and other socioeconomic conditions
have quite consistently demonstrated, social and ethnic tensions become easily inflamed
when economies become overly disproportionate or oppressive. The opposite, then, peaceful
coexistence between diverse social groups, occurs when economies are more balanced and
expandable, thus nondiscriminatory. These dynamic relationships between livelihood and
conflict or union, as well as the failures in world order and free market mechanics, are vibrant
indicators that 21st Century civilization may now be teetering on the verge of what Ibn Khaldun
referred to as the fourth stage in his First Law of Historical Cycles: civilizational decline leading
to ultimate collapse:
Civilizations must go through four stages: the first stage is the emergence of a new civilization
and society. The second stage covers a period of growth and prosperity. Stagnation and
decadence characterize the third stage where wealth can no longer increase. This brings
us to a fourth stage of decline leading to the ultimate collapse. Finally, a new civilization
emerges from the ashes of the previous one and another cycle is born. The conditions of
the world and of the nations do not persist in one unchanging state, but are transformed
with the passage of time and move from one condition to another.
If we as a human species are indeed being drawn from a stage of stagnation and decadence
into a stage of decline and collapse, is there any way in which we might join together and
renew ourselves before some collapse can come about? Or is the collapse inevitable? Is
12 Ibn Khaldun (full name Abu Zayd Abdu l-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldun al-Hadrami), (b. 1332/732AH
d. 1406/808AH), Arab historiographer and socio-economist born in present-day Tunisia. His central work was his Kitab
al-Ibar (Universal History) intimately detailing the history of Muslim North Africa and the Berbers. Its six volumes,
however, have been overshadowed by the immense significance of the Muqaddamah (which he meant merely as a
prologue to the Universal History). In this prologue, Ibn Khaldun outlined a philosophy of history and theory of society
that are unprecedented in ancient and medieval writing and that are even now relevant in understanding modern
sociology. The rise and fall of societies, he believed, follow laws that can be empirically discovered and that reflect
economic causes and effects.

The Q Principles | 29
it some tragic form of destiny that prevents us from an a priori awakening of our entangled
consciousness before the collapse occurs? These questions are important to ask now because,
in the end, even if civilization were to be faced with imminent decline and collapse, certainly,
the better angels of our nature would desire renewal not as a matter of necessity, but as a matter
of choice. This distinction—voluntarily choosing interdependence between diverse cultures
and peoples rather than being forced to become interdependent—will come to make all the
difference in the world.
Perhaps the key to civilizational interdependence is hidden within our very own
livelihoods. Our very callings.
The Quantum View
Earlier, the modern era emergence of self-organizing ad hoc collaborative communities
and systems within global market economies was placed in perspective of the ‘old economy’
permanence-seeking institution. Now, the self-organizing aspects of the ‘we-think’ economy
will be taken to a radical direction: to be interwoven into the fabric of we-think economies
are the minute threads of quantum entanglement13. By combining we-think’s self-organizing
principles with the entanglement concepts of quantum science, these new ‘quantum economic’
principles may perhaps be the tools which will allow us to balance aggregate economic demand
with our civilizational legal and moral restraints. More particularly, quantum economics may
possess the astonishing potential to finally bonding together all individuals and civilizations by
unleashing an almost unfathomable source of human and economic value which presently lies
dormant, perhaps even feared. First, however, it is necessary to explain quantum entanglement
and its possible relevance to economics.
Quantum science, like the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo, has provided humankind
a different perspective, and thus understanding of the physical universe which was not
previously perceived. All matter in the universe (that which occupies space) is composed of
atoms, and atoms, in turn, are composed of elementary or fundamental particles. In its most
basic description, quantum science is the study of how these particles (or quanta) interact
with each other and with energy. Pertinent to this exploration of economics, the following
concepts of quantum science might provide an additional perspective to individual and group
interdependency—and more specifically, to how economic entanglement interacts with the
energy of the mind:
Entanglement. Classical laws of physics, which helps humankind to define and understand
physical reality, works well when applied to large objects such as car engines, high-rise buildings,
even billiard balls. In classical laws of physics, the maxim “no two objects of mass can occupy
the same space” is universally accepted as not only true, but unbreakable. On the sub-atomic
or quantum level, however, everything humankind has accepted as reality is simply shattered.
On the quantum level, not only can a single particle be both a particle and at the same time a
wave of particles, a particle can exist in multiple places at the same time (so far scientists have
observed a single particle occupying just a bit more than 3,000 different places at the same
time). And more to the point of economics, particles that were once joined to each other,
then separated from each other by great distances, react to each other instantaneously—faster
than the speed of light—and classical laws of physics say nothing can travel faster than the
speed of light. By studying these sub-atomic particles, science is beginning to understand that
all matter in the universe—including the human species—is interconnected on the quantum
level… nothing is separate… all life is ‘entangled’.
This means, economically, when a single individual from one part of the world
conceptualizes an idea—someone else from the other side of the world may perhaps intuitively
understand how to exploit that very same idea so as to generate economic value. Our classical
view of reality tells us this is science fiction. But quantum physics shows us that it is indeed
possible. All we lack to see this quantum potential of economics is the courage to see and

13 Quantum entanglement is a quantum (sub-atomic) mechanical phenomenon in which the quantum states
of two or more objects are linked together so that one object can no longer be adequately described without full
mention of its counterpart—even though the individual objects may be spatially separated.

30 | The Q Principles
 Figure 4.  Topology of an Entangled Quantum the ‘plug-and-play’ infrastructure to give life to
State: Brunnian Model these latent ideas. The original Latin definition of
the word ‘idea’ is idein, “to see”. Quantum science,
however, is still unsure as how exactly to map
these entanglements due to the very fact that by
simply observing particles, the particles change
their nature; the act of observation, in and of itself,
changes the particles. Figure 4 is one of various
models that attempt to illustrate the topology of
quantum particles in their entangled state. This
Brunnian link is a nontrivial link that becomes
trivial if any component is removed. In other
words, cutting any loop frees all the other loops
(so that no two loops can be directly linked). This
Brunnian14 model will be used later in this text as a
starting point for constructing a geoeconomic model of interdependent livelihood.
Energy. Classical science (and our common senses, our experience) tells us that a solid
table is just that: solid. But again, quantum science has revealed that what we perceive as
‘solid’ is, in reality, mostly ‘latent energy’. On the quantum level, solid objects are comprised
of atoms. But atoms are mostly ‘empty’. Figure 5 illustrates a simple hydrogen atom; a
negatively-charged electron circling a positively-charged proton—and what appears to be
‘emptiness’ between the electron and proton is actually filled with ‘latent energy’… energy
waiting to be ignited and used. It may not
appear that this emptiness—latent energy— Figure 5.  Hydrogen Atom
is of any consequence to the real world. But
if two different perspectives of this latent Latent Energy
energy were to be considered: firstly, so as
to grasp the sheer physical dimension of the
latent energy existing between the proton
and electron, assume the proton is the size
Electron (negative)
of a basketball, then the electron would be
orbiting a full 20 miles from the basketball-
sized proton. Secondly, if the proton’s area
represented the world’s total gross domestic Proton (positive)
production (about US$ 55.6 trillion), then
the ‘empty space’ of the atom—the amount
of latent energy potential—would represent
an unfathomable innovation, production, and consumption potential of US$ 70.4 quintillion.
If we were to simply view economic markets from this quantum perspective—seeing its vast
untapped reservoir of energy and creativity—then we perhaps can begin to imagine what kind
of spark could ignite this latent energy. Is this quantum view of economics entirely unrealistic?
Does this unorthodox view invite chaos? The original Greek definition of chaos is: khaos
“void, abyss”. Do we fear chaos or khaos? What waits us in the void and abyss of khaos?
By viewing global economics through the prism of quantum science—a combination of
entanglement of peoples and our natural reservoirs of latent energy—it becomes possible to
view global innovation, production, and consumption not simply as mechanistic attributes of
supply and demand, but rather as organismic sparks of potential energy—human energy. It is
thought the human brain is capable of processing 400 billion bits of information, yet our non-
quantum state of awareness processes only an average of 2,000 bits. This gap in how we utilize
our very minds represents an astonishing potential for not only the human species, but also
global economics. How might we convert this latent energy into actual activity, actual value
(social and economic)?
14 Hermann Brunn, Über Verkettung, 1892.

The Q Principles | 31
 Certainly, it cannot be disputed that the world’s civilizations are not exploiting the totality
of their human potential. The question becomes, then: why not? In one version of ‘reality’,
Muslims, Christians, and Jews have drawn lines in the sand between themselves; Americans
and Russians, Whites and Blacks, the thin and obese, rich and poor, too, have drawn their
lines. Powerful militaries are created precisely to defend the notion of ‘separateness’. One
identity is prepared to kill another identity wholly because of separateness. In another version
of reality, however, quantum science has demonstrated that on the sub-atomic level, all of life
is entangled, not separate. The two realities, then, clash. Is there a process where individuality
(identity) and group (commonality, reciprocity) can, themselves, become entangled? Is that
process already available to us… right now lying dormant within our very minds?

3  Balancing Wealth & Responsibility

The purpose of any economic activity (personal or corporate) is to earn profit. This is true
of any large or small corporation, and even the individual farmer or employee. Indeed, in most
Western states, corporate law specifically protects this purpose, even going so far as to prohibit
a corporation’s directors from any activity that would reduce profits (such as voluntarily
incurring cost associated with protecting the environment or reducing employee workloads, as
examples). Earning profit, then, results in the natural accumulation of capital. Conventional
practice holds that this accumulated capital is either reinvested into the corporation so as to
consistently improve its goods/services to meet changing market demand, or distributed to
corporate shareholders (dividends) and/or employees (bonuses).
How much profit or capital accumulation is too much? Certainly, this is an overtly subjective
question. Or is it? Various objective valuation econometric studies have demonstrated when
corporate profit/capital accumulation exceeds a certain ratio in proportion to individual
consumer levels of disposable income, this imbalance can cause instabilities in the economic
market as well as social tension. From a comfortable distance, this issue might appear to be
somewhat manageable by imposing certain price ceilings on goods/services that gain high
margins of profit and capital accumulation—based, as an example, on specific statistical
equations which are triggered if an when imbalances occur. But view this issue more closely:
firstly, in a transnationalized economy, how can these triggers be managed within a world of
national economies that possess a wide diversity of national interests and value systems? And
secondly, consider that an increasing percentage of corporate stockholdings are being held
by private individuals (say, investing in the capital markets for the purpose of supplementing
retirement or children’s education costs) as well as institutions (ranging from pension funds to
hedge funds). Why should these sovereign and self-deterministic individuals and institutions
limit their capacity to benefit from high profit margins and capital valuations earned by
publicly traded corporations?
In a world where national economies and their market stakeholders have for generations
been operating in markets that are almost exclusively interested in profit-seeking, is it really
feasible that the intention of profit-seeking can be voluntarily balanced with the intention of
social responsibility? This paper argues that some form of balance can indeed be obtained, and
will outline the operational procedures to achieve this transition just a bit later. However, it
is important to first address a fundamental philosophical principle underpinning our ultimate
acceptance of the intention to balance wealth with responsibility. It is exceedingly inelegant
to attempt to seek social and economic guidance from historical foundations of philosophical
thought, primarily because so many distinct and often contradictory or paradoxical views can
be drawn from any single philosophy, not to mention the often wide distinctions between
Eastern and Western philosophies and religions. For the purpose of understanding the
stateless and voluntary natures of global socioeconomic interdependency as envisaged in this
paper, however, one particular philosophy stands out: the Categorical Imperative as defined by
Immanuel Kant.
Prior to exploring the observations of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-

32 | The Q Principles
1804) in the context of individual self-determinism and global economic interdependence, it
might be helpful to first highlight Kant’s philosophies in context to the great shifts in thought
and politics occurring in his own time. The Protestant Reformation, and its promotion that
reason should challenge the Catholic strict adherence and obedience to dogma, and thus
challenge ecclesiastical supremacy of the Catholic Church (including monarchs who believed
themselves divinely chosen to rule human subjects and protect the Church), set into motion
not only astonishing shifts in the politics of power and geography, but profoundly opened new
vistas in how humankind interpreted concepts of knowledge and consciousness.
The tool of reason rose to prominence with René Descartes (1596-1650), who held that
by means of reason alone, certain universal, self-evident truths could be discovered, from
which the remaining content of philosophy and the sciences could be deductively derived.
He maintained these self-evident truths were innate, not derived from sense experience.
Writers and philosophers such as Voltaire (assumed name of François Marie Arouet, 1694-
1778), and Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) provided the foundations for the European-
wide emergence of the Enlightenment Age, also referred to as the Age of Reason—and also
animated the French Revolution (1789 to 1799). Rousseau believed that a government
remains good only when sovereignty rests with the people. He saw the communal will, which
he called the general will, as a force more noble and moral than any individual will. This notion,
then, mirrors Ibn Khaldun’s 14th Century observation of group feeling, assabiyah, being more
virtuous than the ‘savage individual’. Rousseau’s 1762 essay, On Social Contract, presents
this notion: “Since no individual has natural authority over his fellow man, and since force
creates no rights, agreements remain the basis of all legitimate authority among men.” Others,
though, contributed an opposing notion of the human condition, empiricism. Philosophers
such as Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and John Locke (1632-1704) were inspired by the great
leaps in knowledge emanating from technological and scientific discovery, and thus held that
all knowledge is based on experience, rejecting the possibility of spontaneous ideas or a priori
knowledge gained independent of experience.
Immanuel Kant essentially synthesized these two notions of reason and empiricism,
recognizing that whilst both possessed elements of truth, neither philosophy, on its own,
provided humankind with practical tools with which knowledge could be harnessed in the real
world. Kant’s practical reason held that pure reason was merely theoretical and that incidental
experience lacked the ‘agony of thought’—practical reason, then, provided humankind with
the tools to ‘think with clarity’ as well as ‘act with clarity’. And, most importantly, practical
reason provides the civilizational tool to not only assess past and present experience, but also
to predict and anticipate future experience. An example: prior to Copernicus and Galileo
determining through experiential observation via a telescope the earth was rotating around
the sun, Aristotle had observed and reasoned the opposite: the sun was rotating around the
earth. Aristotle’s early reasoning had for centuries animated the dogma of the Christian faith.
Thus, on one hand, it can be argued the tools of empiricism and science had disproved both
the tool of reason and also the Church. On the other hand, however, this new discovery, in
and of itself, lacked four specific and vital components of consciousness: firstly, the discoveries
of Copernicus and Galileo—even though they were indeed experiences—did not actually
experience anything new or original (all three were looking at the same sky), they merely
gained access to a different perspective of the universe which then allowed civilization to see
what had already been seen but misinterpreted, and now reinterpreted through a different
perspective. Secondly, empiricism and science can only address the ‘how’, not the ‘why’.
Thirdly, the practical use of this new knowledge is not self-evident—this new knowledge,
therefore, still requires the agony of thought. And lastly, future experience can be anticipated
by correlating the moral and practical lessons learned from the Copernicus-Galileo experience
to, as an example pertinent to this paper, the evolution of knowledge and intention relative
to dogmatic systems of national and global economics. The Copernicus-Galileo discoveries
challenged the ecclesiastical supremacy of the church, just as geoeconomics might ultimately
prove to challenge the supremacy of geopolitical world order. Comprehending both the
The Q Principles | 33
reason and experience gained from the former may provide foresight to the latter. By using
the tool of practical reason and viewing what is seen and experienced every day in the tangible
world of economics through a completely different perspective of quantum entanglement, as
an example, may allow for a new consciousness to emerge.
The freedom to think for one’s self does not provide freedom from responsibility. Immanuel
Kant clearly held that as individuals used the tools of reason and experience to think and act
for themselves, they must equally possess the courage to uphold a moral law. Further, and
importantly, he held this obligation to a moral law should not necessarily be as a result of the
state compelling citizens to abide by laws, but that the innate being of the individual agonized
by thought should be the compelling force for judgment and duty; the person is self-capable
of using its senses of maturity and conscience. Kant’s Categorical Imperative (categorical,
meaning: not hypothetical): “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time
will that it become a universal law”. Essentially, what Kant provided civilization was a secular
and practical tool by which all individuals could use to synthesize moral reasoning in context
of the exceptionally diverse experiences occurring in the ‘moment-to-moment’ of life. This
notion of the moment-to-moment is critical to the geoeconomic process of interdependency
explored later in this paper. Here, though, Kant identifies individual freedom and responsibility
as being symbiotic parts of the whole—the whole being a state of enlightenment.
Kant’s philosophies directly oppose those of utilitarianism (Latin utilis, “useful”), the
doctrine that what is useful is good, and consequently, that the ethical value of conduct is
determined by the utility of its results. Essentially, in utilitarianism, the supreme objective of
moral action is the achievement of the greatest happiness for the greatest number. This utilitarian
objective is also considered the aim of all legislation and is the ultimate criterion of all social
institutions. Kant’s central disagreements with utilitarianism: (a) happiness is not necessarily
a state of being which might ultimately be judged as being moral, and thus, (b) to determine a
state of ‘moral happiness’ would still require the use of the categorical imperative. An example:
it is logical to consider a clear majority of persons would intuitively and experientially desire
accumulating capital wealth, and thus, utilitarianism
would view the achieving of capital wealth by the
majority as moral. Yet, utilitarianism does not address
the moment-to-moment actions required to achieve
capital wealth and happiness (meaning, the ends do
not justify the means... destroying the environment
for the sake of accumulating capital wealth, as an
example). Thus, practical reason is still required to
balance the moment-to-moment influences of benefit
and responsibility.
In more specific terms, Kant describes
enlightenment as the moment when humanity is
going to put its own reason to use, without subjecting
itself to any outside authority. Again, certainly, the
better angels of our nature would desire some form
of balance between wealth and responsibility not as
a matter of necessity, but as a matter of choice. This
distinction—voluntarily choosing interdependence
between diverse cultures and peoples rather than be forced to become interdependent—is
Kant’s greatest message which can speak to us in our modern circumstances of global
socioeconomic transition. Thus, in a world where national economies and their market
stakeholders have for generations been operating in markets that are almost exclusively
interested in profit-seeking, our long-held intention of profit-seeking can indeed be voluntarily
balanced with the intention of social responsibility—as a direct consequence of us choosing to
seek this balance.

