Oskar Hertwig called human beings the "most difficult subjects for observation". I think that we have hardly begun to observe humans scientifically. Let us assume we could inject into an animal or a plant the intelligence necessary to look at the development of humans critically. Those creatures would then find themselves in a similar situation to what ours would be if we made contact with even further developed energons on another planet. Plants and animals would certainly follow the human workings with the greatest interest. The human being, the creature who has come from their midst... behold its many achievements!

Our acquisition forms would certainly be of particular interest to them. In that respect they would not find their way around the human gear easily. At least there would be clues for them in order to relate their own experiences ...

Let us assume the two of them observed a farmer: he carries off plants – that is nothing new. Yet, the way he acts is unusual. Instead of looking for edible ones, he pulls out inedible ones. Instead of eating seeds, he sticks them into the ground. Thus the fantasy creature human being would reveal himself to the two observers. Inside his brain he connects present actions to the effects that will only become apparent a few months later.

The animal observer would thereby be made aware of the primitiveness of its own way of acquisition. The knowledge of what its prey should look like is wholly or to a large degree inherent in all animal energons. Certain sensory impressions trigger off the appropriate actions of attack. If the animal is a herbivore it moves towards the prey and starts to nibble at it. If it is an animal of prey, it pursues the prey and tears off pieces from it, attempts to overcome it. If an animal is satiated, its "voracious mood" abates. The sight of the prey does not then trigger off food-seeking behaviour. If the animal gets hungry again later, the reaction begins anew.

Thus, animals have certain ideas in their "fantasy" too. They are innate though. What is more, the sensory impression which an animal seeks and the reaction to it – provided that it is in a voracious mood – are connected directly. The fact that on the other hand the profit can be further increased through activities that are counter to the feeding process – like the various activities of a farmer – is decidedly new!

Nevertheless, in some ant colonies mushroom patches are laid out which are properly tended and fertilised. That, however, is inherent behaviour. Individually no animal can develop such a pattern of behaviour.

All animals and plants are, as it were, nestling in the natural equilibrium of thousands of interconnections. Humans, however, change that equilibrium deliberately. What harms them, they smooth away. What is useful to them, they foster. Also by not eating animals but tending them they obtain more and easier accessible food.

At the same time humans – again in their fantasy –develop the notion that all other creatures exist mainly for their benefit. They like the idea that animals are provided by a higher authority in order to provide what humans need. Towards domesticated animals humans develop a patriarchal affection – and consume them.
 
 

The actual and typical form of acquisition for humans is a different one, though. It would give the two observers a headache that is even worse.

For instance, there is a shoemaker who willingly explains his actions. By cutting leather into pieces, sewing it together with needle and thread and gluing it, among other processes, an artificial organ, a shoe, is produced. It can be worn as a protection for the feet. Later the observers watch the shoemaker having a meal. How did he get to that food – to those organic molecules? The shoemaker points to the shoes. By the cutting of leather and the appropriate joining together he achieves an organic substance. – That must be incomprehensible for them.

Here the achievement of the human fantasy even goes a step further. Here an energon foresees what an activity leads to within a complicated causal chain. Between cause and effect in this case there lies not only a long interval – as with agriculture and cattle breeding. Instead, there is a further confusing connection inserted between cause and effect.

The biologists Wolfe and Cowles discovered that chimpanzees cam be led to understand similar interrelations¹. By pulling on a handle the apes were able to acquire coins and with them obtained delicacies from a vending machine. They learned to understand the values of different coins. With one kind they could acquire food, with a second kind they could open the door of the cage, the third one got the guardian to play with them. Here, too, there was a tricky connection between the causal relations – although the elements to combine lay close together spatially and temporally.

Nevertheless, the brain of an ape is already able to achieve such results – provided that the animal is instructed appropriately. The necessary recipe of behaviour thus has to be contributed from somewhere else. Apes cannot construct them themselves.
 
 

What then is the lock that has to be opened to understand the human form of acquisition by exchange? Furthermore, what does the key bit look like by which one can unlock the respective source of energy?

As for plants, the rays of the sun are the lock and the plastids the key bit. With animals the lock consists of plants or other animals and the movable intestine that is guided by sense organs is the key bit. For plants the equipment assisting acquisition is comprised of their roots, their sap channels and their fissures. As far as animals are concerned, the equipment assisting acquisition is comprised of their organs of locomotion, the specially designed front end of the intestine, the digestive glands, appropriate patterns of behaviour and a lot more.

