The government bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will cost taxpayers $5.3 trillion. The $700 billion bailout of other notable financial firms is a Band-aid approach to a gaping-wound quandary.

So what is the long-term solution? Does the current crisis represent the end of America as we know it?

What can you do to contribute to a more secure and prosperous economy?

Is it possible for you to prosper in economic downturns?

The first step to identifying solutions is to accurately diagnose the problem. While the reasons are diverse, our current predicament is the product of three primary factors on three different levels:

1. The government manipulates the economy with the money supply, creating artificial demand and warping natural market forces.
2. Corporations have been guided by shortsighted greed.
3. The average American consumes more than they produce.

Since corporate behavior and government policy represent individual action, the only long-term solution to America’s economic woes is for individuals to be the change they wish to see in the world; to focus more on their internal economy than on the external economy.

Internal v. External Economy

The external economy represents everything outside of you: GDP, the Federal Reserve, international trade, supply and demand, manufacturing, etc.

Your internal economy is the sum total of the value you offer to others minus the factors that limit your production. It is your human life value—your knowledge, skills, abilities, relationships, confidence, etc.

It is what happens within you that determines your material and spiritual prosperity, or lack thereof.

Our pressing crisis hasn’t happened in a vacuum; it’s the result of a steady shift in culture, based on personal, internal decisions.

We can blame the government and corporations all we want, but government agents and corporate executives are common Americans like you and I, doing common things.

There’s little you and I can do to influence government policy during this crisis, but there’s an infinite number of things we can do to ensure security and prosperity regardless of what happens in the external economy.

Do you want to learn and grow, or complain and wallow in the misery? If you choose the former, then it’s time to grow your internal economy.

But how, exactly, is this done? Your personal economy will be strengthened and vitalized by living the following five principles:

1. Entitlement is the enemy of prosperity.

Stop waiting for someone else to solve your problems and give you economic security.

Contrary to New Deal lies and cradle-to-the-grave propaganda, the only things you’re entitled to are life, liberty, private property, and the pursuit of happiness.

The government owes you nothing but the protection of your unalienable rights. Corporations can give and take benefits as they please.

Your suffering during hard economic times will be directly proportionate to the degree to which you feel entitled to “security” and benefits from any person or institution.

You’re entitled to the fruits of your own labor and ingenuity—nothing more or less.

Don’t abdicate your responsibility to prosper to funds that you don’t understand, investments that you can’t control and that are not collateralized, and managers that you don’t know.

Take full responsibility for your money and your life.

2. Produce more than you consume.

The average American—while complaining about the federal budget deficit—spends more than $1.20 for every dollar that he or she earns. Contrary to the crippling myth that “consumer spending drives the economy,” production drives the economy.

Production—creating value for others in a way that they compensate you for it—is what gives any individual or entity the ability to consume.

You can’t control government spending. But you can control your own.

• Spend less than you earn.
• Never, ever borrow to consume.
• Pay off consumer debt as fast as you are able.
• Cut up your credit cards if that’s what it takes.
• Increase your production through education, better marketing, a career change, etc.
• Save and invest ten percent of your income.

Do whatever it takes to ensure that your home economy produces more than it consumes; this is the best way to fight inflation.

3. Value creation comes before desire fulfillment.

Who has more money—you, or other people? Obviously, other people.

How can you get others to give you money? By providing something to them that they value more than their money.

Greed and selfishness are at the basis of so many of our current problems. The wise understand that they can only get what they want by first focusing on what other people want.

Ask yourself:

• What do you have to offer that other people want?
• What suffering exists in the world that you have the ability to alleviate?
• What do other people need and how can you provide it efficiently?

Dollars follow value—creating value for others is the only legitimate way to meet your own needs.

4. Integrity is worth its weight in gold.

Corporate executives are being caught in lies like flies to honey. But what about you? Are you going to unfairly take advantage of others in the name of “Everyone else is doing it?”

Or will you take the road less traveled and be a person of your word, a person who others can trust in and rely upon? Does your private life reflect your core values?

When times are hard, people look for stability. Integrity provides stability of character, drawing others toward you.

Integrity alone is a magnetic marketing tool and will boost your ability to influence and serve others, and therefore profit in spite of crises.

5. Find and live your Soul Purpose.

Soul Purpose is your unique set of talents, abilities, values, and passions applied productively and effectively, making tremendous impact upon the world and bringing the highest levels of joy and fulfillment to you and everyone you touch.

You were born for something wonderful. Are you doing it?

Do you love to get up every morning? Are you energized by your career? Does it continually stretch you to achieve your fullest potential? Or is it time for you to choose something different?

Prosperity is much more than dollars, investment accounts, and toys; it’s the internal joy that you experience by applying your best work to pressing problems.

Soul Purpose is the best long-term investment. Find what you were born to do and do it—your prosperity will increase exponentially.

Rise to the Occasion

The problems we face are big—which means that there’s now more opportunity than ever to create value by alleviating suffering.

Big problems require bigger solutions, and bigger solutions pay bigger dividends.

The positive side of the financial meltdown is increased awareness; there is now enough pain for us to course-correct and overcome the economic myths of the last century.

The solution isn’t to elect new leaders any more than changing drivers on a broken car makes the car run better.

The solution is for common Americans to reform the economy from the inside out by:

1. Eliminating the entitlement mentality
2. Producing more than we consume
3. Creating value for others
4. Developing impeccable integrity
5. Living Soul Purpose

If you don’t know what to invest in—especially during hard economic times—your best bet is to invest in yourself through education.

After all, the external economy is nothing but a reflection of the aggregate of internal economies.

