What is a Corporation?

What is the most influential social institution in the Western world? Now by “influential” I don’t mean just “positive influence” but also “negative influence.” Well, let’s look at some of the candidates. Given the cultural forces that are currently at work here in the United States, most of you would say either religion or government. Both are pretty good candidates. But let’s look a bit closer. Who produced the food that you ate this morning? Who sold it to you? Who loaned you the money to go to college? Who built your computer? Who sold it to you? Who printed your books? Who sold them to you? Who brewed the beer that you drank last Saturday night, and who sold it to you? Who produced your cigarettes and who sold them to you? Who owns the Reds and the Bengals? Who built your home? Who financed it? Get the point? For better or worse, I would argue that corporations are the most influential social institutions in the Western world, especially in the United States. But what is a corporation? The answer to any question requires a theory. Therefore, we need a “theory of the modern corporation.”

Orthodoxy in business management and ethics often cites “Nexus-of-Contracts Theory.” Rooted in in social contract theory, it argues that the firm, or the modern corporation, is a complex adaptive system comprised of definable subsystems, called stakeholders. A stakeholder is any individual or group of individuals that either benefits of suffers as a result of the actions of that corporation. Therefore, the modern corporation is essentially a set of contracts or agreements between various stakeholder groups. The corporate stakeholder groups, engaged in this bargaining process typically include: stockholders, employees, consumers, suppliers, financiers, and local communities. The interests of these various groups are often represented by “agents.” 

Now in order for the Nexus-of Contracts Theory to be useful it must be both descriptive and prescriptive; that is, it must describe how the classes of stakeholders (stockholders, consumers, managers, employees, consumers etc.) bargain in the real world, AND prescribe how those stakeholders ought to bargain. It must also describe and prescribe the role that leaders ought to play in this process. Hence, any theory of the modern corporation must answer three questions:

1. Whose ends (rights or interests) are in fact served by corporate leaders? (E.g.: stockholders, consumers, employees, financiers, suppliers, local communities, nations, humanity etc.) AND, whose ends (rights or interests) ought to be served by corporate leaders?

2. By what means can leaders in fact employ in order to efficiently realize these stated ends (rights or interests) AND, what means can managers morally realize these stated ends.

3. What role does government in fact play in the realization of these various ends? AND, what role ought government (local, state, federal, international) play in this process?

Despite the idealistic ruminations of various “win-win” strategists, in the real world, what’s “good” for one group of stakeholders (stockholders, employees, consumers, etc) is not necessarily “good” for the other stakeholders. If you raise the pay of employees, generally, either the consumers pay higher prices, and/or the stockholders earn less. And, what’s “good” for any given society may or may not be “good” for individual industries or corporations. And, what’s “good” for United States may or may not be “good” for the rest of the world. And what’s “good” for present stakeholders, may not be good for future stakeholders. Hence, corporations are both cooperative and competitive. 

Within the NOC framework, a “good leader,” is a leader that can reconcile the often conflicting interests of the various stakeholder groups. NOC scholars have identified two alternative sub-theories of corporate leadership.

Stockholder Theory: Leaders are morally and legally obligated to serve as agents of the stockholders, and advance their interests regardless of how those decisions might affect the other stakeholders.

 Stakeholder Theory: Leaders are morally and legally obligated to serve as agents of all stakeholder groups, and try to advance all of these interests collectively and impartially.

The next two blogs will discuss these two theories.  

Responsibility

The question of "responsibility" plays a central role in retribution and is central to our feelings and thought about justice. There are two different forms:  legal responsibility and moral responsibility.

Legal responsibility is not necessarily identical to moral responsibility. Not everything that is “legal” is “moral,” and not everything that is moral is legal. The basic difference between legality and morality lies in the distinction between “laws” and “rules” and how each are monitored and enforced. Laws are monitored and enforced via the coercive power of the state. If you break a law and get caught, you can get punished by a government. In the Western world, governments “sanction” law breakers via fines, incarceration, and sometimes via death (United States). Some non-Western countries whip or beat law breakers. If you break a moral rule, members of the community will praise you or blame you. Most governments limit what groups can do to enforce morality. In some countries, like Saudi Arabia, almost everything that is immoral is also illegal.  