With human exchange the respective lock to be opened is a highly invisible and obscure affair within the central nervous system of other people. The one who acquires something cannot directly see the source of acquisition, or smell it, or make it out by touching. We call it "human needs": they are hidden impulses which produce a "readiness for demand". If they are joined by available surpluses, they will constitute a source of acquisition: the "requirement"².

The feeling of "being hungry" is produced by an instinctive mechanism – it creates a requirement. The anxiety drive is also an inherent mechanism – it creates a need for security and protection, for instance for shelter. The effects of coldness lead to a need for clothes. The human sexual drive is especially strong – it results in the need for a sexual partner. As the acquisition of one usually occurs indirectly, that drive also creates additional secondary needs – for instance, for pleasing clothes, a car, jewellery, cosmetics and similar things.

With humans those basic needs were expanded by others. On the one hand this is caused by human success and the surpluses connected with it, on the other hand it relies on the fact that humans are not forced anymore to spend those surpluses in the propagation of their own species.

Animals, too, "enjoy" their lives, roll around on the floor out of pure joy. However, they cannot afford a lot more "luxury" with their surpluses. If animal is happy – it will reproduce itself.

It is still the same with humans also – but over and above that they became specialists in the creation of "conveniences". Comfort, especially, for many people became the goal and the centre of their lives. Every physical, mental and other stirring which triggered off feelings in the faintest sense was investigated with insistence. For the fulfilment of all those additional needs, however, appropriate surpluses are often the precondition. Thus, the striving for comfort, happiness and pleasure became a particularly strong impulse for the striving for acquisition.

Food, clothes, housing, marriage create a rather fixed, rather clearly mapped out requirement. Everything that goes beyond that, all requirements of "culture" or "luxury", however, are labile and easy to influence. Upbringing, moulding and fashion play a crucial part. Once the basic needs are satisfied, a variety of possibilities is opened up for using gained surpluses.

That is the highly vague requirement which is determines the alignment of half of the acquisitional structures created by humans – a great many locks which can be unlocked by way of exchange. Humans have specialised in that exploitation in particular. If only basic needs existed, only farmers, butchers, greengrocers, bakers, dairies and furthermore tailors, shoemakers, master-builders and similar trades would have a basis for acquisition. On the contrary, what distinguishes human development in particular are numerous other needs that actually only came into existence on the basis of our intelligence and fantasy.

The plant and animal observer would probably not even be very surprised by the human increase of power – but more by its use. Not actually the acquisition impulse but the use of the "profit" is what makes humans differ from everything that came into existence in the course of evolution before them. Humans have turned the tables. What is a necessary impulse for animals and by which they are directed, we have made a subject of intense research and exploitation.

More than half of the human acquisitional structures are aligned with the mastering of these additional requirements. These are the locks that they endeavour to unlock. This "prey" is not less varied in shape and form than the prey that animal energons hunt.
 
 

Now, what must the key bit be like in order to unlock that multitude of energy sources?

For shoemakers, the key bit is the shoe he has produced. The lock to be unlocked – the source of energy – is the need for that object. The latter he fulfils by producing the object, and the exchange partner is willing to give over part of his or her energy potential to acquire the object. Concretely: the purchaser spends money, a common currency for any human achievement.

With all other products for sale it is the same: they are the actual organs of acquisition for that form of acquisition developed by humans. The source of acquisition we generally call "market"³. What the plastids are for plants, the intestines for animals, for humans are the sale objects which they either produce themselves, obtain by way of exchange or acquire otherwise.

Here the animal observer could spot a parallel. Many insect larvae enjoy quite light-hearted lives inside the buildings of ants. They are tended, fed and carried around by the ants – because they excrete a palatable fluid from their glands. The ants hurry to them like somebody who is fond of drinking in a pub. That interrelation developed on the basis of instinctive patterns – functionally it really approximates the human exchange. Those guests of the ants produce something that is required by other energons and they get appropriate compensation for that: nourishment and protection. With regard to the energy balance this completely corresponds to the human process of exchange.

With the example of the coral-polyp the animal observer could even better "indirectly" understand the form of acquisition. Inside the skin of the tentacles of those animals there are special units of cells which are not less complicated and effective than the plastids of plants. They are spherical constructions with pins (Fig. 10). If the latter are touched – for instance by a small living thing, then a mechanism is set into motion. An arrow shoots out, tears a wound, expands it, a hose forces its way into the wound and a paralysing fluid pours forth into the stricken organism. The latter is thus made defenceless and can be consumed.

