Chapter 7
Going Beyond the Philosophical Vision of the Enlightenment

In Chapter 1, we outlined the two responses that Marx proposed to the fundamental question: Why does progress not benefit everyone?
Then in Chapters 2 and 3, we explained the sociological foundations that Marx did not have at his disposal when he formulated these answers.
Subsequently, we illustrated their consequences at the level of the decision-making process, the underlying mental representations of the world, and finally the historical development that followed, in order to ultimately clarify the current context in which Marx's original big question has become urgent again.
We will therefore now conclude the first part of this book by returning to the original question, in order to finally provide a new answer to it.

Updating and Generalizing Marx’s Problematic

Let us first situate the question 'Why does progress not benefit everyone?' within the general framework of philosophy.
To do this, let us start with the very general question: What is philosophy?
Without claiming to exhaust the subject, we propose two answers: Firstly, philosophy is a tool to deal with the stress caused by the disappearance of loved ones and one's own impending death. Secondly, it is a tool to move beyond mutually destructive attitudes.
We defined in Chapter 2 what mutually destructive attitudes are, namely widespread nepotism that often takes the form of confrontations of the 'us versus them' type.

From this, we can understand Marx's reasoning bias. Marx starts with the entirely legitimate question of why the progress resulting from the explosion of productivity does not benefit everyone? He answers it by saying it is due to class struggle, and deduces that the strong solution is to eliminate the capitalist class. In doing so, he reduces widespread nepotism to its expression within a given historical context, namely that of capitalism. Consequently, when one applies his solution, one changes the historical context, as one moves to communism, and widespread nepotism reappears in another form. This is illustrated by the experience of communism in the USSR, where it reappeared just as violently in the form of the struggle between the party and others.
To avoid making the mistake of Marx, we conclude that to his question of why the progress resulting from the explosion of productivity does not benefit everyone, the answer must be more context-independent, thus taking the form: due to widespread nepotism.
Hence the reformulation of Marx's problematic in the form: what would be a social organization that effectively limits widespread nepotism?

We can therefore finally, in the light of the new knowledge gained since and the specificities of our time, update the original question posed by Marx, in the form:
What would be a satisfactory social organization that takes into account the three main constraints:
1. the two key elements of human nature are the pursuit of social ascent and cognitive dissonance,
2. their natural effects are the proliferation of management and the irrationality of decisions within organizations,
3. the Earth has become the limiting factor, whereas previously it was our technology.

Let us now reassess the various solutions proposed so far, in the light of the reformulation we have just made and of the various contributions at the beginning of this book.

The Communist Solution

This is the solution proposed by Marx in the Communist Manifesto, namely the collectivization of the means of production. Marx observes that the Industrial Revolution changes the nature of ownership of the means of production, from individual to capital, which produces a disastrous social effect. Therefore, he logically proposes to eliminate capital by collectivizing the means of production.

We can identify three major objections to this solution:

The first one, we have just expressed when we updated and generalized the original problematic: class struggle is only the expression of widespread nepotism in the capitalist context. If one changes the context, for example by collectivizing the means of production, without taking more precautions, then widespread nepotism, and the constant stress it induces on individuals, reappears in a new form. This is what happens in the USSR and in China with the periodic purges.

The second objection is that by inviting the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeoisie, Marx in fact answers the question of 'Who' holds power rather than answering the question of 'How' power is exercised. This is evidenced by the high level of improvisation observed by witnesses immediately after the October 1917 revolution.

Our third objection is that in the Manifesto, Marx speaks of the working class as a well-defined and especially stable entity over time. However, the chapter on widespread nepotism has shown that, with a few rare exceptions, the dream of a worker is not so much to overthrow the bourgeoisie as to join it, or to allow their children to join it.

The Social-Democratic Solution

Later, in Capital, Marx proposes another solution. This is no more than the modern vision of liberalism, namely the regulation of capitalism by the State through law, i.e. social democracy.

We will oppose four objections to it.

