When we ask, “What’s holding America back?” we hear varied responses, driven by people’s areas of expertise. Without denying the validity of these responses, it’s important to distinguish symptoms from root causes.
At a symptomatic level, America’s problems run the entire gamut: gun violence, student debt, opioid crisis, healthcare costs, inflation, unhealthy diets, political polarization, environmental degradation, mental health, etc.
Root causes are less apparent and lie in the mental models, invisible assumptions and unconscious biases.
We are breeding technical experts who see only from the lens of their discipline and peddle their diagnosis and treatment modalities. What is missing is a search for deeper root causes, systemic patterns and a causal core that is common to seemingly unrelated problems.
Our educational system promotes overspecialization and analysis rather than the synthesis and integration desperately needed. Focusing on surface-level factors yields symptomatic solutions.
To explore societal problems at a paradigmatic level, we propose two frameworks that can help us see deeper patterns of causation. One framework is the “hierarchy of ideals” and the other is that of “category errors.”
The “hierarchy of ideals” proposes that we are motivated by various ideals and core commitments that are sometimes contradictory, competing for our attention. One of our commitments may triumph all the others, capture first place and rise to the top of our invisible hierarchy, becoming the major ideal or driving force behind all our actions.
Not just individuals, but institutions too, operate driven by a hierarchy of ideals.
Publicly espoused ideals may be less powerful than “undeclared commitments.” Many argue that in the U.S., providing quality health care may be the espoused ideal of the healthcare system, but the undeclared ideal is profit maximization.
No wonder we spend more than any other country on health care and yet we are globally ranked at the very bottom among high-income countries.
Similarly, quality education may be the espoused ideal of charter schools, but the undeclared ideal may be to transform schools through privatization into a lucrative business for investors.
A “category error” occurs when an entity is placed in the wrong category. When education, health care or prisons are categorized as a business and operated as such, profit maximization becomes primary, while quality of service or access become secondary.
The Indian Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen warned that education and health care shouldn’t be operated as businesses, because they have goals of excellence that run antithetical to profit maximization.
While experts on health care, education, defense, prisons, nutrition, student debt and global warming may propose specific solutions, society is quietly devoured by the Frankenstein monster of a ferocious business mindset cutting across all areas.
Profits are prioritized over the well-being of people. For example, poor nutritional choices, incentivized by a profit-seeking food industry, produce adverse health impacts downstream that benefit a profit-seeking healthcare industry.
The business-based fundamentalism of profit maximization at the cost of collective wellbeing is an American social experiment whose evolutionary consequences on the rise and fall of our civilization will be understood only centuries after the collateral damage it leaves behind.
Sadly, politicians seldom question the pervasiveness of this business mindset. While we can propose domain-specific solutions to problems, we need to refocus our attention on the common paradigmatic core of a “business mentality overreach” that is holding America back.