Nematocyte (a) with the included nematocyste from the ectoderm of the tentacle of a coral-polyp. K = nucleus, C = cnidocil, D = lid, S = stiletto, N = tubule. When touching the cnidocil the capsule unloads: the stilettos pull forth (b) and drill through the skin of small prey. When the stilettos fold apart (c) the wound is expanded. The tubule is turned outside (d, e) and the paralysing fluid gets into the body of the prey. If a rapacious organism gets too close to a coral-polyp and thereby touches the cnidocil, the unloading also takes place. Thus, the nematocyte is a vehicle of effect of both the capturing of the prey and of defence against enemies – a double function. However, it can only perform its service once.

That seems to have little to do with the acts of exchange of humans – rather with the acquisitional forms of bandits – but has something in common with them, though. Every single capsule – they are called "nematocysts" – can shoot only once. After that it is used up. Other cells of the outer skin produce further capsules that are ready to shoot.

What is common here is that in the course of the activity of acquisition that unit gets lost. Consequently, the whole potential is correspondingly diminished. It is exactly the same with the exchange products of humans though. In the process of acquisition we lose them. We produce or obtain them by the expenditure of our own energy – and by giving them away we gain possession of more energy than our provision of them has cost us. No matter whether collar studs, machines or Christmas tree candles are concerned – it is the same with everything. A special something is produced or obtained – and then gets lost in the course of the acquisition process.

According to the theory of the energon, robbery and exchange are not essentially different. It is true that the one who is robbed cries for help and attempts to defend himself with all his or her strength while with the process of exchange both parties have friendly smiles on their faces and everyone is content with the process. This, however, does not show up at all in the balance of the one who acquires (Fig. 11). In both cases a drop of the potential or free energy occurs – through the search and the pursuit of the prey or through the construction of the acquisition organ. Subsequently, more energy is taken in than has been spent.

In both cases the energon manages to take away parts of the energy potential of someone else. In both cases this takes an effort. Whether that is used in order to overcome the vehicle of energy or in order to produce something that makes the vehicle abandon part of its potential voluntarily is secondary. It does not show in the balance.
 
 

There are acts of exchange where the one who acquires does not offer a product made by himself but where he performs work. Here, too, the animal observer will find parallels.

In tropical oceans there are wormlike fish which specialise in cleaning parasites from their bigger colleagues . They are called "cleaner-fish" – they are not totally dissimilar to a human delousing institution or a professional hairdresser. If a big fish wants to be cleaned, it swims to a coral cluster where such cleaner-fish live, places itself above it and spreads its gills. That instinctive movement is a signal. Thereupon the cleaner-fish leave their hiding places – which is also instinctive behaviour – swim over to the fish and start to clean it. They do a service and in a way receive a payment for it. They eat the parasites and therefore do not need to pursue such food for long. With this exchange it is delivered directly to them at home.

The delouser delouses, the hairdresser does one’s hair, the cleaner-fish cleans. The human following of a profession is based on patterns of behaviour which are founded on intellectual achievements. With the cleaner-fish they are innate. As regards the balance, however, that difference is minor and is not expressed.

More precisely, the acquisition of services can be depicted as follows: if not a product but an activity is offered, then the supplier becomes the vehicle of effect for the client. He produces a required effect for the latter. By that he becomes a rented artificial organ for the client.

This is not really surprising, only it has not been previously so defined. If we rent the services of a hairdresser, of a doctor or of an insurance company, then those professional entities become parts of our own vehicle of effect (professional entity or luxury item) for the rental period.

Through the acquisitional effort beginning at A (searching, pursuing and overcoming of the prey or producing an exchange object and searching for an interested party) the energy potential of the energon drops. At point B the acquisition aim is achieved: the robbery or the exchange is secured. The result of the acquisition now flows into the energon. It has to (on average) lead to an energy potential that is higher than the initial value A. Only then can the individual energon survive and carry on the energon development (life development).
 
 

The form of acquisition by exchange had a number of consequences: first of all, the development of money. Only with that functional unit was it possible to exchange any service or product for any other. Most importantly, however, the proceeds also became divisible.

For instance, how should a smith producing swords obtain a chicken? His sword was of a higher value – the invested energy expenditure was much bigger than the energy the farmer needs to rear a chicken. Above all, maybe the farmer does not even want a sword. The universal mediator money solved all those problems. A third person needs a sword. He pays with money. This then can be divided into small units – and with some of them the sword-smith acquires the chicken.