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Garrett Gunderson is an entrepreneur, financial coach, the founder of Freedom FastTrack, and the primary author of the New York Times bestseller Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

Garrett loves inspiring others to turn their potential into production. He has dedicated his life to living and teaching a unique concept known as Soul Purpose that reveals how anyone can live a more prosperous and rewarding life.

As a finance and business productivity coach, Garrett instructs both large and small groups of business owners and financial service professionals nationwide.

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Hardly anything amazes me more than the self-deception levels obtained by would-be leaders.

In a desire to protect their fragile egos, potential leaders would rather destroy their businesses than confront the facts.

If business is going poorly, the first step is to confront the facts. Most people, when they read this, are quick to say:

“Yes, I confronted the facts and it is everyone’s fault but my own.”

The only problem with this answer is that if everyone else is to blame, then how can YOU change to get better?

Yes, bad business partners can hurt you, but they cannot stop you as only you can choose to quit your leadership journey.

Let’s walk through a couple of key points to keep you from self-deception.

First, always look at the data. If the data is not available then you must design a reporting mechanism to get the data. Any business that plans on succeeding must have a scoreboard.

How do you score points in your business? How do you know if you are winning or losing if no one is keeping score?

I know this sounds basic, but the amount of times I have studied business issues to find out the alleged leader was not keeping score is legion!

Can you imagine going to a football game where there was no scoreboard? Every team would claim they were the best and demand pay increases –plus signing bonuses — if there wasn’t a scoreboard to keep them from their delusional thinking.

I love the statement, “In God we Trust — all others must have data.”

You claim to be a great leader? Back it up by your results. If you have no results, then you are the proverbial “Emperor with no clothes on,” suffering from self-deception.

Second, no matter how bad the facts are, there is always the potential for a turnaround as long as you do not blame others or self-deceive yourself.

I have never seen a hopeless situation, but have seen many hopeless leaders in situations. I believe one of the strongest attributes of any leader is his undying optimism to push through no matter what the odds are against him.

By accurately confronting the data, it will force you to assign blame to yourself and generate action plans to get better.

Only people who assess the facts as they actually are and develop game plans to improve will become the leaders they are capable of becoming.

Self-deception is an immediate cancellation of the growth process and must be avoided at all cost. Anyone claiming to be a leader should be judged by his scoreboard and not by his self-proclamations.

Third, be a producer, not an exploiter.

I love the Texas saying, “Big hat and no cattle.” No matter how big the hat you wear, if you have no cattle, you have no results.

The internet age has allowed people with little or no results to make beautiful websites and exciting videos, and network with big names, but none of this determines the quality of the individual’s leadership.

Leadership is a function of who you are and what you do, not what you wear, the names you drop, or how pretty your website is.

There are only two ways to produce results in life: First, by production and second by exploitation.

Producers go out into the world and serve people to produce results for themselves and others. Exploiters cannot produce results, so they quickly flock to producers to exploit part of the harvest from them.

Producers and exploiters come in all shapes and sizes and in many different fields.

Producers row the boat while exploiters are along for the ride. Exploiters can be in any field but usually seek positions where the scoreboard is non-existent or nebulous like government, management, churches, etc.

Producers and exploiters have been in a constant battle since the beginning of time.

Producers attempt to set up scoreboards to evaluate the true performance while exploiters attempt to self-deceive by flocking to jobs without scoreboards, –or even eliminating the scoreboard!

If America is going to return to greatness, we must end the reign of self-deception and bring back true competition by keeping score, regardless of how politically incorrect this thinking may be today.

China, India, Japan, and the rest of the world, do not care a lick about our self-esteem and will destroy us in business if we do not compete. The beginning of all competition is to keep score, therefore I emphatically encourage all businesses to start keeping score and evaluating results.

Exploiters will run from your company, but if all businesses will do this, they will have no place to hide outside of our government.

Are you a producer or an exploiter? Don’t tell me by your words, don’t self-deceive yourself by your thoughts; show me by your results on the scoreboard.

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Orrin Woodward is the co-founder of Team, a leadership development and training company, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Launching a Leadership Revolution.

Named by the International Association of Business as a Top 10 Leadership Guru, he is dedicated to building leaders and entrepreneurs and promoting freedom and prosperity.

Orrin blogs regularly at Orrin Woodward. He lives in Port St. Lucie, Florida with his wife and four children.

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Then the economy tanks, the era of the male provider-warrior ends, and man stands wondering if he has any importance.

As women take more than half of the new jobs in the market, they too begin to wonder if man is needed.

Here comes the miracle.

Like a wildfire burning a forest and opening the seeds for the growth of new trees and vast swaths of new woodlands, men look around, try to see any value in their lives, and find, hopefully, inevitably, their inner nurturer.

If this sounds effeminate, you still don’t realize how much the world has changed.

This transition is not simple, and we fight it with the zeal of the government battling the most threatening forest fires.

The experts and activists may call it “A New Era of Matriarchy,” “The End of Men,” “The Failed Marriage Plot,” “The Victory of Feminism,” or “a Matriarchal Society,” but all of these miss the most central point.

After generations of an economy driving men further and further away from their nurturing selves, of making them more and more the provider-manager-disconnected-careerist or confused-noncommittal-freewheeler-playboy, something drastic is required to reawaken a generation of husbandmen.

A generation of husbandmen could improve the world like perhaps nothing else. Indeed this is the highest ideal of manhood promoted by feminism and its opponents alike.

And if unemployment and economic struggles are what it takes to bring about this change, it is certainly worth it.

