Only if we know the conscious and unconscious motivation of why people commit crimes, an offender’s behavior can be fully understood. It is likely true of most jurisdictions that the bulk of auto stealing can be attributed to transportation and recreation motives. Some portion of transportation motives involve the use of stolen vehicles for the anonymity they provide when doing other crime; however, this would probably account for a lesser proportion than the perceived need to steal a car simply to get somewhere. For the most part, auto theft appears by and large to be a crime against the property rights of others in the sense of unauthorized use. Where youth are involved, motives for automobile stealing are largely affective, and the heightened sense of risk-taking among today’s youth has served to enlarge thrill- and status-seeking motives. The past decade has witnessed the cultivation of a daredevil ethic now rooted in popular culture and much of youth-focused product advertising. This growing desire to feel the “rush” of fear-induced adrenaline appears to have been the major driving force behind the massive increase in auto stealing in America. Most in the sample described their auto stealing as thrill-seeking behavior from which they derive an “adrenaline rush” unmatched by legitimate thrill activities like skiing or snowboarding. “I got hooked on the thrill,” said one 16-year-old reflecting on his commitment to auto theft. Seventy-one percent of the sample described themselves as thrill-seekers. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

The appeal of auto theft in this respect was threefold: driving fast and recklessly; the prospect of getting into a police pursuit; and the prospect of getting caught. For many in the sample, thrill and status seeking were intertwined: “I like to shock people, intimidate them, make them back down. We used to play tag with stolen cars and my friends couldn’t believe the things I would do.” (17-year-old.) “I like crime. I like to get in police chases. I do crimes for the adrenaline rush. Car theft, B&E, smash and grab, whatever.” (15-year-old.) Offenders with varying involvement in auto theft were interviewed. The most public in the sample claimed to have stolen hundreds of cars in recent years; the least active offender said he took three in his life. For the most part, differences in the level of auto theft involvement among offenders living in different regions of the province appear to be a function of urban versus rural living. The lack of anonymity perceived by youth in small towns appears to be a significant deterrent. All of the low-involvement offenders in this sample lived in towns in California. The automobile stealing they described was very opportunistic: they took vehicles left running in driveways on cold winter mornings. These offenders were inhibited both by a limited local street network and by the perceived likelihood of being caught if they drove the stolen car through towns where residents know each others’ vehicles. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

Of course each interviewed offender was uniquely motivated to steal automobiles; however, many described themselves and their motivations in ways that made it possible to draw some generalizations. What follows are profiles for the three most evident auto stealing personalities encountered in the interviews with young offenders: Acting Out Joyriders—most emotionally disturbed of the offenders interviewed—likes to convince his or her peers that he or she is crazy. Engages in outrageous driving stunts—dangerous to pursue. Vents anger via car—responsible for large proportion of totaled and burned cars. Most committed to crime—irrational, immature. Least likely to be deterred—does not care what happens. Thrill-Seeker—heavily into drugs—doing crime is a way to finance the habit—entices others to feel the “rush” of doing crime. Engages in car stunts and willful damage to cars, but also steal them for transportation and to use in other crimes. Steals parts for sale in loosely structured friendship network. If automobiles become too difficult to steal, likely to look for the “rush” elsewhere. “Rush” might be legitimately substituted. Instrumental Offender—doing auto theft for the money—most active of the offenders but the smallest proportion of the sample—connected to organized theft operations. Rational, intelligent—does crimes with least risk—gravitated to auto theft from burglary—thinks about outcomes doing crime while young offender status affords them lenient treatment—indicate that they will quit crime at age 18. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

Even among this sample of multiple-offense, persistent young offender, thrill-seeking motives were identified in more than half of their auto thefts. One variant of joyriding often incorporates deliberate destruction of the vehicles—68 percent indicated that they had stolen vehicles for the express purpose of “trashing” them. “It’s not your car: You can do whatever you want, beat it up, go as fast as you want, bake the tires, do jumps.” (16-year-old.) Many offender expressed the belief that this kind of activity did not really hurt anyone as the vehicles they typically stole to intentionally wreck were “old beaters” whose owners “probably got insurance money to buy a better one.” However, that is an uneducated statement. Some of these people bought their cars brand-new, when they were employed, paid them off, kept up the maintenance on them, and may have retired, be out of work, or cannot afford to buy the same car brand new and do not want a use car. So stealing their car might hurt them, and they have to pay a large deductible. There simply is no victimless crime. Profit-motivated automobile stealing in this sample was evidenced in two areas: vehicle acquisition for a adult-run theft ring; haphazard stripping of joyrider and thrill-seeker, instrumental offenders expressed little interest in adrenaline producing behavior. They took precautions to avoid police and usually worked alone. They possessed a reflective, business-like attitude about their crime of choice and this is what probably enabled them to find work with relatively rare organized theft rings. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

“The newbies [younger kids just beginning their frequent involvement in automobile stealing] are real heat scores [do things that attract police attention]. They wear the black Bulls [NBA team logo] skull caps and drive like idiots. If the guys I steal for ever saw one of them around, I’d never get another call. (17-year-old.) Perhaps the simplest way to dichotomize the targets of auto theft is to think in terms of supply and demand. Instrumental motives for automobile stealing are driven by the demand for certain models sought in whole or for their parts. Why? People who like to drive fast and take risks much of the time (exempli gratia, immature individuals) are drawn to vehicles engineered and marketed for this “need for speed.” They buy America “muscle cars” like Mustangs, Camaros, and Corvettes; European sports coupes like BMW M3, M4, M6, Z4, M8 and Japanese sports cars like Honda Accord, Acura NSX; of if they are looking for off-road thrills, 4X4 pick-ups and sport utility vehicles. One would expect that risk-taking drivers would crash with greater frequency, driving the demand for replacement parts. Because they are likely at fault in the majority of their crashes, drivers of these kinds of vehicles are greatly motivated to cover needed repairs outside the legitimate economy where they can stretch their repair outside the legitimate economy to their fleet proportions, the kinds of models identified above are overrepresented in organized auto theft activities uncovered by police stings and task forces in many jurisdictions. The targets of instrumental theft, then, are in response to the demand for specific models. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

On the affective motivation side, we would not expect to see much in the way of target specificity aside from general performance requirements—sporty cars that go fast and impress girls, or 4X4 trucks and sport utility vehicles sought for off-road thrill potential. A supply orientation should dominate this realm wherein largely opportunistic offenders steal whatever is most readily available. A victimization survey done for the large study found that 20 percent of vehicles were stolen with the owners’ keys, roughly half of which were left in the ignition or elsewhere in the vehicle. As might be expected, no target specificity was exhibited amongst this subset of auto thefts—any car with the keys in it will do as far as most thrill or transportation seeking offenders are concerned. We did, however, find pronounced model specificity for the passenger vehicles. Virtually all interviewed offenders identified older Japanese models as the targets of choice for thrill and transportation motives due to the relative ease with which their door and ignition locks could be defeated with ordinary objects such as scissors or screwdrivers. Simplistic, brute force techniques are the favored modus operandi of juvenile delinquents everywhere, and so it is with young car thieves. We were able to quantify the degree of this target specificity by analyzing insurance claims data relative to the fleet of licensed passenger vehicles. When theft rates by vehicle make (exempli gratia, Chevrolet, Ford, Mazda, et cetera) were rank-ordered, we found that Japanese nameplates occupying eight of the 10 makes most at risk. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

Japanese makes are very popular in North America. In the early 1990, they accounted for roughly one-quarter of the fleet; however, the 10-year-old models most at risk of theft made up a much smaller proportion. Insurance claim data analyses replicated following the sharp auto theft increase witnessed between 1995 and 1996 found that passenger vehicles manufactured by U.S.A. conglomerate Chrysler, Plymouth, Dodge, Jeep, Eagle, Mitsubishi—makes exhibiting the lowest theft rates in the early 1990s—to be most disproportionately at risk of theft. Largely ignored in the first half of the decade, automobile stealers learned in the intervening years that many older Chrysler, Plymouth, Dodge products were likewise vulnerable to their favored brute-force techniques. In 1996, 30 passenger vehicle models making up just 12 percent of the fleet accounted for more than a third of all auto thefts in the province. The most obvious implication regarding the relative rarity of favorite targets has to do with offender search patterns. If they settled on wandering about aimlessly in the hopes of finding the relatively few vehicles on which their limited theft skillset would likely work, motivated offenders would waste huge amounts of time. This limited competence funnels them to places where they are apt to find their favorite prey—large parking lots. Conveniently, the large amounts of time young offenders spend in and around shopping malls provide a good match between their routine activities and sufficiently large pool of easy-to-steal vehicles. Mall parking lots were noted as prime “hunting grounds.” Roughly a third of the offenders thought underground parking lots the best place to steal vehicles. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

The practical motive for research on personality adjustment seem to be the attainment of a state of affairs having a specific behavioral and emotional content deemed “good.” However, one man’s happiness is another man’s gloom. We reject such a formulation because while we no doubt share the middle-class norms which are idealized, they too often imply a sort of subcultural ethnocentrism that neither can nor should be forced upon other segments of society, it treats conflict as evil in itself, and conceives it unrealistically as unnatural and expungable, and by setting up a stable state of affairs as the end of action by family agencies, it dooms such action to inevitable futility, while closing the door to the exploration and the discovery of new experience and forms in family life. Joint involvement in constructive activity is much more than absence of disagreement. Quite apart from the intricate and unresolved methodological problem of getting operational definitions and objective measures of adjustment and maladjustment, the basic concept seems to have passed the peak of its popularity a decade or so ago. Research devoted to determining the conditions of adjustment in families evokes less and less interest, while critics multiply. The historian of ideas may eventually associate it with the period of the depression, while the notion of traits may perhaps be associated with a still earlier period in which a man’s character was alleged to be his fate, a fate predestined because impervious to change. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

Thus interpersonal competence is neither a trait nor a state. Competence denotes capabilities to meet and deal with a changing World, to formulate ends and implements them. The incessant problem of equipping human beings to handle their affairs and to progress toward the discovery of new values and new means is not solved by authoritarian indoctrination of static attributes and beliefs. To rely upon such methods would not only be subversive of the most fundamental of American democratic values but would ultimately result in failure of the system which sought to maintain itself by these means. If merely given freedom, on the other hand, there are no grounds for assuming that human nature will “unfold” into competent personalities. Somewhere between these extremes lies a conception of personalities not inflexibly bound to and molded by the past, nor by utopian absolutists eager to sacrifice the present generation, but capable of utilizing past experience and future aspirations in an effective organization of present effort; not dependent upon direction from without but capable of integrating their goals with those of other and collaborating in their realization; in short, able to cope with their World whether the formulas devised by predecessors fit or not. The developmental approach, while considerably more suitable than concepts of compatibility and adjustment for evaluating family functioning, is still somewhat encrusted with earlier associations. The notion of maturity, for example, is a rather ambiguous term, which deserves scrutiny. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

In the normal physical development of a child from infancy to adulthood, the final stage of growth is usually called maturity. When applied to the development of the child’s personality, however, the idea of maturity frequently becomes a misleading organic analogy. And when a phrase like “emotional maturity” begins to be used as an epithet by which some adults pronounce moral judgements upon other, its utility has almost vanished. From the standpoint of interpersonal behavior, personality development is a continuous process. Not only must there be intermittent adaptation to those conditions beyond the control of the person, but a person must constantly set oneself a fringe of new objectives. This is especially so in a dynamic society, for it is only thus that a person must constantly set oneself a fringe of new objectives. This is especially so in a dynamic society, for it is only thus that a person can resist the welter of conflicting influences which play upon one daily, and organize a more or less unified scheme of autonomous action. The confusion of age norms with stages of growth is one of the more harassing connotations of the maturity concept because of its incomplete emergence from biology and child psychology. This confusion is especially acute in the more rivalrous subcultures of the American community, where children’s progress relative to other children is watched with a jealous eye by their parents. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

An adequate concept of personality development recognizes the full potential range of qualitative differentiation; it requires the measurement of development of a child or an adult against one’s previous self or one’s authentic peers, rather than against extraneous competitive norms. To impose competitive norms in a punitive manner is often discouraging or destructive for development, though intended to be motivating. As central concepts in family research, adjustment has not superseded compatibility, nor has maturity outdated adjustment, in any neat and clear-cut manner; at most there has been a series of successive emphases. This is particularly true in connection with the concept of adaptability, which was first used effectively in family research by Robert C. Angell in the early 1930’s, yet has recently been more fully elaborated by Burgess and Wallin, as particularly appropriate to companionate family relationships. Despite its early use, adaptability appears to be a concept which I transitional from adjustment to competence as a way of looking at family behavior. As used by Burgess and Wallin, it partake also of a realistic developmental approach: if their development is unimpeded, persons do not automatically become adapted to a wide range of situations; rather, if conditions do not permit this kind of learning, they acquire adaptability through formulating diverse ways of coping with problematic situations, and they may acquire instead quite maladaptive modes of performance. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

There is a passivity of the will—the “will” being the helm, so to speak, of the ship. This originates from a wrong conception of what full surrender to the ultimate concern means. Thinking that a “surrender will” to God means no use of the will at all, the believer ceases to choose, determine, and act of one’s own volition. Powers of darkness will disguise the seriousness of this, and at first the consequences may seem trivial and be scarcely noticeable. In fact, the initial changes may appear to be glorifying to the ultimate concern. The “strong-willed” person suddenly becomes complacent and yielding—no longer “obnoxious” to one’s acquaintances. One believes that the ultimate concern is “willing for him”—through circumstances and in the decisions of other people—and so one becomes more and more helpless in one’s actions. After a time no decision can be obtained from one in matters of daily life; no resolve or initiative in matters demanding action. One becomes afraid to express a wish, much less a decision. Others must choose, decide, act, lead, while one drifts as a cork upon the waters. Later on, the powers of darkness begin to make capital out of this “surrendered” believer, and to weave around one various kinds of psychopathology which entangle one through one’s passivity of will. One has now no power to protest or resist. Conditions which are obviously wrong—springing from things which this believer alone has a right to deal with—flourish, and grow strong and blatant. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

The powers of darkness have slowly gained because of one’s passivity of will, which at first was merely submission to one’s environment under the idea that the ultimate concern was “willing” for him in all things round one. The text that such believers misinterpret is Philippians 2.13, “It is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for His good pleasure.” The “passive” person reads it as “It is God who works in me the willing and the doing,” id est, “God wills instead of me.” The verse actually speaks of God working in the believer’s soul up to the point of the action of one’s will, but the undiscerning reader assumes that God Himself doe all the “willing” and the “working.” This wrong interpretation justifies his inactivity. Three aspects of faith as ultimate concern—its indivisible totality, unrelatedness to traditional notions, and vagueness of content—do contribute to a certain bafflement about it. However, there is another side to the coin: the intensity of faith which is conveyed by stressing its totality, the freshness of this thought which does not mouth staid formulas, and the exhilarating sweep of the universality of faith. The universality of faith raises a question about its content. There is an intrinsic difficulty of explaining faith: Faith is a concept—and a reality—which is difficult to grasp and to describe. This cannot be otherwise, since faith is not a phenomenon beside others, but the central phenomenon in man’s personal life, manifest and hidden at the same time. Let faith not grab you. Faith is a primary notion, a primary reality; it cannot be properly defined, but only experienced. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