34 | The Q Principles
 4  Quantum Value & Interdependency: Vision
First and foremost to quantify in a ‘quantum socioeconomic’ paradigm is the irresistible
potential residing within the entangled individual and group. Since the earliest moments of
free enterprise, individuals and groups were primarily concerned with, first, essential survival,
then, accumulation of wealth—and hence utilized the tools and benefits of free enterprise so
as to survive and accumulate. The corporation existed to serve as the operating vessel to earn
revenue; labor was merely a tool of the corporation. Taking into account the evolving self-
deterministic individual and self-organizing collaborative networks, however, the employee
can be recognized as something much greater than a mere tool of the corporation. Quantum
science seems to suggest a much more substantial wealth may actually reside in the latent
energy housed within the individual/group. Thus, the heretofore unrealized potential of
corporations and civilization is in the moment-to-moment entanglements which possess the
capacity to reveal and exploit this latent energy, and thus transform the corporation and our
very lives from a basis of token value to authentic value. As will be demonstrated, this more
authentic value, then, substantially transforms the value references of society itself.
The corporate & employee perspective
Suppose the following: an employee of any typical corporation is tasked with increasing
sales of the company’s least profitable product. In the present orthodox and hierarchical
corporate setting, the standard operating procedure is: (1) reduce expenses, including
cutting regulatory corners and replacing higher paid workers with lower paid workers, and
other such measures; and (2) the employee tasked to sell the slow-selling product is provided
fairly limited options with which to expand the market: one conventional method is simply
to cold call potential clients and persistently pursue the client until a purchase is made. In the
orthodox version of the company, employees are nothing more than task-specific labor, simply
a pigeon to fit into a specific pigeonhole, simply chattel.
In a ‘quantum corporation’, however, the process of better managing corporate value
might look more like this: (1) a particular product appears to be slow-selling; (2) a ‘bull-pen’
assessment meeting attended by various specializations perhaps determines that although the
present product has been made redundant by changes in population demographics, certain
individual components or know-how of the product possess a substantial potential for revenue
generation only if the company responds quickly to market the know-how (knowledge, not
a specific product) in advance of the competition. In fact, the employee initially tasked with
selling the slow-selling product has a contact with an industry lobby group specifically in
search of new know-how. By viewing something as simple as a slow moving product in a
different light—a light animated by part visceral, part rational organismic energy living within
peoples and markets—the company may perhaps exploit market opportunities that were
previously neglected, or even alter its fundamental business model as a consequence of its new
opportunities. In the quantum version of the company, employees take pride and interest in
the totality of the company’s assets and surroundings, including people (internal and external
to the company), their knowledge, and the very ebbs and tides of the market. The employee
ceases to be merely labor or chattel, but rather an organismic conduit between market and
company. The company comes alive, reacting almost biologically to stimulus, and capable to
integrate into its organs a moral, even curious existence. The word ‘corporation’ derives from
corpus, the Latin word for body.
In the above example, it can be discerned the company’s authentic versus nominal identity,
and thus, its economic value and relevance to the market is much more significant in the
quantum version. In the orthodox version, the company operates on a task-by-task basis—
and no one is tolerated to break away from the tasks, no one is tolerated to think, question, and
propose potential solutions which could perhaps alter the business model of the company.
Thus, to the employees, the identity and value of the company is simply a job to earn enough
money to pay the bills, put the kids through school, and retire. To executive management, the
identity and value of the company is status to join the local Chamber of Commerce or be

The Q Principles | 35
elected to a city task force. To the shareholders, the identity and value of the company is black-
and-white simple: increasing returns. To the consumer, the identity and value of the company
is largely non-existent; the consumer sees the product, not the company.
If consumers cannot see the company, then they also cannot see the company’s employees.
And if a shift in the market were to cause tension between two competing interests, say,
industry and the environment—then, it should come as no surprise that employees of
industry often feel socially on the defensive in these times of tension. The tragic reality,
though, is this: no matter how rational or reasoned an argument for change might be, the
realpolitik of a vast percentage of corporations throughout the world always finds some timely
and rational-sounding excuse to not change, to persistently maintain their nominal identities.
Certainly, it is vastly more complex and challenging to orchestrate a quantum version of a
company due to the very complex nature of human imagination, behavior, and market forces.
Few, if any, corporate managers like change; security is what corporations and employees
generally seek. Thus, anticipating changes in the market place is often an afterthought, rather
than forethought. It is vastly more simple and straight forward to see the black and white
world of labor as merely a tool to obtain profit—merely as a job. If the realpolitik attitude
were to somehow change; if minds themselves were to change, the authentic identities and
value of individuals, companies, and consumers would have the opportunity to completely
revolutionize socioeconomics as we now know it.
Suppose the following: an employee (a computer technician) who has grown to realize
his/her authentic identity to be vulnerable and contributory to significance, and chooses to
act somewhat like a prism—taking in significant contributions from others into the prism’s
unique aperture. Suppose the input is from a colleague who, over lunch, has revealed that
one of the company’s products—say, a line of winter sweaters—in spite of its high quality and
low sales price, is not selling well. The computer technician tells the colleague a story about
his/her mother who had a sweater which was handed-down to her by her mother. Each time
the sweater was handed-down, mother passed to the daughter memories experienced wearing
the sweater (first kiss, a reflective time on the banks of a winding river, a night the electricity
failed). The colleague listens to the story, and later that day, meets with the advertising team,
and relates the mother-daughter story. The advertising team, in turn, exploits the idea to
design an advertising campaign—which is successful in increasing sales. In this example,
where the company’s computer technician simply shared a personal story with a colleague,
which was later used in an advertising campaign, what is the value of the computer technician?
Can this value be valued by the company? Can this value be quantified?
When people are considered merely as labor, this labor-tool works to generate wealth for
the corporation—and in turn, the labor-tool receives a token reward of a certain amount of
wealth in the form of a salary. The word ‘token’ is carefully chosen, for what is any individual’s
authentic value within a corporation? In the example used above of the computer technician
relating the story of his/her mother and her sweater, does a monthly salary of the technician
truly reflect the value of the individual’s contribution to the company?
When I was 18 years old (the year was 1976), and beginning to seek my way in the world,
my father took me aside to bequeath a traditional ‘rule of thumb’: command a salary equal to
US$ 1,000 per the years of my age. Now that I was 18, I should earn a salary of US$ 18,000.
When I was to turn 19, then US$ 19,000 should be commanded. Many people still today
abide by this rule of thumb. Several years later, though, whilst living in New York City, I had
been challenged by a friend (who was then a quite influential acting-modeling agent) to write
a television commercial (I had been complaining that commercials were utterly mindless
affairs). That evening, I indeed wrote a television commercial—a tongue-in-cheek telling of
the ancient Roman gladiator-type strength and passion alive today in the ‘brand x’ condom.
The following day, my friend, the theatrical agent, read carefully what I had committed to
paper the previous evening, and began to laugh. Instinctively, he reached for the telephone
to call a friend of his at an advertising agency. As he did so, he looked up at me and asked:
“How much do you want for this commercial?” My father’s rule of thumb came to mind, then
36 | The Q Principles
vanished—this was something different than commanding US$ 1,000 per the years of my
age, working for and being loyal to a specific company day-in and day-out. This was a one-off,
something that might never come my way again. What was the value of my brain? What was
the value of an idea (and the life experiences which served to spark the idea)?
A salary (or fixed pay), in its very essence, is merely a token of an individual’s authentic
value—and this, perhaps, is the most tangible indicator of just how and why authentic value
is so elusive from the global economies of today. Consider for a moment anyone’s salary:
what is the specific and quantifiable formula, the equation used by the company to set the
salary amount? It should be clear that real and quantifiable formulas for authentic value are
rarely used, if at all; salary determinations (including bonuses and commissions) are almost
exclusively subjective and arbitrary. Token values also permeate our social fabric (the classic,
yet revealing example: why do school teachers generally earn less revenue than, say, cosmetic
surgeons?).
It should also be noted that potent centrifugal forces within the nature of global economic
markets constantly shift the terrains of labor, corporations, and thus, society in general. Two
of these centrifugal forces—a virtual doubling in the size of the global labor force over the past
15 years, versus the displacement of low wage jobs as technology progressively replaces the
requirement for human labor—are briefly highlighted here.
Richard Freeman, in The Great Doubling: Labor in the New Global Economy, estimates
the global workforce reached 2.9 billion workers in 2000, due in large part as a consequence
of the profound economic growth of China and India. This is a virtual doubling in the size
of the global labor force in only 15 years. This extraordinary infusion on the supply side
of the global labor market adds a complex dimension to the global labor arbitrage. With
cross-border trade reaching a record 30% of world GDP in 2006, an increasing volume of
production and employment is shifting to the low-cost, low-wage developing world. But on
the other side of the arbitrage ledger is that as developing economies continue to progress,
technology eventually begins to displace low-wage labor—and these displaced workers, like
their Western counterparts were forced to do these past several years, either gain new skills or
fall to unemployment.
Figure 6.  Labor “waves”: expansion to developing regions, then technology displaces labor
La
hic) bo
rD
rap isp
e og lac
n (g em
n sio en
t(
xpa te
c
rE hn
bo olo
La gy)