Moral responsibility involves the basic question of what kinds of persons are “fair” targets for moral praise and moral blame. Simply put, we praise or reward persons that do good things, and we blame persons that do bad things. But what is it about the nature of persons that justifies holding them responsible for their behavior? And, why do we, in fact, hold each other morally responsible for our actions? Well, at least in the Western moral tradition we assess responsibility based on two main criteria: rationality and free will.

We praise and blame persons that are capable of understanding and applying moral rules and reasoning about consequences before they act. The assessment of degrees of rationality usually involves assessing mental processes such as logical reasoning, forethought, learning from experience, processing information etc. Thus, mind or mentality is a necessary condition for the assessment of moral responsibility, but not a sufficient condition. Not all persons that possess mentality are morally responsible. We do not hold young children responsible for their behavior. But as they get older we tend to hold them more responsible. Nor do we hold persons that have a "cognitive or defect" responsible for their actions. And, obviously we do not always hold other persons responsible for acts born out of ignorance of the rules or the consequences. We generally do not hold animals morally responsible for their good or bad behavior, although we may praise or blame them in order to encourage or discourage future behaviors.  

We also praise and blame responsible persons for acts of free will; that is, acts that they are capable of controlling. Basically, this means that we do not praise or blame persons for acts that are coerced by other persons or forced by internal or external circumstances. Personal coercion generally involves the use of personal threats and enticements enforced by others. Both threats and enticements come in various degrees. Major threat: "Rob that bank or I'll kill your family!" Minor threat: "Rob that bank or I'll take your shoes!" Major enticement: "Rob that bank and I'll give you 10 million dollars!" Minor enticement: "Rob that bank and I'll give you one dollar." Generally speaking, we hold moral agents responsible for bad acts that were performed in exchange for enticements and we do not usually praise people that do good things in exchange for major enticements. In other words, responsible persons ought to be able to resist at least some low-level threats and/or enticements. Philosophers argue over whether and/or to what degree threats and enticements undermine free will, and whether the concept of free will even makes sense.

As a general rule, we do not praise or blame others for good or bad consequences that are brought on by chance, or moral luck. If I accidentally run into a fleeing bank robber, I probably will not be praised as a hero. Unless, I could convince the media that I knew he was a fleeing bank robber and that I deliberately tackled him. If I accidentally killed that robber, I might even be held legally responsible and blamed for his death. More on that later.       

Not only do we hold persons morally responsible for their actions, we also hold groups of individuals legally and morally responsible for their actions. But collective responsibility is much more difficult to assess. Here’s why. First of all, our individual association with groups is not always framed by rationality or free will. Sometimes we are coerced into associating with others, and sometimes we associate ourselves with groups without really knowing everything that they do. Sometimes we associate ourselves with groups based on tradition alone.  Most of us remain associated with the same religious group that we grew up with.   

Voluntary associations are those groups that we rationally and freely choose to associate.  These associations are often organized hierarchies that involve leaders and followers. Generally speaking, we hold both leaders and followers morally responsible for their actions. But the responsibility of followers is contingent upon what they knew beforehand and the presence of coercive influences. When we really know exactly what an organization does and when we freely choose to follow its leaders, we are held individually responsible for what that organization does. Hence, responsibility is diminished commensurate to both information and freedom. Unfortunately, in the real world followers do not always possess perfect knowledge or perfect freedom.

Moreover, hierarchies often delegate responsibility, which means that leaders at the top of an organization may not always know what lower level leaders are doing and sometimes upper level leaders employ coercive force on lower level leaders. For example, many of the Nazi doctors claimed that they tortured their patients because they would have been killed if they disobeyed orders.

Corporate responsibility is especially convoluted. Who is ultimately responsible for good and bad corporate behavior? Should we hold the CEO or the Board of Trustees of a multi-national corporation responsible for everything that takes place within that corporation?  Should the leaders get paid for what followers produce? Should leaders be held responsible for immoral and/or illegal behavior of followers? In short, this notion of collective (or shared) responsibility turns out to be very complex.

Another source of complexity has to do with the dynamics of how human beings behave in groups. Historically, philosophers have identified two sources of determinism that limit moral responsibility” biology and social structure. Biological determinists argue that at least some human behavior is “natural,” or caused by our brains and genes. Therefore, biological determinists argue that at least some human behavior lies outside of the realm of rationality and free will and that praise and/or blame cannot alter those behaviors.  