Focusing on international relations, a great challenge facing Japan is how to cope with the coming de-massification of a society that has been propagandized into believing that homogeneity is always a virtue. More than a three decades ago, anthropologist Kazuko Tsurumi of Sophia University pointed out that there is more diversity in Japan than its leaders acknowledge. However, this was diversity within the framework of a homogenizing Second Wave society. As Japan enters the Third Wave era it will face potentially explosive heterogenizing pressures. Its antagonism to social, economic, and cultural diversity is directly related to its greatest long-term weakness of all. Today’s Japanese are no longer the “economic powerhouse” they were once accused of being, and their national power no longer rests on a single leg of the power triad. However, in the most important power competition—the generation and diffusion of ideas, information, imagery, and knowledge—they still lag behind the United States of America. With these various power resources to deploy, Japan’s business and political leaders lack a clear international strategy. A consensus exists at the top about certain key domestic goals. These include expansion of the domestic economy and reduction of the need to export, improvement of the quality of life through increased leisure, and reclamation of the heavily fouled environment. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

However, if any, Japan’s elites are deeply split over foreign economic policy that Japan should play in the future. One strategy presupposes that the World will break into regions and that Japan’s role should be to dominate the East Asian/Pacific Region. This means concentrating investment and international assistance there. It means quietly preparing for the role of regional police power. Such a policy reduces Japan’s vulnerability to American and European protectionism. A second approach suggests that Japan concentrate instead on the developing economies, wherever they may be. If they are to plug into the World economy, a variation of this approach proposes that Japan focus on creating the electronic infrastructures needed by these countries. (Such a strategy fills a critical need for the “meticulous” countries of the World, draws on Japanese technological strengths, and helps lock these economies electronically into Japan’s.) A third strategy, perhaps the most widely held at present, sees Japan’s mission as global, unconfined to any particular region. Its backers push for a “global mission, not because of some messianic economy is too big, too varied, too fast-growing to be contained within a single region or country group. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

It is this “globalist” faction that urged the dispatch of navy ships to help the United States of America and its allies protect the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war. It is this group that favors making loans to Eastern Europe, playing a larger and larger diplomatic role on the World stage, assuming dominant positions in the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and other global institutions. When Japan makes its decision among these three strategies, it will not be clear-cut. The Japanese way is frequently to split differences. Yet astute observers will be able to judge which way the bamboo stick falls. At that point, the World will first begin to feel the real impact of Japan’s thrust toward tomorrow. Often times, financial crisis occur in the West and other parts of the World because no one—neither state, nor top managers, nor shareholders—put the transactions with tricky financial instruments under proper control before it is too late. Financiers entrusted to carry out those transactions eventually get a free hand, make unbelievably big money and, finally, overdo it. However, this is also because wages are not keeping up with inflation, and we have a consumer driven economy, so people have to borrow to survive. Collateralized debt obligations (CDO) often tend to be the most toxic element of the financial markets today. When an investment banker talks of toxicity, a regulator is bound to take a heightened interest. However, sometimes the transactions in question remain out of the regulators’ sight. The state frequently fails to fulfill the major role it has to play in the market economy: setting the rules for doing business and enforcing businesspeople to comply. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

This can lead to Western capitalism’s major structural failure. Insurance companies sometimes buy products they do not understand because they are attracted to higher returns on offer. Little attention may be paid to any potential risk because the rewards are so attractive. This is why some define CDO buyer as naïve capital. The CDO buyers who do not bother to understand the product, and to assess risks, are not limited to insurance companies, but, as mentioned, include banks, investment funds, and other financial institutions as well as nonfinancial corporations. Risk models created and used by banks to meet regulatory requirements do not always identify CDO as risky instruments. Do not know, do not care, did not do. All these “technical” things, or rather, problems with basic work attitudes and the lack of responsibility on the part of people in charge, are, of course, a key part of financial debacles. Collateralized debt obligations are pools of several debts that led to the 2008 economic crisis and have been making a comeback. In 2021, a similar asset class known as collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) became prominent, but these assets may be much more resistant to causing economic downturns or being affected by them. In 2021, CLO issuance in the U.S.A. totaled $184.4 billion and resulted in returns between 1.4 percent and 8.9 percent. Collateralized debt obligations repacked individual loans into securities and they are then sold to investors on the secondary market. The perception of a Western, namely Anglo-Saxon corporate system as shareholders’ capitalism, meaning that shareholders exercise effective control over managers preventing the latter’s too risky and irresponsible actions proved to be a myth. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

In real life, it turned out to be exactly the opposite. Shareholders of leading financial institutions and a number of nonfinancial companies, which collapsed in 2008-2009 because of managers’ adventurism, greed, or inability to find solutions for pressing problems, failed to stand up to protect their interests and to stop mismanagement. They packaged with subprime mortgages, rated as safer than they truly were and offloaded to investors while the very banks peddling them took out short positions at the same time. These trading patterns led to massive inflation in the housing market, and caused a sharp contraction in the economy. In the failed financial institutions and companies, the shareholders’ voices were unheard. Nonexecutive directors, who were supposed to protect their interests and exercise control over managers, were too aggregable and/or were not provided enough access to important information. In the 2020a, the CDO market is expected to rebound. Whereas the CDO market stood at roughly $70 billon in 2017 (compared to more than $200 billion pre-crisis 2008), it is expected to reach $158.5 billion by 2026. We have already talked about what CDO are. Now, what actually happens is you have a pool of corporate credits. They do not all have to be good credits; some can be junk bonds. The creation of tranches is done largely with respect to mathematical models rather than corporate credits. As a result, there is little understanding of the actual risk to a CDO based on the credits it contained. Instead, it is a numbers game detached from true security. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

There were a few reasons CDOs became attractive pre-crisis. For banks, they helped offload risk onto investors and freed up more capital to make new investments or issue new loans. For investors, they purportedly offered a way to realize higher yields with the expectation that the riskier aspects of the CDO were supported by the less-risky asses. Unfortunately, speculation and unwarranted optimism in the housing market undercut those expectations. They were rating these things based on the probability of the loss of the pool of assets, rather than the creditworthiness of each individual borrower. That is where they got into trouble and lost a bunch of money. There were big losses on CDOs, and rating agencies came under fire for that as well. The typical buyers of CDOs were insurance companies, banks, pension funds and hedge funds, rather than individuals. These were the institutions left holding the debt when the financial crisis hit, and the losses precipitated the rest of the country just as the value of homes—often individual Americans’ largest source of equity—was crashing. In reality, the dominant stake holders of a large Western, namely, Angelo-Saxon corporation are not stakeholders, but rather high-ranking managers. Their dominance, often effectively uncontested, leads to a decision-making monopoly, while their responsibility for the outcome remains obscure. Among other things, they have obtained enormous power to set their own revenues at fantastically high levels, often without a linkage with the corporation’s performance and profitability. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

In this sense, Anglo-Saxon capitalism is not itself anymore. Some of its very basic concepts have ceased to apply. Furthermore, this real Western corporate model is not in agreement with the basic idea of the market economy as such. It is a dictatorship, rent-seeking, and rent-taking based on personal power. Besides enormous economic losses it incurs, it destroys values and ideals embedded in the fabric of liberal Western societies, causing the deepest crisis of confidence since the late 1980s, when Americans were losing badly in its competition with rapidly rising Japan, and Eurosclerosis was the most popular definition for the status of major economies of the old continent. Bankers’ moves to aggressively protect their cosmic bonuses, even after their institutions collapsed and were bailed out by the state with the use of taxpayers’ money, manifest a destruction of Western business and societal ethics, or rather their remnants. The financiers’ most popular argument that unless the bonuses are left intact talented people (did they mean those talented people who had engineered the financial fiasco?) would not stay is both cynical and confusing. It goes against the basic principle the market economy rests upon: Businesspeople have to bear responsibility for their decisions and actions. Logically, if this principle still really mattered, in such a situation it would have been irrelevant and ridiculous to pay any bonuses at all. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

Government bailouts should have been accompanied not only by bonuses bans, but also by mandatory replacements of all high-ranking managers of the business entities rescued, with punitive financial measures against those who were responsible for the failures. No government was bold enough to go that far. The truth, and one of the greatest social injustices of the early twenty-first century, is that today, in the aftermath of the crisis, those who engineered it are mostly doing fine and living a jolly life, while millions of people it broke down are still struggling with its repercussion and COVID hurt their rebound. This manifests one more failure of Western capitalism: a moral failure. Or maybe, in the World of Western financial business the very notion of morality had already been killed altogether? The investigation showed that in the wake of the crisis, in a desperate effort to arrange any cash flow, for example, the Wachovia Bank, one of the largest in the United States of America (in 2008 it was acquired by Wells Fargo), laundered money of the Mexican drug mafia on a scale equaling one-third of Mexico’s GDP. The Bank of America was also involved in operations of this kind. Surprisingly (or not surprisingly?) it did not become a big story in the news and was not widely discussed by the public. For Wachovia it was quite a happy end as it avoided criminal prosecution paying out almost a symbolic fine of $160 million. Meanwhile the bank reportedly had no way of checking $420 billion (?!) in transactions for possible money laundering activity. This is a bit too much, is it not? #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

Emotions are in some respect the most subjective elements of consciousness, since it is only the person oneself who can tell whether one truly experiences love, shame, gratitude, or happiness. Yet an emotion is also the most objective content of the mind, because the “gut feeling” we experience when we are in love, or ashamed, or scared, or happy, is generally more real to us than what we observe in the World outside, or whatever we learn from science or logic. Thus we often find ourselves in the paradoxical position of being like behavioral psychologists when we look at other people, discounting what they say and trusting only what they do; whereas when we look at ourselves we are likely phenomenologists, taking our inner feelings more seriously than outside events or overt actions. Psychologists have identified up to nine basic emotions that can reliably be identified by facial expressions among people living in very different cultures; thus it seems that just as all humans can see and can speak, so they also share a common set of feeling states However, to simplify as much as possible, one can say that all emotions share in a basic duality: they are either positive and attractive, or they are negative and repulsive. It is because of this simple feature that emotions help us choose what should be good for us. A baby is attracted to a human face, and is happy when he or she see his or her mother, because it helps the baby bond with one’s caretaker. We feel pleasure when eating, or when with a member of the opposite gender, because the species would not survive otherwise. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

We feel an instinctive revulsion at the sight of snakes, insects, rotten smells, darkness—all things that in the evolutionary past might have presented serious danger to survival. When trying to figure out survival methods for youthful offenders, we did interviews with thirty-one youthful, incarcerated automobile thieves to provide insight into the nature and dynamics of motor vehicle theft. California correctional officials were used to identify youths with a history of auto theft offending. Prison visits allowed for lengthy face-to-face interview with a broad array of youthful offenders. The respondents were described as active members of the lower-class street culture and were shown to have pronounced criminal histories that spanned a host of offense categories. Subjects’ self-reported involvements in automobile theft spanned a host of offense categories. Subjects’ self-reported involvements in automobile theft varied from three lifetime offenses to hundreds of offenses. Some offenders are described as “acting out joyriders” who stole fast cars in order to vent their anger and immaturity through high-risk and high-speed driving behavior. Other study participants were labelled “thrill-seekers.” These youth had pronounced substance abuse problems and used auto theft as a means of excitement or income to fee their drug habit. The remaining offenders were termed “instrumental offenders.” These youth were more calculating in their behaviors and sought to use persistent auto theft and resale as a means of steady income. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

Level of perceived risk and reward were found to vary across these three subgroups of offenders. Instrumental offenders may have committed thefts with greater frequency than thrill-seekers or joyriders, but they did so in a more guarded and planful manner. The conversations revealed that all of the offenders were unconcerned about the potential sanctions that were attached to their criminal activities. In contrast to decade-long national trends in both the United States of America and Canada which have seen auto theft levels rise and fall with other property crimes. According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau’s (NICB) Hot Spots Report, vehicle thefts continue to skyrocket in many areas of the United States of America Nationwide, 932,329 vehicles were reported stolen to law enforcement in 2021, a 6 percent increase over 2020, and a 17 percent increase since 2019. In response to the first rapid increase in auto theft, authorities undertook a province-wide study intended to triangulate information about offenders, victims, and vehicle characteristics, the auto theft event, and the justice system’s response to the problem. These areas of interest were explored using multiple methods and data sources, including an examination of auto theft claims reported in order to provide comprehensive automobile insurance coverage to people with passenger vehicles. The availability of a very large sample of auto theft insurance claims information provided invaluable in the efforts to profile the nature of the auto theft problem. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

Because of the kinds of policies one would pursue to reduce the incidence of organized professional car theft differ significantly from those undertaken to thwart thrill-seeking youth, useful policy hinges on accurately profiling the nature of the auto theft problem in a given jurisdiction. The sources of uncovered discovered in the United States of America: Profit motives—including thefts for resale, chopping, stripping, and/or fraud; transportation motives—temporary appropriation for short-term or extended use, including use in the commission of other crimes; and recreational motives—temporary appropriation of automobiles for thrill and status—seeking by young persons (exempli gratia, joyriding). It is commonly believed that profit motives drive more or less organized, adult, “professional” offenders; recreation motives characterize disorganized juvenile offenders; and transportation motives underlie both juveniles and adults. Stolen automobiles not recovered or those recovered minus a significant percentage of their parts are thought to have been stole because of the profit motive. Stolen automobiles that are recovered either intact, damaged, or vandalized are usually thought to have been stolen for recreation or out of need for temporary transportation. During the past decade, 90 percent of all passenger vehicles stolen have been recovered. This high recovery rate existed even during periods when annual auto theft frequency counts increased greatly. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

Even among the small portion going unrecovered, very few have been the kinds of vehicles associated with professional auto thieves (exempli gratia, late-year model German imports like BMW, Mercedes Benz, or Porsche; high-end luxury models such as Jaguar, Lexus, or Infiniti; or expensive sport utility models such as Cadillac Escalade). Other analyses of auto theft insurance claims filed in recent years found that the vast majority of part replacement costs (other than door and ignition lock assemblies) stemmed from damage to vehicle body parts as opposed to systematic part stripping associated with organized offenders. Insurance data thus tend to point the finger at youth as the source of the rapid increase in auto theft. In the late 19980s, police began seeing a growing number of stolen vehicles being intentionally damaged by new forms of reckless joyriding. Teenager began stealing cars not merely to get to “bush” parties held in remote locations, but also for the expressed purpose of sideshows and trashing them to entertain other partygoers. Police began to recover groups of totaled automobiles stolen to use in impromptu demolition derbies. By all accounts, auto stealing was becoming more thrill-focused. The purpose of this study was to determine the motives and strategies underlying theft of automobiles by youthful offenders and to discover their perceptions of the deterrent effect of the criminal justice sanction. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