Region 1 Region 2

The primary consequences of this ever-shifting labor terrain is (a) global aggregate demand
becomes difficult to predict and manage due to regional shifts in the technical sophistication
of the markets; (b) local markets become vulnerable to “boom or bust” waves (and this
certainly contributes to increased migration during bust periods); and (c) technologically-
based markets consistently lead to ‘knowledge-based economies’ which require completely
different skill sets, education curricula, and business models. Eventually, as global economies
evolve, it is logical to contemplate that intelligent technology will, at some point, near totally
displace the need for low-skilled, low-wage labor. In 1995, Jeremy Rifkin expanded this labor
displacement eventuality to an extreme in The End of Work: the Decline of the Global Labor
Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era:
The global economy is in the midst of a radical change in the nature of work, with profound
consequences for the future of society. In the Industrial Age, mass human labor worked
side by side with machines to produce basic goods and services. In the Age of Access,
intelligent machines, in the form of computer software, robotics, nanotechnology, and
biotechnology, increasingly replaced human labor in the agriculture, manufacturing, and
service sectors. Farms, factories, and many white-collar service industries are quickly
The Q Principles | 37
 becoming automated. More and more physical and mental labor, from menial repetitive
tasks to highly conceptual professional work, will be done by cheaper and more efficient
thinking machines in the twenty-first century. The cheapest workers in the world likely will
be not as cheap as the technology coming online to replace them.
By the middle decades of the twenty-first century, the commercial sphere will have the
technological wherewithal and organizational capacity to provide goods and basic services
for an expanding human population using a fraction of the workforce presently employed.
Perhaps as little as 5 percent of the adult population will be needed to manage and operate
the traditional industrial sphere by the year 2050. Near-workerless farms, factories, and
offices will be the norm in every country.
Few of the CEOs I talk to believe that mass amounts of human labor will be needed to
produce conventional goods and services fifty years from now. Virtually all believe that
intelligent technology will be the workforce of the future.
Although a near total displacement of the global workforce as feared by Rifkin is still
many years away, four observations to be made from the two centrifugal forces of labor force
expansion and contraction:
1. Perception & reality. The public’s media-driven perception of globalization
exacerbates an underlying fear that growing trade between more-developed and less-
developed regions of the world is the main cause of increased income inequality in
the United States and high unemployment in Europe. Yet as Princeton University
economics professor Paul Krugman and others have argued, the more probable
cause of income inequality is falling internal demand for unskilled labor. David Popp
(2003) observes: since 1971, total U.S. manufacturing wages have fallen. The drop
is most dramatic for unskilled workers. However, wages for the highest paid workers
are rising. In addition, wages for high technology and science-based industries are
rising. The wages of U.S. college graduates have risen by 30% more relative to those
of high-school graduates. The real wages of the least educated has actually fallen
over the past 20 years. Differences between the 90th and 10th income percentiles:
1971: 266% — 1995: 366%. In the U.S., the wage gap between high and low-skilled
workers grew. In Europe, low-skilled workers experienced higher unemployment.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2008) outlined the fastest declining occupations
(due almost exclusively to advances in technology), including the following ten
occupations: (1) Model makers and patternmakers, wood, (2) Photographic process
workers and processing machine operators, (3) Textile machine setters, operators,
and tenders, (4) Credit, file, new account, and order clerks, (5) Computer operators,
(6) Bookbinders and bindery workers, (7) Radio operators, (8) Machine tool cutting
setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic, (9) Pumping station operators, and
(10) Coating, painting, and spraying machine setters, operators, and tenders. The
ten fastest growing occupations: (1) Network systems and data communications
analyst, (2) Personal and home care aides, (3) Home health aides, (4) Computer
applications software engineers, (5) Veterinary technologists and technicians, (6)
Personal financial advisers, (7) Theatrical and performance makeup artists, (8)
Medical assistants, (9) Veterinarians, and (10) Substance abuse and behavioral
disorder counselors.
2. Skill sets & education. As the above shifts in wage and composition of the labor force
demonstrate, skill sets and education curricula will require consistent adaptation.
To demonstrate just how complex this is with respect to developing nation-states,
an observation of the nation-building case study of Bosnia-Herzegovina reveals:
whilst the nation-building process attempts to impose upon developing states such
as Bosnia-Herzegovina bureaucratic and policy components of education reform, the
actual curricula necessary for the generation of innovation, the development of higher
skill-sets, the increase of exports, and the preparation for global market competition
are being neglected. The curriculum focused on information and communication
38 | The Q Principles
 technologies (ICT), as an example, as taught by Sarajevo University simply cannot
be compared to ICT curricula within the more fully developed economies. The
Sarajevo University ICT curriculum places its priority focus on technology (93%)
and organization process (7%); whereas curricula found within developed economies
place priority focus on organization process (77%) and technology (23%). It is also
revealing that Official Development Assistance (ODA) places a negligible priority
to education. As an example, European Union Stability Pact Quick Start Packages
funding priorities only provide about 1.4 percent of aid funding to the development
of education and vocational training. If the skill sets, education, and vocational
training are not made available throughout the economies of developing regions,
so as to prepare for economic sustainability that arises from progressive innovation,
then obviously this will impact boom and bust and migration trends.
3. Adaptation. As the earlier example of Martin Marietta irrationally denying the
inevitability of post Cold War reductions in government contracts clearly illustrates,
corporations, throughout much of history, have unambiguously demonstrated a
severe reluctance to possess the foresight and capacity to evolve their business models
as market and labor forces evolve. The conventional method corporations utilize to
adapt to major shifts: layoffs. If corporations are to survive the dramatic shifts to
markets certain to progress well into the future, they will most unquestionably require
a radically different approach to adapting their business models. A natural resource
that most corporations have conventionally overlooked in their efforts to proactively
rather than reactively adapt to market changes: their very own employees.
4. Opportunity? Might we view the ultimate displacement of human labor by technology
not as a threat, but as an opportunity?
So, in order to better adapt to market shifts, and if some balance between wealth generation
and social responsibility could be integrated throughout a more organismic corporate-social-
market environment, what might the corporation of the future look like? Figures 7 and 8
compares conventional ‘pyramid’ with ‘quantum’ structures of a corporation.
Figure 7.  Conventional ‘pyramid’ structure of corporations
End-product

Owners

Management

Staff

The Q Principles | 39
 Figure 8.  A ‘quantum’ process of integrating corporation-social-market relationships
End-product

Social development Education & mentoring

(local & global)

Know-how

Technology
for the home

Social Well-being
Neuro-communications

Wealth Generation

Internal
Contributors resources & relationships

Consumers

External
resources & relationships

The noticeable differences between the pyramid and quantum versions of corporations
are (a) human relationships are at the heart of a corporate life, and (b) as a consequence of its
more human entanglements, the corporation produces exponentially greater value through
additional and more diverse production output as well as social value output. In a pyramid
structure, an employee merely fills a specific pigeonhole, and is considered easily replaceable.
In a quantum process, however, human resources are to be found both internal and external to
the corporation, and these diverse human resources provide much more than mere labor, they
provide creativity, curiosity, and a myriad of new relationships that consistently transform the
corporation on a moment-to-moment basis. As Figure 8 illustrates, a corporation is blended
in its focus to wealth generation and social well-being. As a consequence of this blending,
employees are no longer employees, but rather are contributing resources, just as external
contacts might contribute value to the corporation. Consumers, too, may from time to
time, might actually act as contributors of value to a corporation (an occasional innovation
or social introduction). Much like single cell biology, the biological corporation possesses
neuro-communication resources which transmit ‘value component signals’ throughout the
corporation’s diverse relationships. As a consequence, the corporation becomes capable of
producing not merely some end-product, but also discovers additional ‘real time’ value within
its collective know-how as well as its capacity to transfer technologies from one industry to
another (say, automobile manufacturing to home utilities). By involving itself in education
and mentoring (individuals and other companies) as well as social development, locally and
globally, consumers begin to see the human nuances of a company, and thus they begin to

40 | The Q Principles
see the company’s internal and external human resources. And if a shift in the market were
to cause tension between two competing interests, say, industry and the environment—then,
corporation and society act in concert to best balance any competing interests.
Before attempting to quantify these new values animated by quantum economics, either
economically or socially, it is important to view a bit more closely the human resource itself.
Consider the following: in the orthodox pyramid structure, an employee is identified by his/
her pigeonhole designation (this is based, in the main, on Adam Smith’s concept of ‘division
of labor’). As an example, an employee fills a division of labor task as ‘logistics manager’.
In a pyramid structure, the value to the corporation represented by the logistics manager is
merely in the performance of his/her division of labor duties relating to logistics. This might
certainly be satisfactory for companies operating in the early days of the industrial revolution.
But in the knowledge economy, and in a world where society itself is finally seen as being
valuable, value occurs in both product and ideas. In a quantum existence, the energy that lies
latent within each of us possesses an extraordinary reservoir of value. The logistics manager
designation only represents the tip of a much larger iceberg of value. As Figure 9 illustrates,
what is latent just below the surface might serve to contribute untold resources of value to the
corporation and society in general.

Figure 9.  Quantum value: beyond pigeonhole value

Challenge:
corporations develop a process
CONVENTIONAL Logistics
to gain access to this latent value
VALUE Manager

Professional contacts
as resources

Academic background
in mechanical engineering

Family & friends

LATENT
as resources VALUE

Hobby is painting

Thus, in a quantum economic process of entanglement, a logistics manager becomes a

vulnerable conduit for providing logistics consulting/teaching services to other companies,
city governments, aid agencies, vocational-technical schools, and individuals. Further though,
this particular human resource has multiple professional contacts which might represent
some future potential client of innovation resource for the corporation. Even further, this
human resource possesses an academic background in mechanical engineering, and this too
can be of value to the corporation and other companies, governments, agencies, schools, and
individuals. Further still, the family and friends of the human resource may possess non-
professional assets, such as someone who might be a cancer survivor which might provide
support to another employee who might be fighting the disease. Possibly, the human resource
might have a hobby of painting, and this hobby might be a magnet for bringing a local or
international community together.

The Q Principles | 41
 Figure 10.  Quantum value: exploiting the rest of the iceberg

Benefits:
• Corporate & individual cross-shareholding
• Social cohesion & sustainability
• Increased production output

QUANTUM VALUE

CONVENTIONAL VALUE External individuals

External corporations

Figure 10 illustrates the conceptual benefits to viewing human resources well beyond the
mere tip of the iceberg. However, this is not to say that the objective of quantum economics
is for corporations to merely exploit more of the employee than they already do. Indeed, the
human resources (both internal and external) readily exploit the assets of the corporation
just as the corporation exploits the human resources. To explain this, it is important to detail
five fundamental and interconnected aspects of the economics embodied within this vision of
quantum economics:
• Technology & knowledge transfer and intellectual property
• The Brunnian model of economic transactions
• Financial assumptions & projections of the Brunnian model
• Process, not institutions
• Value, price, and self-restraining capitalism

(a)  Technology & knowledge transfer and intellectual property

Technology and knowledge transfer relates to wide area broadcasting of intellectual
property across industries and markets. Three examples: firstly, a university research laboratory
innovates a specific item of technology. Via often government chartered technology transfer
offices (TTOs), this specific item of technology may be useful to multiple industries, ranging
from automotive to medical products. The TTO, then, operates as a business development
arm of the university research laboratory, and resulting revenues are shared between the lab
and TTO. Many multinational corporations have developed similar schemes so as to more
diversely broadcast its intellectual
property throughout multiple Figure 11.  An example of technology transfer
industries and markets. A second
variation of technology and knowledge
transfer relates to exploiting the value
LCD screen technology
of a product component in addition to
the product itself. Figure 11 illustrates
a simple variation of technology
transfer: LCD screen technology
initially developed for computer
screens can be broadcast throughout
a wide range of products, including
PDAs and mobile telephones, as
examples.

42 | The Q Principles
 But a much less utilized variation of technology transfer relates to this third example: in
any given moment, an item of knowledge or merely data is produced within a corporation
which, in and of itself, possesses some type of value. The item of knowledge might be an
employee’s lifetime of experience in personnel training; the item of data might be a database
of customers. Assume for a moment a large corporation with over 40,000 employees which
most likely requires its global employee base to receive some level of skill sets training. Most
corporations view its training requirements as a cost to the company. In modern economics,
however, the know-how relating to the operations of skill sets training is potentially a revenue
generating asset. The corporation could very well package its training know-how either as part
of its business mix, or spin off or sell the asset. Even though virtually all corporations and all
employees possess some type of knowledge and/or data, exceedingly few corporations have
established processes through which these assets are accumulated, assessed, and exploited.
These three variations of technology and transfer, then, become lucid examples of the latent
value within all corporations and individuals. The primary difference between corporations
and individuals, relating to how intellectual property is exploited, is that individuals have
traditionally not possessed the tools with which to broadcast their intellectual property.
Whether that intellectual property is knowing the best technique to mold plastic in various
environments or even a collection of poetry, the ‘hold grail’ of economics is to somehow develop
a process with which all individuals, anywhere in the world, can exploit their particular items
of intellectual property. The hypernet (and more specifically, expert systems15) are certainly
potent tools with which intellectual property—corporately or individually generated—can
be accumulated, assessed, and exploited. Before the mass broadcasting process is specifically
addressed, however, it is important to first view the orthodox methods of ‘protecting’ the
intellectual property originating from individuals.
A patent is an exclusive right granted by a state to an inventor or his/her assignee for a
fixed period of time in exchange for a public disclosure of an invention. A patent is not a right
to practice or use the invention. Rather, a patent provides the right to exclude others from
making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the patented invention for the term of the
patent, which is usually 20 years from the filing date. A patent is, in effect, a limited property
right that a government offers to inventors in exchange for their agreement to share the details
of their inventions with the public. Like any other property right, it may be sold, licensed,
mortgaged, assigned or transferred, given away, or simply abandoned.
Consider the following: over the past several years, major tensions have arisen between
corporate holders of various pharmaceutical patents and entire societies deemed at risk to
contract certain medical disorders treatable with these ‘patent protected’ pharmaceutical
assets. In particular, as an example, HIV-AIDS treatments tend to require substantial research
investments, and corporations, understandably, desire to maintain their legal ownership
of their intellectual property so as to recover their investments and earn profits (as well as
shareholder value). Tension is caused when large segments of a population are at risk from
a particular disorder and the economic interests of a corporation come into conflict with the
health interests of the public (particularly, if specific populations cannot economically afford
to purchase expensive pharmaceuticals from corporations). This paper presents a view that
orthodox methods of protecting intellectual property may be outdated. Figure 12 (next page)
illustrates a radical alternative to the notion that patents should deliberately exclude others
from utilizing an inventor’s intellectual property, whilst at the same, however, protecting the
ability for the inventor to earn revenue from his/her intellectual endeavors.

15 An expert system is a computer application which makes decisions or solves problems in a particular field,
such as finance or medicine, by using knowledge and analytical rules defined by known human knowledge. People
solve problems by using a combination of factual knowledge and reasoning. In an expert system, these two essentials
are mimicked by two software components, a knowledge base and an inference engine. The knowledge base provides
specific facts and rules about the subject, and the inference engine provides the reasoning ability that enables the
expert system to form conclusions.

The Q Principles | 43
 Figure 12.  A quantum process of technology & knowledge transfer
Access to market
Product 1 1.
Corporation provides environment
and tools to Inventor

Inventor 2.
Patent issued to Inventor with
marketing rights to anyone
Corporation A (time unlimited)

Employee 3.
A Employee A sells innovation
to Employee B1

Employee
B1
4.
Innovation from Inventor used in
Corporation B Product 2 of Corporation B
increasing market access for both
corporations
Employee
B2 7.
5. Revenues shared with
Employee B2 sells entir e value chain
innovation to Employee C1
Employee
C1
6.
Innovation from Inventor used in
Product 3 of Corporation C -
Corporation C
increasing market access for both
corporations

Employee
C2

Ect .

The radical concept illustrated in Figure 12 is that any intellectual property which any
employee may possess (corporately, personally, formally, and/or informally) is tradeable.
The figure illustrates an example involving three separate corporations, each producing
unique products. Although, in this case, a patent has been issued to the inventor, another
employee—without requiring formal permission from the inventor—sells the intellectual
property to an employee of another corporation. In turn, the employee initiating the sale
earns a sales commission, and the inventor and corporation receive their compensation for
the trade. Further, a second employee from the second corporation sells the same intellectual
property to an employee of a third corporation. Again, everyone up the value chain receives
compensation for the trade between second and third corporations. These types of trading
transactions can be replicated an infinite number of times—potentially contributing an
infinite economic value, and a wider and more
rapid distribution of the intellectual property. In
the past, it would have been virtually impossible
for corporations and individuals to effectively and
honorably consummate these types of transactions.
With hypernet and expert systems technologies,
however, corporations can track and assess these
transactions with reliability. In many ways,
this type of opportunistic trading of intellectual
property mimics the fluid and air distribution
capillary systems found within biological entities,
such as the capillary system of a body. Instead of
a limited number of large trading transactions,
the objective here is to produce a large number of
smaller transactions.
44 | The Q Principles
 Understandably, many will likely see this ‘anarchic’ distribution of intellectual property
as being illogical and irresponsible. But again, modern technology has already established
a precedence for this type of responsibility undertaken by common employees: a present-
day production floor worker using ‘enterprise resource program’ (ERP16) technologies, is
fully authorized to purchase needed raw materials and supplies on behalf of the corporation,
simultaneously transmitting the details of the purchase to multiple stakeholders, ranging from
the warehouse manager to the chief financial officer. In quantum economics, technology is
used to track the opportunistic trading of these otherwise protected assets of corporate and/
or individual intellectual property—and by so doing, the latent potential of moment-to-
moment opportunities can be exploited in ‘real time’ rather than be mired in bureaucratic and
ego-centric control regimes.