So, how does social structure affect human rationality and free will, and to what degree does "social causation" diminish individual and/or collective responsibility? This question raises a host of other questions concerning the nature and extent of circumstantial coercion, the malleability of human nature, and the "nature v. nurture controversy."  To what degree are human beings conditioned by their social environment and their genetic makeup? There are two wrong answers:

1. Human behavior is infinitely malleable via manipulation of the social environment (social determinism). Therefore individual responsibility is impossible.

2. Human behavior is not malleable at all, but determined by our social environment and biology (genetic determinism). Therefore, the assessment of individual responsibility is impossible.

If the truth lies somewhere between these extremes, then how do we (in fact) go about assessing personal and collective moral responsibility in our everyday lives? How should we?

Now the relationship between legality and morality is itself subject to a long line of philosophical inquiry. Historically, many philosophers have argued that morality is timelessly universal and “objective” and that legality is relative to time and place. Other philosophers have argued that universal morality always trumps legality. Some say that both morality and legality are temporally and culturally relative. Therefore, “When in Rome do as the Romans do.”

Metaphysical Academic Freedom

Okay...so I copped out on my last blog entry on academic freedom. If you all insist, I'll take a crack at the ever-elusive concept of "metaphysical academic freedom." To me, metaphysical academic freedom generally refers to either the descriptive (factual) capacity for human to "freely" produce a theory and the prescriptive (normative) conditions that might be involved. Descriptive academic freedom would  entail addressing the larger problems of biological and cultural determinism. Prescriptive academic freedom might involve the rights and duties that would undergird that "freedom of inquiry." Answers to academic questions are called theories (or conjectures) that either explain, predict, or control phenomena. So it's fair to ask two questions: "To what extent do I have a right to propose theories?" And, "To what extent do I have a right to propose theories to an academic community?"

First of all, what do we mean by a right to propose a theory? There are two kinds of rights: positive rights and negative rights. If I claim a positive right to propose a theory, then someone else has a duty to assist me. If I have a negative right, that means that my right is implies the duty of non-interference by others and does not necessarily mean that others have a duty to assist me or enable me to publish my theory. That is: "Ron you have a right to publish that book, I won't interfere with that! But I don't have a duty to read it, and I don't have a duty to publish it in my journal. How about a case study?

Ron W. is going up for promotion next year and believes that he needs one more publication. So he surfs the Internet and finds a journal titled the Journal of Arcane and Useless Philosophy, which has an acceptance rate of 98.2% and a circulation of 73 subscribers. It is published by the Society for Arcane and Useless Philosophy, which has a membership of 73. Ron thinks to himself: "Ah...the perfect home for my most recent scholarly essay: "Does Academic Freedom Imply Positive or Negative Rights?" He sends the essay to the editor, who then sends it to two "referees," who read it six months later and submit their respective reviews. Reader A loves it, and offers three minor revisions. Reader B hates it and recommends that it be rejected. The editor, however, notes that only three essays were submitted to the journal in the last three months (all were accepted) and that Volume 11 Number 16 needs one more article. So he decides to publish Ron's essay. As a result, Ron was promoted to full professor. Since then, three scholars read that article (one of them finished it!), the Society for Arcane Philosophy has disbanded, and their journal discontinued. However, that article still appears prominently on Ron's curriculum vitae. Question: Does "academic freedom" include a scholar's right to publish research in journals that no one reads? Do academic institutions have a right or a duty to read what their faculty publish? And, if so who and how much should that reader get paid? So much for metaphysical academic freedom.     

Academic Freedom

A friend asked me to articulate my views on "Academic Freedom" from a libertarian perspective. As a philosopher, my usual strategy is to take a close look at the key concepts. In this case, let's look at the meaning(s) of "academic" and "freedom."

The term "academic" describes a human activity, a profession, and an industry. It also implies a unique set of instutional  associations: colleges, universities, departments, publishing companies, professional organizations etc. However, the activity is nothing more than the process of human inquiry, or the distinctly human capacity to ask questions and propose answers between individuals, groups, and generations. I would also argue that academic inquiry (or inquiry conducted within an academic institutional structure) involves the epistemic pursuit of either Descriptive Truth (is) or Prescriptive Value (ought).

The concept of "freedom" within the context of academic inquiry turns out to be enormously complex and therefore wide-open to metaphysical interpretation. For us libertarians, freedom is a political concept that refers to the relationship between individuals and governments. Some of us take on the challenge of addressing "metaphysical freedom," or "freedom of the will," but most of us prefer to focus on freedom as the absence of coercion by government. Minarchist libertarians seek to limit the use of coercive power of governments to tax citizens and limit the use of tax money to the performance of specific functions, such as a: police force, judiciary, a military, and perhaps the provision of a very basic social safety net. Anarcho-capitalist libertarians seek to eliminate all involuntary forms of taxation and all coercive government.