Of course, making this change will be neither immediate, easy nor sure. There will be ups and downs, and individuals may reject the whole thing.

But the change is here, women and men are empowered, and our society is poised to take a great step toward an ideal world.

Speaking as a man, I am both overwhelmed and intrigued by the prospects.

This is about much more than just seeing the proverbial silver lining in economic struggles. We literally have the chance to become better as men, women, and people.

The debate about gender that has raged my entire life can finally be answered. We don’t need to worry so much about what men or women should be or who is ahead.

We have reached a point where all the incentive is simply for men to be better men. If each of us, male and female, see things this way and simply set out to be better, just imagine the potential.

I am so glad my daughters live in a world of such opportunity—both in and out of the home. And I am equally thrilled that my sons will build their lives in a world where the whole man—nurturer as well as provider—is emerging as the ideal.

I am more enthused than ever about the potential for all our children to be equally yoked and fully happy in their marriages.

I don’t believe that the era of marriage, family happiness, or the high point for men or women is over. In contrast, I have never been more optimistic about the future of family.

If we are entering an era where both women and men more broadly improve themselves, the future of the home is indeed bright—and the impact on the rest of the world is inevitable.

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Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

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This reality, in fact, is one of those amazing coincidences that can only be called either inspiration or serendipity.

The current crisis is offering an opportunity for men to develop their nurturing side.

Before you discount this, consider that men are as naturally prone to nurture as they are to provide.

Thousands of years of the Nomadic, Agrarian and Industrial Ages have conditioned hundreds of generations of men to find success through work.

And the long era of comparative peace and prosperity since 1945 have tended to make them feel entitled to plentiful jobs, extra cash, vacations, and leisure time, and numerous other opportunities—often with minimal effort.

The Great Recession has challenged these assumptions, requiring a new type of individual with two sets of character traits and skills:

1. First, extremely high levels of initiative, resiliency, ingenuity, and tenacity.
2. Second, much higher than traditional levels of cooperation, communication, unselfishness about who gets rewards and credit, and teamwork.

Today’s generation of men and women are capable of the first list of needed traits and changes, but many men struggle to compete with women on the second list.

Indeed, for much of history it was man’s lack of these very “weaknesses” that made him independent, self-assured, bold, assertive, ambitious, and what has been called simply, “manly,” “Roman,” and “tough.”

When boys are taught, “be a man,” “don’t cry like a sissy,” and men are told to “cowboy up,” it often means precisely not to be the cooperative, communicative, depend-on-others types.

“Stop talking and just do it.” “Who cares what others say or do, just do what you want.”

Men still laugh at Tim Allen’s grunts as the essence of male communication, and even in team athletics boys are taught to stand out and rise above the crowd.

What used to be the unwritten rules of “male dominance” are now actually seen as inability to excel in the vital second list of characteristics (communication, cooperation, unselfishness).

While of course this generalization is overcome by a number of individuals, it remains a reality for many.

Wise fathers, grandfathers and role models will help teach boys and men that there is much more to manhood than the wartime and gang-related values.

Indeed, the lessons taught from fathers to sons by generations of hunters, farmers and entrepreneurs differ greatly from those idealized by warriors, politicians and corporate raiders.

The first group idealizes cooperation, communication, and progress whereas the second prefers competition, dominance and victory.

In the Industrial Age, the “Organization Man” became the ideal for males—detached, admired, cash-carrying, benefitting from a lot of leisure time, and considered in charge of his family and its members.

The Industrial Man was the provider and the boss. At work he was an employee, a servant, but at home he was the center of the universe. He too often tended to treat his wife and children like employees and act like the boss he resented at work.

With a life experience built on succeeding as an employee, he didn’t know another way of acting.

His wife was either an employee, the boss, or perhaps a fellow worker in competition for advancement, attention and rewards.

His marriage was most often seen as a contract, where both sides were expected to perform their agreed upon roles, rather than a covenant where he would give his all in sacrifice and longsuffering regardless of what the other side did.

His relationships with neighbors and his nation took on this same contractual perspective.

He voted like an employee, for what he wanted—rather than for what the nation truly needed like a farmer or owner protecting the land or the organization he raised from scratch.

Today some men are lamenting (often quietly) the loss of this concept, while at the same time the need for a new male ideal is vital.

Before the Industrial Revolution, the masculine ideal was often the best nurturer. It takes nurturing, not detached management, to grow a farm, build a business from the ground up, and raise children into adults.

The necessary attention to detail is legendary. Indeed, in the Agrarian Age the iconic man’s occupation and business was Husbandry.

Providing was part of their role, but it was a secondary natural outgrowth of nurturing children like a small business in its infancy, encouraging and husbanding plants and coaxing them to grow and flourish into a farm in full bloom.

As Wendell Berry put it:

“…a man who is in the traditional sense a good farmer is husbandman and husband, the begetter and conserver of the earth’s bounty, but he is also midwife and motherer. He is a nurturer of life. His work is domestic. He is bound to the household.

“But let ‘progress’ take such a man and transform him…sever him from the household, make…‘uneconomical’ his impulse to conserve and to nurture…’ and not only will much of his incentive to be a good husband end, but his attachment to the land, to his nation, and to his wife and children, who are, after all, not particularly economical.

“Then, send his children away to school during the day, thus severing the wife from both husband and children, and she will naturally follow him to work looking for connection and meaning.

“Our homes are left abandoned and barren across the nation—father, mother and children are all elsewhere, seeking love and acceptance and nurturing.”

