needs of those who are not wealthy are little regarded by those in power. The economic system, education and political arrangements all discriminate against the average citizen, although infotainment industries mostly disguise this fact. Freedoms of choice in the market as well as in politics and government are being eroded. Income inequalities persist and grow. The prison populations in the US have doubled in the past decade. Squalor, debasement, misery, hatred and death continue to be world problems. Efforts to support corporate globalization appear to be detached from such concerns.

We may ask: to what extent do economic forecasts take such factors into account? Such problems enter into the thinking of citizens and customers who have not bought into all the hopes of marketers for communications technologies and products. To what extent do market forecasters and others mislead us all with an obsessive emphasis on information they can chart and quantify?

While a random summary can point to the extent of the problems, what is really needed is a level of understanding on which coherent policies can be based.

Stupidity Easier to Handle

If the problems were only based upon stupidity, their resolution might be easier.

It adds to the problem that leaders in government and the corporate world are not lacking in intelligence. The real issues are deeper, and relate to political will and values, and those to whom economic and social benefits flow. It may be more accurate to speak not of stupidity but of greed and a broken � �cras� � intellectual center � literally, craziness in high places.

If these observations are not to be left as a mishmash of disconnected items, how may they be seen within a coherent system which offers priorities and provides some strategic purchase or leverage? How may we connect these particulars to the kinds of theorizing � economic and other � which may explain them? In what ways must our ideas and theories be altered if results are to be changed?

There are perhaps three major options around which such thinking may gather. The first is the kind of abstract/theoretical approach of traditional economics. Here the problem is that too much of such theory is not clearly related to the facts of experience. The guidance which it provides is much like guesswork. The second is the approach of Postmodernism, which, as a kind of mirror image or negative of theory, simply denies the possibility of any ideas adequate to provide a coherent understanding of the real world. The third strategy is a systems approach, which emphasizes process and builds on an analysis and specification of target values, and develops the organization required to meet these. Let us consider these three methods as possible ways to go.

(1) Traditional economic abstractions (e.g., general equilibrium theory, etc.) have been less than adequate in managing many of the real problems of the world. An increasing literature attests to the growing dissatisfaction with continuing reliance on such approaches.2 Such methods are being seen as part of the problem, not of the solution.

(2) However, to reject all abstract ideas or theories as tainted in the same way is an unthinking response � although it may provide a convenient rationalization for a decision maker who wishes to be arbitrary. The influence of Postmodernism and mistaken ideas of relativism leads many to believe that there are no ways of thinking upon which human beings can depend to lead them out of the trap of subjective preference and forward in a common cause.

In a recent article, Varoufakis3 points out the mistakes and hazards of such a view. While �modern thought� may have marginalized formal religion, it still appears to worship theory, and thereby holds on to an implied transcendence. Economics has pretended to the status of a kind of higher truth. Varoufakis comments: �Economics valiantly attempts to extricate itself with a touching commitment to mathematics but, sadly, it only ends up as a religion with equations.� However, some theories are more capable of approaching objectivity than others.

(3) What is required is an approach grounded as objectively as possible in universals reflective of human nature, capacities and needs. Of course human knowledge is relative, but this only means that the frame of reference and perspective requires specification. As we have seen, men are far from god-like in their capacities, and they bring on many troubles when, in the grip of illusions, they fail to recognize what are objectively legitimate human needs.