Maine’s Statehouse Paintings, Conclusion

Maine’s Statehouse Paintings, Conclusion

Entrepreneurship and individualism are ingrained in our culture but corporations are not entrepreneurial. They are bureaucracies managed by administrators. The real entrepreneurs, the small businesses are disappearing. Wal-Mart has displaced the “mom and pop” local shops and you can buy your cigarettes, wine (in some southern states) and milk in the local EXXON gas station. You can get a haircut in a chain barbershop and coffee at Starbucks. This is true capitalism and from the standpoint of the general population not altogether bad and as long as monopolies are prevented, prices will go down and we as consumers benefit. As a society grows and becomes more advanced and complex, the individualism that was a strong cultural asset during our early days may become a liability. With so much interdependence we have to be concerned not only with our selves and our immediate surroundings but with the broader society and environment.

Another problem was the Soviet propensity for central planning. The disadvantage of a planned economy over a free market one is that commercial interactions are too complicated to anticipate and plan. Whereas the free market uses a somewhat free form method devoid of planning and relies on the economy to be driven by “real-time” supply and demand, (though large corporations do utilize central planning) the Soviets established an intricate bureaucracy to create five-year plans. Within these plans was determined how much of what to make and where and for how much to sell it. As societies grow and technologies advance the complexity and number of commercial interactions grows, central planning became less and less effective. Going forward, however, there is no question but that computer science will be able to deal with this complexity. The only question is when? Years ago it was believed that a computer program will never be able to beat a world champ in chess. Well, it has. More recently, Watson, an IBM program, won on Jeopardy. We need to be alert and not fall victim to ideology. I suspect China, since it already has a culture of central planning, as its participation in free markets grows, will not given up on the notion of central planning and is pursuing technologies to improve it as we speak.

Being an optimist, I am confident that we will reform our political system allowing the voices of our citizens to continue to be heard and encourage dialog expressing divergent points of view that is not drowned out by special interest with very deep pockets. The free market will continue, though adjusted to reflect the times and government will be allowed, if not forced, to do its job in the ever more complex future. So if we are going to build statues, paint pictures and sing songs, I would like to see a scene with a group of people some of whom have calluses on their hands while others are working on something scientific and also someone at a financial chart on the wall. The paintings will be bright and the subjects will all be well fed, healthy and strong. The songs will showcase their kindness, courage, tolerance and generosity. As to the Maine statehouse painting, my advice to the governor comes in the form of an anecdote. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychotherapy, was on stage smoking a cigar while addressing a group of students at Clark University in Worcester, MA. He said to the audience, you are looking at me and thinking the cigar is a phallic symbol, but sometimes it is just a cigar. The painting of workers in the Main statehouse was just a painting, no more or less.