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Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Connect With Oliver:

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President Obama said in his 2008 Father’s Day Speech that fathers are critical to the foundations of the family:

“They are teachers and coaches. They are mentors and role models. They are examples of success and men who constantly push us toward it.”

Kids who are raised without fathers are five times more likely to commit crime or live in poverty and nine times as likely to drop out of school. But these statistics are all in debate, and no clear conclusions are accepted by the researchers.

In fact, as the author of Parenting, Inc., Pamela Paul, put it,

“The bad news for Dad is that despite common perception, there’s nothing objectively essential about his contribution. The good news is, we’ve gotten used to him.”

Such tepid support for the role of fathers is becoming the norm. As Don Peck wrote:

“In Identity Economics, the economists George Akerloff and Rachel Kranton find that among married couples, men who aren’t working at all, despite their free time, do only 37 percent of the housework, on average. And some men, apparently in an effort to guard their masculinity, actually do less housework after becoming unemployed.

“Many working women struggle with the idea of partners who aren’t breadwinners. ‘We’ve got this image of Archie Bunker sitting at home, grumbling and acting out,’ says Kathryn Edin, a professor of public policy at Harvard, and an expert on family life….It may sound harsh, but in general, [Wilcox] says, ‘if men can’t make a contribution financially, they don’t have much to offer.’

“Two-thirds of all divorces are legally initiated by women. Wilcox believes that over the next few years, we may see a long wave of divorces, washing no small number of discarded and dispirited men back into single adulthood.

“Among couples without college degrees, says Edin, marriage has become an ‘increasingly fragile’ institution. In many low-income communities, she fears it is being supplanted as a social norm by single motherhood and revolving-door relationships. As a rule, fewer people marry during recession, and this one has been no exception.”

More people are putting off marriage and just deciding not to marry.

One result of all this is that more communities are filled with unmarried, unemployed, underemployed, increasingly less educated, frustrated and unproductive males.

Even among educated men who are married and employed, there is increasing confusion about the ideal and proper role of men.

Few men are willing to voice a strong opinion about the roles of men and women any more, though it is a frequent topic among women.

Even those men who do share an opinion most often begin or end, or both, with a disclaimer along the lines of, “but what do I know? I’m just a man, after all.”

We are at an interesting place in gender relations in America. Hanna Rosin wrote:

“Throughout the ‘90s, various authors and researchers agonized over why boys seemed to be failing at every level of education, from elementary school on up, and identified various culprits: a misguided feminism that treated normal boys as incipient harassers (Christina Hoff Sommers); different brain chemistry (Michael Gurian); a demanding, verbally focused curriculum that ignored boy’s interests (Richard Whitmire).

“But again, it’s not all that clear that boys have become more dysfunctional—or have changed in any way. What’s clear is that schools, like the economy, now value the self-control, focus, and verbal aptitude that seem to come more easily to young girls.”

I have suggested for many years that girls are a couple of years ahead of boys and that we do much harm by pushing boys into academics too early.

In fact, until they have a love of learning (which comes early) and then a love of studying (which usually comes to boys shortly after puberty), requiring them to do a lot of typical school work is often very destructive to their long-term education.

By establishing grade levels by age, rather than as phases that come to different children at their own pace, society often labels boys as “dumb,” “not smart,” “less gifted,” and “behind,” when in fact they just aren’t yet ready to meet some arbitrary standard called a grade level.

Some boys, and some girls, may develop more slowly than the “established norm,” but they are still fully capable of superb performance when they are allowed to move at they own pace.

Unfortunately, this flies in the face of the “expert” wisdom and is largely discounted by most.

One suggested solution by those currently dealing with this trend of “underperforming” boys is to create gender-oriented tests instead of standard exams. This strikes me as sad and frustrating, since I have been promoting personalized, oral exams instead of standardized tests for years.

Another proposal is to allow boys to walk around during class in order to get out their nervous attention and allow them to concentrate like girls or older students.

Again, I have taught for nearly two decades that younger children aren’t quite ready for the academic environment we have forced them to endure.

Some experts want to establish all-boys classrooms and even all-boys school, and to focus on the needs of boys instead of requiring them to fit into standard classrooms.

I agree with Rosin:

“It is fabulous to see girls and young women poised for success in the years ahead. But allowing generations of boys to grow up feeling rootless and obsolete is not a recipe for a peaceful future.”

Unfortunately, the pro-men and pro-boy movements that are now happening are either discounted by many as too religious, too extreme, or too angry and anti-women.

In short, the only thing which really seems to work in raising boys toward ideal manhood, regardless of what the experts are saying, is the intimate and ongoing example of fathers, grandfathers, uncles and other key male role models.

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Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Connect With Oliver:

Read Part 1 Here
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At the same time, and certainly not unrelated, many women are finding marriage less attractive.

Sandra Tsing Loh writes that:

“for women, obsession with real estate is replacing obsession with love and marriage….Whatever the emotional need, we women can engineer the solution. But such continual resculpting may be irksome if the vessel of our current and future happiness is an actual male….

“So what if, in comparison with Jane Austen’s time, when the heroine’s journey was necessarily Girl Meets Boy, Girl Marries Boy, Girl Gets Pemberley, 200 years later our plots are Woman Buys Pemberley, Pemberley Needs Remodeling, Woman Hires Handsome, Soulful, Single Architect to Find Perfect Farmhouse Sink but After Whirlwind Affair Boots Him Out Anyway Because She Hates His Choice of Carpeting…?

“Whether you wish to chant ‘Our houses, our selves’ or ‘We have houses, hear us roar,’ for us women, home is where the heart is.”

Loh suggests that “middle-aged female readers’ tastes,” at least, “are shifting away from the marriage plot.”