(b)  The Brunnian model of economic transactions

Earlier (Figure 4, page 31), an illustration of the Topology of an Entangled Quantum State:
Brunnian Model was presented. Quantum science is still attempting to understand how
quantum particles exist in the entangled state, and the Brunnian model is only one of many
interpretations. If the Brunnian model might be translated for use within economics (the
entanglement of people instead of atomic particles), the results of this experiment of the mind
might provide a tangible and practical process through which enlightened change to the very
form and function of global economics could ultimately occur.
Figure 13.  Activity within Single Brunnian Employee-Corporation Node

A C
D B
Mind INFLOW to Entity Consumer Sales

Mind OUTFLOW from Entity

A
Consumer Sales

7 D A C
D B
8
2 1 5 6

Consumer Sales 4
A C
B 3
D B

Consumer Sales
A C
D B

The Brunnian model shows four ‘forks’ which intersect with each other at various points.
Each fork represents a single corporate entity and a single employee of that corporation. The
blue tine of the fork represents the corporation itself and the green tine the employee. It is
noticeable, then, each blue and green tine intersects with others in different ways—sometimes
16 An ERP system is a business support system that maintains in a single database the data needed for a
variety of business functions such as Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management, Financials, Projects, Human Resources
and Customer Relationship Management. An ERP system is based on a common database and a modular software
design. The common database can allow every department of a business to store and retrieve information in real-
time.

The Q Principles | 45
a green-employee from one corporation intersects with a second blue-corporation; sometimes
with a second green-employee; sometimes both. The corporation, too, intersects with others
in multiple ways. The geometric arrangement of the forks, then, impacts how the intersections
are distributed between blue-corporations and green-employees. The variation shown
in this illustration, then, is the median average of the distribution potential of corporation
and employee intersections—and will be used to construct the various geoeconomic or
‘quantum economic’ models throughout the remaining pages. From this point forward, this
Brunnian model of four intersecting employee-corporation forks will be referred to as a ‘node’.
If a corporation is comprised of 400 employees, then 400 nodes would not only reflect the
employee makeup of the corporation, they would also reflect 400 unique relationships with
corporations and employees external to the corporation. It should also be stated here that how
these 400 nodes within a single corporation are arranged geometrically—and how they impact
the 400 external corporation-employee relationships, and how these external relationships
intersect with their own external relationships—the potential geometric permutations of
these diverse relationships cannot be seen as linear or even exponential, but truly infinite.
The four forks of the node are labeled Entity A, B, C, and D (an Entity representing a
corporation-employee relationship). For the sake of simplicity, within each Entity, the green-
employee tine will represent a single employee selling knowledge (of the individual or of the
company) to either an external corporation or to another employee of an external corporation
(or both) (see steps 1, 3, 5 and 7). In this simplified model, only one transaction is made
per step, although many more transactions are possible. To illustrate this, notice that step
1 originating from the employee tine of Entity A actually intersects 3 interlocutors: the
employee and corporation tines of Entity D and the corporation tine from Entity B. Thus,
in the geoeconomic steps that follow, only the terminus of the step will result in an economic
transaction (in step 1, then, Employee A sells knowledge to Corporation B).
In reciprocity, step 2 blue-corporation tine: Corporation B sells either knowledge,
technology, or even a product/service to Corporation A. When an employee acquires
knowledge from either an external employee or corporation, the payment comes out of the
employee’s pocket—if the employee is to share in the benefit, then the employee must also
share in the responsibility/risk. These one-two reciprocating steps are repeated throughout
the entire node of four forks (steps 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8). Steps 1-8, then, illustrate the ‘business-
to-business’ relationships that occur throughout the node. All business-to-business
transactions are traded not in cash or barter, but in shares of corporate stock (either owned by
the company or the employee). Importantly, however, these business-to-business steps 1-8
are only to provide the initial spark to ignite additional consumer sales via the sales channels of
the combined node. All consumer-related transactions, at least initially, are transacted in cash
sales commissions. Further, each of the Entities cross-trades corporate shares of stock.
Steps 1-8, then, are repeated for each of the remaining employees of the corporation. If
the corporation is comprised of 400 employees, then 400 nodes (steps 1-8) are implemented.
When all nodes from all four Entities are integrated, this forms a ‘Network of Nodes’.
Throughout local, national, and global economic markets, an almost infinite number of
network of nodes would exist within this Brunnian model of corporate-employee-consumer
entanglement. A Brunnian model of market entanglement, then, operates much like visual
fibers interconnecting each one of us to all of us.
In keeping with the third intention of this paper (page 24), the intention of a Brunnian
model of business processes is that the incentive to innovate, produce, or consume does not
originate from some external source (access to inexpensive capital, government subsidies,
favorable tax or credit incentives, etc.); rather, the incentive originates from within each one
of us. We, not markets, could embody significance. Within each moment, any individual from
anywhere on the planet might possess either a formal asset of intellectual property, a business
contact, or merely a creative idea. The intention of integrating a Brunnian-type model within
all corporate processes is to provide a global tool with which resources and opportunities can
become interdependent in real time.
46 | The Q Principles
 A global economy which is united by opportunities arising from intellectual property is
likely to become liberated from its past dependence upon real estate, perhaps even natural
resources. It is logical to conceive that as an increased amount of the population is focused
on exploring the creativity of the mind, technologies will eventually emerge which may lessen
our dependence upon natural resources or even replace our use of natural resources. As
nation-building case studies have consistently shown, organized corruption networks gain a
vital foothold in economic markets due to their control of real estate and natural resources.
Reduce or remove as much as possible real estate and natural resources from the value stream,
and create an economic system specifically designed to not be controllable (indeed, quantum
economics thrives on ‘managed disorder’), and it may be possible to eventually minimize the
now-prominent role of gray market and organized corruption networks.

(c)  Financial assumptions & projections of the Brunnian model

Now, to view the potential economic consequences from utilizing a Brunnian model. The
following three tables provide a summary set of projections of pre- and post-Brunnian states
of entanglement as they relate to a Brunnian ‘network of nodes’. The following four types of
corporations are used:
Entity A - a large corporation (focused on the development, production, and sale of optical
technology), comprised of 400 employees, and annual sales revenues of US$ 2 billion.
Entity B – a SME corporation (focused on the design of software), comprised of 25
employees, and annual sales revenues of US$ 50 million.
Entity C – an ad hoc collaborative consortium (focused on providing logistics and
communications services/technologies), comprised of 1 large corporation (400 employees),
3 SMEs (total 75 employees), 100 independent contractors (a total of 575 employees), and
annual sales revenues of US$ 3 billion.
Entity D – SME corporation (focused on the manufacturing of hardware), comprised of
25 employees, and annual sales revenues of US$ 50 million.
Table 4.  Network of Nodes, Pre- & Post-Brunnian: Sales & Profit

Beginning Profit Margin 7%

Profit Margin (Brunnian improved productivity) 10%
Corporate Sales & Profit
Brunnian
Beginning Total Annual Beginning Brunnian % Profit
Consumer
Annual Sales Sales Annual Profit Annual Profit growth
Sales
US$ ‘000 %
Entity A - Large Co. 2,000,000 6,000,000 8,000,000 140,000 800,000 471
Entity B - SME 50,000 9,375 59,375 3,500 5,937 70
Entity C - Ad hoc consortium 3,000,000 12,937,500 15,937,500 210,000 1,593,750 659
Entity D - SME 50,000 9,375 59,375 3,500 5,937 70
5,100,000 18,956,250 24,056,250 357,000 2,405,625

Table 5.  Network of Nodes, Pre- & Post-Brunnian: Corporate Share Value

Corporate Share Value

Beginning Brunnian Share Value Beginning Brunnian Share
Share Value Share Value Growth Price per share Value - Per Share

US $ ‘000 US $ ‘000 % US$ US$

Entity A - Large Co. - Optical Technology 500,000 735,714 47% $ 15 $ 22.07
Entity B - SME - Software Design 12,500 13,370 7% $ 5 $ 5.35
Entity C - Ad hoc - Logistics/Communications 750,000 1,244,196 66% $ 20 $ 33.18
Entity D - SME - Hardware Mfg 12,500 13,370 7% $ 5 $ 5.35
1,275,000 2,006,651

The Q Principles | 47
Table 6.  Network of Nodes, Pre- & Post-Brunnian: Employee Value

Average Beginning Employee Salary $ 30,000

Employee Value
Brunnian
Beginning Brunnian Consumer Total
Per
Employee Share Sales Employee
Employee
Salaries Value Commissions Revenue
Revenue
US$ ‘000
Entity A - Large Co. - Optical Technology 12,000 246 232,500 244,746 611
Entity B - SME - Software Design 750 41 23,671 24,463 978
Entity C - Ad hoc - Logistics/Communications 17,250 410 226,406 244,066 424
Entity D - SME - Hardware Mfg 750 41 23,671 24,463 978
30,750 740 506,250 537,740

Table 4 shows Entity A (the large optical technology corporation) with a beginning
annual revenue of US$ 2 billion. By altering its perceptions of value and empowering its entire
employee base to become entangled with others throughout the world, Entity A generates an
additional US$ 6 billion in consumer sales, for a total of US$ 8 billion in revenue. In Table 5,
Entity A’s share value, in one year, has increased by 47%.
Table 6, then, shows within Entity A, the combined 400 employees generate new value in
earning consumer sales commissions and increasing corporate share value. A typical employee
of Entity A which began with an average annual salary of US$ 30,000, as a consequence of
entanglement, generates US$ 611,867 in personal revenue. In toto, then, the observations to
be gained from the above three tables are the following:
• By utilizing employees as near limitless conduits to access other markets, industries,
and opportunities, corporations can accumulate, assess, and exploit value streams
never before recognized.
• By constructing mutually beneficial relationships between corporation, employee,
and consumer, all parties benefit from both economic and moral perspectives. No
longer are individuals exploited. Ideas, themselves, are exploited. Ideas, themselves,
become the tool which entangles all parties to collaborate and balance the activities
of the markets and of societies. The corporation and the individual are no longer
separate entities; they are a unified organismic body.
• By constructing an economic process which places shareholding to be directly
interlinked within markets as a form of currency, and by allowing these shareholding
currencies to be cross-traded on an employee-to-employee, corporation-to-
corporation, and global basis, individuals no longer require fixed salaries (which are
merely token representations of value), but now can contribute and earn value from
a large volume of small per-transaction revenues. Thus, when technology ultimately
displaces a wider segment of the population, individuals still retain their cross-
shareholdings as an ongoing source of income.
• In the end, corporations are no longer something to ‘own’; they become ever-adapting
conduits for any individual choosing to participate, to contribute and earn value.

(d)  Process, not institutions

For multiple reasons, it is important to construct local, state, and global economic
development strategies and applications of the Brunnian model based not on any specific
choice of substance (specific automotive parts manufacturing, specific computer components
research and development, specific software development, or even specific types of theatrical
film production) although indeed these components of the economy are important. Each state
and local market possesses certain strengths and weakness, thus, what may be applicable to
develop in one market may not necessarily be appropriate to develop in another. Each market
will be required to match its strengths and weaknesses with local, state, and global market
necessities. Certainly, global market demand for specific products are both identifiable and

48 | The Q Principles
quantifiable. However, it is more important to construct strategies based on process, rather
than substance or institutions.
Process is essentially the geometric conduit through which substance moves. In other
words, if economics could be compared to the biological systems of the human anatomy, any
economic development strategy process might be akin to the skeletal system which allows the
other systems of the body some form of physical stability and protection. A healthy economy,
then, could be described where each and all the body systems function in a synergetic manner.
The economic development process cannot pre-determine where specifically to place each
organ—this is substance, which can only be defined by the strengths and weaknesses of any
specific market. Economic examples of substance include the following:
• Specialization
–– Manufacturing, heavy and light
–– Services
–– Innovation labs
–– Infrastructure
–– Agriculture
• Size and reach
–– Large and SME corporations, domestic
–– Large and SME corporations, international
–– Formal transnational supply and value chains
–– Ad hoc collaborative communities
–– Individual proprietorships
• Level of autonomy
–– Free-standing corporations
–– Corporations housed within business incubators
• Labor intensive or labor-less
• Investment requirement
–– Capital investment
–– Technology and know-how investment
Whereas, economic examples of process include the following:
• Conduits for technology and know-how transfer
• Conduits for market access, domestic and international
• Networks for corporate mentoring
• Networks for targeted training of human resources
• Networks for research and development
• Integration with local, state, and multilateral governments and regulations
The differences between substance and process, then, can be distilled to this: without
process, any of the components listed in substance could not reasonably be expected to be
sustained. Unless, as an example, any single corporation (substance) can depend on an
interactive process to both gain access to a reasonably well trained labor force (another
substance) as well as market its goods/services (another substance), that corporation cannot
be expected to operate on a competitive basis. Each community will be required to consider
(practically, morally, culturally) what priorities for consumption it should hold in parallel with
what production capabilities the community possesses. Further, the issues of ecosystems
protection and cultural expression are vital for each community and the global community as a
whole to consider. As an example, it is possible to consider that various communities of people
already possess within their authentic identities the vision and passion to apply their culture,
knowledge, and skills to exploring new methods of renewable energy generation, but simply
lack the process to ‘plug in’ to global markets. Several Japanese architects, as an example, have
over the past several years, made substantial progress in developing new organic materials and
forms of housing and building construction which are both safer and more aesthetically natural
than products consumed today. Nigerian filmmakers produce on the average about 2,000 full
The Q Principles | 49
length films per year—some of which are now being shown in international markets. Bosnian
filmmakers over the past few years have won international awards, including the U.S. Academy
Award and the Berlin, Germany Golden Bear Award. Many Middle Eastern cultures have for
centuries formally provided music therapy programs for workers and citizens within both the
corporate setting and health care institutions.
Economic development does not necessarily mean ecosystems should be endangered,
or cultures should forego their traditions. Indeed, if the Chinese economy could have several
years ago implemented a more flexible and process-oriented economic development strategy,
China, today, might not be as dependent upon inexpensive consumer goods production
(which imposes price limitations for its labor force so that consumer products can remain
inexpensive—and which also severely impacts the ecosystems). New Orleans, prior to the
devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, was a city which generated the majority
of its revenue from the oil industry, shipping, and tourism. Hurricane Katrina not only
flooded roughly 80 percent of the city, the natural disaster unmasked large populations
living in poverty—predominately African-American. The hurricane also unmasked the
dysfunctional state and federal emergency response agencies, where political disputes and
territorialism were carried out in public view. The reconstruction of New Orleans can be
compared to the geopolitical process of nation-building: firstly, both the emergency response
and reconstruction phases were essentially political venues upon which ego and power were
contested (and also where incompetence was flagrant). Institutions were more focused on
protecting hierarchy and control rather than serving society. Secondly, government agencies
possessed no understanding that almost all economic sectors or industries are invariably
subject to natural market changes. New Orleans had for so long grown dependent upon certain
industries, and consequently, no attention for decades had been given to designing process-
driven economic development strategies. By not enabling these process-driven processes,
the labor market and society as a whole become complacent—and this complacency easily
transforms to social tension when markets are inevitably forced to change. Indeed, large
percentages of the New Orleans population (estimated 40%) were relocated throughout the
country (primarily Houston and Dallas) during the emergency evacuation—and because the
industries upon which the city had grown dependent were slow to rebuild (if rebuilt at all), a
negligible percentage of the relocated have since returned to New Orleans.
In the mid-1980s, I was living near the Yorkshire Wolds of England, and spent a great
deal of time travelling throughout the country. A coal miner’s strike beginning in March of
1984 was fraught with diverse economic and sociopolitical tensions. In part, the strike (and
the public response) was animated by the protectionist role of labor unions; and in part, the
strike mortally exposed the coal industry as a whole had diminished in economic importance.
Beginning later that year, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher began closing what
were deemed ‘non-productive pits’—most of these mines were located in or near small rural
townships. As I visited many of these townships, it became clear the coal mines were essentially
the single largest employer of the local community. Not only were laid-off miners affected, but
pub proprietors, auto mechanics, and retail clerks also suffered economically. But something
more subtle was also discernible. Go into any pub, and it became noticeable that the entire
social community had—for generations—been entwined with the single industry of coal.
Sons, fathers, grandfathers, mothers, daughters, and wives—all their identities bound together
into not simply the coal industry, but also the very history of the coal industry. Because small
towns are almost always dependent upon a particular industry, when the industry changes,
townspeople have difficulty adapting and transferring their skills and knowledge to another
industry. The real question exposed by this example of British coal mine closures is not
how to protect any specific livelihood, but how each one of us responds, professionally and
personally, to the ever-evolving nature of life, society, and economics.
From the few examples highlighted above, it should be clear that orthodox institutions
are both slow to respond and hesitant to anticipate. By constructing conduits (process) for
each population-base’s diverse and unique assets (substance) to be globalized, the uniqueness
50 | The Q Principles
of individual skills and social cultures can be liberated from old market dependencies and
geopolitical constraints as well as past experiences of isolation and disenfranchisement. Figure
14 illustrates the core of how process is utilized to construct these substance conduits.
Figure 14.  A network of conduits (process for substance to flow throughout markets)