More auxilliary equipment followed – necessarily. The supplier and the demander have to meet each other: How should they find each other? The "markets" were the necessary institutions for that. As another consequence, a special professional type developed: the mediator. We talk about "traders", "representatives", "commissioners", "brokers", "agents". With such processes of acquisition both products and services can be negotiated. The lock to be opened here is, as it were, a double one. On the one hand an offer, on the other hand a demand has to be found – the two of them have to be made to coincide. If the trader definitely buys the producer’s product from him, then the former could be seen as a supplier who just does not produce the things offered himself. If he takes the product into commission, the activity of a mediator is perfect. Even for that there are already preliminary stages in the animal kingdom.

In Africa a number of different kinds of birds – the honey-guides – work as mediators. They find out the locations of bee-hives, then search for a honey-badger and fly up and down in front of him conspicuously. That is instinctive behaviour – also the honey-badger’s ability to understand its meaning. He follows the bird and is guided to the bee-hive by the latter. The bee-hive is then cleared out by him. The bird in that "mediator business" receives its commission in the form of natural produce. The honey-badger is interested in honey, the wax of the honeycombs he leaves untouched. That the bird is able to unlock. Without the badger he would not be able to get at that food. Here the badger lays it bare for him, though.

For the human form of acquisition called "exchange" the formation of communities and appropriate protection were important prerequisites. What is listed in the following became supporting ancillary equipment: means of transport, telephone, telegraph, payment transactions, securing of the cash value. These institutions could only be financed and secured as common organs also.
 
 

Both observers, animal and plant, would probably be interested in how much can be earned in that way. Again they would discover parallels to their own forms of acquisition.

What for the robber in the animal kingdom is abundant prey, for somebody who is acquiring through exchange is strong demand. If an area is teeming with prey, it is not difficult for someone specialised in their pursuit to acquire them. They do not have to search for long. The same income is then achieved at a relatively small expense. Similarly, the supplier does not have to go hawking in cases of strong demand. What he has to offer is seized from his hands. Thus, also his energy-expense is lower. With the same income he achieves a better balance.

One possibility to improve the balance regarding human exchange is to influence the needs that build the basis for the requirement. It is true that there are narrow limits set for the basic requirement as it is quite stable ("inelastic"). For luxury requirements, however, an ample field of possibilities is opened up. Here humans are not nearly as sure about which of the many conveniences offered they should choose. This is the domain of influence of advertising.

What is it that is influenced? In any case, it is the vehicle of surpluses: the arrangement of needs, the "structure of demand". Thus in the end it is that invisible something that operates somewhere in the central nervous system. This is – as everybody knows – where clever devices have been developed in order to influence others so that they consider as desirable what is offered.

Even concerning that process the animal observer could realise that it is not completely new. Also with certain rapacious activities of acquisition the hidden patterns of behaviour of other energons are influenced and activated. Angler fish are an example. They lie hidden in the mud and at the end of a greatly lengthened fin they have another skin formation which they move up and down in front of their mouths. Small fish regard it as prey, dash towards it – and end up in the stomach of the angler. So the act of acquisition is made easier for the latter in that the behaviour of their prey is manipulated. Instead of them having to follow the prey, it comes to their mouths of its own accord. In advertising, the producer does not have to run after the purchaser but motivates the latter to pursue the product. In functional terms there is no essential difference between the two processes.

There are even further resemblances: the motives have to be disguised. Only if the prey really "believes" in its advantage can the angler be successful. The same applies to someone who is taken in by a sales trick.
 
 

The plant observer would probably be particularly interested in larger businesses. Finally, he would have discovered something that reminds him of his own type of acquisition. Those bodies of acquisition, too, are not rushing about hurriedly like their animal colleagues but are situated squarely and leisurely in one place. There is one major difference, though: some of their functional units make their way independently. Today directors, salespersons and market researchers undertake journeys around the whole world. Here the plant might express admiration. How utterly limited a scope of action its roots do have! Furthermore, what effort it takes to spread its semen and its sexual products! Such movable units as mentioned above would suit them well.

Here humans have built acquisition structures that, as it were, combine features of animals and plants. The major part of the load is sitting in one place immovably: that is an immense advantage. That load does not have to follow the prey in question. Only single organs – especially the organs of acquisition: the products for sale – follow it. By means of organisations of transport and trade they eventually circulate around the whole world. Only the key bit is moving in this case in that it searches for locks. With further organisational institutions – money, payment transactions – the proceeds flow back the same way ... into the firmly sitting body of the enterprise.