She cites such current female classics as Committed by woman’s icon Elizabeth Gilbert, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House by Meghan Daum, and Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity From a Consumer Culture by Shannon Hayes.

About The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine (which the New York Times Book Review called “an update of Sense and Sensibility”), Loh said that it is

“less about who ends up with the men than who ends up with the real estate….

“As the years grind on, Sheldon ['bald and in bow ties'] will only continue to physically collapse, as opposed to a house, whose luster just improves with age. A 100-year-old farm house? Make it 200! Even 300! Original hardware! Wide-plank floors! And what’s more fun than falling madly in love with a piece of real estate?”

Quoting Meghan Daum:

“Moving, like chocolate and sunshine, stirs up many of the same chemicals you ostensibly produce when you’re in love. At least it does for me. Like a new lover, a new house opens a floodgate of anticipation and trepidation and terrifying expectations fused with dreamy distractions. It’s all encompassing and crazy making. You can’t concentrate at work…”

And about Hayes’s book:

“I am raptly studying the New York Times piece on lefty stay-at-home mothers in Berkeley who raise their own chickens. In a house with no cable…the only entertainment we have is reading….Evenings go by so slowly, I’m already halfway through my every-four-years read of Anna Karenina…

“I’m intrigued by the stay-at-home-mom chicken-slaughtering because on my rickety nightstand (flea market—$8!) is my new bible, Shanon Hayes’s Radical Homemakers. Sure, it has some of the usual tropes one would expect from a crunchy-granola rebel seeking to live off the land: Hayes’s daughters have lyrically daunting names like Saoirse and Ula; there is copious homeschooling; there are hushed-voice, enigmatic, and unironic biographical descriptions like ‘She raises and forages most of her food in the heart of the city’ (Chicago). More timid souls might balk at maybe limiting their diet to venison, figs, and prickly pear cactus; melting beef tallow for soap….And yet, I find myself dog-earing page after page, exclaiming ‘Aha!’ and circling passages….

“What a heady brand of feminism—self reliance in the home is a path to more authentic macro-freedom; freedom from government, freedom from corporations, freedom from a soul-diminishing economy! Like early American rebels who freed themselves from dependence on the British by pairing turkey not with imported jam but with locally grown cranberry sauce, we, too, can start a revolution in the kitchen!”

A much more direct new feminism, according to Rosin, comes from leaders like Iceland’s female Prime Minister who campaigned by promising to put an end to “the age of testosterone.”

And many women are simply foregoing marriage. Says Rosin:

“In 1970, 84 percent of women ages 33 to 44 were married; now 60 percent are….[T]he most compelling theory is that marriage has disappeared because women are setting the terms—and setting them too high for the men around them to reach.”

In all of this, men are often seen as dull, stulted, unimaginative and unable to cope with change, while women are seen as naturally innovative, able, creative, adaptive and ready to deal with and overcome anything.

When challenges come, men are expected to mope, but the women assess the situation, develop solutions, and then muster resources and support to turn challenges into triumphs.

In this new worldview, the stereotypes are significant: men are naturally needy and dependent while women are bright, engaged and full of initiative.

Why would women even want to marry in such an environment? Many college women, according to Rosin, see men as “the new ball and chain.”

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Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Connect With Oliver:

Read Part 2 Here
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Read Part 4 Here
Read Part 5 Here

AT THE CENTER OF ALL SOCIETIES sits the family, and when family culture drastically and irreversibly changes, the whole civilization is impacted.

Our politics, economy, relationships and character are going to be different based on the major family shift now occurring.

What could cause such an all-encompassing change? What exactly is happening right now that is altering our societal future?

The answer is: The shift to a matriarchal society.

And whether this actually happens in full or we are simply witnessing a slight move in this direction, the consequences are momentous.

In short, this boils down to four major trends that are remaking our society:

1. The rise of matriarchal society
2. The decreasing popularity of marriage
3. The growing confusion about manhood
4. The opportunity for masculine nurture

The Rise of Matriarchal Society

The Great Recession is touted by many as having brought the end of male dominance in our culture, and of ushering in a new era of matriarchal supremacy.

As Don Peck writes in The Atlantic:

“The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults….It could cripple marriage as an institution in many communities….Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture and the character of our society for years come…

“[J]oblessness corrodes marriages, and makes divorce much more likely down the road. According to W. Bradford Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, the gender imbalance of the job losses in this recession is particularly noteworthy, and—combined with the depth and duration of the job crisis—poses ‘a profound challenge to marriage’…

“‘We could be headed in a direction where, among elites, marriage and family are conventional, but for substantial portions of society, life is more matriarchal,’ says Wilcox. The marginalization of working-class men in family life has far-reaching consequences.

“Marriage plays an important role in civilizing men. They work harder, longer, more strategically. They spend less time in bars and more time in church, less with friends and more with kin. And they’re happier and healthier.”

Women are now the majority of the paid workforce for the first time in history, the majority of managers are now women, and significantly more women than men now get degrees.

“For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women?”

As Hanna Rosin outlined in a an article on “the unprecedented role reversal now under way—and its vast cultural consequences,” couples at fertility clinics are now requesting more girls than boys, three quarters of the jobs lost in the Great Recession were lost by men, many college women now assume that they will earn the paycheck while their husbands stay home and mind the kids, and women now earn 60 percent of all bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Ask Rosin:

“What if the economics of the new era are better suited to women? Once you open your eyes to this possibility, the evidence is all around you….Indeed, the U.S. economy is in some ways becoming a kind of traveling sisterhood: upper-class women leave home and enter the workforce, creating domestic jobs for other women to fill.