State-level Conduits
Corporate-level Conduits

1-A
Regional-level Conduits
3

Local-level Conduits
1-B

Global
Database 1-C

2-A 2-B
Corporations
Universities

Government Agencies
Private Individuals

Cross-section of Conduit

As Figure 14 illustrates, each conduit is comprised of corporations, universities, government

agencies, and private individuals—which all feed knowledge, information, technology, know-
how, market necessities, etc. throughout the network of conduits. Essentially, this form of
conduit network will serve as the precursor of sorts to the entanglement concept relative to
the Brunnian model. In the Brunnian model, the entire employee base is enabled to make
and carry out decisions on behalf of the company, themselves, and society as a whole. In its
precursor mode, these decisions, in the main, will be facilitated by the employee organization
rather than employee. In the above Figure 14, three variations of ‘substance transfer’ are
illustrated. Steps 1-A, 1-B, and 1-C trace substance being contributed-transferred from a
corporate-level conduit (1-A) to any state-level conduit (even potentially bypassing its nearest
local and state conduits); then, from the state-level conduit to a regional-level conduit (1-B);
then, from the regional-level conduit to a global database for anyone to access (1-C).
Steps 2-A and 2-B illustrate that a specific regional conduit may be able to aggregate a critical
mass of substances into a ‘package of substances’ and contribute the package throughout the
network. Step 3 illustrates that substance can be transferred from one corporate-level conduit
(specializing in technology) to another (specializing in manufacturing). The permutations of
substance-to-conduit flow are geometrically infinite.
As Figure 15 (next page) suggests, a certain amount of order is required to ensure such
aspects as environmental and cultural impact, infrastructure necessities, as well as national
econometric consequences. Note particularly the role of targeted training of human resources.
Orthodoxy might suggest these training programs be institutionalized within ‘separate
schools’, but for two reasons, this should be discouraged: firstly, knowledge is not a personal
or social asset which is separate from any facet of life, and thus the process of education can
be organismically entangled throughout a myriad of formal and informal means. Discernible
from this thought process should be the notion that orthodoxy tends to institutionalize
knowledge and systems, whereas ‘quantum education’ is process-driven. This can be taken
even further: if education were to be de-institutionalized and allowed to be process-driven,
then all individuals become both teacher and student to each other—brought together as
needed by the conduit network. Secondly, the education gained in one specialization (say,
quantum physics) may spark ideas in another specialization (say, economics). Thus, as local,
state, and global strategies are considered and implemented, each molecule of substance, each
The Q Principles | 51
corporate asset, each item of knowledge becomes entangled with the other—via the network
of conduits and strategy groups—and the result should be a controlled explosion of sorts.
The explosion to come is not only an explosion of economic activity, but also an explosion of
ideas.
Figure 15.  Strategy Group process

Resource
Pools (global,
regional,
Regional local)
Contact
Group
Local-level
State Contact
Contact
Group
Regional Group
Common
Markets &
Global
Markets
Kn Tra
Ac rket

o w ns
ss

PRIVATE PUBLIC
ce

le fer
Ma

dg

SECTOR SECTOR
e

Production Target Fast-Track

Public Works
Systems Training Training
Programs
Alliances Alliances Market Coordination, Programs
Knowledge Transfer, and
Research & Development

Relationship between peoples & global-state-community social systems

Priority Governance Priority Social Priority Infrastructure

Systems Reform Systems Reform Systems Reform

State-to-local-to-global Education Transportation

governance Health Care Energy
Legal Social Security Telecommunications
Regulatory Environmental
Taxation protection

(e)  Value, price, & self-restraining capitalism

When the technology and knowledge transfer mechanisms, Brunnian model, and
process/strategy conduits are combined, the resulting principles of quantum economics can
be defined as: 1—establishing a wealth valuation process—based not on the value of labor, but
rather on the civilizational value of the entire innovation-to-consumption chain affecting all
goods and services available to the consumer; 2—establishing a wealth ownership process—
based on individual stakeholdership of all innovation and sales revenues as well as societal
responsibilities; and 3—establishing a capital movement process—based almost exclusively
on corporate shareholdings and equity financing, thus removing the necessity for debt-
based financing of any part of the innovation-to-consumption chain. The core econometric
principles to replace product value based on labor with value based on the entire innovation-
to-consumption chain are as follows:
Balancing value, price & responsibility. Classical economics has suggested for centuries
the more a product is consumed, production economies of scale allow the product to be
produced in a manner that consistently lowers the cost of production, whilst at the same
time, consumers apply pressure to consistently lower the end-user purchase price—which
stimulates even greater consumption. The obvious flaw in this classical valuation process is
that no one along the innovation-to-consumption chain directly shoulders the responsibilities
of balancing self-initiative with self-restraint. Any thought and action of self-restraint has been
relegated to the legal systems. Accordingly, so as to provide a facility for individuals to directly
balance self-initiative with self-restraint, the valuation of goods and services is reversed in
this geoeconomic model: the more a product is consumed on a global scale, the greater its
value. In other words, if Product X was consumed by 25% of the global population, its value
52 | The Q Principles
(consumer purchase price) might be US$ 1.00. However, if Product X was consumed by
75% of the global population, then its value (consumer purchase price) might be US$ 1.25.
Thus, value is determined not by labor value, instead, by a visible socioeconomic weighting
process: 1—percentage of global market consumption (measuring civilizational needs
and wants); 2—percentage of global market usefulness (measuring civilizational utility);
and 3— percentage of global market accountability (measuring the balance of benefit and
responsibility). Figure 17, page 55, illustrates this concept.
Preparing for knowledge-based & labor-less economies. Classical economics has provided
labor with only a token value of labor-based salaries—allowing the corporation to generate
the greater majority of profit value gained as a consequence of labor. But if the economy is
essentially knowledge-based and labor-less, the remaining alternative is to enable all global
consumers to become stockholders in corporations of their choosing, and thus, all global
consumers receive dividends on each product consumed.
Establishing new processes for the creation of disposable income. Since all global citizens
(eventually becoming unemployed in a knowledge-based and labor-less economy) would be
stockholders in a myriad of corporations, and thus receive regular dividend payments resulting
from diverse global consumer purchases, all basic essentials of human existence (shelter, food,
education, health care, etc.), would be financed via these dividend payments (still responsive
to taxation).
Equity versus debt financing. Because self-initiative and self-restraint are the new foundations
to the entire innovation-to-consumption chain, the network of conduits can be exploited for
equity capital at a much greater efficiency than debt-based financing to muster all necessary
resources for growth. The logic here is that if resources within the network of conduits find
a particular idea possessing the potential to add value to the market, and since stockholding
provides the mechanism for return on investment, then investment capital rather than debt-
financing more effectively mirrors the potential value of the idea. Thus, there most likely will
be no economic requirement for debt financing of either consumer or industrial purposes.
Flexible participation. Individual citizens, globally, participate in the innovation cycle at
any time, for any length of time. These innovators-consumers-shareholders, then, receive an
additional appropriation of stockholdings.
Figure 16 (next page) illustrates how value is conventionally calculated throughout the
production-to-consumption cycle. Obviously missing from the value calculations are (a) the
intrinsic values of all individuals who contributed to the innovation process throughout the
entire production-consumption chain; and (b) the valuation of social responsibility in the
production and consumption of goods/services.

The Q Principles | 53
 COMPONENT EQUIPMENT PROVIDERS INTEGRATE COMPONENT EQUIPMENT TO PRODUCE END-USER PRODUCT

Conventional Value Model

4 Individual Items of
Manufactured Equipment
Manufactured by 4
Individual Companies
Present per-Unit Value of Integrated
Raw Materials, Operations Equipment Items
& Labor--then,
Adding a Market Sensitive $ 1,837.50 * 4 Equipment Items
=

54 | The Q Principles
Profit Margin
$ 7,350 Total Purchase Price
Item 1 – Company 1
The equipment, then, is amortized over a
$ 1,837.50 Revenue multi-year period. Asset & Liability is
calculated on a basis of cost and lifespan
Cost of Raw Materials & of equipment. This, then, figures into
Operations, etc. $ 1,000 Profit Margin calculations.
Item 2 – Company 2 + +
$ 1,837.50 Revenue Cost of Labor $ 750
+ +
Profit Margin (5%) $ 87.50
Figure 16.  Value as Defined by Classical Economics

= = Cost of Equipment & other Raw Materials $ 200

Selling Price (incl. tax) $ 1,837.50 + +
Item 3 – Company 3 Cost of Labor $ 175
$ 1,837.50 Revenue Consumer Product
+ +
Manufacturer
Profit Margin (5%) $ 18.75
= =
Selling Price (incl. tax) $ 393.75
Item 4 – Company 4
$ 1,837.50 Revenue

Purchases for:
$ 439.69

(using disposable
income paid by
Company 4) Cost of Finished Product $ 393.75
+ +
End-Consumer Cost of Sales (Labor) $ 25
(also Laborer in Retailer + +
Company 4) Profit Margin (5%) $ 20.94
= =
Selling Price (incl. tax) $ 439.69

day, a citizen might participate in the value chain only as consumer-shareholder; but on the
and 3—how shareholding corporations interact with citizen-sets (citizens as shareholders
and as consumers, and citizens who contribute directly to the innovation and production of
is assigned to products; 2—how capital markets interact with shareholding corporations;
Figure 17 illustrates, within a knowledge-based and labor-less economy: 1—how value

products). It is important to note these citizen-sets are not static definitions. On any particular
 CORPORATE PRODUCTION OF
CAPITAL
VALUE-BASED CONSUMER PRODUCTS
- Production Materials
- Intellectual Property Futures Market
- Goods & Services
Moves capital to
VALUE (x) IS DETERMINED BY:
predicted market
(a) Global Market Consumption
demands
(b) Global Market Usefulness
(c) Global Market Accountability (benefit vs.
responsibility)
Use of Capital (Equity, Consumption
Global Market Consumption (a):
Revenue):
75 % + (a)4 + (b)1..4 + (c)1..4 = (x) (i) Re-investment (Re-Innovation)
STOCKHOLDING (ii) Savings (delayed innovation-
50 – 74.9 % (a)3 + (b)1..4 + (c)1..4 = (x) CORPORATION production)
Figure 17.  Value as Defined by Quantum Economics

(iii) Social Responsibilities, such as

25 – 49.9 % (a)2 + (b)1..4 + (c)1..4 = (x) Education, Health Care,
Environmental Protection, etc.
0 – 24.9 % (a)1 + (b)1..4 + (c)1..4 = (x)

CONSUMPTION Dividend Payments to:

PURCHASE CITIZEN-SETS

Use of Dividend Earnings:

CONTRIBUTION: CITIZEN-SETS (i) Consumption
direct labor; then on the next day, revert back to consumer-shareholder.

(a) Intellectual Property (ii) Savings (delayed consumption)

Sets are fluid, changing as
(b) Labor (diminishing) Innovator-
(iii) Social Responsibilities
market changes
Laborer- Consumer-
Consumer- Shareholder
Shareholder
Innovator-
Consumer-
Shareholder

The Q Principles | 55
next day, this same citizen might participate in the value chain with an innovative idea or even
 Simply, all global citizens are shareholders in corporations of their choosing. These
consumer-shareholders, then, receive dividend payments from each good/service consumed.
The more which is consumed, the more wealth is generated for both the corporation (global
shareholders), the individual (receiving dividends), and the public good (via the enlightened
utilization of social responsibility valuations attached to each product). Further, at any time,
for any length of time, any consumer-shareholder can provide the market with new innovation,
and thus receive an additional appropriation of shareholdings. Capital, and future speculation
of capital needs, then, impact and are impacted by the weighted process of consumer demand
(needs and wants, utility, accountability).
Thus, quantum economics achieves what classical economics thus far has not: (a) the
intrinsic values of all individuals who contributed to the innovation process throughout
the entire production-consumption chain are quantified and secured; (b) the valuation of
social responsibility in the production and consumption of goods/services are balanced
into the valuation of wealth generation; and (c) aggregate demand is maintained as a direct
consequence of society making an a priori and real time determination as to the direction and
force of its economic activity.
Figure 18 (next page) illustrates the geoeconomic process of how multiple values are
balanced to arrive at a global recognition of aggregate value of any product. By altering the
concept of value in this way, two consequences are realized: 1—as all consumers initiate a
purchase, all the components (from innovation value and production value, to environmental
responsibility and social responsibility value) contained within the product are visibly reported
to and considered by the consumer; and 2—individuals are no longer seen as labor, rather,
they are seen in their authentic identities—and thus the authentic identity, itself, become the
value.

