Photo by Leah Zetterberg on Unsplash
A Good Clean Win<->Win Tackle
My Korean War veteran high school football coach once said, "Football is like war; you must be willing to sacrifice your body, let go, risk everything, and be persistent to defeat your opponent; use your helmet, like a weapon, to inflict as much damage as possible on your enemy." We won most games with our strength, skill, and oppressive attitude. In our senior year, we played in the Texas state finals, where a team defeated us with superior football sports ability, not war-like oppression.
It is said that war is when decent men become murderers and oppressors who are trained to damage and kill their enemies. In football, both the brain of the oppressor and the brain of the oppressed are damaged when the helmet is used as a weapon. Football rules today penalize using a helmet as a weapon; thus, the damage has been dramatically reduced, and football is less likely to resemble oppression and more likely to prosper as a competitive sport.
Shonn Greene, left, and Derek Cox in December. Players will be penalized for striking a forcible blow with the crown of their helmets. Credit...Kevin Terrell/Associated Press
Football is a Lot Like Life
Another thing my high school coach told us was that football and real life are a lot alike. For both, you get out of it what you put into it. You make the team based on your merit, character, playing ability, fitness, and skills, not your identity. The same things determine your playing time. In the free market capitalism game of football, your practice and ability are paid for with the points you score instead of dollars. You learn the value of teamwork and working with others. You try to follow the rules to avoid setbacks.
Just as the United States constitutional republic with its Rule of Law cannot eliminate oppression, nor can football rules. It is all about the attitude of the people, the players, and most importantly, the elected representatives and the coaches. The people and players follow the order given. Football players need a win-win sports ideology just as much as the people of the United States need a win-win economic ideology. For the football player, the idea is to win because of their strength, agility, play execution, persistence in playing the game, their merit, and NOT their identity and adrenal desire to oppress their opponent. The losing football team also wins because it has learned how to be a better team from its defeat. For We The People, we succeed because of our character, the merit of our ideas, solutions, labor, knowledge, mental models, and persistence, creating a fair value in a free market capitalism economy free of destructive government manipulation. A win-win always has a superior, more progressive outcome for all concerned. A perfect win-win can not be achieved, but humanity should always strive for that goal.
Free Market Capitalism has Made the US Exceptionally Special
We, The People of the United States of America, take our ideas that have transformed the world economy for granted. Many of the world's economies, including communists and socialists, have been encouraged to use capitalism. Some of us, the "liberal" and "progressive," despise the notion of capitalism and making a profit. They tell us that capitalism is oppressive, especially to the disadvantaged.
Our founding documents proposed a bargain to US citizens. Take the risk of starting a business, which means:
You think you can profit from offering a product or service to others, which makes all the initial low pay, work, and risk all worthwhile.
Putting you and your family at risk.
Putting you and your employees and their families at risk; most startups have been in survival mode for years.
Putting your investors at risk of losing their investment.
Putting your customers at risk of losing your product or service.
The United States government wants you to be wildly successful; why?
Innovation means - more growth - more tax revenue.
More employment means - more tax revenue.
More efficiency means - more productivity - more tax revenue.
Government's No Management, No Liability Bargain
The US government declared that in return for all the hard work and risk a business requires, it would allow freedom from government management, unlike the many other managed economies of the world like China and Russia. Furthermore, the US government promised limited liability to encourage investment in new business entities that it treated like a person for tax purposes. This means the liability of business failure is limited to only the equity invested in the business.
Curve Ball
Every once in a while, life throws you a curve ball. Government involvement in business decisions increased. The Great Depression brought more government attention to managing the economy. World War II required a managed economy to ramp up production to win the war. The politically correct social movements that have grown non-stop since the 1960s, the recent financial crises, and the COVID crises have stressed the freedom of business decisions to the point that the US economy has seen more business regulation, rising debt, inflation, declining productivity, and declining quality.
It looks like too much politically oppressive government management is here to stay. As the US becomes more secular, it should not stop adhering to the hard-earned rules based on 5,323 years of recorded human history and religious beliefs.
Politically Correct Movements
Today, many corners of the US society, politics, the Government, and the economy are ordered based on DEI, ESG, CRT, BLM, LGBTQIA+, climate change, and WOKE-ness; all of these are NOT based on thoughtful, wise human history but on new academic, "liberal", "progressive", secular, oppressive ideologies designed to replace all human history with oppressive power built on "Rules for Radicals" and gaslighting - transferring wealth and value to administer "social justice" - providing "equity" to "disadvantaged, oppressed people."
Cost - Benefit of Political Correctness
History tells us that, like any NFL football team decision, any business decision has a cost and a benefit to bottom-line profits, the best measure of business innovation, efficiency, strength, and value. If any business allows a political movement to change its decision-making process, it must suffer the costs and reap the benefits. Having enlisted the help of AI chatbots, we are told it is too complex an issue for an answer to whether there is a benefit to making business decisions based on the political correctness issues, DEI, ESG, CRT, BLM, LGBTQIA+, climate change, and WOKE-ness.