“The postindustrial economy is indifferent to men’s size and strength. The attributes that are most valuable today—social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus—are, at a minimum, not predominately male….

“The economic and cultural power shift from men to women would be hugely significant even if it never extended beyond working-class America. But women are also starting to dominate middle management, and a surprising number of professional careers as well.”

Of the top 15 careers projected to grow in the decade ahead, says Rosin, only two—janitor and computer engineer—are filled by a male majority. And the trend is not limited to the United States: both China and India boast similar indicators.

College statistics show “with absolute clarity that in the coming decades the middle class will be dominated by women.”

Read Part 2 Here
Read Part 3 Here
Read Part 4 Here
Read Part 5 Here

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Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Connect With Oliver:

Thus hundreds of years of understanding about how to grow Industrial-Age businesses doesn’t really apply to many Information Age endeavors.

Indeed, some of the lessons of how to grow a farm in the Agricultural Age didn’t necessarily translate to Industrial Age corporate growth, although some did.

The key is to think in a new context and apply lessons within the contemporary environment.

Information, and by extension Information-Age organizations and ideas, grow in a certain way.

Instead of the Industrial model of building a foundation, then adding walls, buttresses and finally a roof, informational models grow like waves.

Imagine the ripples caused when a pebble falls into a lake. The waves repeat many times, spreading out and impacting the world around them. Eventually they dissipate and disappear, leaving the world altered, if only a little. Additional pebbles are needed to repeat the process.

And unlike the Industrial Age penchant for building institutions that last forever, information impacts the world and then moves on to something else when enough ripples have accomplished the goal.

The Industrial modus operandi was to build an institution to achieve a goal, and then to focus on the survival and growth of the institution — even if this required abandoning the original purpose for which the institution was established.

In contrast, information sets out to inform, keeps going until this is accomplished, and then moves on to other agendas.

Likewise, where Industrial institutions attempt to control how their work is perceived and utilized, information shares, informs, and leaves (and trusts) those who receive the information to use it as needed and to pass it on.

Good information is naturally improved by various applications, and it is perpetuated by those who receive and utilize it.

There are eight levels of informational waves:

1: At first, information simply is. It exists.

It is in the state and process of being. This is the most important level of informational ideas, institutions and thinkers.

The quality, breadth, depth and wisdom of information matters. Getting it right (right from the beginning) is vital.

Even more important is sharing information for the right reason. If information is shared for the wrong reasons, for example, the information itself is tainted and changed by this fact.

In the Industrial Age, things were considered good information if they were true, but information has a higher standard. Unless informational ideas are shared for the right reasons, the information isn’t reliable.

In short, the first level of information is purity.

Any item of information is a thing, and it has a purpose. In sharing information or building informational institutions or relationships, pure reasons are essential. Without them, the information itself is unreliable.

Note that pure information is one of the most powerful things in the world. It has been called “the power of the word,” “the power of an idea whose time has come,” “resonance,” and a number of other things.

When information is shared by the right person at the right time for the right reasons, it has great and lasting power.

2: Good information that is promoted and shared for the right reasons becomes an interactive wave.

This greatly increases the impact and influence of the information, spreading it to those who need it.

Of course, bad information passed on for the wrong reasons is also interactive and therefore very destructive. Anybody who has ever started a rumor, for example, has probably witnessed how quickly it spreads and how much pain and hurt it can cause.

In the long term, however, tainted information has no lasting power. Information promoters do best when they send out ideas far and wide, openly sharing and personally applying the “new” information they have learned.

3: Next comes the communicative wave.

This occurs where people purposely set out to communicate information to set groups or to everyone.

This wave can be marketed, spun, or twisted for the benefit of various groups and people, but the pure information will shine through and those seeking wisdom will see through the shades of spin and opinion and resonate with what they need to learn.

They will then naturally pass on their contributions and lessons learned and the value of the information will increase.

Synergy kicks in at this point and the value of the information spirals out to many who are seeking it.

4: A linear wave captures much of the information at this level and translates it to specific uses, fields, disciplines, written or spoken or digitized venues and delivers its essence in numerous formats.

Information institutions or thinkers frequently introduce their views to the world in this format. Of course, it existed before they composed, organized or created their specific work, but their creation adds value, quality and even wisdom to the information.

By its nature, information spreads, and those who add to its value without trying to enslave its essence help it spread and increase its ability to serve.

Those who try to control it, in contrast, find that their creation is devalued, their creativity stifled, and their flow of additional information violated.

Unlike land or capital in the Agrarian and Industrial eras, respectively, information is not meant to be owned. The wave of open source programs and wiki media applications harnesses this abundant and cooperative mentality.

Note that I am not arguing here for uncompensated use of copyrighted software, technology, artistic or other proprietary creations.

I believe that original inventions, innovations and creations should benefit those who risked, invested, worked and created. And organizations and governments have every right to keep certain things secret or proprietary.

But pure information in ideas, principles and the flow of wisdom is not the same as one’s proprietary creation–nobody can (or should) lock up or control the flow of pure information.

As long as individuals and institutions own their creation, but without trying to control thought and inspiration, it can benefit them and many others.

5: Eventually information is captured in numerous linear waves which together form a multimedia wave.

In other words, at a certain point pure information is simultaneously delivered in many forms and from numerous sources which reinforce the messages, lessons and value of the original information.

Leaders can help spread this wave by delivering the information multiple times and in manifold ways.

6: The next step occurs when information comes alive.

This happens were the essence of the information is felt.