56 | The Q Principles
 Less More More

Target 75 – 100 %

Global Market Consumption

(Needs & Wants) I nnovation 50 – 74.9 %
Focus

Supply of
Global Market Usefulness Natur al R esour ce,
Capital, &
(Utility)
(limited use of) Labor
& Pr oduction Capacity 25 – 49.9 %
Figure 18.  Synthesizing value & establishing interdependency

Global Market Accountability

Consumer Pr oduct V alue

(Benefit & Responsibility)

Global Mar ket Consumption =
Accountability (benefit & responsibility) = Geoeconomics

0 – 24.9 %
Balancing Consumption (needs & wants) with Usefulness (utility) with

The Q Principles | 57
Less
 It should be already visible to most people that two centrifugal forces are now at work,
impacting all of humankind, and presenting us all with both a challenge and opportunity:
firstly, several of our economic, environmental, even political foundations appear no longer
to be capable to sustain effective control—and hence, power—over increasing parts of the
global populations. Whether the profound global challenges impacting us all are defined in
terms of environmental sustainability, resource supply, or wealth gaps between rich and poor,
the global nature of the challenges are now clear and unavoidable. Secondly, in sometimes
micro-steps and sometimes revolutionary steps, self-organizing collaborative communities
and social activism are at this very moment already giving rise to a new owners of economic
sovereignty—bringing forward the inevitable. The revolution is ascending.
If one were to view possible solutions to the convergence of global crises in a manner
that was not bound to a specific school of thought (liberal, conservative, Western, non-
Western, etc.), but rather in a manner that was free to combine aspects from various schools
of thought—then, the potential to envision more effective paradigms becomes profound. A
combination of Keynesian-Friedman capitalism, Kantian self-governance, and even quantum
science, as examples, might reveal these new paradigms.
The exceptional opportunity that underpins the convergence of global crises is that
society as a whole is ultimately the group that could directly and personally balance the
interwoven objectives of maintaining global aggregate demand with personal and social
responsibility. Further, the element of society as a whole becoming responsible to maintain
aggregate demand raises a fundamental question not really asked before by any previous
civilization: what products/services are we to produce that possesses the potential to maintain
aggregate demand on a global scale (in much the same way as Cold War era military-industrial
production)? A new economic paradigm is needed to ask and answer these profound questions.
This, indeed, may be a rare opportunity for humankind. As with any contemplated transition
or transformation, stakeholders throughout the social, economic, and political spectrums
will be naturally concerned about personal security of livelihood. Undoubtedly, sacrifices are
required. However, the new economic paradigm considered herein can be structured so that
all transitions are both practical and effective.
As Figure 19 illustrates, the hybrid Keynesian-Friedman model with which most nation-
states presently employ, is based on three integrated segments: 1—money, 2—labor (both
operating as commodities), and 3—benefits of production (capital accumulation).
Figure 19.  The Keynesian-Friedman Model

Farming
sector

Government
Military-
Industry
Interest
sector
Rate
Market
stimulator
M bili
sta
ar ze

Debt- Money Marginal

ke r
t

driven Market Efficiency

of
Capital

Product
Market

l
gina
Mar sity to
e n
Labor Prop sume
Market Con

58 | The Q Principles
 Externally, government provides stimulation when necessary, and the military-industrial
sector provides essential market stabilization (by providing aggregate demand) so that various
other risks can be taken within the production market. A few observations can be made from
this model within the context of global crises:
1. When Keynes and Friedman both influenced national and global economic thought,
debt/interest was still the primary investment tool. This debt-driven tool even
influences the fundamental logic of the Bretton Woods institutions. However, with
the massive movement of individual consumer trading of public and private stocks
beginning in the 1970s, equity investment has replaced a substantial portion of debt-
based investment.
2. Since the introduction of personal computing and the Internet, the revenues
earned from knowledge-based value assets have replaced a substantial portion of
physical labor-based value. Not only does this begin to shift the laborer from mere
representations of physical labor to creative innovator, the very pricing (valuation) of
labor shifts from token representations of salary incomes to percentage ownerships
of intellectual property.
3. In the end analysis, however, it becomes clear that the Keynesian-Friedman model
is dependent upon either the government or military-industrial sector to stimulate/
stabilize overall production and consumption activity.
4. From a philosophical perspective, the inferred intentions of the Keynesian-Friedman
model are:
a. Production-consumption for the sake of production-consumption. Military-
industry markets are based on preconceived notions of essential utility (an
aircraft or tank possesses an inherent utility). Whereas consumer-driven markets
is an erratic mixture of utility and luxury (food versus flat-screen televisions).
The more economic systems are driven by luxury rather than utility, the more
unstable economic systems become.
b. Accumulation of capital as an end. This human condition is motivated (and
incentives designed) in part by protectionism and greed. Both of these
motivations are destabilizing to the larger economies. Periodic accusations of
‘price gouging’ by the oil industry is an example of this.
c. Unemployment is persistent. This is due in large part to the market’s inability
to form interdependent relationships with education in a rapid-reaction manner
and to the human and market aversion to risk. Markets can shift rapidly; society,
however, is often reluctant or resistant to change to meet shifting markets.
As Figure 20 (next page) illustrates, a self-restraining model rearranges the intentions of
human participation in relation to production-consumption.
1. Transformation of product value is based not on labor, but on mixture of
socioeconomic weighting inputs:
• Percentage of global market consumption (measuring civilizational needs and
wants);
• Percentage of global market usefulness (measuring civilizational utility); and
• Percentage of global market accountability (measuring the balance of benefit
and responsibility).
2. Transformation of market value is defined not by token value-based labor economies,
but on true knowledge trading and interweaving-based innovation.
3. Transformation of cash as primary source of income to corporate stock-value income
for all individuals. This provides both the authentic value of intellectual property to
be globally traded as well as the essential safety-net for risk to be taken within global
capitalism-based economies.
4. Transformation of corporations as entities primarily focused on producing end-
user products to be equally focused on transferring and receiving technology and

The Q Principles | 59
 knowledge assets on a large and global scale.
5. Transformation of hierarchical-based corporations to project-oriented and self-
organizing collaborative communities.
6. Transformation of obligation/PR-driven CSR programs to authentic employee/
shareholder-driven personal response programs.
7. These economic systems transformations, in toto, provide the basis for societal
activism and political policy to more effectively facilitate the balance between wealth
generation and self-restraint.

Figure 20.  Self-restraining capitalism model

Marginal efficiency Self-restraining
of non-human resources capitalism

Government

Human Mechanical
Labor Labor

M rsig
ov
ar
e
ke ht
t
Production
Human
Knowledge Human
as Innovation Equity
Capital as Capital
Intention

Consumption
Human-social
Well-being
Natural
resources

Marginal propensity to balance wealth generation (market stimulation)

with self-restraint (ecosystem & social well-being)

When we as typical consumers see a product, we predominately only see how that product
can benefit us (what’s in it for me?). But in a state of entanglement, when we as consumers
see a product, we see much more—we see all the elements necessary for that product to exist.
We see the diverse materials which were then processed together to shape matter into form.
We see the innovation of software or optics which animates the form, and which itself was
animated by multiple resources of knowledge and wisdom. We also see the environmental
impact and social relevance of the product. We see all this value not as something distant and
foreign to us; we see all this value because we are a part of it, and this value is also a part of us.

Figure 21.  Seeing the quantum value of a product

Conventional Value
Materials
Production inputs
LCD screen technology Sales & distribution inputs

Value of the Mind

Knowledge & innovation
Books read - personal conversations
Spiritual prayers/thoughts from others
State of environment, diet, etc.

Value of Society & the Environment

Product/service utility/luxury
Environmental impact
Global market penetration

60 | The Q Principles
 The sociopolitical resource mobilization orthodoxy that still binds much of humankind
is based on national government-driven policy and regulatory systems. Civilizations have
inherited government leadership concepts from Socrates and Plato, and have maintained these
archaic systems even though they no longer are effective. Adherence to government-driven
orthodoxy prevents global citizens to more naturally and effectively join together and mobilize
resources for global action. Thus, whether or not the geoeconomic models presented herein
are ultimately deemed to possess any merit or significance, the fact remains some alternative to
labor-based economies and geopolitical polarizations is now unavoidably a moral imperative of
all civilizations. The intention of this quantum economics model has been to present a theory
that stimulates all individuals on a global scale to contribute to innovation and consumption
of these more enlightened needs and wants. A theory that possesses the potential, once and
for all, to unbind us all from the knot of exploitation and polarization, and set us all free.
It is all together too easy to declare the single individual is somehow powerless to confront
the realpolitik of the orthodox hierarchy we have inherited. With the quantum economic tools
at our disposal, the single individual rapidly becomes entangled and interdependent with
others... empowered to think and act with clarity. As individuals, global civilizations might
meekly resign themselves to a hierarchical and subordinated existence, but through the design
of interdependent livelihoods, entangled individuals can radically change the entire logic
and process of corporate, societal and world order. Together, we can make way for the more
egalitarian interdependencies of our authentic identities and our callings into livelihood.
In some future construct of economics, our human art, the product and potential of
our minds, rather than merely our physical selves, shall endure with value. And purposeless
significance. Perhaps this new bonding to our minds and the minds of others is the true
restoration of who we are. At last, to contemplate to radically alter the holders and structures
of power away from hierarchical-centric accumulations of wealth and from geopolitical-
centric governments—and commend authentic power to the previously unthinkable: the
insubstantial and anarchic embodiment of random and often conflicting ideas and values; our
very selves. How to begin the transformation process?

5  Quantum Value & Interdependency: Transition & Process

Individual & corporate transition

Local and global populations do not need to wait for someone else to take the lead in
bringing about a geoeconomic transformation. The following action steps can be implemented
by anyone, anywhere:
1. Value census. Instigate a corporate human resources value census which begins to
identify and establish a database of a more authentic, quantum-level value inherent
within a corporation’s access to human resources (internal and external to the
corporation. This can be done formally by the corporation or trade union, or even
informally by employee groups.
2. See & practice interdependence, not separateness. Instigate the interdependence of
corporate ‘divisions’ (such as integration of R&D and production divisions, or
production and philanthropy divisions, etc.). As interdependence between divisions
grows, a tool to more rapidly and widely broadcast consequences resulting from
integration steps throughout the corporation and community might be to establish
‘enlightenment campuses’ online and within communities.
3. Balance wealth & social priorities. Instigate the integration of social priorities within
the corporation, and in parallel, establish venture opportunities for wealth generation
within the community at large.
4. Corporate & social coalitions. Establish corporate and social coalitions to a create
critical mass for both wealth generation and social priorities along vertical markets
(locally and globally). This might be referred to as a ‘test bed’ of the larger deployment
of quantum economics on a national and international basis.

The Q Principles | 61
 5. Democratize intellectual property. Develop short- and long-term strategic plans for
Brunnian model-based intellectual property management.
6. Broadcast intellectual property. Establish technology & knowledge transfer conduits
(comprised of corporations, universities, government agencies, and private
individuals), which possess the potential to feed knowledge, information, technology,
know-how, market necessities, etc., throughout a global network of conduits.
7. Expand investment. Co-fund with social groups and other investment resources
private equity investment funds for local and international development.
8. Democratize corporate stockholdings. Establish and issue variation of ‘preferred’ stocks—
socially preferred stocks—to public at large, based on balancing wealth generation with
social responsibility. With corporate and social coalitions, one variation of socially
preferred stocks is designated for purchase, whilst another variation is designated as
a ‘birth portfolio’ granted to newborns within the community.
Global transition: objectives
As mentioned earlier, national transitions, although important, will not provide
substantive critical mass to effectively resolve the myriad of global crises local and global
communities now face. Global solutions are required. Right now, at this very moment, vast
untapped value already resides in the minds and imaginations of presently disenfranchised
populations throughout the world. By investing in a level economic playing field for all states
to participate, this untapped value can finally be made manifest. A nearly infinite number
of indicators—spanning personal, societal, macro- and micro-economic, political, internal,
and external factors—all converge to determine the health and sustainability of any society.
Such factors as economic production capacities; standards and access to housing and public
utilities; standards and curriculum of education; standards and resources of health care;
social freedoms; civil liberties and responsibilities, and the like, are all vital to interweave
into any economic development process. However, because to consider such a voluminous
set of factors would effectively require more space than is possible in this paper, herein only
four primary indicators are used to define state economic sustainability—per capital GDP,
employment rate, research and development (R&D) spending, and export-oriented corporate
registrations. Admittedly, the choosing of these particular four indicators can be alleged to be
excessively unsophisticated or even patently subjective, but it can equally be argued these four
primary targets represent a set of indicators—that if they were achieved, would most likely
indicate that the largest part of the other socioeconomic targets had also been achieved.
National output, or national income, is generally accounted in two ways: Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) is the total value of goods and services produced within a country over a
period of time, usually a year; Gross National Product (GNP) is the total of incomes earned
by residents of a country regardless of where the assets are located. In other words, the income
earned by a U.S.-owned business based in China would be considered part of the U.S. GNP,
not China’s. For the purposes of constructing the following two geoeconomic models, GDP
will be used in the model’s calculations—reason being that GDP more accurately than GNP
corresponds to a nation’s per capita earnings. Further, there are socioeconomic distortions
inherent within the GNP accounting process. An example: Intel Corporation, a U.S.
manufacturer of microprocessors and integrated circuits, builds an advanced, US$ 2.5 billion
chip fabrication plant in Dalian, China. On the surface, the plant appears to be a benefit to the
Chinese economy and Intel shareholders. But upon deeper examination, it is questionable
the plant is indeed in the best interests of the U.S. economy, or for that matter, the U.S. and
Chinese civilizations. Firstly, the Chinese economy and civilization—resistant to apply its
own ingenuity and investment resources toward modern global economic requisites—is
benefiting by gaining effortless access to chip innovation and production technology created
by American researchers and American companies, which did apply its own ingenuity and
investment resources. Because the acquisition of technology was effortless on the part of
the Chinese, and is devoid of any act of reciprocity, the Chinese economy and civilization
feel no remorse in transferring this new knowledge and experience to improve their other
62 | The Q Principles
national industries, often illegitimately and without consent from or compensation to the
original developers of the technology (thereby exacerbating the gray and black markets).
The supposed reasoning given to the public for Intel’s decision to build the plant in China
is that lower labor costs would contribute to lower costs to the end-consumer. Computer
chip production facilities, however, are not particularly labor intensive. A study by the
Semiconductor Industry Association found that 90 percent of Asia’s cost advantage over
U.S. production is attributable to government subsidies and tax breaks. In the case of Intel’s
China plant, it has been estimated these subsidies amounted to about US$ 500 million. Thus,
if the essential nature of the investment is assessed, what is actually occurring is that a U.S.
company is transferring to another national economy both tangible and intangible assets of
immeasurable value which required decades of innovation and investment—for the express
purpose of avoiding U.S. social and tax responsibilities, while at the same time receiving
cash subsidies from the Chinese government. This type of abridged economic activity only
intensifies the government’s role in preserving the authority to maintain aggregate demand.
Indeed, in post Cold War U.S. economics, the U.S. government has attempted to reduce its
role in maintaining aggregate demand, leaving this to the larger market forces. Still, however,
various U.S. corporations which have not modernized their own business models so as to be
competitive in the global knowledge economy, have grown dependent upon some type of
government role in maintaining aggregate demand, and thus seek out foreign governments
to fulfill this old economy role. Consequently, regarding GNP accounting methods,
socioeconomic distortions and asymmetries affecting U.S. economic activity, domestically
and transnationally, are elements to be eschewed in the geoeconomic modeling process.
Macroeconomics is, in the main, concerned with what determines the size of national
incomes, its stability, and its relationship to variables such as unemployment and inflation.
In conventional terms, the size of a country’s potential national income at any particular
moment depends on its assets of production—labor, capital, and its technology. However,
it is important to state that many of the conventional macroeconomic paradigms, including
the specific indicator of GDP are now considered by modern-day economists as outdated.
The reason for this can, in part, be attributed to the fact that macroeconomics, in general, and
national income accounting, in specific, is based on valuations of tangibles. National output/
income is predominately concerned only with defining ‘final demand’—the moment when
a tangible purchase has been consummated—consumption (personal expenditure on items
such as food, clothing, appliances, and cars); government spending; net exports (exports
minus imports); and investment (spending by businesses on items such as new facilities and
equipment). However, the role of intangibles—brand equity, organizational and human
competencies, firm-specific resources (such as the secrecy of the formula for Coca Cola®),
scientific R&D, non-scientific R&D, and computerized information, as examples—are not
yet calculated in national income or in other indicators such as the consumer price index
(CPI). Both corporate-level and national income accounting practice has historically treated
expenditure on intangible inputs as an intermediate expense and not as an investment that
is part of GDP—although the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs) has
recently included software in its calculations. An example of this asymmetry between tangible
and intangible value is highlighted in a National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper
(11948), Intangible Capital and Economic Growth, 2006, which observes from 1973-1995,
capital investment accounted for 59 percent of labor productivity growth when intangibles are
included, but only 44 percent when they are excluded. From 1995-2003, the differentiation is
even greater, with capital investment accounting for 54 percent of growth when intangibles are
included but only 35 percent when they are excluded. What these figures clearly demonstrate
is that intangibles have a quantifiable and increasing impact on labor productivity, and hence,
profit and growth potential—yet, U.S. and global institutions have hitherto not modernized
their accounting methods. Orthodoxy continues to maintain its fossilized adherence to
tangible value, whereas modern economics and civilizational activity are increasingly displaying
quantifiable intangible value.
The Q Principles | 63
 Irrespective of these macroeconomic asymmetries, the geoeconomic models presented
herein shall not attempt to create any new accounting methods or econometric terminologies,
for this perhaps would be disorienting to the average reader. However, an effort shall be made
to delineate investment, value, and output in broader terms to include both tangible and
intangible value. The four primary targets defining state economic sustainability to be used in
the geoeconomic models:
1. Raise overall per capita GDP to a minimum of US$ 5,000. Because the average
working age population (age 15-64) of any state is about 54.6% of the total population,
the actual working population needs to be earning about US$ 9,158 per capita GDP.
2. Raise the overall employment rate to 95% of the working age population.
3. Raise global R&D focus to 2.24% of GDP (OECD mean average).
4. Raise export-oriented corporate registrations focused on attracting and implementing
value-chain and international production systems to a minimum of 40% of total
global corporate registrations.
The first indicator relates to per capital GDP (Gross Domestic Product). The logic,
here, is that for a society to generate a widely dispersed per capita wealth (rather than wealth
generated/retained predominately by the elites, or the state itself), it becomes a necessity
for society to possess access and protections that relate to all the individual components of
a healthy state, such as housing/utilities, education, health care, transportation, etc. The
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as do the vast majority
of the economist community, define the minimal per capita GDP necessary to sustain the
security of a state is US$ 5,000 per year. But per capita GDP, in and of itself, is a misleading
indicator. An example: assume a state has a population of 1 million citizens and an overall
state GDP of US$ 5 billion. This would mean by orthodox accounting standards, per capita
GDP would be calculated at US$ 5,000 for each of the state’s 1 million citizens. But reality
dictates that not all of the 1 million citizens will indeed contribute to the whole. The aged,
the infirm, and the infant young do not, conventionally, contribute to economic revenue
(indeed, they often require economic expenditure). Or, possibly, the state may generate the
vast majority of it US$ 5 billion GDP via the sale of oil to foreign buyers—with revenues
most likely retained by elites, exacerbating unemployment. Thus, so as to compensate for
the potential asymmetries inherent within per capita GDP indicators, the second indicator of
employment is assimilated into the models.
By combining these two indicators of per capita GDP and employment, a more definitive
picture can be seen with respect to a state’s economic capacity to sustain the security of the
state. Table 7 and Table 8, below, identify the general present-day status of global GDP, per
capita GDP, and unemployment indicators. For simplicity, the world’s states have been divided
into three tiers, defined by their level of per capita GDP output .
Table 7.  Per capita GDP of the World, 2005 (Organized in Simplified Tiers)
Per capita GDP Number of States
Tier 1 $27,700 + 30
Tier 2 $5,001 - $27,699 93
Tier 3 $0 - $5,000 107