Quantifying the exact value of DEI, ESG, CRT, BLM, LGBTQIA+, climate change, and "WOKE-ness" as a percentage of GDP is highly challenging and potentially misleading.
Cost of Political Correctness Failure
It is prudent to look at what happens in the case of failure of the businesses to capitalize on politically correct business decisions:
The business loses productivity and money it could have made. The company's value is reduced or, in a startup's case, could mean bankruptcy. If this is the case for enough businesses, the country's GDP and Tax revenues are significantly reduced, making it harder for the government to pay its debts.
Maybe government subsidies partially or wholly cover our costly, politically correct business decisions. Creating more debt for the Government while suffering lower GDP and, thus, tax revenue.
Increased business liability and legal cost risk for those businesses where business failures may lead to loss of life and severe injury. Consider the risk involved in aircraft piloting and air traffic control.
In all the cases above, the failure of political correctness to decrease the Government's debt and inflation on the working people is a severe problem. Political correctness, advocated by Rules for Radicals, is always an Oppressor->Oppressed situation, not Win<->Win.
How Did Win<->Win Behavior Originate?
Recorded human history started about 5,323 years ago. As soon as there are two or more humans, you have the beginning of a market. Most likely, the first markets were not free but Oppressor->Oppressed based. Gradually, a somewhat fair "free market" existed within a family, to an extended family, to a community, and then to a tribe.; intertribal markets remained Oppressor->Oppressed, war-like where one tribe would take from another. In human history, up until the time following WWII, whole countries acted like tribes. The United States, for the first time, offered Win<->Win world order.
Do Unto Others as You Would Have Others Do Unto You
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is also known as the "Golden Rule." The actual quote from the Bible is from Luke 6:31, “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” Simply put, this phrase means to treat others the way we want them to treat us. As society matured, this "Golden Rule" progressively guided humanity, eventually leading the US to Win<->Win free-market capitalism that introduced capitalism, leading world trade following WWII. This marks a significant turning point in human history. Before 1945, World Trade had the Oppressor->Oppressed attitude, making war, not peace. For the first time in human history, the US, controlling 50% of the world economy, offered the world a Win<->Win deal to defend peace and free trade.
Patrol the seas to ensure free navigation and trade everywhere for all.
Would fight and bleed for any ally when necessary.
Open its free market to other partner countries even if they protected their own
Provide financial liquidity to grease all wheels to make trade work.
Obvious Solutions
Please spend 10 minutes listening to a strict and extremely successful British school teacher who makes the case for Win<->Win multiculturalism best:
Whether it is a football team, everyday life, or an American company, to win, we must put the best person we can into every position we control and constantly compete with a Win<->Win attitude. Hopefully, one never needs to use Oppressor->Oppressed attitudes. We must be students of human history, living using its knowledge. As for the spirit of the oppressive politically correct movements like DEI, always remember:
Diversity: Our choices and who we are initially are determined by our family, not government social indoctrination at school. Any social indoctrination is collectivism, a primary condition of socialism and communism; both are historical failures and should be avoided. There is a time for learning from our family and then to leave and become responsible for learning whatever we desire to be productive and support ourselves and the ones we love.
Inclusion: A person should initially be unconditionally included and loved by their family. Once a diverse person becomes self-aware developing an identity, their inclusion by others is determined by their actions, character, and merit. In a Win<->Win world, there are no collective identities; everyone is unique; that is the promise of America.
Equity: Every US citizen can earn private equity by offering some product or service to others. This is the one and only way equity is created; this is the source of everything and must pay for:
A way to acquire private equity is for working Americans to give some of their equity to a person as a gift or a charity.
If one person violates a Rule of Law that harms another, justice may take just equity from the violator and give it to the violated. However, this may not happen if the violator has no equity to take.
The US Government has no equity, but it may borrow equity that working Americans must repay with interest to give equity to other Americans who do not work for the equity they receive; this is Oppressive welfare; a better solution is Win->Win workfare when recipients can work.
Some in the Democratic party led by Rep Jamaal Bowman, D-NY, want reparations for descendants of slavery. Several things here:
The violator, the US Government, has no equity; it is 34 trillion dollars in debt. An additional 14 trillion dollars would put the US 48 trillion dollars in debt. American justice is unmistakable: the violating party, the US Government, has no equity to give.
There is no legal precedent; thousands of working Americans have been violated, suffered losses, and have had the Rule of Law on their side. However, they have been left with no reparation because the violator had no equity and was in debt.
Only working Americans are responsible for paying interest and the 48 trillion back to the debt's bondholders; very few are descendants of violators those that are, are not responsible for a relative's action.