When I hear a story and it spurs an emotional response, for example, all the earlier waves combine and impact how I receive the information.

In a similar way, waves far from where the pebble dropped are bigger and carry a lot more water than those right where the pebble fell.

A similar level in Industrial institutions was branding–where a given brand, name or logo carried a repeating emotional charge. In the informational world, however, each additional interaction communicates new information value.

7: Psychological waves come next, and are produced by the transfer of information from one mind to another.

Since all such transfers partake of all the earlier levels of waves (e.g. the person shares his feelings, pure or tainted reasons, multimedia use of voice along with facial expressions and nonverbal cues, etc.), learning from others is an advanced way to receive information.

Because of this, the level of advancement of the person delivering the message has some impact on how the information is delivered.

Still, the condition of the receiver is the most important factor in determining the quality of the reception when the information or signal is pure.

In Industrial marketing this was often dominated by testimonials or infomonials, but informational leaders simply open up and share.

The most powerful of this information often comes from word of mouth, personal stories, and genuine interest in helping others.

Any who truly care about others and share ideas, thoughts or anything else as attempts to help others are partners with information in this process.

The true language of this wave is love, which is why true change most often comes when we feel love or loved.

8: At the highest level, the symbolic wave conveys a packet of information that is amazingly multi-layered and teeming with depth, breadth, context, connections and possibilities.

Shakespeare spoke of being bounded in a nutshell of infinite space and science teaches that the DNA code of an entire organism is found in each cell.

The symbolic wave could be called a mustard seed, a small token carrying the potential and key to so much more.

Also, at this highest level, the receiver can often break the information into smaller pieces, analyze each of the waves alone or together, and consider each facet of the idea–from its essence to all its potential consequences.

The possibilities are exponential. The information at this level is only limited by the abilities of the user to consider, discover or imagine.

Those seeking such information are on a quest for inspiration–be it limited to one question, or as broad as a life of searching.

Because the symbolic wave of information is so powerful, those who ask shall receive; the universe is friendly, and when the student is ready the teacher will appear.

(That last paragraph makes me want to be sure everyone knows how important it is to read Free the Beagle by Roy Williams. It’s a fun read, not homework.)

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Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Connect With Oliver:

Past examples include “The Clash of Civilizations” by Samuel Huntington and “A Separate Peace” by Peggy Noonan. Both of these are still incredibly valuable reading.

Today, when many politicians are trying to convince the American people that the recession is really over, there are still very few people who believe an economic boom is just ahead.

A significant number of people feel that things may well get much worse, and most Americans seem to expect the economy to sputter for the foreseeable future.

Even if growth does increase, it appears that major economic challenges are far from over.

More importantly even than financial impact of hard economic times is the significantly negative impact on the family.

Because of this, today I want to recommend that everyone read a truly important article written by Don Peck in The Atlantic: “How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America.”.

I have read and re-read this article a number of times since I first saw it in March, and I am learning something more each time. I urge you to take time to read it thoroughly.

While you read it, consider at least four themes:

1. The challenges of fixing the economy, and the great need to re-incentivize innovation and entrepreneurs.
2. Why are we choosing to increase taxes and regulations on small business instead of opening the economy and giving them a chance to put American initiative to work?
3. The impact of high unemployment on the family, including the restriction of the roles of husbands, fathers, wives and mothers.
4. The impact on youth.

Finally, I am still trying to figure out the ramifications of one major point in the article, that the economic downturn is altering our culture into a “matriarchal society.”

I’m all for equality, but is a matriarchal society a good thing or a bad thing? What exactly is it, and what will it look like? I think this is a vital trend that we all need to think about and discuss.

***********************************

Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Connect With Oliver:

“The system of corporate life is a new power for which our language contains no name. We have no word to express government by moneyed corporations.” -Charles Francis Adams

Equal opportunity is the bedrock of freedom. This nation was established to preserve, protect, and ensure that opportunity.

The United States (and the world) will need to make a very important decision over the next 30 years: whether to choose democracy or capitalism.

Democracy protects equal opportunity while capitalism (as practiced today) stifles it.

Let’s ask some questions to help us see in what ways capitalism and democracy are incongruent. Our first task will be to precisely describe our terms.

What is capitalism and how does it differ from free enterprise?

Capitalism suffers from misused and loose definitions. Capitalism is commonly defined as

“an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.”

Unfortunately, in our current state of capitalism, this free market doesn’t exist. What we experience is more closely associated with Karl Marx’s definition of a “capitalist.”

It was Marx who first used the term to describe the oppressive and face-grinding economic environment of aristocratic Europe that was buoyed up by legal protection of the few at the expense of the many.

In place of a free market exists a complicated web of laws and regulations that, as one critic suggests, allows the corporate class to

“use free-market rhetoric to justify imposing greater economic risk upon the lower classes, while being insulated from the rigors of the market by the political and economic and legal advantages that such wealth affords.”

Capitalism today is an economic system where the government favors those with capital over those with little or none. It’s a marriage between government and big business.

You don’t see small businesses being “bailed out” right now, do you? There’s a reason for that.

Although capitalism suffers from these weaknesses, we should recognized that it is a much freer system, both economically and politically, than either communism or socialism.

Nevertheless, capitalism is the systems in which those with the capital make the rules. The rules are made to benefit themselves at the expense of new competition. This is accomplished through financially-privileged and unequal access to political influence and power.

For example, a small business owner would have a difficult road competing against a large “box” store, not only because of volume and pricing (which is part of market forces and free enterprise), but because of fewer obstacles (paperwork, fees, etc) the large “box store” would face because of laws and favors granted due to financial influence (which is what makes it capitalism).