So in light of the above, what can I say about "academic freedom?" For a minarchist like myself, I would say that we need to distinguish between public and private colleges and universities. Most of us argue the publically funded educational institutions violate the basic tenets of minarchy, and that all educational institutions ought to be private institutions. So I really can't say much about what academic freedom might mean in the context of a public college or university. But I can say something about what it might mean within a private institution.

Education is an industry. It involves the interaction of both buyers and sellers, and employers and employees.  Academic freedom in private institutions is nothing more than what's mutually agreed upon within a contract. When you agree to accept employment in a private college the limits of your academic freedom are contained within that contract. If you do not accept those limits, then you have the freedom to decline the job offer. Of course, if you willingly sign that contract then your academic freedom does not include the freedom to violate the conditions of that contract. Unfortunately, as an employer the institution does have the "academic freedom" to unilaterally alter that contract without your consent, but you also have the academic freedom to either abide by that contract or resign (freedom to exit). Or, perhaps you might find solace in the "black market" and conceal or disguise your activities.   

Over the years, academic institutions have adopted a variety of traditions intended to increase job security for faculty and expand the concept of academic freedom. The original idea behind tenure was to protect faculty from revolving administrations that constantly seek to revise the terms of employment of faculty, especially salary, working conditions, and academic freedom. Now we libertarians can argue over whether tenure ought to be included within any academic setting, especially over the cost/benefit ratios. But we are reluctant to argue about academic freedom outside of that contractual framework.

So what can I say about my own academic freedom within a Roman Catholic college? Well, obviously I cannot expect the college to grant me the freedom to publish articles with titles like: "The Virtues of Abortion" or "Why God does Not Exist." If I did, it would violate the terms of my contract and I'll get fired, or at least get reprimanded by my superiors. But since, I'm not interested in "inquiring" into the virtues of abortion or defending atheism, I don't regard it as a limit on my metaphysical academic freedom. However, I do disagree with the church's legal strategy for dealing with abortion and I am more of a pantheist than a theist. Now for the "million dollar question?" How did a libertarian philosopher that publishes regularly in journals like Independent Review survive for 25 years at a Roman Catholic college? The answer is simple. Roman Catholic colleges are, in fact, among the last bastions of metaphysical academic freedom in the United States. While it is true that some are more socially conservative than others, for the most part we enjoy much more freedom than other public or private institutions. I do have a few limits, but overall, my college values diverse points of view. In fact, we have not only a handful of outspoken libertarians like myself on the faculty and staff, but also a large number of non-Catholics and atheists. Let me add that all of the libertarians that I know on the MSJ faculty also have tenure. And at least one libertarian on the maintenance staff stops by office every morning to talk politics. But admittedly we're grossly outnumbered by welfare liberals.

The Super-Failure: Why the Super-Committee Failed

I don't usually blog on national political news, but this one is hard to resist! As we all know, the so-called "Super- Committee" failed to reach a consensus on budget cuts and revenue. Although, the blogosphere is teeming with complex post-mortem explanations as to why it failed, I have a much simpler explanation. They were asked to "cut the budget" and/or "enhance revenue." What they really needed to do is reform wasteful programs and departments within that budget and reform the tax code.

Congress has a moral and political responsibility to make sure that tax dollars are spent as efficiently as possible. However, nearly every government program and department is riddled with well-documented wasteful spending. By far the worst budget-busters are the departments of Defense and Homeland Security. The "visible waste" in  these bloated, unsupervised bureaucracies is legendary, while the "invisible waste" is hidden away in budgetary "black holes," where little is known and budgets are fictional. There's no telling how many investigations have been conducted by both governmental and non-governmental watchdog groups: costly research that invariably disappears into other well known "black hole:" the "congressional archives." Ironically, some of the best unread research is conducted by Congressional Budget Office. In short, everyone agrees that these programs and departments need reform, and there's plenty of information out there prescribing what needs to be done. The same can be said for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. But simply cutting the budgets of inefficient, bureacracies will only make those programs less efficient and more wasteful.