Rational choice perspectives argue for analytical distinctions between criminal involvement which entails long-term, multistaged decision making processes concerning initial involvements, continuance, and desistance in crime, and criminal event decisions which involve shorter processes in response to immediate circumstances and situations. In an effort to put these criminal event decisions in context, I begin with a look at how these young repeat offenders described their lives. Ethnographic research on offender lifestyles has identified their involvement in crimes as a means to obtain money in order to fulfill largely expressive needs. The desire to live “life in the last lane” was likewise true for many in this sample. Due to their ages, most of the respondents had few job experiences. More than half of the sample reported having no legitimate source of income, yet the reported average figure for reported monthly spending was roughly $2,000(arrived at through itemizing weekly spending habits). Several offenders described spending sprees in the wake of obtaining money from crime in order to impress friends and show them a good time. Describing a three-day road trip where he put a group of friends up at an expensive hotel and took them all to an amusement park, a 17-year-old remarked: “I probably spent about $5,000, but it was worth it…easy come easy go. We partied hardy. That’s the kind of stuff memories are made of.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

Many expressed their disdain for the opposite of the fast life, the dullness of ordinary, unskilled work, what one subject referred to as being a “ham and egger”; I worked as a busboy for a week once. It was like being a pig in everyone else’s slop. Why should I put up with that sh*t?…Doing crime [referring to a smash and grab where he want a truck through the front window of a Safeway store in order to steal cigarettes] is a lot more fun and pays a lot better.” (17-year-old.) Similar to the findings of other studies concerning the lifestyles of persistent property offenders many in this sample described patterns of offending as extensions to social activities with drinking and psychoactive drug use at the core. The most prevalent “recreational” activity reported by offenders was “hanging-out” with friends, and using drugs and alcohol. Fifty-five percent of the respondents said they used hallucinogens at least ones a month; 23 percent said they did so between 12 and 20 times a month. Fifty-eight percent said they drank to intoxication at least twice a week; 20 percent did so five times a week. This latter 20 percent may well be on their way to severe adult drinking problems. On average, respondents used cocaine five times a month and marijuana almost daily. The majority of respondents indicated that they were motivated to steal cars when they were high on drugs and alcohol. Most of those interviewed said they spend a considerable amount of time hanging around shopping malls. A few were cognizant of the effect frequent exposure to consumer goods played in motivating them to commit crime. Said one 14-year-old: “I go to the mall almost every day and see stuff I want to buy. I do crime in order to buy nice stuff.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

To speak of competent personalities is not to refer to ingrained virtues or fixed traits. What is generally meant by personality trait is not some constantly evident attribute like blue eyes, but a standardized response to standardized situations. Nevertheless, as if it were a constant, it is usually described adjectivally the presence of which transcends or pervades the actor’s behavior in all situations. Actually, this is what competence does, and in that limited sense competence answers the notion of a trait better than what are usually called traits, exempli gratia, authoritarianism. The trait concept, as commonly formulated in psychological literature, is inadequate as a theory be behavior; to attempt directly to inculcate some desired trait concept, as commonly formulated in psychological literature, is inadequate as a theory of behavior; to attempt directly to inculcate some desired trait is therefore frequently unworkable in practice, and indoctrination is improper as an end. Any notion of molding personalities to fit preconceived standards is likely to construe human beings as things or objects, passively subject to manipulation by superior authorities who stand upon some detached pedestal. Behavior, however, is dynamic, episodic, situationally specific. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

Traits, as descriptive categories for distinguishing recurrent aspects of behavior, are applied by some people to other people, and imply a relationship between observer and observed; it is thus that in social life they serve to regularize expectations though they can do so only roughly and incompletely, for the contingencies are too variable. Reciprocal attributions and imputations are subject to unceasing diversification and disagreement. They are stable bases for relivable prediction only to the extent that the representative situations which evoke them are stabilized through implicit commitments of all the parties involved. Every person repeatedly steps beyond the range of standard expectation in the course of one’s development; in a dynamic social World novel situation are pandemic. Outside those situations in which conventional responses are appropriate, trait psychology is as ineffectual in guiding the observer or experimenter as rigid iteration of previous responses would be frustrating to an actor. There is something to be said for the trait notion from the standpoint of an actor’s effort to create a harmonious style of life, but this conception—of a more or less self-conscious pattern of decision—is quite removed from what is normally meant by traits; style of life is a holistic notion, employing themes to relate items or events. One of the more plausible versions of trait psychology as applied to the study of the family is its incorporation in the idea of compatibility. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

In its most common form, as applied to marital selection, the traits of one partner are seen as ideally fitting those of another, analogous to the way in which a key fits a lock. In their interpretation the relationships between two people are put either in terms of similarity or complementarity, and it is explained as the predicable product of matching or mismatching of attributes. This is the simplest and most static view which could be taken; actually theories based upon this original notion are women principally of qualifications and auxiliary hypothesis intended to account for the numerous negative cases. How, for example, do ostensibly compatible people become incompatible, and vice versa? And how do incompatible people marry to begin with? Contradictions particularly multiply when the matching notion is applied to children and parents. The latter have presumably instilled their own traits into their offspring, yet incompatibilities arise. The emphasis on matching is sometimes carried to extreme lengths in adoption cases, though this had no warrant from research. To suppose that happy marriage and successful parenthood depend upon felicitous concurrence of compatible traits, and that a wise selection can avert the hazards of family life, is neither a logical nor an empirical conclusions. Most of the important questions lie in areas that this approach cannot reach, or where it cannot be experimentally tested. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

Out of the reaction against the atomistic and static approach of trait psychology, there has arisen a more holistic and dynamic concept—adjustment. This became, and for the present still remains, predominant in both research and practice. There are many measures of adjustment, differing so widely that proponents of each can no doubt with some validity deny that applicability of any general criticism of this concept. Nonetheless the various usages of adjustment can probably for present purposes be sufficiently distinguished from competence by point out certain of their most common meanings. One usage has the “contented cow” overtones of adjustment terminology; the implication is that human beings react only to disturbances which upset their putative equilibrium, and that the objective of all action is the restoration of tensionless rest. Another usage which has come in for increasing attack is the one that implies reliance upon others to provide instigations to action. If each lets oneself be directed by others, critics ask, who guides the whole, and, for that matter, who is responsible for each The so-called environment to which the individual is assumed to be adjusting is mainly a social environment; are the good adjusters to subordinate themselves to the poor adjusters? A third implication which is being currently challenged is the notion of immediate happiness and security as ultimate values, and the rejection of trial, sacrifice, and risk as evils. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

One of the most recent standard textbooks on the family defines maladjustment as consisting of conflict, frustration, disapproval, and deprivation; by this view Romeo and Juliet were totally maladjusted. Logically, the concept gets into insuperable difficulties as soon as its users commence to speak of good adjustment and poor adjustment; all pretense of its being a value-neutral term vanishes at this point. The critics allege that adjustment as either an imputed or recommended end masks a conservative ethic; and this cannot be removed without abandoning the use of the term as a means of differentiating desire from undesired states of affairs, or else plainly adopting a value position other than defense of some given status quo. The man who is delivered from conduct disorder and freed from illusion, who is emancipated from the suffering for all time because the flesh can catch him no more, has entered the right to infinite rest in the eternal Void. However, one has also the power to choose otherwise. One may stop at its very threshold and renounce the reward it offers. Since the phenomenal World has nothing to offer one, the only reason for such a choice can be compassionate thought for the benighted creatures one is about to leave behind. There are some who use the word “surrender” and who think they are surrendered fully to carry out the will of the ultimate concern but are only so in sentiment and purpose, for actually they walk by the reason and judgement of the natural man, although they submit all their plans to the ultimate concern; and because of this submittal they sincerely believe they are carrying out its will. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

However, those who are really “surrendered” give themselves up implicitly to obey, and carry out at all costs what is revealed to them sacredly as from the ultimate concern, and not what they themselves plan and reason out to be the will of the ultimate concern. Self-actualized who surrender their wills and all they are and have to the ultimate concern, yet who WALK BY THE USE OF THEIR NATURAL MINDS, are not the ones who are open to the “passivity” which gives ground to psychopathology—although they may, and do, give ground to them in other ways. The origin of the passivity which gives psychopathology the opportunity to deceive is generally a wrong interpretation of morals, ethics, virtues, and laws, or wrong thoughts or beliefs about sacred things. Some of these misinterpretations of the sacred, these wrong conceptions which cause men to give way to the passive condition, have already discussed. Such passivity may affect the whole man, in spirit, soul and body, when it has become very deep, and is of many years’ standing. However, the progress is generally very gradual and insidious in growth, and consequently the release from its gradual and slow. It is the very idea of religion which creates difficulty nowadays. The modern mind resists the idea of the supernatural, even in the very large sense of a personal intervention of the ultimate concern in the World. It is at this level, the level of the very meaning of religion, that many men today find the problem of faith. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

In these conditions, more than as a simple intellectual adhesion to dogmas, faith appears as an attitude of every religious man who takes a position in relation to the Absolute. It seems, moreover, to require for its foundations something other than rational arguments, and one can understand why so many recent authors appeal to a certain immediate experience in which to ground it. If twenty-first century man resents divine intervention in the World, the ultimate concern is already here. If modern man is skeptical of a personal God, one must be confronted with the ground and power of being. And if one is weary of rational arguments, one is invited to open the depths of one’s being to the experience of the holy. Doubt itself is the disguised visage of faith. Many Christians as well as members of other religious groups, feel anxiety, guilt and despair about what they call “loss of faith.” However, serous doubt is confirmation of faith. It indicates the seriousness of the concern, it unconditional character. Therefore, the is a beneficial side of doubt, the fact that unextinguished faith smolders beneath it. Everything is also related to culture. The relation to the gods is not a necessary element. With ultimate concern as the constitutive factor, religion can be extended to take in non-theistic and even secular quasi religions in which the ultimate concern is directed towards objects like nation, science, a particular form or stage of society or a highest ideal of humanity, which are then considered divine. Thus the relation of religion to culture is erected upon a very broad basis indeed. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

Religion in the narrow sense cannot determine the limits of the relationship so long as one can say, that the most important religious movements are developing outside of religion. The universality of the problematic flows from the relative simplicity to the operative factor: ultimate concern. Religion is wide in application because it is simple in constitution, being constituted by ultimate concern. The simplicity of the ultimate concern it is defined as total surrender, unconditional concern, infinite passion. We avoid using terms like intellect, will, and emotions, because we are afraid of being trapped into identifying it with one of these functions. This we speak of it inly in its totality, but, as in the case of the simplicity of the atom, this can render it all but impenetrable. Another obstacle to comprehending the ultimate concern is that faith has been twisted to such a degree that there is hardly a word in the religious language, both theological and popular, which is subject to more misunderstanding, distortions, and questionable definitions than the word “faith.” Tempted to drop the term altogether, we must content with the effort to reinterpret the word and remove the consuming and distorting connotations, some of which are the heritage of centuries. On this point, the only way to bring the ultimate concern into a better focus would be to specify it somehow from its object. Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. The content matters infinitely for the life of the believer, but it does not matter for the formal definition of faith. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

For decades, the Japanese have been journeying all over the United States of America, from the Silicon Valley to Washington and Wall Street, from Harvard and MIT to Stanford, visiting thousands of businesses, government officials, laboratories, schools, and homes, looking for another kind of faith. They are consciously learning as much as possible about what make America tick tock—not just commercially or politically, but culturally, psychologically, socially. This was not so much an exercise in business espionage (although some clearly took place) as an expression of Japan’s deeply ingrained curiosity about the outside World and its search for a role model. Following three hundred years of isolation from the rest of the planet, Japan, after the Meiji revolution, rushed to make up for its enforce privacy and has become the most avid newspaper-reading nation in the World, the most inquisitive about international attitudes, the most eager to travel. The intense curiosity has contrasted sharply with American provincialism. With the arrogance of the World’s dominant power, with a domestic market so large it could afford to treat exports as peripheral, with the condescension of a conqueror, and the unconscious preferences, the United States of America bothered to learn little about Japan beyond some technology. Food and culture came later. While 24,000 Japanese students hastened to study in the United States of America, few than 1,000 Americans bothered to make the reverse trip. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

As of 2022, there are 13,449 students from Japan studying in America, and there are currently 3,406 Americans studying in Japan, which is a 62 percent decrease from 2020. Japan works very hard at expanding its general knowledge, and this helps explain why it has been so good at marketing its wares in the United States of America, and why U.S.A. firms would have double difficulty penetrating the Japanese market even if all trade barriers vanished overnight. Yet Japan’s overall knowledge base is still deficient in several dimensions. Reflecting its own preferences and values, it may unenlightened about ethnicity and may be more study to understand its significance in a global economy. Japan’s much vaunted-education system, which many U.S.A. educators and business leaders ingenuously hold up as a model, is itself savagely criticized at home for its overregimentation and creativity-crushing methods. At the lower levels, teachers’ unions and the educational bureaucracy snuff out any proposed innovation. Its higher education lacks the renowned quality of its manufactured goods. Japan makes superior Acuras, but some international CEOs would like to see their graduates exposed to more American culture. Japan leads the World in spreading extra-intelligent electronic behind both the United States of America and Europe in deregulating the media and following the full development or cable television and direct broadcast satellite, which would diversify the imagery and ideas so necessary in spurring innovation in a culture. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

Where Japan needs more improvement, is in cultural exports. Japan today has great writers, artists, architects, choreographers, and film makers. However, few are known outside of Japan, and even they exercise little influence. In pursuit of balanced power, Japan has launched a major cultural offensive—beginning in fields directly linked to the economy, like fashion and industrial design. It is now moving on to the popular arts as well, including television, movies, music, and dance, and to literature and the fine arts. The recent creation of the Praemium Imperiale awards, intended to be the Japanese equivalent of the Nobel Prize and sponsored by the Japan Art Association, indicates Japan’s determination to play a significant role in World cultural affairs. Japan faces a tremendous obstacle, however, in spreading its ideas and culture abroad. This is its language. Some nationalist Japanese scholars insist there is something mystical and untranslatable about Japanese, the it has a unique “soul.” In truth, as poets and translators know, all languages are incompletely translatable, since the very categorization schemes and analogies embedded in them differ. However, the fact that only 125.6 million people on the face of the Earth speak Japanese is a significant drawback for Japan’s pursuit of balanced World power. This is why Japan, more perseveringly than any other nation, presses on with research into computerized translation. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

During the COVID crisis of 2020, a dramatic rise in the volume of transactions with structured financial products caused an economic contraction. More and more, Western capitalism was turning into gambling capitalism. For investors, structured financial products provide a wide range of options regarding risks and returns. When you buy an ordinary bond, periodic coupons are attached to receive regular interest payments, and at the maturity date you are paid the final principle. When you buy a corporate stock, you are paid dividends. In both cases your payoffs are derived from the cash flow of the issuer itself. When you buy a structured product, it is not so: The payoffs are linked to the performance of one or more underlying assets the issuer has chosen. Investments in conventional stocks and bonds are based on the investors’ assessment of the present performance and future prospects of a particular business organization. Investments in structure financial instruments are, the more difficult it is to properly assess and predict the performance of all the assets involved and to calculate the risks associated with them. To win this game, you have to be somewhat like a gambler: shrewd, imaginative, but also lucky. In the good times, with a little bit of luck, you make enormous profits and feel like a king. When luck says good-bye, you are down on the ground. The structured product in the center of the financial crisis story were collateralized debt obligations (CDO) based on nonprime mortgages. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