Another parallel to the situation with animals and plants: also with professional bodies and businesses there are both specialists and universalists and the advantages and disadvantages are the same here and there. The specialist can work better and more profitably, he beats the less specialised competitors at that. Beware, though, what happens if his source of acquisition – his "market" – is not stable. Then he will be worse off. Then the universalist who works less profitably but can adjust himself more easily has the advantage. While the specialist perishes the universalist shifts over to another form of acquisition. Those chainlike connections that are so typical for the kingdom of organisms also exist within the human "economy". Just as in an endless chain one animal lives on another and itself forms the prey of yet another, so also many human professions live on others and can themselves form the source of acquisition for others. If a form of acquisition is affected by environmental influences, the balance is upset from time to time. Here and there one finds economic trends and crises. Both in economic areas and in the biospheres of nature ("ecosystems") there prevail permanently changing and hundredfold intertwined connections and dependencies that are difficult to comprehend: that is, an always fluctuating balance.

However, the human institution of the "state" can produce a change. As long as the state does not go beyond securing internal and external order there is no essential difference between human economies and the symbioses of nature. It is true that in this case part of the individual defence of professional bodies and businesses is taken off their shoulders (for which they pay by way of taxes) while animals and plants – if they do not build states, too – have to provide their own defence. The actual balance of power is not really affected in this case, though. The stronger and more capable energons make their way here as well as there and in their wake others follow which profit from their success directly or indirectly. The situation is a different one if the state intervenes directively in the economy. Then the state itself is transformed into a large acquisition structure and starts – which is only logical – to consider its own compartments as functional units. Suddenly the state finds fault with this and that ... that is, if something does not serve the "common interest". Just as a company cannot completely leave it up to its departments to determine what they do or not, the state starts to limit certain interests while supporting others ... it tries to integrate the multitude of activities.

That is a process which does not have a real parallel in the animal and plant kingdom. The reason for that is that animal states – those of insects – are always organisations of individuals belonging to the same species and which differ only secondarily. No real energons have ever arisen from the coming together and integration of different species

What has not been realised up till now is that states built by humans do not actually consist of genetically formed naked Homo sapiens. They rather consist of professional entities and business organisations – energons – which are as different from each other as a grasshopper is from a water lily, or as a peregrine falcon is from the parasites that live inside its intestine. Especially in the "modern state" something is going on which probably for the animal and plant observer appears to be most amazing. Out of thousands and ten thousands of diverse acquisition structures there emerges a larger, unified form of life⁴.

Today the economy is characterised by opposing trends that either assess the single company from the viewpoint of the whole state (especially with the central administrative economies of the East) or take the single company as the starting point for consideration (e. g. in Germany or in the United States of America). The resulting divergences lead to the following question: what interests are more important? Which ones have priority? The interests of the "whole" or of the "components"?

Let us first look at the individual interests.
 
 

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Continue to "The framework of competitiveness"
 
 

Comments:

¹ J. B. Wolfe, “Effectiveness of Token-Rewards in chimpanzees”, in Comparative Psychological Monographs”, Vol. 12, 1936, p. 1-72; J. T. Cowles, “Food-Tokens as Incentives for Learning by chimpanzees”, in “Comparative Psychological Monographs”, Vol. 14, 1937, p. 1.96.
² In economics need is defined as “a conscious feeling of a lack with the striving for its removal” and requirement as “the totality of the needs that finds its effective expression on the market as demand”.
³ Here I follow Sombart: “We understand the term market in the most general and abstract sense as the epitome of the possibilities and opportunities of sale.” (“Der moderne Kapitalismus”, Munich 1921, p. 185.)
⁴ W. Eucken was of the opinion that the economy as opposed to physical, chemical and biological processes didn’t have an “invariant overall style”: it lacked “the openly underlying uniformity of natural processes,” it showed “an enormous multiformity and historical diversity”. (“Die Grundlagen der Nationalökonomie,” p.22.) Here the objection has to be made that the effect-network of plants and animals is just as variously shaped and diverse and that the interactions within economy do not differ fundamentally. The formation of states is the only reason for the emerging of complicated interconnections. Within the biospheres of nature the “laissez faire, laissez passer” is maintained. There is no such thing as a superior, intervening unit there.