This environment results in exclusionary practices and limits opportunity; and this is where our current state of capitalism breaks with democracy.

Free enterprise is the legal framework that allows all with the desire and the idea and the creativity to compete on a level playing field; free enterprise is therefore more democratic because it is based on equal opportunity before the law.

In contrast, capitalism is the legal framework that leads to aristocratic structures by providing advantage to those who have capital via protection and perpetuation of wealth.

What is democracy and why is it currently tightly associated with capitalism?

Democracy is another term with many loose definitions. Historically it denotes that the common people (demos) rule (kratia) in that the population of the society controls the government, and that the government is for, of and by the people.

There are many brands of democracy but they are all distinguished from other forms of government by general population-based input into the political process.

Aristocracy, the rule by “the best” (generally determined by birth or status that almost always rule for life) and plutocracy, rule by the wealthy, are enemies of democracy.

Our current brand of capitalism tends to create and then maintain these other social forms.

Historically, free enterprise was tied to democracy by the American Revolution, as much of the reasoning for war was a push-back against British mercantilistic policies imposed upon colonists accustomed to operating within an essentially free market.

With the advent of communism and socialism in the mid 19th century and their rise at the turn of that century, capitalism stood out as the “more free” of the economic systems and the alliance with democracy was forged.

This bond was fortified during WWI and WWII and the Cold War as the world battled between democracy and totalitarianism.

Why is “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people” inconsistent with mercantilistic capitalism?

1. The increasingly manipulated legal system of capitalism, set up in order to preserve and protect privileged access to the market (try to get a franchise license without incredible personal assets), causes the political process to concurrently become less and less democratic.

Although we are given the impression that the process is becoming more democratic (that we can vote about more things), reality is that those who we choose to represent us are increasingly influenced, and to that degree, controlled by those who fund their political ascendancy. This tends to aristocracy or oligarchy (rule by the few).

2. Thus, only those with legal and political influence are able to manipulate the system to their advantage. At some point (I think we’re getting close) the common man disengages from the political and civil conversation and the wealthy and powerful (whether conservative or liberal) are the only ones involved in the functioning of government, making decisions based on protecting their wealth and power.

3. Even if the political structures don’t change form, the economic and legal systems create a de facto wealth-based aristocracy. The ability of the common people (demos) to influence the political situation diminishes into insignificance and thus capitalism changes the political structure.

4. The laws currently in place give capitalism a decided advantage in the choice between capitalism and democracy. Money purchases political influence and will continue to bring into play laws that perpetuate the capitalist system at the expense of free enterprise and democracy.

5. Remember that we are not talking about overnight change. This is a trend that has progressed for decades. Only now are we able to distinguish the two, and we need to choose before we reach a point of no return.

How are democracy and capitalism perceived internationally?

The United States is currently the self-proclaimed “bastion” of both capitalism and democracy.

However, in international opinion the U.S. government is associated (through sad experience) with rapacious capitalistic policies and oft-times hypocritical democratic interventions that have been claimed have the intention of “spreading democracy and prosperity,” only to have had the opposite effects in multiple countries throughout the world.

Much of U.S. foreign policy has supposedly been to “spread democracy”; however the means chosen seem to indicate that the purpose has been to make the world safe for mercantilistic capitalism at the expense of popular sovereignty and paced and sequenced movements, determined by each country, to improve the freedom in their markets and the prosperity of the people of these lands.

It’s not yet clear whether the incoming executive administration will continue to force on other countries the concepts of free government and free markets through the use of the military and international financial organizations.

Regardless, we must choose, as soon as possible, whether as a people we will continue to align ourselves with mercantilistic capitalism, or if we will trust free government, free markets, and popular sovereignty.

Conclusion

Our rampant commercialism, consumerism, and materialism indicate which way we are leaning.

Our ethics and our legal system to which we sacrifice our morals demonstrate that we value capital and wealth (and especially protecting it) more than we value liberty.

We demonstrate that we would rather have an aristocratic plutocracy govern us than to govern ourselves (if it means we can maintain our current level of luxury).

Mercantilistic capitalism is winning in the U.S. and will continue to do so until appropriate corporate and tax reforms are undertaken and until financial influence of the political system is eliminated.

Will we wait until our own government implements “Intolerable Acts” that protect its mercantilistic desires at the expense of the free market, or until our foreign economic and political policies become so unfair that our security is even more seriously compromised?

Or will we pro-actively choose democracy, free enterprise, and liberty at home and abroad?

We must call our current economic system what it is — mercantilistic capitalism — recognize how distant we are from liberty in our government and our economics, and move forward the overhaul that needs to occur.

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Mike Wilson received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Brigham Young University and pursued graduate work at the University of California, San Diego, where he earned a M.S. degree in Biomedical Sciences prior to obtaining his M.D. at the UCSD School of Medicine.

He lives in Cedar City, Utah with his wife Jenni and their six children and practices emergency medicine in St. George, Utah while working on a Ph.D. in Constitutional Law at George Wythe University. He is also an Associate Mentor at GWU.

Mike’s passion is promoting idea that the common man has power and capacity to affect grand change in the world through true principles of love, goodness, and virtue. Because of his Jeffersonian trust in the common man, he considers himself a “little d” democrat (an ideal, not a political party).

He believes that the cause of liberty is founded essentially in widespread powerful education, checks on power, and promotion of virtue and goodness. Force is never a real solution to problems for Mike and the statesman’s role is to understand the ideal, see where society is, and then put himself in a position to move society in the direction of the ideal.