It is type of structured asset-based security whose value and payments are derived from a portfolio of fixed-income underlying assets. The first CDO is said to have been issued back in 1987 in Britain by bankers at the now-defunct Drexel Burnham Lambert. In 20 years the size of their market reached $2 trillion, but a real boom started in 2004 and ended in 2007. Issued by major investment banks and given high ratings by leading credit rating agencies, they were actively bought by banks, insurance companies, mutual funds, and other investors attracted by high returns. Contagion fears have been trigged by the speedy collapse of two regional banks in less than a week, back in March of 2023, which is rising the risk of a crisis in confidence in the U.S.A. banks, one in which government bonds would be the “toxic asset” at the center of it all. Under a best-case scenario, investors’ fear would be calmed as California’s Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in New York are reorganized in a orderly fashion. The flip-side scenario is that the U.S.A. government’s efforts to ensure that the banks’ depositors are made whole may erode confidence even further with consumers starting to fear for the safety of their deposits. Financial-stability concerns continue to be exacerbated by fresh troubles at Swiss giant Credit Suisse CS, which undermined traders’ expectations for continued rate hikes by the Federal Reserve this year. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

With investors continuing to assess the risks of further fallout from regional banks, there is a possibility that the start of the next financial crisis could already be underway. Inflation remains steady around 7 percent. The economic data confirms what the Fed, economists, bond market CEOs expect, which is a mild recession in July. The stock market is likely to fall 17 percent to 33 percent, possibly during the looming debt ceiling shutdown (June 1^st). During the low-interest period, the Fed did not make sure that banks—including medium sized banks-kept reasonable levels of leverage and adequate liquidity based on the types of deposits they attached. However, banks rebounded from the pandemic with strong revenue growth from higher margins and capital rations. Revenue grew globally by $345 billion. As the economy slows, the divergence between banks will widen further. The boost to profitability from higher margins may prove transitory, and all banks face a long-term growth slowdown. Banks in Asia—Pacific may gain from a stronger marcoeconomic outlook: in the event of a long recession, we estimate that banks’ return on equity globally could fall to 7 percent by 2026—and below 6 percent for European banks. The net impact will likely be a further concertation of growth in Emerging Asia, China, Latin America, and the United States of America. We expect that these regions will account for about 80 percent of the estimated $1.3 trillion in global banking revenue growth between 2021 and 2025. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

Banking as a sector is valued substantially below other industries. Total global market capitalization peaked at 2021 at $16 trillion and dropped back to $14.5 trillion by May 2022. Lingering effects of COVID-19 and geopolitical tensions shook the global economy and are rolling the financial sector. The long-tail effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are still being felt, from the supply chain disruptions to people’s changing attitudes to employment. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 and heightened tensions over Taiwan marked the rude return of geopolitical as a disruptive force after decades of relatively stability—exacerbating pandemic-related effects and creating new shocks, notably including an emergency supply crisis in Europe. This combination of disease and armed conflict proved toxic for the global economy. Together, the create a highly uncertain environment. Soaring inflation and the likelihood of recession are sorely testing central banks, even as they seek to rein in their quantitative-easing policies started during the global financial crisis in 2008, which the IMF estimated that banks had $3.4 trillion in toxic assets. The shocks to asset values include steep declines in the Chinese property market and the sharp devaluation of fintechs and cryptocurrenies, including the bankruptcy of some high-profile crypto organizations. In addition, sanctions against Russia for the first time cut off a major economy from much of the global financial system. Disruptions to the energy and food supply, related to the war in Ukraine, are contributing to inflation and putting millions of livelihoods at risk, especially but not only in Europe. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

When we choose to invest attention in a given task, we say that we have formed an intention, or set a goal for ourselves. How long and how intensely we stick by our goals is a function of motivation. Therefore intentions, goals, and motivations are also manifestations of psychic negentropy. They focus psychic energy, establish priorities, and thus create order in consciousness. Without them mental processes become random, and feelings tend to deteriorate rapidly. Goals are usually arranged in a hierarchy, from trivial ones, like getting to the corner store to buy some ice cream, to risking one’s life for the country. In the course of an average day, about one-third of the time people will say that they do what they do because they wanted to do it, one-third because they have to do it, and the last third because they had nothing better to do. These proportions vary by age, gender, and activity: children feel they have more choice than their fathers, and men more than their wives; whatever a person does at home is perceived to be more voluntary than at work. Quite a bit of evidence shows that whereas people feel best when what they do is obligatory. Psychic entropy is highest instead when a person feels that what they do is motivated by not having anything else to do. Thus both intrinsic motivation (wanting to do it) and extrinsic motivation (having to do it) are preferable to the state where one acts by default, without having any kind of goal to focus attention. The large part of life many people experience as being thus unmotivated leaves a great deal of room for improvement. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

Intentions focus psychic energy in the short run, whereas goals tend to be more long-term, and eventually it is the goals that we pursue that will shape and determine the kind of self that we are to become. Psychological disorders lead some people to shoplift. They include depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and kleptomania. These disorders can influence anyone to steal, regardless of what they look like, their demographic, or their salary bracket. Those who shoplift come from all walks of life, including celebrities and affluent people. For some people, taking something illegally provides them with a psychological benefit. It is not really about the actual item stolen, but more about the way the stealing makes them feel. Beyond disorders, however, personalities may play a role in shoplifting. A study done showed people who shoplift may often be characterized as unorganized, unreliable, unfriendly and antisocial. While not every act of shoplifting can be linked to a psychological fact, many are. Forty-nine subjects reported peer pressure as the primary motivation for their shoplifting. Peer pressure—the second most cited motive in the present study—may be a highly rational motive for behavior, as perceived by the offender. Approval from peers is one of the most powerful motivators of youthful behavior. This pressure might be direct, with respondents reporting that their friends explicitly encouraged them to commit the delinquent act. This pressure might also be indirect, with respondents stating that they were trying to impress their friends or simply act in conformity with them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

Two-thirds of all the subjects reported shoplifting because of peer influence at one time or another in their life. However, only those subjects who were in the earl stages of a shoplifting career or those who had shoplifted only a few times reported “peer influence” as the primary motivation for their current behavior. European-American respondents were 3-4 times more likely to report peer pressure as a motive for their behavior. Many of the professional thieves reported shoplifting due to peer influence, but they seemed to be referring to their early experiences. Twenty-two Sacramento students (15 males and 7 females) and 27 Sacramento informant (20 males and 7 females) listed peer influence as the primary motivation of their behavior. “My mom is a shoplifter. Both my sisters do it. I got it from them. My oldest sister said, ‘Don’t be stupid. Take what you want.’” (Sacramento: 20-year-old African-American female.) “I never stole anything in my life until I changed schools in the seventh grade. These girls had a sorority and to get in you have to shoplift something. They would tell you what to take…I had to get a pair of earrings from a Wal-Mart store. Red ones. It was too easy. I still do it sometimes.” (Sacramento: 22 year old European-American female.) In some cases, need or greed supplied the primary motive, but peer pressure facilitated the actual offense. One Sacramento subject state: “I had been wanting this CD and my friend started egging me on to steal it. I was afraid I’d get caught and stuff, but he just kept bugging me about it and finally I went in the store and put it down my pants and just walked out. I set off the alarm by the door, but they were too busy looking at a black kid, and I just ran out of the store. Now I can’t ever go back in there ‘cause they know what I look like.” (Sacramento: 19-year-old female.)  #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

These subjects shoplift for resale and much of their income is derived from shoplifting. Most, but not all, were or had been drug addicts with daily habits which ranged from $100 to $1,000. They engaged in a range of legal and illegal activities to support their habits. Most preferred shoplifting to other criminal activity because of the ease of committing the crime and the minimal sanctions associated with apprehension and conviction. Forty-six of the Sacramento subjects were categorized. In every case, these subjects looked on their shoplifting as “work.” One subject in Sacramento told the interviewer, “I’m a self-employed thief.” Typical responses included: “I changed from doing houses [burglary] to boosting cause it was getting too hot for me in Sacramento. I couldn’t go out of the house without being dragged down for some burglary I didn’t comment. I’ve been down to CDC [California Department of Corrections] two times already and I could get the “b*tch” [life imprisonment as a habitual criminal] next time so I went to boosting. It’s a misdemeanor. Oughta have changed years ago. Boosting is easy and safer [Y]ou steal a TV from a house and maybe you get $50 for it. I got a 32-inch LG at Wal-Mart last week and sold it for half the sticker price.” (Sacramento: 47-year-old Hispanic-American male.) “I make more than you do [referring to the writer] just stealing from stores. Yesterday I rolled up 6 silk dressed inside my shirt and walked out of Macy’s [an upscale department store in Sacramento]. They was worth over a thousand dollars and I sold ‘em for $300. That was 30 minutes work. (Sacramento drug clinic: 39-year-old European-American female.) “It’s like it’s my job.” (Sacramento drug addict: 35-year-old African-American female.) #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

Another common response to the motivation questions was, “I wanted [the item] and didn’t have enough money, so I lifted it.” This motivation was reported much more often by women (80 percent) than by men. Some of the women who reported this motivation were single parents with few financial resources. However, the majority simply coveted some item that they could not then afford to purchase. In many cases, this was one of the motivations for their first shoplifting experience. Five Sacramento student respondents (0 males and 5 females) and 36 other Sacramento subjects (8 males and 28 females) listed this as their primary motive for shoplifting. Typical responses included: “I want nice things for my family but I can’t afford to buy them. My husband and kids have the best wardrobe in town. My husband doesn’t know, but I don’t know how he doesn’t. Where does he think all this stuff some from? He never asks. Course, he doesn’t know how much anything costs. (Sacramento: 39-year-old European America female). “My mom wouldn’t buy me a pair of $30 jeans…so I took ‘em.” (Sacramento: 18-year-old African-American female.) Many expressed the belief that their acts were impulsive, committed without thought or planning. Nine Sacramento college students (4 males and 5 females) and 28 other Sacramento subjects (10 males and 18 females) reported impulse as primary motive for their shoplifting. Over one-half of all the subjects reported impulse as one of the motives for their shoplifting experiences. Typical responses included: “I want to say ‘spur of the moment.’ It was a watch and I just wanted that watch then. The amazing thing was that I had the money in my pocket to pay for it…I wish I could say that I had been drinking, but I can’t.” (Sacramento: 33-year-old African American male.) “It was sort of an impulse. I didn’t plan to do it. I’m really embarrassed by all this.” (Sacramento: 22-year-old European American female.) #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

Eleven of the subjects in the Sacramento diversion sample (7 males and 4 females) and six in the Sacramento student sample (3 males and 3 females) reported shoplifting only when intoxicated or under the influence of drugs. Many stated that they never stole when sober and blamed the disinhibition of alcohol or drug use for their crimes. In most cases, they reported taking minor items such as beer, cigarettes, or candy. Subjects reported: “Drinking causes it. I should stop altogether. Makes me impulsive. That’s when I take things. Usually I’m too drunk to be a good thief.” (Sacramento: 40-year-old African America male.) “When I’m drunk or stoned, it’s like I’m invisible. No, it’s like I’m that’s what always gets me in trouble. I’ll just walk in and take something and walk out.” (37-year-old European American male.) Many informants viewed shoplifting as a challenge and a thrill. They enjoyed the risk taking and many discussed the “rush” they received from the act. Many of the subjects reported “excitement” or “rush” as one of the motivations for their illegal behavior; however, only 15 informants, six Sacramento students (6 males and 0 females) and nine other Sacramento subjects (7 males and 2 females), considered this motivation as primary. “Its like an addiction. I like the feeling I get when I might get caught. Once you get in the car and you got away with it, it’s like, wow, I did it. It’s a buzz. An adrenaline buzz. I love that feeling—while I’m still in the store, my heart is pumping real loud and fast. It’s so loud I know people can hear it. I’m really scared, but once I get away. I’m exhausted.” (Sacramento student: 21-year-old European American female.) “It’s a thrill—the excitement, danger. Fear. Dude, my heart pounding like a drum. Like it was gonna come out of my chest. It made me feel alive.” (Sacramento: 20-year-old European American male). #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

A few informants reported that their behavior was beyond their control. This category is differentiated from the “Impulse” category by the subject’s assertion that they could not seem to stop. Many argued that they were addicted to shoplifting. There was significant crossover between those who reported compulsive behavior and those who reported shoplifting for thrill and excitement. Seven Sacramento students (0 males and 7 females) and six other Sacramento subjects (2 males and 4 females) reported that they could not easily control their shoplifting behavior. Typical responses include: “I don’t plan on stealing. I tell myself I’m not going to do it again and then I see something I want and I lift it. I already have it in my purse before I think about it. It’s like, you know, automatic pilot. I’m not addicted—that’s all I know.” (Sacramento student: 19-year-old European American female.) “I’m a kleptomanic. I steal anything I can get in my purse. The other day I stole a key chain—can you believe it? Took a chance on going to jail with a stupid key chain.” (Sacramento: 35-year-old-European America female.)  A small number of subjects reported shoplifting as a response to stressful life situations. Five Sacramento (2 males and 3 females) and five Sacramento students (0 males and 5 females) listed stress as the primary factor in their shoplifting behavior. Typical responses included: “I was working long hours and not getting along with my wife and we had a lot of bills and some sickness. I don’t know what happened to me. Next thing I know I’m stealing things. Books from Barnes and Nobles, cigarettes, meat from [grocery store].” (Sacramento: 40-year-old European American Male.) “I get depressed. Things start to pile up and I start shoplifting. Sometimes it’s at finals [final exams] or when I have a fight with my boyfriend. One time when I thought I was pregnant. Who knows why. It’s like I take out my feelings on them [the stores].” (Sacramento student: 24-year-old European American female.) #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

It is obvious, now, that to speak of shoplifting as having a simple causal dynamic, is to misunderstand the diversity and complexity of the behavior. When asked, “Why do you shoplift?”, the 320 shoplifters in this study revealed motivations that ranged from purely economic to apparent manifestations of emotional maladjustment. Most of the subjects reported that they shoplifted for some economic benefit. These subjects chose to seal as a means of satisfying their material needs and desires. Other satisfied some emotional need by their shoplifting activity. Still others sought to avoid some unpleasant or painful encounter or activity. These behaviors—satisfying economic or emotional needs—may be seen as highly utilitarian and rational. Motivations in these categories included: wanting the item but could not afford it; wanting the item but not wanting to pay for it; pressure from peers; stealing for a living; and feeling of thrill, rush or danger.  A small number of subjects reported that they stole to avoid the embarrassment of paying for condoms, to avoid long lines at the check-out station, to embarrass a spouse or parent, or to exact revenge on an employer or store where they perceived that they had been mistreated. Of critical importance, however, was the finding that people who shoplift steal for different reasons at different times. In the 115 cases more extensively interviewed, there were few individuals who reported a single, stable criminal calculus. An otherwise “rational” shoplifter might occasionally act impulsively, stealing some item for which he or she had no need or purpose. The informants often expressed bewilderment over their motives in such cases. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