The objection of insufficient regulation of inequalities

The first objection is that the level of regulation required to maintain inequalities at socially acceptable levels over the long term is never achieved in practice. The reason is cognitive dissonance, which leads, as Marx himself notes at the end of Capital, to translate great indignations into small actions. A more rigorous validation of this argument is found in the studies conducted by Thomas Piketty and a few other economists regarding the evolution of inequalities in various countries, over as long a period as the available documents allow. These results are summarized in Capital in the Twenty-First Century:
« When the rate of return on capital significantly exceeds the rate of growth - and we will see that this has almost always been the case in history, at least until the 19th century, and that it has a strong chance of becoming the norm again in the 21st century - ... it is almost inevitable that inherited wealth dominates greatly the wealth accumulated during a lifetime of work, and that the concentration of capital reaches extremely high levels, and potentially incompatible with meritocratic values and the principles of social justice that underpin our modern democratic societies. »

Another element demonstrating the power of cognitive dissonance that leads to the formatting of economic thinking, even among elites, and thus their inability to effectively combat inequalities. At the beginning of the 21st century, their reactions during interviews show that many journalists have come to accept that the trickle-down effect stems from a capitalist ideology contradicted by facts. But as soon as one addresses the shocking aspect of the extreme wealth of billionaires, they make the distinction between entrepreneurs who 'create thousands of jobs' and heirs to great fortunes. This shows a bias that considers the successful entrepreneur of the new economy (often digital) as someone who has created jobs and could therefore, on that basis, claim an out-of-the-ordinary wealth. However, an observation of the actual functioning of capitalist companies shows that he is simply one of the survivors of the phase of concentration that inevitably follows the pioneer phase. This second phase simply eliminates, either directly or through absorption, the vast majority of the initial actors. In other words, what created jobs was the emergence of a new market. If this particular business leader had not existed, or had been less successful, there would not be fewer jobs linked to this new market, but these jobs would simply be distributed in other companies.
Once again, we have forgotten that what creates wealth is progress, and that progress is primarily the result of the application of modern scientific methods. There may exist men (politicians) who hinder this progress, but not a providential man (entrepreneur) who creates it through his mere personal talent. Exceptional personal talent can only exist at the level of science with Newton and mechanics or Einstein and the general theory of relativity. We can also recognize the courage of pioneering entrepreneurs in a new market, provided we see them as explorers. Would it be considered normal for an explorer to become a billionaire, and would one regard an explorer as great because he has become a billionaire?

The Ecological Objection

The second objection to regulating capitalism through the law in the framework of social democracy is, as history shows over the last 50 years, its inability to manage the ecological constraint. However, as we saw at the beginning of this chapter when we updated Marx's problematic, meeting the ecological constraint is now indispensable to put progress at the service of everyone.
A double reason explains the inefficiency of regulation by law of the disastrous ecological effects of the capitalist system. On the one hand, the ecological effects exist only in the long term and are diffuse, while the effects of economic regulation are more localized and visible in the short term, therefore political arbitrages, as opposed to rhetoric, are mostly in favor of the economic at the expense of the ecological.
However, even assuming that the will and especially political courage may exist at a certain moment, the problem would not be resolved anyway. Indeed, if we place ourselves in the framework of a capitalist market economy, then the objective of the company is profit, so laws are constraints - at best equitable if they apply to everyone - in the sense that they tend to increase production costs. Therefore, companies, assuming they do not transgress them, will still seek to circumvent them. However, the complexity inherent in technological progress means that, at a certain stage, laws can no longer properly address all possible cases, so circumventing without even transgressing becomes possible.
If one wants to have a responsible approach from an ecological point of view, it becomes essential to change the approach. Indeed, one can very well assess a given company from an ecological point of view: it is enough to observe what it does. This is what we will propose in the second part of this book. On the other hand, if one wants to frame it through the law, then one must consider everything it could do, and here, it is impossible in terms of complexity.
In summary, it is progress itself, and its corollary of increasing complexity, which makes it technically unfeasible to treat the ecological constraint through the law.

The Objection of Sterilizing the Debate

The third problem of regulating capitalism through the law in social democracy, which is probably the least important, is that it actually concentrates the political debate around more or less regulation.
The right says its position is more efficient, and dismisses the problem of inequalities by this assertion, which is however contradicted by all observations, that if there is a general increase in wealth, it eventually benefits everyone via a supposed 'trickle-down effect'. The left says its position is more morally just, and dismisses the efficiency problem by associating it systematically with a lack of means. Then, the great illusion is to pretend, and believe due to cognitive dissonance, that there exists an intermediate position that is the right one. The problem is that in all cases, we have simply not addressed the central question, which is: how do we organize ourselves to produce efficiently and harmoniously together? If we take the right-left opposition, the right says let us trust the elites, and the left says let us let the vote decide. In all cases, we have focused the debate on the Who decides, and we have forgotten to address the How?
Macronism, or more clearly still, the flexicurity of the northern European countries, claims to find the solution not by a middle position between these two extremes, but by having both at the same time, namely very free entrepreneurs and a protective state toward individuals. With this vision, we again ignore the central question, which is not how much power for the entrepreneurs, but how these entrepreneurs exercise power?