What about revenue enhancement? Again, everyone in Congress knows that our tax system has become a bastion of unfairness and incomprehensibility. It's so arcane and complex that most Americans employ third parties to file their taxes. It's even incomprehensible to the IRS! The astronomical error rate for the chronically understaffed, under-brained IRS has been documented many times over, in 6,000 page reports. Unfortunately, those reports are ultimately filed away in the Congressional Archives, or well hidden from Internet search engines, never to be seen again. Moreover, everyone knows that the tax code needs to be reformed from top to bottom, but that's not  even on the political horizon. Herman Cain's feeble-minded 9-9-9 tax proposal clearly illustrates this tendency to ignore well-known facts. 

So, if Congress already has access to the information necessary to reform and/or eliminate wasteful spending, why don't they do it? That's a good question. Here's my theory. First of all, individual congressmen rarely if ever read anything substantive. Why not? First of all, there's so much information, misinformation, and disinformation manufactured by government agencies that it's impossible for any one human to read even a small portion of it. That's why individual lawmakers hire an army of congressional staffers to read it and summarize it. Now, there's no guarantee that staff members are themselves competent and/or actually read and comprehend those 6,000 page reports. Nevertheless, staffers pass on those summaries to illiterate congressmen, who may (or may not) read them.  

So why is it that politicians don't read and act on this vast body of well-documented information? Well, it's because they are politicians and therefore spend most of their time, energy, and resources running for re-election. Watch C-Span and marvel at the quasi-articulate speeches delivered before an empty rooms! But then again, when they do show up for work, they rarely vote on anything. Check out what congress has actually accomplished this year! Your jaw will drop! 

So why did the super-committee fail? Well, for starters they were pursuing the wrong goal. Why pay a group of lawyers to argue endlessly over whether to cut budget items and/or increase revenue under the guise of half-baked political and economic theories? They should have been actually fixing and/or cutting inefficient programs and departments and the reforming the tax code. My modest solution? I think we need a whole new batch of politicians with a strong work ethic; statesmen that read more, attend more, and simply act more. I would also argue that we have WAY too many lawyers in Congress that stay in office WAY too long. Let's insist that the forthcoming 2012 Congress actually read, attend, and act upon what's already known. In sum, we Americans have been WAY too tolerant of incompetent lawmakers. Next November, I propose that we vote out every single incumbant in the House and Senate, and whenever possible vote for third party candidates. In short, let's fix the system ourselves.                 

Why Read Machiavelli's THE PRINCE?

Over the years non-philosophers done a pretty effective job of disparaging the philosophical writings of Nicolo Machiavelli's writings. Leadership scholars simply dismiss his works under the rubric of "bad leadership." Among psychologists the term "Machiavellian intelligence" refers to the human (and Chimpanzee) propensity for deception. In fact, the adjective itself, "Machiavellian," has become synonymous with deception and immorality. Philosophers, political scientists, and scholars that have actually read (and understand) his seminal works: The Prince, Discourses on Livy, and  The Art of War have a much more nuanced assessment.

As you read The Prince it's important to understand Machiavelli's philosophical moorings. First and foremost, Machiavelli is a descriptive empiricist. Therefore, in contrast to the a priori, deductive, rational epistemology employed by Plato in The Republic, Machiavelli believes that human knowledge can only be ascertained via inductive observation of the world, or as Plato would say "in the cave." In other words, if you want to know how to organize a group of human beings, Machiavelli suggests that the best way to begin that process is to uncover the descriptive facts: How are sucessful organizations organized?

Second, Machiavelli is a prescriptive utilitarian; that is, he (like Plato) believes that a good organization produces more happiness than unhappiness. Like Plato, Machiavelli believed that political leadership is especially important and that "bad leaders" destroy themselves and their organizations and "good leaders" preserve themselves and their organization. Based on historical evidence, Machiavelli described how thoroughout the course of human history, leaders and followers tend to behave within certain kinds of organizational contexts. At the beginning of The Prince he identifies two different organizational contexts: republics (shared governance) and principalities (monarchy).  The Prince explores the "nature" of principalities. So as you read The Prince keep in mind that he is not "prescribing" monarchy as the best way to organizise human beings, he's only "describing" the kind of behavior that you'll observe in principalities. Of course, some principalities survive for a long time, while others have suffer extinction.