Table 8.  Per capita GDP in relation to Unemployment, 2005

GDP Component Population-Unemployment Component
Overall GDP per capita GDP Labor Age Unemployment of
Population
(combined) (averaged) (15-64) Labor Age
US$ Billions US$ # millions # millions # millions %
Tier 1 27,225 33,057 821 448 54 12
Tier 2 20,771 12,960 2,619 1,430 267 19
Tier 3 7,627 2,214 3,011 1,644 501 30

64 | The Q Principles
 As is seen in Table 7 and Table 8, 107 states presently operate below the empirical
benchmark for economic, social, and political sustainability—and equally, are burdened
with an average unemployment rate of 30%. 30 states (generally, the OECD states) presently
operate with a higher level of relative per capita output in balance with semi-sustainable
unemployment rates (12%). However, the Tier 1 12% unemployment rate average reveals
the ‘under-the-surface’ weakness of even the OECD markets. It is generally considered an
optimum unemployment rate of 5% allows for essential market/labor flexibility—and it is
almost certain the changing demographics of OECD states will increasingly apply further
pressure upon this 12% rate (changes due from ageing populations, low birth rates, and even
from technology depressing labor demand). The Tier 2 states, then, due to their higher
unemployment rate average (19%), are in even greater jeopardy of destabilization
Targets 1 and 2 (per capita GDP and employment rates) are now taken in reverse
order; here, it is the intention of global geoeconomic sustainability to achieve the optimum
unemployment level of 5% of the labor age. Inescapably, then, new employment opportunities
will need to be created. Indeed, this employment creation focused intention contradicts the
very essence of orthodox multilateral institutional emphasis on ‘poverty reduction’.
Table 9.  Employment Creation, not Poverty Reduction
Labor Age
Presently Employed New Jobs to Add
(15-64)
# millions # millions # millions
Tier 1 448 395 31
Tier 2 1,430 1,163 196
Tier 3 1,644 1,143 419
Globally 3,522 2,700 646

Table 9 identifies that 646 million new jobs need to be created on a global scale so as to
enable global economic sustainability. By assimilating the per capita GDP component with the
employment component, two socioeconomic principles emerge: 1—it is essential to identify
the types of jobs which generate the revenues necessary to achieve a minimum per capita GDP
of US$ 5,000. A farm laborer, as an example, is likely to generate substantially less revenue
than a software engineer—thus, creating an overbalance of low-paying jobs would not achieve
sustainability; 2—the broad distribution of new wealth generation opportunities throughout
the population supports an egalitarian, rather than elitist-centric market economy.
If only base averages were considered, it would be seen the average working age population
(age 15-64) of any state is about 54.6% of the total population—thus, the actual working
population needs to earn more than US$ 5,000 (base average calculations: US$ 9,158 per
capita GDP) so that overall national GDP can be averaged at US$ 5,000. However, because
of two factors, this US$ 9,158 figure will be increased for the models. First, when Tier 3 states
are subjected to demographic asymmetries caused by statistical variations in working age
populations, etc., a average working age per capita GDP of US$ 10,000 is required for the
overall national GDP to rise just above US$ 5,000. Second, intangibles are conventionally
unaccounted in orthodox GDP indicators—and because intangibles are a vital component of
modern economics—the per capita GDP targets will be raised by an additional 30% to reflect
modern contributions of intangibles to labor productivity. The final working age average per
capita GDP for Tier 3 states is US$ 13,000—and thus, the final overall average national per
capita GDP equals US$ 6, 743. Per capita GDP for Tier 1 and 2 states have also been adjusted
for projected increases in labor productivity, accounting for both tangible and intangible
contributions. The following Table 10, then, illustrates the impact on global per capita GDP
and overall national GDP by increasing per capita GDP throughout all three tiers of the global
economy. Note that per capita GDP in Tier 3 states is raised to slightly more than minimum
sustainability levels—in truth, these targets should be adjusted much higher, but for the intent
of this model, the minimum levels are used.

The Q Principles | 65
Table 10.  Creation of New Demands & Supplies

Per capita GDP (averaged) National GDP

Present-day New per

Present-day New GDP
per capita capita GDP % %
GDP Benchmark
GDP Benchmark change change
US$ US$ US$ Billions US$ Billions
Tier 1 33,057 51,158 55 27,225 41,999 54
Tier 2 12,960 16,265 25 20,771 42,591 105
Tier 3 2,214 6,743 20 7,627 20,305 166
Global 16,077 24,722 54 55,624 104,895 89

Table 11.  Shifts in Global Market Dynamics

New GDP
Present-day GDP % of total % of total
Benchmark
World GDP World GDP
US$ Billions US$ Billions
Tier 1 27,225 49 41,999 40
Tier 2 20,771 37 42,591 41
Tier 3 7,627 14 20,305 19
Global 55,624 104,895

When a level playing field for economic interdependency is established on a global scale,
the essential dynamics of the markets shift. In terms of growth measured within each tier
(Table 10), all three tiers experience growth—but Tier 2 and 3 states experience the highest
growth in comparison to their initial output. In terms of production output based on global
population demographics (Table 11), percentage of total output decreases in the Tier 1 states
(generally, the OECD states) and increases in the Tier 2 and 3 states.
The global establishment of an economic level playing field would increase both
investment capacity and consumer demand—by generating substantial new reservoirs of
disposable income and consumer product growth. Increasing disposable income is obviously
beneficial to all states (particularly Tier 2 and 3 states). But increasing global reservoirs of
disposable income is also particularly beneficial to the present Tier 1 states which produce
more sophisticated and expensive goods/services, but which Tier 3 state markets cannot
presently afford. What this model cannot address directly, however, is defining the specific
composition or substance of the new markets. Whether the new wealth is generated from
day-to-day consumer based production-consumption, or alternative energy solutions—this
can only be decided by individual conscience and public debate.
By establishing a globalized critical mass of higher-level skill sets and diverse markets
upon a level playing field, Tier 3 states would no longer be held captive to their conventional
(and extremely low paying) resources of wealth generation, such as agriculture, exploitation of
natural and human resources, etc. From a social perspective, this can only benefit and sustain
the notion of fundamental human respect. And from a market security perspective, these
new reservoirs of wealth generation would severely diminish the impact that corruption, gray
markets, and uncollected tax revenues presently has on all states.
As markets demand higher-level skill sets, effective education, then, becomes of paramount
importance. The increased tax revenues collected from increased market activity would then
facilitate these education systems to be both sustainable and relevant to the needs of society.
Since all states operating on the level playing field are focused on balancing the benefits of self-
initiative with the obligations of self-restraint, the notion of ‘outsourcing’ existent production
capacity to a foreign state merely to exploit cheap labor, no longer is an inducement. Essentially,
the global level playing field begins to evolve classical and neo-classical economic theory to a
point where labor as a function of determining product value is diminished. This evolution
of diminishing labor value, then, begins to foreshadow the establishing logic of quantum
economics.
66 | The Q Principles
 Since new reservoirs of wealth generation are to be established via the global level
playing field, labor will be less inclined to migrate to foreign states simply to locate customary
employment opportunities. Specialized skill sets, however, would certainly still require labor
movement. Further, since these new reservoirs of wealth generation will require all state
governments to reform and adhere to international standards of rights and responsibilities
(see below), political asylum migration would also be substantially diminished.
The present outlook for Tier 3 states is that a nexus has been created between inefficient
and non-productive markets, weak governments, dependence upon gray markets, organized
corruption networks, negligible tax revenues, and disenfranchised citizens. As a consequence
of this nexus, it becomes essentially unrealistic to expect that a weak government could
somehow implement internationally-mandated democratization programs, and by somehow
doing so, expect economic development to occur at substantial levels which could effectively
keep the negative influences at bay. By implementing a global economic level playing field,
a critical mass of economic assets, stakeholders, and good governance expectations can be
brought to bear on the state, its citizens, and the otherwise negative influences within the
state—all to the extent that the state’s general public, itself, would not tolerate negative
infiltrations into its new socioeconomic fabric. Thus, it becomes the desire of society as
a whole to engage itself in the endeavors of nation-statehood, including all its component
foundations such as the protection of human rights, the securing of higher standards of living
for its peoples, and actualizing the balance of self-initiative with self-restraint. This, then,
leads society and its state to more effectively understand socioeconomic consequences to the
general environment, as well as fundamental applications of urban and rural development/
protection. Again, this more enlightened and engaged society becomes a dynamic participant
in the larger global society, interdependent, and focused on the occupations of their human
art, their livelihoods.
Market interdependency gives rise to the dialectic confrontations between market
reason and market critique. In the end, market interdependency becomes exactly what we
define it to be. The orthodox ‘invisible hand of the market’ is just a coded way for the elites
to manipulate the serendipities of ‘fate’ for its own end. A level playing field for product-to-
product market competition (rather than societal competition) removes this invisible hand.
Innovation, production and consumption are made visible and comprehensible to all—the
visible hands and brains of the market. We innovate, produce, and consume whatever we
imagine, and whatever our consciousness and free will determines as valuable. The word value
will continue to evolve to possess new meanings as the human species continues to evolve.
Targets 3 and 4—Raise R&D focus to 2.24% of GDP (OECD mean average), and raise
export-oriented corporate registrations focused on attracting and implementing value-
chain and international production systems to a minimum of 40% of total global corporate
registrations—are now considered. In an effort to diminish civilizational dependency
upon access to and control of national resources and cheap labor, it is vital to facilitate a
substantial portion of the world’s human resources to the generation of 21st Century assets
of value—namely, intellectual property and services. Consequently, the question arises:
to which industries should research and development (R&D) be focused? Perhaps, this is
answered, partially, by viewing what specifically comprises the nature of world exports. A few
of the major sources of exports are: electronic microcircuits; parts and accessories for data
processing machines; television, radio and related transmitters and receivers; medicaments;
complete digital central processing units; other electrical machinery and equipment. Another
manner in which to determine a potential focus of global research and development is to view
what priorities the OECD markets presently hold. In Table 12, below, R&D expenditure
trends within OECD markets are compared. Not surprising, services, pharmaceuticals, and
electronics enjoy the highest growth rates, whilst it is the business and higher education
sectors which conduct the overwhelming majority of R&D. Indeed, government R&D has
significantly declined by -15.3% between 1990 and 2001 (another indicator that governments
are decreasing their authority to maintain aggregate demand).
The Q Principles | 67
Table 12.  R&D Expenditures Trends, OECD
R&D expenditures by industry (as % of total R&D)
1990 2001 % Growth
Services 12.4 19.4 57.2
Pharmaceuticals 5.9 8.2 39.0
Electronics 11.2 13.3 19.3
Instruments 2.7 2.7 -2.3
Aerospace 3.6 2.8 -22.2
Office Machinery & Computers 3.2 1.6 -49.7
R&D expenditures by performer (as % of total R&D)
1990 2001 % Growth
Business 69.3 69.7 0.6
Higher Education 15.8 17.1 8.2
Government 12.4 10.5 -15.3
Private non-profit 2.5 2.7 8.0

Another direction for R&D research might perhaps be influenced by the global
community working together to discover solutions to protect the earth’s ecosystems, especially
with respect to finding alternative energy solutions as well as water management alternatives.
With this in mind, note private non-profit R&D increased over the time period by 8 percent
(Table 12). Today, global R&D investments total about US$ 1.2 trillion. However, as Table
13 demonstrates, by all states committing about 2.24% of national GDP to research and
development, global R&D investments would be increased to about US$ 2.3 trillion, nearly
doubling present-day levels.
Table 13.  Creation of New Global R&D Focus