To highlight the importance of the 'how', let us return to the article Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony mentioned in Chapter 3.
In this article, the word myth means what is considered as true without ever being verified. The right's myth is that entrepreneurs naturally organize companies efficiently, so it is enough to let them do it. However, Meyer and Rowan's article shows that, contrary to appearances, entrepreneurs have an ideological and not pragmatic vision of reality. What they consider as efficient management methods, and therefore implement, is never verified in terms of actual efficiency. The explanation, we have given in the same chapter: it is cognitive dissonance, which leads to the a posteriori justification of our decisions and not to decisions resulting from rational reasoning. In other words, the right's myth is the myth of efficiency.

To summarize, the third objection to social democracy is its inherently conflictual nature. Indeed, consensus on an optimal level of regulation cannot exist, simply because such an optimal level does not exist. Cognitive dissonance being what it is, those who are most favored by nature or inheritance always think there is too much regulation, whereas those who are least favored think there is never enough.
Consensus requires reasoned decisions, which cannot be achieved in a complex system by simply imposing bans. However, this is exactly what social democracy resorts to. It is not the amount that is bad, as each party claims before every election, but the method. We will come back to this in the second part of this book.

The objection of generalized nepotism

Let us now turn to the fourth objection concerning social democracy as a method for regulating capitalism. This objection, from our perspective, is the deepest one. At the beginning of this chapter, we indicated that putting progress at the service of all requires limiting the proliferation of non-productive management roles, that is to say, fighting what we called Parkinson’s Law in chapter 2. Let us recall that the effect of Parkinson’s Law is generalized nepotism, and the permanent stress it induces on individuals. In capitalism, what limits the proliferation of management roles is simply the disappearance of companies and their replacement by new ones, which is what is called “creative destruction.” This indirect way of achieving results has two drawbacks. First, it is socially brutal, and second, it is only partial. Now, if we return to social democracy, the major problem is precisely that the first effect of regulation is to favor the proliferation of management roles. In other words, social democratic regulation is both a remedy against inequality and a poison that favors the stress caused by generalized nepotism.
This could justify the ultra-liberal view that advocates for no constraints on the markets. However, since this method is indirect and not very efficient, in order for creative destruction to effectively limit the long-term proliferation of management roles, it must be taken to extremes, that is to say, the economy must collapse periodically, which is not what anyone wants.
The solution is therefore to treat the problem directly, rather than through an indirect and crude effect. To do so, it is necessary to implement a mechanism that limits the proliferation of management roles in companies without the need to periodically eliminate them. This is what we will see in the second part of this book.

Other solutions derived from Enlightenment philosophy

Let us now briefly review four other solutions proposed by Enlightenment philosophers and their successors, relying once again on the lectures by Alain Supiot mentioned in chapter 5, which help to understand the humanist vision of the world both before Marx and today.

Resolved redistribution

The first approach is determined redistribution. Enlightenment philosophers, drawing on the experience of Athens in antiquity and the sabotage of some medieval Italian democracies, were well aware of the risk of civil war due to the concentration of economic means in the hands of a minority. Suppose we were to adopt a radical redistribution today, as Solon did in Athens at the time, without turning to communism as Marx proposed. This would resolve the first objection we raised against the social democratic approach, namely the insufficient regulation of inequality.
However, the second objection, that of ecology, would remain.
The same applies to the fourth objection, which is that the productivity gains from modern science encourage the proliferation of non-productive roles, thus generalized nepotism and hence permanent stress. If a single operational worker can feed not 1.1 but ten people, then the non-operational ones become the majority and take power.
Therefore, this solution of energetic redistribution alone appears insufficient in all cases. Indeed, while technological levels were low and productivity was low, it was difficult to resist the temptation of slavery or other forms of subjugation, leading to selective redistribution. When technological levels rise, the proliferation of non-productive roles can no longer be contained by redistribution alone.