Now it's important to emphasize that both Plato and Machiavelli are both utilitarians of sorts, and therefore agree that the primary value of collective life is that it brings about more happiness than unhappiness. Philosophers call this flourishment. Therefore, Plato and Machiavelli that are trying identify the underlying political arrangements that increase happiness and decrease unhappiness. Recall that in The Republic Plato attempted to prove that tyrants are unhappy and the organizations that they head are also unhappy. Well, what Machiavelli is going to argue in The Prince is exactly what Thrasymachus would have argued in The Republic if he had chosen to remain engaged in the dialectic with Socrates. In other words, Machiavelli is going to do philosophy within "the cave," in a world where humans actually possess the equivalent of "Gyges Ring."

One of Machiavelli's of The Prince is the idea that sometimes leaders have to make decisions where none of anticipated outcomes are ideal. In short sometimes leaders must get their hands dirty; that is "choose between lesser evils." Philosophers call this the "ethics of dirty hands." Political leadership often takes place within this context, however you might argue that other leadership contexts also entail getting your hands dirty. Machiavelli argued that virtue-based ethics in the Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions cannot provide moral guidance in these contexts and that "virtuous leaders" (in the Platonic sense) are deposed by followers and/or conquered by other nations. The question for you is as follows: "Are there times when leaders MUST "enter into evil" in order to avoid catastrophic consequences? If so, does this apply to other leadership contexts?"             

African Development

A Facebook friend of mine from Ghana asked me what I thought about "African Development." That's a tough question...given the fact that I don't know very much about Africa or the various nation states that currently dominate political discussions. But like most philosophers, I won't let my ignorance of the facts stand in the way of participating in that discussion. That's because there are philosophical issues that I can help sort out. The following is my edited and expanded response. 

First, what do you mean by "African development?" It could mean many things. Philosophically, the concept of development signifies progress toward a desirable goal via some means. So to talk "development" we need to identify both a GOAL and the MEANS of achieving that goal. Also, we need to clarify what you mean by "Africa." Are you referring to the entire continent of Africa as a whole or the nation-state of Ghana? There are also "long-term goals" and "short-term goals" and various means of achieving both. Some "goals" are realistic (means are known and can be implimented) and others are idealistic (imaginable but impossible to realize). Of course, we don't always KNOW with certainty which goals are "realistic" and what's "idealistic." Right now, it's hard to set long-term or short-term development goals for Africa as a whole because there's very little social, cultural, or political unity. Even national identity in many African countries are currently in a flux. Do you envision African unity, where all the various tribes, religions, and nation states "cooperate" toward a specific ENDS? If so, by what means MEANS to you plan to to impliment in bringing about that end?

Having said all that, let's return to the original question: "What do you mean by African development?" I assume that you are referring to "economic development." Does your vision for African economic development refer to the ability of Africa to operate (survive or thrive?) independent of the rest of the world (autonomy and self-sufficiency); or,  do you want Africa to develop the capacity to participate in the global economy? Both goals have implications for one's vision of the future of African identity. If economic autonomy and self-sufficiency are your long term goals, then what social, cultural, and political traditions do you embrace, and how do you instill those values? How do you reject the old values? In short, how does economic development relate to sociopolitical development?

Now if your ultimate goal is for Africa to participate in a global economy, you'll have to promote social, cultural, and political traditions that are not hostile to participation in global trade. First of all, Africa would have to embrace rule of law; that is Africans will have to obey rules (that apply to everyone) not what leaders say.  Africans would have reject violence, theft, fraud and breach of contract. If Africa is unable or unwilling to monitor and enforce these basic moral rules, then other nations will not willingly trade with Africa. If you want Africa to be "autonomous and self-sustaining" those same moral and legal rules would have to be enforced. In fact, I would argue that any nation on earth (at any time or any place) that wants to "develop" will have to follow these rules.

 I wish I could say that the United States provides a useful role model, but our society has fallen far short of the "ideal." In fact, much of the economic recession can be attributed to our own failure to uphold these values. So...back again to your original question. What is your vision for Africa 20 years from now? Do you seek a unified Africa (one single sociopolitical entity), or many different competing and cooperating states (like the US and European Union)? Do you want the everyday lives of future Africans to revolve around work, religion, family? Do you want Africans to own a lot of stuff (homes, automobiles, airports, trains, Chinese food, McDonalds food, Western clothes, Western music, Western art etc.)? Or, would you rather revive lost traditions, such as tribal association or subsistence agriculture? What do you think? What is your long-term vision for Africa and how might that vision be realized? What must you do in the sort-term to realize this goal?