Yes like Jack I fear these hard professions are running amok, and will left unchecked destroy over time everything I value as most human. Yes of course we humans need your minimum professional (do no harm) senses - my favourite guess as to why Russia didnt immediately grow strong with the collapse of the Berlin Wall was too little law to do minimums of decent business and personal exchanges

But in America, the double whammy of accountant and lawyer has turned this most innovative country into a value destroyer, as well as traitor to the very democratic words of the Declaration of Independence (rights of freedom and happiness for all). The way it works is global accountants measure stuff that it is wholly tangential to sustaining/systemising true human value, and then lawyers pick up the quarrels between the deceived. When the wrong numbers (for constructing relationship value) are being publicly reported, there's no need for esoteric insider knowledge. The way to profit on the stockmarket is to short a company you know has been pumped up to the gil of optimistic estimates and short-term leadership.

The way to cure the over-use of lawyers is:
-agree a set of laws that are sufficient and simple to cover most human exchanges so that everyone can understand them (get rid of all small print)
-use a gizmo that is already invented and commercialised but blocked by an accounting firm: its a tiny video camera you can wear; thump your chest once to put it on, once off; use it whenever you're signing a deal; it transmits by wireless to a digitalised computer bank as your indelible personal security record

However as well as technology answers, the main idea we need is to govern organsiations in ways that detect emerging conflicts and resolve them before they compound into costly messes rather than America's current accounting standards which govern by numbers that are mathematically perfect for compounding conflicts.

Here the additional idea of win-win-win is a clue to follow up in another post of this blog.

PS Permit me to end on a personal note. My hero, and uncle, David Kemp QC died recently after a long innings. His last campaign was to rid the UK of the Lord Chancellor who was telling little porkies, out of no greater arrogance than publicly making a mistake with compound arithmentic and then refusing to let any other judge or lord rectify his errant maths. Mathematical literacy in high places isnt what it used to be, and the compounding of leaders' mathematical mistakes may very well ruin this place we call earth. posted by ..., 9:54 AM  permalink