Of course, it is recognized that subjects may not have good insight into their own behavior or motives. Subjects may have reported their motive as “impulsive,” or “compulsive” because they could not articulate the dynamics of their behavior. Others may have reported stealing because of the disinhibition brought on by drugs or alcohol as a rationalization for behavior which they could not otherwise justify. This points out the situational nature of offending. The motivation to shoplift is closely tied to the offender’s current circumstances. In most instances offenders perceive the act as a means of satisfying some need. The “need” may be for cash, for some item(s) they wish to obtain for their personal use, or to satisfy some psychosocial need, such as revenge, self-esteem, peer approval, or for thrill and excitement. However, that same individual might also commit offenses without a clear motive. Several informants reported that they simply went along with friends who decided to shoplift during an otherwise legitimate shopping excursion. They joined in for no reason other than, as one information said, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Men seldom have clear objectives. They do not know exactly where they are going or what they want. To imagine that people carry out only projects that are conceived in advance and act in terms that are clearly foreseen is “sheer idealism.” A shoplifter may drift into crime on one day, following a friend or acquaintance, while on another occasion they may utilize a more thoughtful planning strategy before committing a crime. This type of offending is not the result of a thoughtful decision strategy, rather it “emerges out of the natural flow of events, seemingly coming out of nowhere. It is not so much that these actors consciously choose to commit crime, as they elect to get involved in situations that drive them toward lawbreaking. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

Some “otherwise rational” shoplifters reported that they occasionally took an item, not out of need or because they wanted it, but because they could do so without being observed. In these cases, the relative lack of risk appeared to be the major factor in the offender’s calculus. If the circumstances were favorable, they were individuals with a “readiness” to commit offense, and they did so, even though they had no specific need for the item taken. Like the proverbial mountain that was climbed “because it was there,” these shoplifters stole because they could. Sixty informants reported occasionally committing offenses for what appeared to be nonrational motives. These included shoplifting as a response to stress, as a result of compulsion, impulse, anger, and alcohol or drug use. Such shoplifters often asserted that they did not know why the committed their acts or they did not understand their own behavior. The behavior was seldom obviously goal-oriented and it frequently did not have a significant acquisitive element. Many of these shoplifters took small, inexpensive items such as candy, cigarettes, and other nonsensical items such as kay chains or small toys for which they had no use. However, upon closer examination, we found that all of these individuals recognized that they had a tendency to “compulsively” or “impulsively” shoplift, and yet they consciously entered places of business for that very purpose. Others appeared to attribute their shoplifting to forces over which they had no control as a means of maintaining their sense of self-worth or to impress the interviewer with their “basic goodness.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

One informant summed it up, stating, “I’m basically a good person. Sometimes I lift things and when it’s over, I can’t tell you why. It’s not like me at all.” One college student reported that he never shoplifted unless he was drinking. Later, he admitted that he often had a few beets before going to a store in order to “get up his nerve” to commit the offense. The goals one endorses manifest themselves in predictable actions, emotions, and choices, in time becomes recognizable as a more or less unique “self.” These goals also determine one’s self-esteem. However, given that the general notion of interpersonal competence sets the framework for defining each of its components (health, intelligence, empathy, autonomy, judgment, and creativity), it is hoped that each component will be interpreted as an acquired ability for effective interaction, rather than in some context. To illustrate, creativity may refer elsewhere to artistic talent or scientific genius, but here it is confined to resourcefulness in devising new and effective responses to problematic interpersonal situations. Each component is conceived as a component of total competence. In any performance all six aspects of competence are manifested simultaneously, though one may be more obviously put to test than another. And the degree to which each be cultivated independently remains an empirical question. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

The abilities designated are possess by individual family members in varying degrees, however much they may derive from common family experience or affect family structure and functioning. Nor is this the only reason for speaking of interpersonal rather than family competence. By including all intimate relationships such as fiancé, chum, or sibling long absent, futile controversy over who is a family member is avoided. Since our dependent variable is personality development, every significant other in the family constellation must be taken into account; and, the concept of quasi-families arises both to explain certain suggestive developments in urban sociability and to suggest self-conscious experimentation with identity-forming small groups. A number of theorists have endeavored broadly to classify the relationships among people according to the motives these relationships are said to express. Many years ago, the six basic interests were believed to generate all human associations: health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, rightness. Among the many schemes for classifying motives, this list is nearly cognate with the elements of interpersonal competence. Why such resemblances should occur is itself an inviting topic for speculation. An intriguing coincide of the same order was also discovered in the 1952 Annual Report of the Superintendent of Schools of New York City, which lists “what we want for our children” as: adequate knowledge and skills, good social character for living in a democracy, good health, sound thinking, creative expression and appreciations, adjustment of the World of work. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

And Miss Ethel Kawin, Director of the Parent Education Project at the University of Chicago, in a progress report dated March 31, 1954, presented what an advisory panel of qualified scholars had approved as “the major essential characteristics of mature, responsible citizens,” and what such citizens require for “competent participation of the individual in a democratic social system”: feelings of security and adequacy, understanding of self and others, democratic values and goals, problem-solving attitudes and techniques, self-discipline, responsibility, and freedom, constructive attitudes toward change. Beyond the obvious differences and similarities of these lists and the elements of competence, two less visible assumptions involved deserve emphasis: that their authors aspired to completeness in the range of species under the genus imputed, and that the motives of persons and the goals of institutions do, can, or ought to converse. Some other writers, ore therapeutically and less educationally oriented, have attempted to define analytically the characteristics of mental health. At the 1953 National Conference on Social work, for example, Dr Marie Jahoda grappled with this quite metaphorical concept before an interdisciplinary symposium on the family. She first criticized previous conceptions which confused psychological health with: the absence of disease, statistical normality, psychological well-being (happiness), or successful survival. These criteria were inappropriate, she asserted, because they neglected the social matrix of human behavior. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

“It follows that we must not conceive of psychological health as the final state in which the individual finds oneself, for this state s dependent upon external events over which one has no control. Rather, if things in the external World were all right, we should think of it as a style of behavior or a behavior tendency which would add to one’s happiness, satisfaction, and so on. Psychological health, then, manifests itself in behavior that has a promise of success under favorable conditions.” What are the psychologically relevant attributes of an environment which permit the manifestation of psychologically healthy behavior? This research task differs markedly from the etiology of mental disease. Any systematic effort to define normality in child development must include, even for small children, not only physical well-being, but such aspects of their behavior as effectiveness, originality, adaptability, trust, and confidence in self. There is a scheme of eight stages in personality development from infancy to maturity. Each of these stages is entitled according to the favorable or unfavorable personality characteristics in which they result. These emerge from successful or unsuccessful negotiation of the problems peculiar to each stage: trust versus basic mistrust, autonomy versus shame and doubt, initiative versus guilt, industry versus inferiority, identity versus role diffusion, intimacy versus isolation, generativity versus stagnation, ego integrity versus despair. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

The fact-finding report of the Mid-century White House Conference on Children and Youth adapted the favored products of designating the attributes of healthy personality. The cultivation of these products is set forth as an implied objective for the various social institutions making up the community: the sense of trust, the sense of autonomy, the sense of initiative, the sense of duty and accomplishment, the sense of identity, the sense of intimacy, the parental sense, the sense of integrity. That the concept of interpersonal competence converges with certain other trends of current thought is thus as evident as that it diverges from certain lines of conceptualization. The chief condition for the working of offenders, apart from psychopathology, is passivity, the exact opposite to the condition which the ultimate concern requires for righteous working. Even when there is the surrender of the will to the ultimate concern, with active choice to do it will as it may be revealed, the ultimate concern require one’s cooperation with its ways, and the full use of every faculty of the whole human. The powers of the offender aim at obtaining a passive slave, a captive to their will; while the ultimate concern desires a regenerated man who is intelligently and actively both willing and choosing, doing its will in liberation from slavery of spirit, soul, body, and mind. The powers of the offender would make a man a machine, a tool, an automaton; the ultimate concern is sacred and love desires to make him a free, intelligent sovereign in his own sphere—a thinking, rational, renewed creation created after its own image. Therefore the ultimate concern never says to any faculty of man, “Be thou idle.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

The ultimate concern neither needs nor demands non-activity in a man for its working in and through him; but psychopathological spirits demand the utmost non-activity and passivity. The ultimate concern ask for intelligent action in cooperation with it. The offender demands passivity as a condition for his or her compulsory action, and in order compulsorily to subject men to his or her will and purpose. The ultimate concern requires the cessation of conduct disorder and psychopathological behavior. Passivity must not be confused with quietness, or the meek and quiet of a humble individual, which in the sight of the ultimate cause is of great price. Quietness of spirit, of heart, of mind, of manner, voice and expression, may be coexistent with the most effective activity in the will of the ultimate cause. The experience of the sacred, of the unconditional, takes place in a state of ecstasy in which the human spirit is grasped by ultimate concern and transcends itself. This description applies equally to faith, righteousness, and revelation; they are substantially the same. In faith, ultimate concern is considered more as it affects the individual in the center of one’ personality. The questions of doubt, risk, and courage here come to the fore. In righteousness, the symbolic expression of ultimate concern in myth and ritual and its embodiment in institutions receives more attention. For righteousness as ultimate concern drives toward expression, and it always includes within its scope virtue in the narrow sense. In revelation the manifestation of ultimate concern in a correlation of event and ecstasy receives the stress. For the ground of being grasps us through beings. These differences seem sufficiently marked and important to dispel confusion about the ultimate concern. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

More important than either arms or wealth is the knowledge on which both are increasingly dependent. Japanese pupils often go to a juku, or cram school, after hours to improve their grades. Japan, as a nation, has been enrolled in one big juku for decades, working overtime to expand the country’s ultimate power source—its knowledge base. Ever since 1970, Japan has thrown itself consciously and enthusiastically into the race to create an informed-based economy. It started building its technological R&D capacity even earlier. In 1965 the number of scientists and engineers per 10,000 member of the work force was roughly a third that in the United States of America. By 1986 the ratio had surpassed that in America. The “knowledge-density” of its work force has been skyrocketing. Japan is pushing ahead in every advanced field from biotechnology to space. It has ample capital for R&D, and for investments in high-tech start-up firms anywhere in the World. It is advancing frontiers in superconductivity, materials, and robotics. In 1990 it became the third nation, after the United States of America and the U.S.S.R., to send an unmanned spacecraft to the moon. Its success in semiconductor chip manufacture have been astonishing. However, the World’s scientific-technological marathon is only starting, and Japan’s general technological base is still developing. Japan even now spends 3.3 times more money for royalties, patents, and licenses for foreign technology than it takes in from the sale of its own. Sixty percent of that is paid to the United States of America. Japanese weakness is evident in fields like parallel computing architectures, computational fluid dynamics, phased array, and other advanced radar-related technologies. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

Moreover, Japan which is so advanced in the manufacture of computer chips and hardware, continues to be weak in the increasingly crucial field of software. Its much ballyhood attempt at a great leap forward—the “fifth generation project”—has so far proved disappointing. Financed by MITI, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, the project was described as Japan’s equivalent of sputnik, the Soviets’ first space probe. Such was the advance enthusiasm that, in 1986, Dr. Akira Ishikawa of Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo said the Japanese saw the fifth-generation project as “nothing short of a mandate for their survival, a means of…self-sufficiency.” By 1989 it was reporting modest results. Even more significant, perhaps, Japan is being the development of “meta”-software, used for producing software itself. In a recent survey, 98 percent of Japanese CEOs conceded U.S.A. supremacy in software; 92 percent agreed that the United States of America was still in the lead in artificial intelligence and in supercomputers; 76 percent felt the same way about the computer-aided design and engineering. In the early laps of the R&D race, therefore, the United States of America is slipping. Japan is gaining fast, but there are still many laps to go. Knowledge-power, however, is not just a matter of science and technology. This is something Japan understands much better than the United States of America. As in chess and war, so in commercial or scientific rivalry: “Know your adversary” is still a vital rule. And here Japan is light-years ahead. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

Japan knows infinitely more about the United States of American than the United State of America knows about Japan. Because Japan was militarily and politically dependent on the United States of America for decades, American decisions had an enormous impact on Japan. Japan needed to know American inside out. The pandemic crisis of 2020, the worst since the Great Depression, can be explained by a few major factors Unaffordable consumption and households deeper in debt. First, it was the crisis of consumption patterns and lifestyles. Many Western household had tiny savings and accumulated debts that were too big. Americans and Europeans have to ask themselves a simple, but very basic question: Are we living right? Are out lifestyles financially sustainable? Not all Western countries are similar in this regard. The United States of America is the most typical example of biased and adventurous consumption. Countries like Germany and Switzerland represent another pole. In 2022, the China’s average household income was $12,472.51 as opposed to the $70,784 average for U.S.A. households. In both China and the United States of America, the average family assets were about eight times its average income. However, the average U.S.A. household’s debt comprised 136 percent of its income, while the average ratio for a Chinese family was no more than 17 percent. Out of the Chinese families surveyed, 85 percent owned a home, but only 11 percent carried a mortgage on their property. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

In the United States of America, as of 2022, 65.8 percent of Americans own a home, and 70 percent of the homeowners were carrying  debt on the property in the form of a mortgage or an equity loan. While in the United States of America mortgage debt is encouraged through a subsidy in tax code, China’s policy is to provide housing without high indebtedness—through employer home purchase plans for employees and so on. Less than 1 percent of the Chinese use consumer loans to purchase consumer goods. In the United States of America, 47 percent of the families have installment loans and 46 percent carry a credit card balance. Though China is cautiously encouraging a gradual expansion of consumer credit, it is clear that, as far as consumption patters and lifestyle are concerned, the two economic giants represent two opposite cultures: of living on debt and of not living on debt. It is not difficult to say which one makes the economy more vulnerable. A prudent household decides what and how much to consumer depending on its income. Income comes first, setting reasonable consumption limits. For many households in the West, starting from the United States of America, it is the reserve. First comes a consumption standard considered necessary to achieve or to maintain. If disposable income is not enough, borrowing increases up to the point where the standard is achievable. The standard itself depends not only on the personal requirements of every particular consumer, but also on the established perceptions of the consumption level relevant for a more or less well-to-do family; a house is should live in, a car it should ride, a set of durable goods it should have, and so on. You either meet his standard or lose the esteem of the people around you. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

As time goes by, the standard is rising, often faster than the household’s incomes. It is here that the financial crisis mechanism starts to unveil. As the financial sector develops and offers a widening variety of lending schemes, households increasingly rely on loans, especially when interest rates are low. The lion’s share of the loans the get is accounted for by mortgages. The range of borrowers expands as lower-income households, often with a poor credit record, join in. Lending risks increase, but as long as the economy is growing, asset prices are rising (and they rise faster as more and more buyers emerge, tempted by easy credit), and growth expectations remain high, financial institutions continue to increase lending to marginal borrowers seeking to boost their business and assuming that the loans will be returned or at least that the collateralized assets will shield them from losses. The trend grows stronger as more and more debts are securitized: Lenders feel more risk-averse as they can get their cash faster and risks are dispersed. However, at a certain point marginal borrowers start to default, which, together with the burst of the asset bubble, drives the financial sector into the crisis. Dispersing risk through securitization only widens the range of the financial players suffering a blow. Not only lenders, but also borrowers have to bear heavy responsibility for this kind of crisis. If the national economy in question is large, the financial sector debacle, spurred by their irresponsible behavior, disables the national economy in general and also hits a heavy blow to the whole World. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