Safeguarded sectors

The second approach is to exclude certain sectors from the market, as was the case before the ultra-liberal wave of the 1990s. Here, the problem is how to prevent the proliferation of non-productive roles in the non-market sector, since the creative destruction, we just mentioned in the fourth objection to social democracy, does not operate there. Note that the proliferation of non-productive roles in the non-market sector mainly takes the form of bureaucratic administration commonly referred to.

Moral elitism

The third approach is Saint-Simonism, that is governance by virtuous meritocratic elites. However, even if one succeeds in setting up a ruling social class that considers itself virtuous and from which deviant members are effectively excluded, Festinger's work on cognitive dissonance shows that this ruling class will not necessarily work in the interest of all.

Deliberative democracy

Finally, the fourth approach is a return to deliberative democracy in the public square. This aims to move beyond what Alain Supiot calls “governance by numbers,” which consists of understanding the economy from above through macroeconomic indicators, in order to bring decision-making to the level of local assemblies where all individuals concerned by a decision have the effective opportunity to participate in the debate. We will now see that, just as in the case of the ecological objection to social democracy, it is progress itself that has made this solution impracticable today.

The illusion of the vote

The vote is the main tool of Enlightenment philosophy as inherited today. The goal of education for all is to enable citizens to fully exercise this right. The vote can take two forms: either the election of representatives in the context of representative democracy, or direct participation in decision-making through deliberative assemblies.

Let us re-examine what an election is, in light of the sociological elements we presented in chapters 2 and 3. We assert here that the election is not a good solution for allocating positions of power. Indeed, we assert that the election favors the network, and therefore favors too much demagogy. All of this originates from the fact that we accept too easily the merely plausible, which has the effect of making the exploitation of cognitive dissonance for electoral purposes decisive. In other words, in order to be elected, one must limit the dissonance one generates, which means telling people what they believe and what they want. Complexity is not possible, sincerity is only marginally possible.
Our post-war French elites were unable to accept the inapplicability of communism. Our 2000s French elites are unable to accept the inapplicability of the Enlightenment, that is to understand that a contradictory debate followed by a vote does not produce a reliable result because cognitive dissonance causes a highly biased selection of arguments. This is certainly not an apology for dictatorship or even enlightened monarchy, but for reason as the result of a social effort organized rather than assuming it is innate in educated individuals.

If we now turn to public deliberation, direct voting of decisions is not a solution either, due to the increasingly complex issues to be handled, which is the price of technological progress. In chapter 4 on the decision process we saw that a rigorous decision process requires satisfying 4 conditions, the first of which is that the person conducting the decision process has the necessary skills, and the second that the amount of work required by the complexity of the subject is provided.
Progress forbids universally competent individuals, so voting everyone leads to transferring the power of complex decisions to a small number of prescriptive specialists.
Moreover, and especially, having all citizens vote assumes that each one studies the subject individually, so each study will at best be extremely superficial.
Next, such a vote is often the result of a bargaining to obtain a majority, and the compromising solution can very well be the worst one, because it is the least coherent one.
Finally, and most importantly, in the case of a vote, each voter’s ballot cannot be justified, as could be the case with a judgment, so if the decision proves to be inadequate, it is very difficult to go back and notice a methodological flaw at the level of the reasoning that led to the decision. The vote is the absence of safety.

In summary, the fundamental problem of Enlightenment philosophy is that it assumes that well-educated citizens and a quality debate are sufficient to produce a quality decision. This is based on the myth (in the sense of Meyer and Rowan) that debate can add up the knowledge of the subject of some and others and eventually lead to the equivalent of the constructed work provided by a single competent and impartial person in charge of the subject.
The classic excuse when one observes in a practical case that it does not work is: the debate was not of high enough quality. However, on the one hand, the debate cannot be of high quality in general, simply because the main motivation of humans is social ambition, not the search for truth. With few exceptions, the people who speak in a debate are interested, either by the personal prestige of a brilliant intervention or by obtaining a final decision favorable to them. On the other hand, after the debate, the vote has all the flaws we just mentioned, and first of all, it is not motivated by an explicit reasoning that could be checked.