New GDP 2.24% GDP

Benchmark Applied to R&D
US$ Billions US$ Billions
Tier 1 41,999 941
Tier 2 42,591 954
Tier 3 20,305 455
Global 104,895 2,350

The final target—raise export-oriented corporate registrations focused on attracting and

implementing value-chain and international production systems to a minimum of 40% of total
global corporate registrations—can be readily demonstrated by viewing present-day exports
as a percentage of total GDP. Tier 1 states presently export an average of 23% of national
GDP; Tier 2, 18%; and Tier 3, 11%. Thus, raising exports to about 40% of GDP (using the
new GDP benchmark) would have the following projected impact (Table 14):
Table 14.  Creation of New Global Exports

Present-day Exports New Exports

40% GDP to
% Change
Exports
US$ Billions % total exports US$ Billions % % total exports
Tier 1 6,262 58 16,800 168 40
Tier 2 3,739 34 17,036 356 41
Tier 3 839 8 8,122 868 19
Global 10,840 41,958 287

Again, as with projected GDP targets, all states would enjoy exponential rises in exports
in relation to their present levels. As a percentage of total world exports, Tier 1 states decline,
whilst Tier 2 & 3 states increase. Tier 1 states, nonetheless, should not be uncomfortable with
this change in market dynamics. Tier 1 states will most likely possess substantial assets of
intellectual property investments made into the Tier 2 and 3 states via the level playing field

68 | The Q Principles
development process, and thus would enjoy IP royalties from a certain amount of these new
global exports.
The above four targets are simply econometric extrapolations from a series of sociological
principles inherent within a vision of geoeconomic interdependency. Targets, which if
achieved, would substantially indicate that global economies were operating interdependently
with each other. Targets, which if achieved, would provide a secure foundation upon which to
establish global interdependency of livelihood and perpetual peace.
Global transition: investment
Labor, at least initially, needs to operate within some organized format and group—
typically a corporate or ad hoc collaborative community structure. Thus, new corporations-
collaboration communities to house the new labor force and facilitate new wealth generation
will be required (Table 15).
Table 15.  Labor-to-Corporate Distribution

Labor Distribution Assumptions % of Market

Labor per Large Corp 400 20%
Labor per SME 25 60%
Labor per Ad hoc Community 150 20%
New Jobs to New Corporations to Create
Create Large Corp SME Ad hoc Community
# millions # # #
Tier 1 31 15,548 746,290 41,461
Tier 2 196 97,853 4,696,967 260,943
Tier 3 419 209,377 10,050,089 558,338
Globally 646 322,778 15,493,346 860,741

Each of these corporations-collaboration communities will require investment capital (to

construct facilities; purchase raw materials, production equipment, and intellectual property,
etc.). Each of these new corporations-collaboration communities will also bear what is referred
to as job creation costs (costs associated with hiring, training, administration, and taxes, etc.).
The average job creation cost, averaged globally, is about US$ 10,000 per job. With careful
planning—such as the use of business incubators and technology and knowledge transfer
conduits, etc.,—these investments can be reduced to about US$ 1,000 per job. Herein, this
lower figure is used (Table 16).
Table 16.  Corporate Investment in Global Economic Interdependence

Investment Assumptions
Investment per Large Corp $50,000,000
Investment per SME $1,500,000
Investment per Ad hoc Community $5,000,000
Job Creation Cost $1,000
Ad hoc Job Creation Total
Large Corp SME
Community Cost Investment Cost
US$ Billions
Tier 1 777 1,119 207 31 2,135
Tier 2 4,893 7,045 1,305 196 13,439
Tier 3 10,469 15,075 2,792 419 28,754
Globally 16,139 23,240 4,304 646 44,328

As Table 16 demonstrates, the essential vehicles of job creation (corporations-collaboration

communities)—so as to reduce global unemployment to about 5% (thus reducing civilizational
unrest and ensuring world order)—will require substantial investment—about US$ 44.3
trillion to create enough corporations-collaboration communities to house the 646 million
new jobs to be created. However, as a consequence of this investment, global GDP would be
increased from its present value of about US$ 55.6 trillion to a projected value of US$ 104.9
trillion (Table 10, page 66)—nearly double present GDP. Then, infrastructure and public
services costs will need to be budgeted. Table 17 provides a very simplified projection of
The Q Principles | 69
tax revenues emanating from GDP (these tax burdens would generally be divided between
individuals and corporations, on a global basis), as well as a projection of infrastructure and
public services costs.
Table 17.  Tax & Infrastructure Budget

Tax and Infrastructure Budget Assumptions

Tax rate - Present-day GDP 10%
Tax rate - Development-stage GDP 25%
Infrastructure & Public Services Cost - % of Total Corp Investment 40%
Annual Tax Revenue
Infrastructure &
from Public Services
from Present- Total Tax
Development- Budget
day GDP Revenues
stage GDP
US$ Billions
Tier 1 2,723 3,693 6,416 854
Tier 2 2,077 5,455 7,532 5,375
Tier 3 763 3,170 3,932 11,502
Globally 5,562 12,318 17,880 17,731

It should be noted—in comparison to the above figure of US$ 44.3 trillion global
corporate investment capital requirement costs (Table 16)—in 2003 alone, US$ 12.7 trillion
was lost to the gray markets. Thus, the equivalent of 3 years and 6 months worth of gray
market losses is what is required to finally establish global economic interdependency (and
possibly, a durable global peace).
The essential intention of implementing and investing in, globally, such an employment
and production development project is four-fold: 1—to provide an economic level playing
field where innovation, production, and consumption capacity is available on a global scale;
2—once the level playing field exists, states and peoples do not compete against each other,
rather, the goods/services that are produced and consumed on this global level playing field
are the competing entities; 3—once the level playing field exists, gray markets and organized
corruption networks will be limited in their power to exploit the disenfranchised; and
4—since all peoples are then dependent upon global market production and consumption,
each member of the global society becomes interdependent upon the other to produce the
goods/services in demand by the market, and then to consume the goods/services being
produced.
Livelihood, then, is no longer the clash of civilizations; it is the bond, the force majeure of
world interdependency.

70 | The Q Principles
 Our Human Nature: Livelihood

How to invent the future?

A synthesis of the principles discussed throughout the preceding pages essentially
produces the revelation of geoeconomics—not as an ideology of world order to which all must
conform—but rather as an entangling tool, a translator of sorts. This tool of geoeconomics,
then, is thoughtfully wielded by all societies so as to translate and facilitate their enlightened
senses of mutual benefit and responsibility, their interdependence of livelihood. To even
contemplate the design and implementation of a geoeconomic process of global livelihood
interdependence, however, will require a revolution. The revolution is not one where a
specific system of power and control is replaced by another; this would be merely a change of
actors. Rather, the revolution is in the Kantian sense, where thought, enlightenment, courage,
and action become conjoined within the consciousness and wills of all peoples. Thus, the
physical manifestation of geoeconomics—the vehicle through which authentic consciousness
can be actualized—is not an institution, a parliament, a corporation, a club, or even a church.
The physical manifestation of geoeconomics is in the art itself—the manifestations of human
art, of livelihood.
Our occupations call to us from the abyss. Conventional concepts of purposefulness or
meaning applied to our occupations have for so very long been misinterpreted as the definitions
and bases of identity—some pre-defined declaration of destiny. Authentic identity, however,
cannot exist without the entanglement of the individual with all other individuals—each
giving life to and receiving life from each other—where destiny is replaced by the journey itself.
Purposeless significance, then, is revealed from within the abyss of Khaos. A dance possesses
no definable or absolute purpose other than to enter into a shared relationship between the
music, your temporal and transcendental self, and a dance partner. Our occupations and
wealth generation-consumption are nothing more than a dance. We all enter a shared and
purposeless significant relationship with the music (the chords and notes of our individual
and social innovation-production-consumption); our entwined temporal and transcendental
selves (the melodic values we contribute and imbibe which are embodied both in the goods-
services we innovate-produce-consume and in how and why we utilize these goods-services);
and a dance partner (anyone, everyone, anywhere, everywhere).
As civilizations now stand at the intersection of crisis and opportunity, and contemplate
which future to invent, it is easy to be reminded of a poem that once spoke of curiosity and
courage to take the road less travelled. The human species has often treated its means of
livelihood as means only. The farm, the industrial plant, the government office, the school,
the software lab, even the research lab—these have all been places for most to merely toil
until retirement or death. Self-realization and enjoyment were luxuries to be experienced only
outside of work or in the after-life.
Yet, to see livelihood from an alternative perspective of authentic identity, value, and
entanglement reveals a new kind of civilization. The khaos of the mind is our true livelihood,
our true final frontier to explore. Its mystery is who we are.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
—Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
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72 | The Q Principles
 About the Author

Michael Byrnes began his strategic advisory career in 1980 as a consultant with the New
York and Washington, D.C. firm, World Affairs, Inc. There, under the tutelage of Martin R.
Haley and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, he worked on multiple ‘big picture’ projects, ranging
from defense conversion strategies with the National Economic Commission to technology
transfer processes with multiple stakeholders, including the NSA, U.S. Congress, and individual
technology transfer offices. He also worked with Fortune 500 clients to design and manage
various corporate intelligence and crisis management projects.
While deployed in Europe in the mid-1980s to assist in the design of economic
development strategies for German Reunification, he resided in the Vatican City. There, he
studied dialectics and ethics, and later was ordained. In 1997, he undertook an assignment
in Bosnia-Herzegovina to assess the country’s electronic banking capacity. He remained
in the Southeast European region for the next nine years to study the long-term economic
consequences of nation-building. He is now working to develop and implement a ‘global
Marshall plan’ based on his book Hands & Brains Unbound: Revealing the Illusion of World
Order & the Revolution Ascending.

Contact: michael.byrnes@gmail.com

The Q Principles | 73
74 | The Q Principles
 Appendix A

The consumer-goods company Procter and Gamble (P&G) is an example of a corporation

which has developed a collaborative network with external resources to improve business
performance. In 2001, P&G established its collaboration system: Connect and Develop. The
C&D program sources new products, ideas and technologies for P&G through a network of 70
senior experts scattered around the world who make contacts within industry and academia,
and with suppliers and local markets. To date, the program has brought over 10,000 new
products, ideas and technologies to the attention of P&G. For a case study analysis of P&G,
see www.managementinnovationlab.com.
P&G has established 20 communities of practice to help the cross-fertilization and
circulation of knowledge. Each community is run by a specific leader and has a budget and
membership of between 60 and 2,500 people with shared technical expertise. The communities
encourage problem solving and knowledge sharing through email, video conferences and
websites. P&G has developed electronic gateways to find possible solution providers that
are external to the company. Since 2000 the number of joint projects involving staff from
suppliers and P&G has increased by 30% as result of the closer networks and information
sharing strategies put into place by the company. BusinessWeek’s analysis of P&G:
“Year over year, Procter & Gamble Co. has been able to grow revenues from $68.2B to
$76.5B. Most impressively, the company has been able to reduce the percentage of sales
devoted to cost of goods sold from 48.55% to 47.97%. This was a driver that led to a
bottom line growth from $8.7B to $10.3B.” $1,000 invested on May 30, 2000 is now
worth $1,960.90, an increase of 96.09% (May 29, 2008).

Several other global branded companies have developed similar collaborative networks,
including IBM, Nokia, Lego, Google, Yahoo, and Intel, to name only a few. These new
collaborative organizations are beginning to obliterate both national and corporate borders,
and importantly, they are beginning to think and act using self-organization rather than
hierarchy.
Do-it-yourself, collaborative and small-scale manufacturing systems is another example of
how mass collaboration is beginning to emerge as a potent contributor to economic markets.
As Charles Leadbeater highlights in We-Think: Mass innovation, not mass production:
Neil Gershenfeld, a visionary scientist at the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT, has
developed an integrated manufacturing centre called a Fab Lab. Each lab is a suite of
industrial fabrication tools, including laser cutters, that make three-dimensional objects,
as well as machines that make antennas, circuits and other precision parts. Larry Sass,
and MIT architecture professor, has adapted the Fab Lab to make a plywood house for
about $2,000. Gershenfeld predicts the lab’s cost will fall from $25,000 in 2007 to below
$10,000 within a decade.
In Ghana, a Fab Lab is making mobile refrigerators, and in India another is producing
gears to bring ageing copying machines back to life. Gershenfeld argues Fab Labs will
allow people to make a much wider variety of products tailored to their local needs—
niche manufacturing—and so sustain local innovation an entrepreneurship. Fab Labs could
democratize how we make products, just as computers are democratising how we access
information. Fabricators may migrate into our homes just as computers and printers
have.

For additional information regarding self-organizing and collaborative systems, please

see: http://www.gwu.edu/~cistp/research/SelfOrganizing_RWR_2.24.03.pdf
The Q Principles | 75
76 | The Q Principles
 List of Tables

Table 1.  Institutions have one single investment motivation, whereas individuals have many. 7
Table 2.  Internet versus Web 2.0 - a Hypernet empowering collaboration (source: Digital 4Sight) 9
Table 3.  The global dominance of gray markets (source: Schneider, 2004) 14
Table 4.  Network of Nodes, Pre- & Post-Brunnian: Sales & Profit 47
Table 5.  Network of Nodes, Pre- & Post-Brunnian: Corporate Share Value 47
Table 6.  Network of Nodes, Pre- & Post-Brunnian: Employee Value 48
Table 7.  Per capita GDP of the World, 2005 (Organized in Simplified Tiers) 64
Table 8.  Per capita GDP in relation to Unemployment, 2005 64
Table 9.  Employment Creation, not Poverty Reduction 65
Table 10.  Creation of New Demands & Supplies 66
Table 11.  Shifts in Global Market Dynamics 66
Table 12.  R&D Expenditures Trends, OECD 68
Table 13.  Creation of New Global R&D Focus 68
Table 14.  Creation of New Global Exports 68
Table 15.  Labor-to-Corporate Distribution 69
Table 16.  Corporate Investment in Global Economic Interdependence 69
Table 17.  Tax & Infrastructure Budget 70

List of Figures

Figure 1.  Emerging Types of Online Communities (source: ZDnet) 10

Figure 2.  Slide 9 of 35 of perotcharts.com 16
Figure 3.  Authentic identity is a synthesis of others & self 29
Figure 4.  Topology of an Entangled Quantum State: Brunnian Model 31
Figure 5.  Hydrogen Atom 31
Figure 6.  Labor “waves”: expansion to developing regions, then technology displaces labor 37
Figure 7.  Conventional ‘pyramid’ structure of corporations 39
Figure 8.  A ‘quantum’ process of integrating corporation-social-market relationships 40
Figure 9.  Quantum value: beyond pigeonhole value 41
Figure 10.  Quantum value: exploiting the rest of the iceberg 42
Figure 11.  An example of technology transfer 42
Figure 12.  A quantum process of technology & knowledge transfer 44
Figure 13.  Activity within Single Brunnian Employee-Corporation Node 45
Figure 14.  A network of conduits (process for substance to flow throughout markets) 51
Figure 15.  Strategy Group process 52
Figure 16.  Value as Defined by Classical Economics 54
Figure 17.  Value as Defined by Quantum Economics 55
Figure 18.  Synthesizing value & establishing interdependency 57
Figure 19.  The Keynesian-Friedman Model 58
Figure 20.  Self-restraining capitalism model 60
Figure 21.  Seeing the quantum value of a product 60

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