Time has come to realize that in today’s globalized economy outrageous lending-borrowing games played by the Western households wishing to have much more than they can afford, and by financial institutions drive by greed and ignoring the very basic rules of prudent lending, hit a karate-style blow to billions of people around the planet. Also, with the COVID-19 disruptions and shutdowns and lockdowns, the economy and work force seized. The outrageous borrows’ defaults and the aggressive lenders lumps of non-performing loans unleashed a chain reaction of financial-sector agony, depression in the global economy, and finally the global downturn. During the economic boom of the mid-2000s, in most industrially developed countries of the West saving rates were declining and household debts rising amid an increasing availability of credit. Not surprisingly, consumer spending was growing faster than households’ disposable income. In the United States of America, household saving rates had been decreasing for more than20 years before they began elevating in 2008. As stocks and home prices were mostly going up, American families spent a growing portion of their incomes, reducing savings to near zero: In 2005-2007 saving rates experienced drops to a below 1 percent level. Seeking to consumer more, many Americans and Europeans did not hesitate to borrow. By 2007, the households’ leverage ratio (the ratio of household debt to disposable income) hit 199 percent in Demark, 191 percent in Ireland, 185 percent in the Netherlands, 143 percent in Italy, and 130 percent in the United States of America. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Household dept in the United States of America peaked in Q3 2008 at 155.6 percent of household disposable income. It then declined to 132.4 by late 2015. Growth in household debt levels accelerated from early 2016, so that the debt-to-income ratio rose again to 136.3 percent by mid-2017. In Q4 2022 it was 131.3 percent. The average Standard Variable Rate (SVR) was 7.41 percent in April 2023, up 3.3 percentage points on a year ago. The average 2-year fixed mortgage rate was 4.63 percent in April 2023, up 2.28 percentage points on a year ago. The U.S.A. nonprime loans disaster was caused by Freddie, Fannie, and the like, but also by American households whose incomes and purchasing power were too modest compared to excessively high standards they set for their homes. The problem worsened as the rise of the number of home buyers caused by easy access to credit pushed house prices further and further up, with average incomes deceasing by $14,000 from 2007, causing unprecedented high against disposable incomes. The COVID crises caused banks $565 billion in loan losses. However, can you expect borrows to take responsibility for their failure when they were forced to shutdown their businesses, forced to stay home from work and forced to get vaccines to be able to return to work months later, while they suffered having no income or drastically reduced incomes? They had the moral right to live in the houses they pledged to but failed to pay for. People are still suffering economically and trying to recover. There were 324,237 properties with foreclosure filings in 2022. However, in 2008, there were over six million home foreclosures. U.S.A. foreclosures jumped 22 percent in the first quarter of 2023, compared to the same period last year. The crisis has showed many Westerns are not at all as rich as they want to be, as they pretend to be, and as they seemed to be in other parts of the World. You have got to be more modest guy, but how can they when they are taught to spend to support the economy? #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

Creative people are especially good at ordering their lives so that what they do, when, and with whom will enable them to do their best work. If what they need is spontaneity and disorder, then they make sure they have that, too. Among experienced educators in the family field, there is general agreement that mere rules and prescriptions cannot give this eager audience the competence they desire. Applied inappropriately, the most intelligent advice can have untoward results. What the advice-seeking public requires in addition is the resource to utilize general knowledge effectively in varied circumstances. Moreover, as such adaptability of response develops, the craving for categorical rules frequently, as in other fields of learning, abates; the second baby is less likely to be raised from the book. To be sure, the need for straight information on technical matters cannot be gainsaid. However, specifically with regard to the intimate interpersonal episodes of family life, general information and abstract principles are of minor effect in enhancing competence; demonstration and practice are superior means of changing behavior. The possible sources of confusion about the meaning of competence are less troublesome than a moral issue which the term may evoke. When it comes to the achievement of power in interpersonal relationships, more is gained by dropping than by keeping it. This enables us to dispose of any lingering notion that interpersonal competence implies the mechanical manipulation of others. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

The resistance sometimes engendered by referring to power in interpersonal relations can be tracked back to a fear of one person controlling another. Implied in this fear is the assumption that the dominated persons will be exploited or forced to serve ends of which one disapproves. Where dominator and dominated are assumed to seek the same goals, the question of domination is less often raised. The democratic values of freedom and equality imply plurality of values and presume that the values of some shall not be imposed upon others. In government, protection against domination by the stronger is approached through distributing power as widely as possible, and by various checks and balances for maintaining this distribution. It is logically absurd to speak of eliminating power; the threat of domination is countered by equalizing power. Some self-styled realists claim that power is never restrained except by equal and opposite power, and that to expect any self-restraint by the powerful is to think wishfully. Yet, if some self-restraint by fathers and husbands, as well as majorities vis-à-vis minorities, could not be counted upon, the powers of the weaker parties could never develop sufficiently to match the strength of their potential oppressors. Thus, even if power is taken to be the relative strength to dominate or resist, there is every reason to learn how to control the conditions of its growth. Power is the means of access to all other values. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Power may be employed to realize favored or opposed values, to suppress or to foster the development of other persons. The mere fact of possessing power is not evil per se. There is no way of increasing power which guarantees against its misuse, and one cannot realize good ends if one is powerless. So construed, the pursuit of power in interpersonal relations is ethically neutral. In proposing the enhancement of interpersonal competence we are not advocating any one set of institutional values as against any other. The analogy to free public education is fairly exact. Unless citizens are equipped with the knowledge and the skill with which to communicate and judge public policy they cannot participate equally in governing the commonwealth. The purpose of free (and compulsory) public education has always been to make all citizens competent to exercise their voice in making public decisions. In a country where only a small class is literate, self-government is hardly feasible, and so the lifting of education levels generally has become a democratic value. In this same sense, the diffusion of interpersonal competence is a democratic value. It can be employed for good or evil, yet from the standpoint of any one person, it is good to have more of it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

As an anti-democrat, a person would at east want it for oneself, but as a democrat, one would logically want to see everyone at least as competent as oneself. As a program, therefore, the development of interpersonal competence could well be regarded as a proper extension of the value of free public education. The neutral or general value of interpersonal competence, considered as a prerequisite for the achievement of any other values of personality and family life, appeals to neo-Freudians as well as to pragmatists. Dr. Alfred Adler was perhaps the earliest to stress the incessant effort by the person from infancy onward to gain control of one’s World. And Dr. Adler also saw from the outset that the “power-seeker”—the neurotic individual who deliberately maneuvers to dominate others—is a person who, having been unsuccessful in winning their favorable response by normal means, strives to construct a situation in which one can extort involuntary deference. The quest for mastery is a virtually universal motive. Yet no one from, Dr. Erich Fromm, Dr. Karen Horney, Dr. Erik Erikson advocates the domination or manipulation of others, not even of children by parents. All are advocates of some variant of self-realization. And all recognize the dependence of optimal development along self-chosen lines upon one’s social relations with others. At the level of common-sense observation, people are seen to differ markedly in their aptitude or ineptitude for dealing satisfactorily with others. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

At the level of theoretical speculation, interpersonal competence as a general phenomenon appears to be based on what certain existentialist philosophers call transcendence. This term summarizes the uniquely human processes of suspended action, memory, revery, foresight, reflection, and imagination, by means of which a person from birth onward escapes progressively from the control of one’s immediately given environment and begins to control it. It is by this freedom from the irresistible instincts and external stimuli, which chain the responses of lower animals, that the human being is enabled to modify one’s surroundings, to plan and create, to have a history and a future. One’s detachment from the present situation provides both the opportunity and the necessity for one to declare one’s own identity and values as an adult. This capacity for transcending the immediately given and thus affecting and reconstructing it invites several levels of explanation, ranging from neurology to prehistory. The explanation most relevant here is the one based on man’s ability to use symbols. Symbolization affords representation at will of that which is not present, and recombination of its elements—whether in language, dreams, art, or play. It is more than possible that inquires into the abstract realms of symbolic processes will produce findings more potent in the development of interpersonal competence than the more proximate behavioral hypotheses. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

The dynamics of petty crime—this study is based on a 9-year, four-phase data collection effort that spanned three states. In phase 1, “active” shoplifters from Texas were asked about the nature and dynamics of their shoplifting behavior. Phase 2 of the data collection effort enlisted the assistance of heroin addicts in Miami to produce a snowball sample of 22 active, drug using shoplifters. In phase 3, we identified 141 shoplifters through a self-report study of criminal behavior among undergraduate students at the University of Miami. Follow-up efforts yielded additional self-report and in-depth interview data specific to their shoplifting activities. The final phase of the data collection saw the researchers accessing 137 known offenders from Kansas who completed a court-monitored diversionary program that was intended for “first-time” shoplifters. This last group of subjects were observed as they progressed through the 8-hour program and approached to be interviewed once it was complete. Collectively, these data afford us access to 320 known shoplifters, 115 of whom submitted to in-depth interviews that are received in this report. The findings paint a complex and varied picture of shoplifting offenders. For starters, shoplifting motives varied within and across offenders. Most stole for financial reasons; however, heightened emotion (stress, excitement), peer pressure, drug/alcohol impairment, and a host of other expressive motivations were also identified. Varied levels of planning, risk assessment, and skill were also observed within and across the shoplifters. These observations stress that shoplifting, like burglary and other forms of crime, is best understood as having a diverse behavioral and cognitive manifestations. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Shoplifting may be the one crime that most people have committed at one time or another in their lives. It is perhaps the most commonly committed crimes. It is widely distributed in the population and appears to cross racial, ethnic, gender, and class lines. Studies have show that one in every 10-15 shoppers shoplifts. The Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates that shoplifting accounts for approximately 15 percent of all larcenies. Shoplifting is the most prevalent and most frequent crime among high school seniors over time, with over 30 percent of respondents reporting having taken something from a store without paying on one or more occasions. Shoplifting has been identified as the most common offense for which youth under the age of 15 are referred to juvenile court. Loss is an everyday part of the retail business—it is even budgeted for. However, when sales are low, and shrink is getting higher, it becomes unsustainable for businesses to keep their doors open. Shrinkage described the loss of inventory due to circumstances such as shoplifting, vendor fraud, employee theft, and administrative error. The difference between the recorded inventory and the actual inventory is measure by shrinkage. Recently, retailers have been battling unprecedented losses. Organized retail crime (ORC) is running rampant. A National Retail Security Survey (NRSS) shows that total shrink is 2021 was up 27 percent and is now a $100 billion problem. Some people have been tempted to steal from store, and many have been guilty (at least as children) of “snitching” an item or two from counter tops. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

With merchandise so attractively displayed in department stores and supermarkets, and much of it apparently there for the taking, one may ask why everyone is not a thief. Yes, shoplifting is a relatively unstudied crime. There are few large scale studies yielding systematically collected data. Prior research on this subject tends to focus on small convenience or student populations, criminal justice or store security records, special populations, such as the elderly, juveniles, or psychiatric patients, or involve a few questions about shoplifting as part of a large more general survey. And, while there have been some large scale studies, most of these have been conducted with apprehended shoplifters and have concentrated primarily on demographic data on the subjects. The very fact that shoplifting is so widely distributed in the population enables us to see some things about the origin and motivation for crime that more serious offenses such as burglary and robbery may not. And, explaining why people shoplift may help explain why most of us at some time or another engage in deviant behavior and why some persist in such behavior where other do not. If shoplifting is as prevalent as studies have shown and the losses attributed to shoplifting as great as estimates indicate, this criminal activity has major economic and social consequences and should be more widely and systematically studied. The purpose of this study is to analyze the various motives that underlie shoplifting behavior. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

The subjects expressed motivation ranging from pure greed to compulsive behavior over which they felt powerless. Most subjects reported more than one motive for their behavior. All the subjects were asked to explain their primary motivation for shoplifting. They were asked, “Why do you shoplift?” They were allowed to list as many reasons as they believed applied to them, but were asked to be specific about the “main reason you shoplift.” It was difficult to determine the primary motivation driving the shoplifting activity for most of the informants, as they shoplifted for different reasons at different times. Many reported multiple reasons for single shoplifting events. For example, one Sacramento subject stated, “I wanted it. It’s kind of a rush to take things, and I was mad at my mother at the time.” When a subject expressed difficulty listing a primary motivation, the first motivation mentioned was considered primary. In the example above, the primary motive was recorded as “I wanted it.” The subject was then asked if he/she had the money to pay for the item. If he/she said “yes” the motive was classified as “I wanted the item but did not want to pay for it.” If he/she said, “no,” the motive was classified as “I wanted the item but could not afford to pay for it.” A Sacramento student report, “My girlfriend dared me to do it. It was real exciting—I was pumped.” In this case, the motive was recorded as “peer pressure.” This finding of within-individual variation in motivation may be important as most of the literature in criminal decision making suggests a single, stable criminal calculus. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

However, it appears that many of the subjects in this study shoplifted for economic gain on some occasions and to satisfy some psychosocial need on others. Occasionally, the two motive were intertwined in a single offense. “I wanted the item(s) but did not want to pay for it.” Eighty-two subjects listed this motive as primary. These shoplifters admit to having the money to pay for the items they steal, but prefer to steal the items anyway. Over sixty percent (64.6 percent) of males and only 48 percent of females reported this motivation as their primary reason for shoplifting. Many of these subjects also reported on occasion stealing for the thrill or rush, by impulse, or for some other “non-economic” reason. White respondents (43 percent) were more likely than Black respondents (25 percent) or Hispanic (33 percent) to report this motivation. Some examples of their responses included: “I did it because I didn’t want to pay for anything. I’ve got better things to do with my money.” (Sacramento: 18-year-old White male). “I got two kids I gotta rise and I don’t get no help from that sh*t of n ex-husband of mine. They like nice things and it makes me feel good seeing them dressed nice to go to school. It ain’t hard to stake stuff. I just take what I want, anytime I want it. I’ve got 3 televisions and 3 DVD players in my house. I took ‘em all from Wal Mart…I once went a whole year without washing clothes. Just threw them in the basement when they was dirty and ‘went shopping’ for some more.” (Sacramento: 29-year-old Black female.) #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