At this stage, the solution begins to emerge. The issue is not so much to select the right leaders, be it by meritocracy or by election, nor to properly involve as many people as possible through the vote, but to ensure the relevance of each decision taken by requiring it to be motivated by a deep analysis, which will be checked from a methodological point of view. The challenge we will have to address to put progress at the service of all is therefore the one illustrated in chapter 4, that is to say the production of rational decisions, by humans who are ambitious and very little rational.

The return to reason

After considering the various solutions derived from Enlightenment philosophy, and before diving into the details of the construction of a rational decision, let us take a step back, move to the scale of human history, which brings us back to Dumézil's tripartition worldview seen in chapter 5. Capitalism is the shift of the main power from the sacerdotal function (reason), to the martial function (action). This shift occurred gradually in three stages: first the discovery of the New World, then the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century (Marx), and finally informatization and automation (today). At the same time, we have seen an increase in complexity due to the two technological revolutions, and the emergence of the Earth’s capacities as a limiting factor of our development, making the global or long-term consequences of our actions harder to perceive. Therefore, to build a solution, we must go beyond Marx’s vision that capitalism is the primacy of capital over labor, to adopt a more Dumézilian register that capitalism is the primacy of action over reason.

Let us illustrate this with some examples of the overvaluation of action and its corollary, speed, in our current culture. This overvaluation of action aims mainly to favor the acceptance by populations of the capitalist system, despite its inability to put progress at the service of all. A manager who asks for a summary and makes a decision in three minutes is not first and foremost seen as a phony, but as a man capable of making decisions.
What is frowned upon is to do nothing, to not work enough, but conversely, spending one’s time agitated due to poor organization will not lead to any disapproval. Worse, a manager who puts pressure on his subordinates while dismissing their remarks concerning the inconsistencies of the work requested and the organization in place for its accomplishment, by a simple 'I can't do anything about it,' is not judged as incompetent in management. On the contrary, as the book showsThe stupidity paradox: The power and pitfalls of functional stupidity at work, the fact that he behaves in a martial way is a guarantee of success.

We finally have all the elements needed to formulate our solution to the Marx problem, which was how to make progress benefit everyone. The solution is an exit from capitalism, which does not primarily consist of collectivization. Indeed, the solution we propose is to shift the predominant function from the martial, that is to say action, to the sacerdotal, which must be understood in the context of the scientific method born in the 17th century, that is to say reason and not dogma. The second part of this work will present the associated social organization. For now, let us simply present the decision process, which is at its core.

The Conditions of a Reliable Decision-Making Process

In Chapter 4, we showed that the current decision-making process is simply inept if we adopt the point of view of rationality. If this does not catch our eye in normal times, it is on the one hand because of the power of conditioning and habit, and on the other hand because of the fact that we are certainly victims of it in the long term. , but above all, constant accomplices. In other words, this system of reasoning is totally unsatisfactory with regard to our new moral expectations linked to technological know-how. But it is also a reflection of our nature inherited from our genetic evolution. And it is finally the effective engine which fuels populism.
Let us now look at what a rational decision-making process could be. To do this, let us first recall the four conditions that it requires to be met simultaneously:
1. That the person leading the decision-making process has the necessary skills.
2. That they provide the amount of work required by the complexity of the subject.
3. That they are sincere in their conclusions as opposed to orienting them in favor of a particular interest.
4. That they are not the victim of beliefs that would lead them to bias their conclusions in good faith.

The biggest difficulty to overcome in setting up a social organization that produces credible decisions, and therefore widely accepted by society as a whole, is to satisfy the fourth condition, namely that reasoning is not biased in good faith. In particular, how can we avoid the development of a stereotypical reasoning that only mimics the state of the art, as revealed by the article by Meyer and Rowan mentioned in Chapter 3? Likewise, how can we prevent good faith in biased reasoning from being ensured by simply relying on social support, that is, gregarious behavior, as formulated by Festinger in his theory of cognitive dissonance that we also mentioned in Chapter 3?

