It’s Beyond Confidence, Mr. Obama

Much is made about confidence in regard to the economy. When consumers have confidence their economic world will stay stable or improve, they are more likely to spend resources–money.

People speak of confidence with regard to the business community as well. If the business community is confident, it will make more products. To do so, each business man or woman will buy more raw materials and hire more workers to make them into finished products. It will be a wonderful thing. The unemployed will work, the suppliers of raw materials will hire more people, too, and in so many other ways, the spiral of economic growth will turn from down to up.

From a psychological perspective, confidence is just a term for an aspect of autonomy. The genetic drive for autonomy relates to the ability to do things, to function as an independent human being. To be…autonomous. Each of us experienced this at a very early age, perhaps when we were 1 or 2 years old. We learned to do things by ourselves, to walk, for example.

Competence is part of autonomy, a necessary part. That is, we actually have to be able to walk. There are others aspects of autonomy, too. Confidence is one of them. It Is the mental sense we can engage in the autonomous function, walking in this example. If the infant is not confidence he can walk, he won’t take a step. If he is overconfident, he might take steps before he is ready. Confidence says, “I think I can do it. I think I have the competence to do it. It will work out.”

In government, political leaders try to instill confidence that buying raw materials and hiring more employees will work out. That is, that people will buy those products, that the businessman’s ability to function by producing goods and services that people will buy will actually occur. Governments try to instill this confidence indirectly, by stimulants or other policy changes. Sometimes it works well, sometimes not so well. The presumption is that if employers become  confident their hiring will pay off, they will hire.

However, it is not so simple. To understand, let’s again look back at our first encounters with autonomy. We took a step. We had the confidence we could take another. It worked out, so we took another and another. Finally, we could walk. It was fun. It was pleasurable. It was no different in that way from all that we do to survive and to reproduce.

Anyway, it was so much fun, we tried to walk everywhere, for example down stairs, and we fell. We soon learned the other side of pleasure, or how to curtail what is pleasurable for reality. If we do not, i.e. if we do everything that is pleasurable, we will ultimately feel displeasure, or pain. So, we get real. That is, we apply the reality principle. We slow down and even stop when we get to the stairs. As we learn to apply the reality principle, we actually gain more autonomy. This is because we are able to do things without falling. So, to achieve autonomy, one must also apply the reality principle.

Unfortunately, or fortunately from another perspective, there is yet another step. A step beyond the reality principle. I call it the social reality principle. Sure, we are autonomous enough to walk, but our social world also puts a limit on where and when we can walk. The first social contacts we have are with our parents. When they give us permission to do something, even walk, we are allowed to do it. When they tell us not to do it or simply ignore it, it is called bad. We feel we are bad if we do it anyway. We take a chance on losing our parents’ love and support when we do what they forbid. So, there is permission, and there is prohibition. All of us know this.

We also know about something else. Sometimes, parents actually praise us for doing something. They can also praise someone else for doing it. In either case,  it becomes praiseworthy to do it. We feel it is good to do it. Our value is that it is good to do it, and when we do it, we feel pleasure. That sense of pleasure drives us to do that behavior even more.

For many of us, doing well in school is one of those allowed and praised behaviors, in most families, at least. When we excel in school, our parents praise us, we feel good.

But what about those unpraised or unvalued things we have the confidence  and competence to do, i.e. things we are autonomous in. Hmmm. We probably don’t do them. If we do, it is with a bit of guilty anxiety, so we likely won’t do them very well.

For many Americans, there is a positive value on having a business. It is valued enough, that people with the confidence they can do most things try to develop competence in. They mortgage their homes, they work nights, whatever, because if they do succeed in reaching competence/autonomy in a business, they will be worthy of praise. Making a lot of money in other ways is also praised, but business is certainly one of them.

Now, what happens when businessmen are singled out for not sharing, for not wanting to pay more taxes, for being, in effect, bad? Do you think the businessman or woman proceeds with business activities with as much drive? It is not just the money, for there are many businessmen and women who come to realize that working for someone else for less hours and less financial risk can yield about as much money. But those businessmen and women are then not in a position to hire, and unemployment suffers for all.

This is the risk not of just taxing the rich, but of implying they are not doing their part, not pulling their load, are bad. Instead of keeping the fruit of their labor and choosing with whom to share it, usually their families and their charities, they are told whom someone else says they should share it with.

In sum, it is not just confidence that must be instilled in the business men and women. There is something beyond confidence that drives them on to expand and hire. It is the sense within them that they are doing the right thing, the praiseworthy thing, the cool thing, the good thing, that also drives them. Making them feel like they are bad makes them do less, not more.