We will continue with more of that discussion later. There are dangers that center around the coining of phrases to describe some special experience. Words such as “possess,” “control,” “surrender,” “let go”—all containing truth in relation to the ultimate concern, but because of the interpretation of them in the minds of many believers, liable to bring about conditions for the devious offenders to “possess” and “control” those who “surrender” and “let go” to the powers of the material World—if they know not how to discern between the working of the ultimate concern and offenders. Various preconceptions of the way the ultimate cause works also gives offender their opportunity: such as, that when a person is compelled to act, it is a special evidence that the ultimate concern is guiding one; or that if the ultimate concern all things to our “remembrance” we need not use our memories at all. Other thoughts which are liable to bring about the passive conditions which all offenders need for their deceptive workings may also be through assuming that one has no control over anything and everything is up to the ultimate concern. “Christ lives in me,” id est, I do not live now at all. “Christ lives in me,” id est, I have lost my personality, because Christ is now personally in me. “God works in me,” id est, I need not work, only surrender and obey. “God wills instead of me,” id est, I must not use my judgment. “I have the mind of Christ,” so I must not have any mind of my own. “God speaks to me,” so I must not “think” or “reason,” only “obey” what He tells me to do. “I wait on God,” and “I must not act until He moves me.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

“God reveals His will to me by visions,” so I do not need to decide, and use my reason and conscience. “I am crucified with Christ,” therefore “I am dead,” and must “practice” death, which I conceive to be passivity of feeling, thinking, et cetera. To carry out in practice these various conceptions of truth, the believer quenches all personal action of mind, judgment, reason, will and activity in order for the “divine life to flow” through one, whereas God needs the fullest liberation of the faculties of the man, and his active and intelligent cooperation in will, for the working out of all these spiritual truths in experience. Here are some other things that need clarifying. Truth: The blood of Jesus cleanseth. True Interpretation: Cleanses moment by moment. Incorrect Interpretation: Leaves the man sinless. Truth: It is not ye that speaks. True Interpretation: The source is not from the believer. Incorrect Interpretation: The man must not speak nor use his jaws, but be passive. Truth: Ask and ye shall receive. True Interpretation: Ask according to God’s will and you will receive. Incorrect Interpretation: Ask anything, and you will receive. Truth: It is God that worketh in you to will and to do…True Interpretation: The man must “will” and must act. Incorrect Interpretation: God wills for you (or instead of you) and God works instead of you. Truth: Ye need not that any man teach you. True Interpretation: You do not need any man to teach you, but you need Spirit-taught teachers given of God. Incorrect Interpretation: I must not take teaching from any man, but “direct” from God…#RandolphHarris 12 of 18

True: He will guide you into all truth. True Interpretation: The Spirit of God will guide, but I must see how and when. Incorrect Interpretation: He has guided me into all truth. Truth: A people for His own possession. True Interpretation: God’s ownership. Incorrect Interpretation: “Possessed” by God indwelling moving and controlling a passive automaton. Truth: Meet for the Master’s use. True Interpretation: God, in the man’s spirit, using the mind, in the sense of giving light for the believer’s intelligent cooperation. Incorrect Interpretation: “Used” by God as a passive tool, requiring blind submission. What, then, is the condition for safety from the deception of malicious offenders? Knowledge that they exist; recognition that they can deceive the most honest self-actualized; an understanding of the conditions and ground necessary for their working, so as to give them no place, and no opportunity of working; and, lastly, intelligent knowledge of God, and how to cooperate with Him in the power of the Holy Spirit. Revelation is the manifestation of what concerns us ultimately. Revelation is the breakthrough of the unconditioned content of meaning through the form of meaning (der Durchbruch des unbedingten Sinngehaltes durch die Sinnform). Revelation, as faith, has two sides: the subjective and the objective. Subjectively, someone is grasped by the mystery of being. This is the receiving side of revelation, for there is no revelation without someone to receive it. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

The subjective reception of revelation is the state of “ecstasy.” Objectively, something occurs through which the mystery grasps the subject. This is the giving side of revelation; it is “miracle.” Ecstasy is not merely emotional feeling, nor is it the cognitive or ethical function. Ecstasy is the state in which reason stands outside itself, that is, transcends itself. The mind is thrown beyond itself by the “ontological shock” or the experience of nonbeing, of the abyss, as happens when the ultimate question is asked: Why is there something? Why not nothing? While the experience of the mysterium tremendum, the abyss, produces the ontological shock, it is the mysterium fascinosum, the ground of being, which overcomes it. A miracle is a “sign-event” which astounds and shakes us, points to the mystery of being, and is received as a miracle in an ecstatic experience. Miracles, though presenting the mystery, do not destroy “the rational structure of reality” any more than ecstasy destroys “the rational structure of the mind.” Miracles cannot be explained by “supranatural interference in natural processes.” The medium of revelation, the object which enters into the miraculous event, can be anything whatsoever—a person, a thing, or an event. For everything participates in the ground of being and meaning, and so is capable of conveying ultimate concern. To live means to experience—through doing, feeling, thinking. Experience takes place in time, so time is the ultimate scarce resource we have. Over the years, the content of experience will determine the quality of life. Therefore one of the most essential decisions any of us can make is about how one’s time is allocated or invested. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

The 2020 COVID crisis had enormous repercussions for the global economic power balance. Effectively it was a farewell to the Western-led World. Though all major national economies were hit, in relative terms, China’s position versus the United States of America, Europe, and Japan became as strong as never before in modern history. Usually it is called a global financial and economic crisis However, it was not really global—at least because China, India, and other large Asian economies, first of all Indonesia and Vietnam, as well as a number of other large emerging economies (LEEs) around the World, retained significant positive growth rates. Created by the United States of America, it was first and foremost an American crisis, and then a Western crisis. The data vividly shows that in 2020 Western powers experienced unusually deep GDP falls—the worst in the whole postwar period and so did small Asian countries highly dependent on Western export markets. On the contrary, China-led large emerging economies of Asia comprised a growing group. The global economy lost $8.5 trillion in output over the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic pushed more than 34 million people into extreme poverty in 2020. The sharp economic contraction, which marks the sharpest contraction since the Great Depression in the 1930s, has lead to an increase in inflation. Recovery remains slow, and there is still a lot to be done to cure various postcrisis economic diseases. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

Though the epicenter of the shock lay in the banking and finance sector, the crisis was not purely financial. Behind it stood structural weaknesses of the U.S.A. and European economies and the medical technology, such as unsustainable consumption patterns and the flaws of corporate governance, and lack of medical technology and staff. Also, our economy is consumer based, means people have to spend money to support the government, which is why Americans have such a low level of saving. They are taught to spend every dime they get, and some have no choice. People are left out of the street like trash. It is really a sad state of affairs. To get over it, along with tightening and expanding financial regulations, America and Europe will need painful structural adjustments, especially a severe restraint on public spending and a further trimming of the welfare state. These adjustments will squeeze economic growth and cause high social tensions. In contrast, in the crisis years China and other LEEs proved capable of growing fast, even when Western economics were contracting. At the beginning of the new decade, they are in a good position to preserve strong growth dynamics if not to accelerate. Western societies are frustrated by the poor performance of the developed and mature market economies. In the wake of the crisis, one of the most popular themes in America, Europe, and Japan was the failure of capitalism and the need to strengthen government intervention not only to put the economy back on track, but also in the long term. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

China and other LEE, on the contrary, are accommodating more and more elements of the classical, Angelo-Saxon-style market economy and amplifying market incentives for companies irrespective of their form of ownership. Conventional wisdom says that Chinese state capitalism is different from the Western capitalist system. However, in reality it was exactly marketization and partial Westernization that served as major systemic drivers of China’s economic growth. The second leg of Japanese power—its wealth—is already so well documented it needs little elaboration here. In 1986, Japan became the World’s biggest creditor nation. In 1987 the combined vale of all stocks on the Tokyo Stock Exchange shot past that of all New York Stock Exchange stocks. The World’s largest banks and securities firms are now Japanese. Japanese buy-ups of prime American real estate, including landmarks like Radio City Music Hall and companies like Columbia Pictures, have ignited anti-Japanese passions in the United States of America. Meanwhile, the United States of America government has become dependent on Japanese investors for nearly a third of the funds needed to finance its deficit, raising fears that a sudden pullout of this support could destroy the economy of the United State of America’s economy. The accumulation of such facts has given rise to predictions that Japan will become an economic Godzilla and dominate the Earth for the next fifty years. Yet Japan’s economic rocket cannot orbit forever. The drive to export goods, and especially capital, will run into progressively stiffer resistance and worsened terms for trade and investment. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

In turn, friction will rise in the richer nations, driving more Japanese investment into the less economically developed countries, where both risks and rewards are potentially high. If large numbers of U.S.A. troops are brought home from Europe, as appears likely the U.S.A. budget deficit could decline, further strengthening the dollars and lowering the yen, which in turn would slow overseas expansion. This would, among other things, drive up Japan’s costs for oil, which is traded in dollars. Japan’s savings rate, already dropping, will decline further as consumer seek more amenity and leisure, and as the fast-growing older population eats into savings put aside during its working years. In turn, both these developments point toward higher interest rates and slower growth over the long term. Worse yet, as every Japanese knows, the Japanese economy is perched atop an immense real estate bubble, waiting to explode at the slightest pinprick. When it does, the impact will send shock waves through the already unstable Tokyo Stock Exchange and radiate instantly to Wall Street, Zurich, and London. Japan, moreover, has a long-neglected backlog of social and political problems. Its discredited political system, corrupt and cumbersome, finds both major parties out of sync with the new realities. (The Liberal Democratic Party depends too heavily on rural voters and needs a stronger urban base. The Socialists are urban, but unable to shake off their obsolete economic and political dogmas.) The decades ahead will find a Japan far less stable than at present, for the era of linear growth is ending. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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Comments and conclusions about marriage and the family no doubt can be traced back to the first time Mrs. Neanderthal leaned out of her cave to gossip with a neighbour. However, competence is a synonym for ability. It means a satisfactory degree of ability for performing certain implied kinds of tasks. As with virtually all human abilities by practice and purposeful training wide differences result. In this sense, interpersonal competence although based upon inherited potentialities, and directly contributing to self-conceptions, may be compared to acquired skills. To conceive of interpersonal relations as governed by relative degrees of skill in controlling the outcome of episodes of interaction is to diverge greatly from some other explanations of characteristic differences in behaviour. The term “social skills” is now quite widely used. It might seem more advantageous and less awkward to employ it, rather than “interpersonal competence.” Unfortunately, however, it has already accumulated a number of connotations which hinder its conveying what is intended here. Thus social skill often indicates correct etiquette or polish. At other times it means success in achieving popularity through display of coveted virtues. Social skill is also used instead of a word such as rhetoric. In some of the numberless books on self-help and human relations readers are initiated into the various tricks and routines for persuading others—into the sort of skills that are necessary for salesmanship and supervision. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

While selling and supervision are legitimate activities, and success in these no doubt makes some use of interpersonal competence, skill in influencing others would be a very limited and limiting objective to impose upon family life. Countless educational media—though ostensibly not commercially or manipulatively minded—likewise profess to furnish training for leadership, which is described in the language of social skill. Again, however, their emphasis tends to be on institutional ends, to the relative neglect of self-realization in day-to-day family living. However, it is fairly often observed that a person can function quite successfully in one’s job or committee post, though one’s behavior as a husband or father is unsatisfactory to all concerned. Conversely, even the development of extraordinary competence in interpersonal relations—though it may help—cannot guarantee success in business or politics. Despite these warnings against confusing interpersonal competence with the social skills of success literature, a word can be said in defense of the impulse which moves writers and readers of self-help books on human relations. Immense numbers of our fellow-citizens feel inept in their interpersonal relations; they sense narrow limits to their ability to influence or even to conciliate others. Their belief that something can be done about their ineptitude is hopeful and constructive. Were they to adopt the pessimistic alternative, and construe their fate as recalcitrant to all throughout or effort, the result would undoubtedly be grave for them and the community at large. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

The mounting demand for functional courses in marriage and parenthood may be interpreted in part as a response to the fact that knowledge and skill in these matters can no longer be simply absorbed through watching one’s parents. The motives which inspire this demand are not merely intended to repair a deficit. Many people feel that they can learn to do a better job or do a better job than their parents did. In nearly all such expressions the assumption is evident that differing outcomes depend upon relative degrees of competence. One reason people want to be more competent parents is because they do not want their children to grow up to be criminals. Research suggest that the motivational aspects of common property offending can vary significantly. For example, in a five-part taxonomy of shoplifting offenders: impulse, occasional, episodic, amateur, and semiprofessional. Impulse shoplifters are spontaneous in their thefts and do so with little concern of the product’s utility or the consequences of their actions. Their thefts are ritualistic in nature and often arise from some psychological malady (id est, self-punishment, kleptomania, stress, depression). Occasional shoplifters steal inexpensive items for peer approval or to alleviate boredom. Episodic shoplifters are emotionally troubled thieves who steal specific items to satisfy bizarre rituals or perceived needs. Amateur shoplifters are opportunistic thieves who steal select items for which they do not want to pay. Finally, the semiprofessionals are habitual perpetrators who steal large quantities of goods for resale purposes. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

The literature on motor vehicle theft also highlights the presence of varied motivation. We can differentiate between profit motives, transportation motives, and recreational motives among auto thieves. The first of these categories takes on decidedly instrumental qualities while the second and third fit the description of expressive motivations. Most scholars agree that the motivational aspects of automobile theft can be directly linked to the offender’s intent. Those persons (usually youths) who steal cars for joyriding (recreational) purposes tend to exhibit expressive motives (id est, status attainment) while those who intend to resell all or part of the car exhibit toward instrumental motives. There appears to be a sense of situational rationality that goes into the planning and target selection aspects of common property crimes. Take shoplifting, for example. Researchers accompanied known shoplifters though retail environments where they were asked to describe their thoughts and ideas about potential theft opportunities and preferences. The researchers used reported theft histories to categorize some subjects as “novices” and others as “experts.” Novice shoplifters were acutely aware of their surroundings and much more planful about their proposed theft opportunities, processing environmental cues more thoroughly and targeting small, expensive products. Professional automobile thieves (id est, those who steal cars or their parts for resale purposes) are often meticulous in their planning and target selection. They my seek out specific makes and models of cars depending on their resale potential. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Once an in-demand target has been acquired, they quickly scan the car to assess potential security and surveillance impediments before electing to break into it. Oftentimes, they sell the cars to illegal chop shops that cut the car up and resell it for a profit. A very different trend emerges among youthful car thieves. Most juveniles who steal cars for transportation (id est, to get from point A to point B or to commit a crime) or recreation (id est, to go cruising or show off) engage in little theft planning. We use the term joyrider to describe these offenders. In some cases, joyriders will steal the first soft target available. Other juveniles are more selective, seeking out luxury or sports cars that fit their driving fancy. Drug and alcohol use appears to play a prominent role in the common property theft transaction. When asked to describe their state of mind, more than half of the larceny-theft and automobile theft inmates surveyed indicated that they were under the influence of form of mind-altering substance at the time of their offense. Moreover, it appears that the financial demands of a drug habit often serve as the driving force behind routinized property offending. Interviews with seasoned property offenders establish a clear link between the frequency and intensity of drug use and the frequency and intensity of criminal activity. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