The key is a methodological evaluation of the reasoning leading to the decision, that is to say, not the content, but the strength of the argument in the sense of the scientific method as presented at the beginning of Chapter 22. In particular, the weakness of reasoning related to the use of too general heuristics, beliefs, as well as social support must be evaluated. Let us now look at the three points that need to be put in place for a methodological evaluation of the qualities of a reasoning to become possible.
1. Effectively fighting against the risk of using too general heuristics requires setting up training to determine whether all the conditions necessary for an assertion to be true are met. This is logic, as described in Chapter 22, which forms the basis of modern science. So effectively fighting against the risk of using too general heuristics means reinstating the study of logic in the mathematics curriculum, as well as its application in other subjects throughout the course of studies, to train in determining the level of reliability of each assertion. Here, the problem with our current education is that it teaches how to build reasoning where one supports a position through a linear argument (1). This is the natural arrangement for rhetoric. However, science does not work this way at all. In fact, each assertion requires a set of conditions, so an argument should take the form of an upside-down tree, that is to say, a series of branches where each group leads to a node that is the start of a larger branch, and so on until the final trunk that establishes the conclusion.
2. Fighting beliefs also requires a shift in the objectives of education. Indeed, the objective is no longer just to acquire a set of knowledge, but to associate with each acquired piece of knowledge a reasonably attributable level of reliability.
The purpose of these two points is to orient education so that the individual can integrate that a reasoning based on the accumulation of widely disseminated but insecure knowledge, as well as the out-of-context reuse of more firmly established scientific knowledge, does not finally produce a reliable conclusion. This implies a significant initial work of assigning a level of reliability to each piece of knowledge, which probably requires redefining the mission of the Academy of Sciences or creating a new academy. This is the consideration of the article Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony by Meyer and Rowan, mentioned in Chapter 3.
3. Fighting against reliance on social support is easier. It is a matter of a simple exercise to be repeated periodically during education, which consists simply of identifying and deleting in a document all the arguments related to social support.
It therefore becomes clear that training individuals to carry out a serious methodological evaluation of a reasoning is no less than a mission to be given to the education system. We will come back a little later to the selection mechanism to be put in place to detect individuals who have acquired the best skills in this area, and to whom the methodological review of the reasoning leading to the most important decisions can be entrusted.

The third condition to ensure the seriousness of the decision-making process, namely the need for sincerity, would logically require that the person conducting the study leading to the decision has no interest related to this decision. This is a rather difficult condition to establish, as often no interest implies no link, and therefore no knowledge of the entity concerned by the decision and its environment.
For this reason, we will try to obtain this condition preferably at the level of the person or persons who will carry out the methodological evaluation of the reasoning leading to the decision.

We will address the modalities put in place to satisfy condition 2, namely the allocation of sufficient resources in relation to the complexity of the subject, in the next chapter.

Finally, regarding the first condition, namely that the person conducting the decision-making process has the necessary skills, we will determine in Chapter 10 the modalities for choosing the person to whom the decision-making process is entrusted.
However, we will now address a difficulty related to this point, namely what to do when we cannot establish a solid reasoning? Indeed, the methodological evaluation we have just outlined carries the risk that, for certain difficult questions, we cannot establish a solid reasoning to support the decision, so that attempts to make a decision are rejected one after the other, with a decision eventually made 'simply because we have to finish it'.
This brings us to the need for an evaluation of the ability of each individual to conduct solid reasoning from a methodological point of view, in order to be able to assign the most difficult questions from the start to the individuals most capable in this area. However, at this level, we cannot rely solely on the initial training provided by the education system. In order to build reasoning leading to the most binding collective decisions, and for these reasonings to be respected, and therefore accepted, one must have proven throughout one's life to have the skills to conduct solid analyses, in accordance with the scientific method.
However, some questions remain too difficult, no matter which individual or group they are entrusted to, for a reasoning leading to a decision to be satisfactory from the methodological point of view as mentioned above, simply because there is not enough reliable applicable knowledge. In this case, we cannot avoid a decision that is partly a gamble, partly an arbitrary choice. Hence, social acceptance of the decision can either rely again on the power of the group supporting it, as is currently the case, or on the respectability of the individual or group that produced it, which we find more desirable.
This implies that all individuals must be required throughout their adult life to develop reasoning leading to a decision, that these works must be evaluated methodologically as outlined above, and that this must lead to the assignment to each individual of a strategic rating, somewhat like the ranking of individuals in certain sports such as tennis, or chess.

Let us not forget, as we saw in Chapter 2, that the main motivation of individuals, in accordance with our genetic heritage, is social advancement. Any social marker, whether it be money and signs of external wealth, power, or honorary distinctions, is therefore attractive and able to influence our behavior. As soon as the strategic rating becomes a public score assigned to all individuals, it inevitably becomes a new fundamental social value, next to money, and influences the behavior of individuals, probably in a more virtuous way.

