ENTITLEMENT

What economic protectionism does to organizational competitiveness, cultural entitlement
does to individual initiative and character development. Note this cycle:
improved standards of living come from greater productivity. Greater productivity
comes from greater specialization. Greater specialization produces greater interdependence,
which maintains standards of living. Entitlement also runs a spiral course.
As the entitlement cycle spirals, the expectation to receive more (standard of living)
while doing less (specialization) leads to mass dependency (entitlement).
With the establishment of the Great Society effort in the U.S. in the mid-1960s,
the U.S. Government declared war on poverty. How has the war been going?
Comparing income statistics from 1966 and 2003 provided by the U.S. Census
Bureau in their historical poverty tables, it is clear that the percentage of people in
the U.S. living below the poverty line has not significantly changed (1966: 14.7%,
2003: 12.5%) and has never been below 10%.

Even with the expenditure of billions
of dollars to address the problem, the measurable economic results have been
marginal at best.
The
desire
to produce is as important in the techonomic economy as the
ability
to
produce. With computers and networks acting as leverage for the mind, anyone possessing
the will to serve can find an opportunity to serve. Agricultural workers displaced
by the industrial age did not have it as good. Industry was slow to develop and expand
into the rural agricultural regions, leaving displaced workers with few options.
Computers and process have created a more level playing field for entry-level
positions. But with welfare payments approaching minimum wage earning capacity,

the motivation fueled by basic needs has diminished the will to work. Subsidized
housing, subsidized meals, subsidized transportation, and subsidized healthcare challenge
the thinking poor to consider the economic advantages of
not working.
The
marginal economic benefits of minimum wage work are seen as negated by the
constraining commitment of time and the costs (transportation, clothes, food) associated
with work. The honor of self-sufficiency and pride of accomplishment has
been erased in large segments of the community.
Techonomics anticipates that those
cultures constraining or eliminating the entitlement mentality will be the cultures
to dominate future markets.
Technology will assure that those who desire to be
productive have the opportunity to be. Economics will assure that those willing to
perform an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay will be rewarded for doing
so. Conversely, technology placed into the hands of one lacking a work ethic will
never be optimally deployed, no matter how innovative. Global competition ultimately
guarantees the demise of entitlement.
In this chapter, we have used techonomics to anticipate the key trends of our
generation, the transition to the Virtual Age. To anticipate trends in the marketplace,
techonomics assumes that the evolutionary powers of the free market are able to
work. But when the free market is constrained, a techonomic analysis can also be
used to study the detrimental trends in the market and offer corrective recommendations.
The next chapter will review contemporary economic challenges of our
time, seeking practical, workable techonomic remedies.