At this point, we can observe that before any possible implementation issues, we do not have a perfect solution for the elaboration of widely accepted collective decisions. However, if we compare this with what is currently in place, which we have dismantled in Chapter 4, and thus highlighted its vertiginous conceptual weakness in the face of the four necessary conditions for a rigorous decision-making process, we can also observe that, provided the precautions we have just discussed are respected, this is indeed a complete overhaul of the social contract, and not just an improvement of institutions.
Hence the obvious remark: all of this is very nice in theory, but how does it work in practice?

Revision of the Declaration of the Rights of Man

Let us start from the current framework that governs the operation of production organizations, companies or administrations. It is composed of two main elements. On the one hand, the legislative framework, which specifies what organizations must do and must never do. On the other hand, accounting rules, which specify how an organization must formalize the use of its resources. We have separated this second point from the first, because it constitutes an extension of the rules that has allowed for the efficient and detailed collection of taxes, that is to say, the establishment of a modern state, with redistribution systems to ensure a certain level of social justice, and possibly the free or almost free provision of certain services such as education or health. In other words, accounting is a methodological constraint, a formality imposed on companies, which allows the establishment of a modern state.

Let us briefly recap everything we have seen since the beginning of this book. First, Marx's observation that the industrial revolution caused a considerable complication of the production system, further amplified by the second industrial revolution of the digital and robotics. Next, the current observation that Earth has become the limiting factor of development possibilities. Facing all this, we have the cognitive dissonance that leads individuals, even well trained, to behave in largely irrational ways, with the result that management relies more on myths than on reason, and distrust of the elite is gradually emerging.
We understand then that what needs to be strengthened to recover a harmonious social organization is rationality in the decision-making process, and for this we will propose to add alongside the accounting constraint a methodological constraint, that is to say a new formality imposed on organizations, which would allow to ensure the quality of decisions. The aim is to finally provide a satisfactory answer to the two major issues of our time, which are on the one hand how to ensure that everyone benefits from technological progress, and on the other hand how to respect the limits related to the Earth's capacity. The effect should also be to restore trust in the elites, and therefore to restore a largely accepted social contract. Finally, this formality must allow to contain the effects of social ambition denounced in Chapter 2, namely widespread nepotism, and the constant stress it induces on individuals.

From a philosophical point of view, this means revising Article 4 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789: we keep for now the essence 'Liberty consists of being able to do anything that does not harm others', which we will question in Chapter 22, but we revise the form. From 'The limits can only be determined by law', we move to a specification of the decision-making method to take into account the complexity of modern societies and the limits of terrestrial resources: 'Any decision whose consequences significantly affect others, including future generations, must be rationally elaborated, with means in line with the stakes.'

In the second part of this book, we will present the implementation in more detail.

(1)
The structure of human languages is linear. It is modeled on spoken language, which only works in one dimension, time. Therefore, human languages are only suitable for rhetoric, that is to say a succession of simply juxtaposed arguments, which aims to achieve adherence by accumulation. However, in order to easily expose a rigorous reasoning, we need the notion of parenthesizing that we find in mathematics and computer science. Parenthesizing is what allows to correctly structure a proposition of the type 'If A₁ and A₂ and A₃... then B' and to nest propositions within each other. As soon as we have parenthesizing, we need two additional notions. On the one hand, a two-dimensional representation, in order to make the nesting more explicit. We find this in an embryonic form for mathematical functions, and more generally in certain computer languages such as Pliant which use indentation to materialize certain levels of parenthesizing. In addition, we need the notion of reference, so that we do not have to expose the entire reasoning in the form of a single highly nested expression, but instead start by exposing certain subparts that will simply be cited later in larger propositions. This is the notion of a lemma in mathematics and of functions in computer science. The problem with human languages at this level is the weakness of the conventions governing the reference system. Current readers are not trained to read structured texts as opposed to linear texts, so if we were to massively use the notions of parenthesizing and reference to establish a more rigorous reasoning, the readers' reflex would undoubtedly be to give up trying to understand the text. Obviously, they would use social support from cognitive dissonance to convince themselves that it is the text that is badly structured rather than admitting that they have to make an effort to learn.
This brings us back to the need to acquire this ability through the education system, which in the process also implies establishing a unique convention for representing the notions of parenthesizing and referencing, as is the case in mathematics, and in each computer language.