Most common property thieves are quite unsympathetic about their victims’ losses and unapologetic about their own behaviors. They tend to justify their actions and the resulting fallout on the basis of need. Persistent property thieves describe their victims as “suckers” or “tricks” or “easy marks.” This sort of conceptualization allows offenders to downplay the wrongfulness of their actions at the same time as it put them at ease about the degree of loss that they have brought upon their victims. For example, shoplifters will often reason that retail chains can afford minor losses or that they simply pass the losses on to paying customers in a “shoplifting tax” that amounts to mere pennies. Auto thieves have a tendency to emphasize insurance coverage or the temporary nature of a victim’s loses (id est, joyriding) as a way of rationalizing their behavior. The social organization of common property offending can take on a number of forms—offenders organize themselves as loners, colleagues, peers, or even team. The loner variety often takes shape among amateur shoplifters, naïve check forgers, and automobile thieves. Here, the individual lives out a solitary existence, stealing as the opportunity or perceived need arise. Other property offenders operate under a colleague-like level of organization. For example, “systematic check forgers” (habitual offenders) choose to operate alone but are well aware of the other “paper hangers” that are at work in the same area. Professional shoplifters (boosters) tend to organize as peers. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

Under this arrangement, we find offenders embarking upon collaborative theft activities in which short-term roles (id est, lookout, diversionary, box man) are assumed to increase efficiency. In the case of professional automobile thieves, we often see the social organization of offending take on a teamlike format. In these instances, set roles and relationships emerge out of the need for steady business as chop shop owners need reliable in-house employees to cut up stolen cars and reliable thieves to target and deliver in-demand models. Simplicity tends to be a hallmark of the socialization scripts that underlie common property offending. More often than not, learning takes place “on the fly” with a lone offender or collective of offenders reding and reacting to their surroundings. They tend to have considerable contact with the criminal subculture but the lack of planning and pervasiveness of drug and/or alcohol use makes for a less than ideal learning scenario. Only in the case of peer or teamlike arrangements do we see point-by-point instruction taking place. In general, common property crimes do not receive a harsh treatment from the criminal justice system. This trend begins with the legal classification of the offenses. The Model Penal Code contains three-tiered offense grading for the crimes of larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft. The theft of a firearm, any motor vehicle, or any form of property valued in excess of $500 is deemed a felony in the third degree and thus subject to a potential sentence of 1 to 5 years in prison. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

A midlevel grading of misdemeanor is assigned to all thefts in which the targeted property is valued in excess of $50 but not more than $500. These offenses are punishable by up to 1 year in jail. Those theft involving property valued at less than $50 are assigned a petty misdemeanor status, meaning that the perpetrator could be subject to a sanction ranging from a small fine to 6 months in jail. Police are overwhelmed with property crime calls for service. In 2022, law enforcement officers made more than 1.6 million arrests on the charges of larceny-theft (19 percent) and motor vehicle theft (15 percent) were well below those of almost every type of crime, for example, the nearly 50 percent of violent crime clearance rate that was recorded for murder, assault, rape, and robbery combined. In fact, burglary (14 percent) was the only form of index crime to post a lower clearance rate. An arrest is not the only outcome that citizens hope for when they have been the victim of a common property crime. They also ask for the safe return of their valuables. Law enforcement data reveal that police are able to return roughly 60 percent of the stolen automobiles to their rightful owners. These data also show that the recovery of a stolen vehicle more than doubles the likelihood that an arrest will occur. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

Given the shear volume of common property crime arrests that occur each year (larceny-theft cases alone accounted for 52 percent of the index crimes arrests that were recorded by police in 2022), it should come as no surprise that court dockets are overflowing with these cases. Common property offenders comprise roughly 20 percent of all felony defendants that are processed through the U.S.A. court system. Roughly 70 percent of property crime defendants were able to obtain their release from jail while awaiting the final disposition of their case. A full one-third of the bailees engaged in at least one form of misconduct while under conditional release, and one in seven were rearrested before their pending case was even settled. Only 55 percent of the theft-related cases resulted in a felony conviction and sizable portions were resolved via a plea bargain to misdemeanor charges (18 percent) or a dismissal (32 percent). Of all the offenses types represented in the study, we found that felony theft defendants were  less likely (25 percent) to be convicted and sentenced to prison. More often than not, a finding of guilt led to jail time (36 percent) or probation (38 percent). For those theft defendants who were unlucky enough to receive a term of imprisonment, the majority received a sentence of less than 2 years. It is estimated that 1 in every 113 motor vehicle thefts that get reported to police result in an arrest and felony conviction. Moreover, it is contended that slightly more than 1 in 10 of the motor vehicle thefts that produce an arrest will lead to a felony conviction and term of incarceration—with only 6 percent receiving a prison sentence. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

The U.S.A. correctional system also appears to adopt a relatively relaxed approach to common property offenders. On average, these inmates serve less than half of their original sentence behind bars. A person who is imprisoned for felony larceny or fraud can expect to serve only 15 months in prison. These average time served figures are shorter than any other form of felony except felony drug possession. The general public would be hypocritical to complain about the leniency that is afforded common property offenders by the agents of the criminal justice system. There is a severe lack of effort when it comes to the informal social control of common property crime. Take, for instance, the crime of shoplifting. Research has confirmed the long-feared assumption that shoppers are unwilling to intervene in the shoplifting event. For example, we found that few shoplifters come to the attention of store personnel as a result of customer-initiated action. A series of quasi-experimental studies, known as staged shoplifting studies, were conducted to assess the thought process behind this lack of informal social control. Well, it was found that only 30 percent of persons who admitted to witnessing the theft reported the incident to store personnel. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

The race, gender, and perceived social class of the perpetrator play an important role in the shoppers’ decision to intervene in shoplifting. The findings of these staged shoplifter studies have spawned several efforts to get customers more involved in the social control of retail theft. Numerous public awareness efforts have been undertaken to raise levels of concern and intervention among the general public. These include the use of in-store signs, media campaigns, and ingenious school-based initiatives. Regardless of their form and process, we have concluded that these efforts to mobile citizen concern and action have been largely unsuccessful and sometimes unadvised for safety reasons. In the final analysis, public opinion polls establish that the average citizen does not consider shoplifting to be a serious crime. One would think that a capitalist country such as the United States of America would have a low tolerance for theft of personal capital. However, we have long adopted weak formal and informal social control responses to crimes such as larceny and auto theft. Why is it that we as a country have been able to develop and maintain this seemingly conflict set of ideals? It is commonly agreed that drug addiction plays an important part in the motivation of many chronic property offenders. This had led some scholars to argue that the legalization of drugs might be expected to vastly reduce the occurrence of crimes such as theft and fraud. How feasible is this argument and how might one best approach the implementation and empirical assessment of this assertion? #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

With crimes rates being so high, many parents not being fit to have children, and other parents not wanting their children to grow up to become criminals, to have or not to have children has become more fully a matter of judgment and planning, with the consequence of marked fluctuations in fertility among those classes which exercise superior foresight and exert most influence on the other segments of the community. Among rural families and the more traditional urban groups, where children’s labour contributes to family income, children have been wanted in the past as additional hands. However, among the increasing other groups, where each child as an uncompensated cost tends to be evaluated against alternative expenditures of money and effort, a sufficient motive must be found in other terms than economic worth for the child not to be accidental and unwanted. Thus results not only the smalless of contemporary families but the heightened self-consciousness with which couples approach parenthood, instead of taking it for granted. When the population is graded according to income and education, it is found that the major contributors to the baby boom of the early 1950’s, for example, were mostly the same white-collar groups among whom family limitation was most pronounced in the 1930’s. It is among these that early marriage had gained most rapidly since. These families, through the mass media and the public schools, furnish the model for other families, and the deliberateness of their approach to parenthood has become a pervasive cultural influence. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

It could be argued that population dynamics—almost by definition—should not be taken as a conditioning factor external to families. On the other hand, from the standpoint of any given family, it is obvious that the example of family size set by others, the general atmosphere of optimistic or pessimistic expectation, and such tangibles as the availability of large houses and uncrowded schools are rather influential conditions. Families are more likely to feel they must adapt to them, than that they can appreciably modify them. To relate family size positively to family income is coming to be both a cultural and statistical pattern among the prototype strata. The chance to become righteous is not to be waited for, but take or RECEIVED from the ultimate concern. One must learn to speak the truth, trust the truth, have great discernment, and learn to recognize the devious plots of offenders and their counterfeit working of the law. Righteous people work according to laws and conditions, and those who uphold the law become known as trustworthy to others. However, it is important to keep in mind that no man is absolutely right in all that he says and does. Sin has been deeply ingrained in many people, and we cannot believe that sin has been eliminated from the whole being. For one to say, “I am is so wise, I do not believe I can be deceived,” is a shutting off of the eyes to fact around us on every hand. Some people learn more quickly than others. That is true. However, one must not close one’s mind to the facts of life nor the help of others who could throw light upon the way. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

Self-transcendence of morality and culture is constantly endangered by the ambiguity of profanization. The intellectual sphere is a kind of fortress. Ambiguity, however, is the proximate, not the remote, an answer to the objection. For one must ask: Why is there ambiguity? The ultimate answer lies in the nature of life itself, in the actualization of potentiality, in the transition from essence to existence. Ours is a fallen World, id est, in transition from essence to existence. I am not sure it has actually gotten any better or worse, for it is hard to judge suffering. Life has changed, but there are more people on the planet to do more bad, more people on the planet to increase the good, but one thing is for sure, it does not seem that the planet was meant for human life to be as advanced as it is, or as primitive as it is. It depends on how you look at it. For we create a lot of waste and are destroying the natural environment and killing animals. This is not always being done out of malicious intent. For instance, the tiny microbeads that were used in face wash to exfoliate the skin, they are being consumed by humans and fish and are poison and being embedded in our DNA, which alters it. The medications we used to save lives can also harm the environment when they are passed through the body into the sewer system. And then there is plastic. We use a lot of plastic to build houses and make sprinkler pipes and sprinkler heads. The sprinkler pipes and sprinklers used to be made from metal, sometimes brass. However, when the town Paradise, California burned down, the plastics used in housing materials released more toxins in the air than usual. The goal of using plastics was to reduce cost, not to hurt anyone nor the environment. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

The ultimate concerns says that because we are in a unenlightened World, everything we do, even good, causes harm. However, I guess it is better to try and do the right thing, than to knowingly do harm. Eventually, the planet will correct itself. One must keep one’s efforts focused on the creative depth of the ultimate concern. Being self-actualized is part of the human being, namely, the dimensions of depth in all of its functions. People go wrong with the tragic estrangement from their soul loses its own ground and depth. But glorious or inglorious, genuine or distorted, the being cannot be avoided no matter how man twists or turns. It is less than human to live without asking the question, “What is the meaning of this life which is given to me?” And now this is what becoming self-actualized means. Self-actualization means ultimate concern about the ultimate, unconditional seriousness about that which is ultimately serious, infinitely serious, namely, the question of the meaning of my life. While many question what is the purpose of their live, several are born knowing they need to wake up and make money. Until recently Japan was a one-legged nation. If a nation’s global influence springs mainly from military potential wealth, and knowledge, Japan’s, until very recently, rested on one leg of the power triad, much like that of the Soviet Union. Instead of nuclear weapons and the Red Army, Japan had cash. And more cash. But one-legged stools are notoriously unstable. And even wealth has its limitations. For this reason, Japan today is pursuing the power balance. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

At first bullied into military spending by Washington; Japan has recently needed little prodding to expand its armed forces. What has been unthinkable since Hiroshima—the notion of a nuclear-armed Japan—is no longer regarded as entirely out of the question. It has become, instead, a noticeable gleam in the eye of some Japanese hawks. Japan’s military budget is now the third-largest in the World, after that of the United States of America and the Soviet Union. Its hawks, according to their critics, now want to expand  the military’s role beyond Japan’s immediate territorial waters, but China and Japan have been having conflicts over ownership of islands and military expansion. To write a mutual security pact with a neighboring country, giving Japan a definite role as a regional policeman; and to equip the navy with an aircraft carrier so Japanese power can be projected over a much wider radius. Japan’s budding military-industrial complex is champing at the bit to build its own fighter aircraft, missiles, and other advanced weaponry. Companies like Fuji Heavy Industries, Kawasaki, Heavy Industries, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Komatso all produce military goods under U.S.A. license. After acrimonious negotiations with the United States of America, a joint project is under way to build the FSX advanced fighter plane using active phased array radar, sophisticated composite materials, and other advanced technologies. Japan is also engaged in research on missile defense. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

Japan is neither aggressive nor irresponsible. It military, since World War II, has been firmly under civilian control, and every survey shows the Japanese public to be fare more peace-loving than some other nations. Nevertheless, it is hard to say how long that sentiment will last as frictions rise between Washington and Tokyo. It is by no means clear what role the Japanese military might play in Southeast Asia if U.S.A. forces were further weakened or withdrawn; and war or revolution threatened Japan’s huge investments in the region. With political unrest flaring from Beijing and Hong Kong to Manila, Japan’s neighbours in the region have one worried eye cocked on Japan’s rearmament and the other on America’s post-Vietnam retrenchment, its troop withdrawals from South Kore, and its defense cutbacks in general. Japan is now driving toward military self-sufficiency, preliminary to suggesting, it the most courteous way, the U.S.A. forces are no longer needed in Japan—or in the region. In 1988, former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita put Japan’s military buildup in sharp perspective. Japan, he told the Japanese Defense Academy, needed military power to match its enormous new economic clout. Japan is racing to balance its triad. When it comes to China, China’s nominal GDP has just become the second largest in the World. From now on, the World economy will be rapidly adopting a two-towers-dominated shape: with the United States of America and Chinese towers much taller than all other buildings. Moreover, the Chinese tower will continue growing much faster than the American and overtake it, most likely, in the first half of this century. #RndolphHarris 17 of 21

Within this U.S.A.—China duopoly, China will first of all further strengthen its position as the leading manufacturing nation, while America will be the number one services nation. At the same time, China will gradually becoming a strong competitor in services as well. On their part, America and the West have opportunities in manufacturing, but will have to work hard not to miss them. Second, “China as the number one producer” had become an international standard for most manufacturing industries and products. As a rule, gaps between China and the followers are increasing. The circle of industries and goods whose top producer is another nation (in most cases, it is the United States of America) is becoming more and more narrow. By and large, it is already limited to several materials-producing sectors. Third, China’s drive to the number one position in merchandise exports, mostly in manufacturing, was even faster than in manufacturing production. In the electronics/electrical products and the light industry consumer goods sectors it is becoming not just a leading, but a dominant exporter. However, in other industries, China’s growing lead in production does not necessarily translate into the lead in exports, as most of its production increment is absorbed by the domestic market. In these industries China often emerges as a big net importer. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

Especially, growth of China’s manufacturing production and exports is accompanied by a rapid increase of the imports of production. What countries and companies will succeed in tapping China’s capital goods market. Up till now, in this regard East Asia has been doing much better than the West. Fourth, Chinese producers have become the World’s dominant players in the production and exports of low-tech—low-end—mass products segment. Their global presence in the low-end—differentiated-product segment and especially in the high-end products segments is much weaker, though increasing. At the domestic market they are rapidly occupying the latter two niches as well. Fifth, China’s manufacturing production/export offensive drastically changes the global rules of the game and the status of Western manufacturers. For the West, if not meaningless, it is getting increasingly difficult to protect traditional local industries from the inflow of affordable made-in-China products by imposing punitive tariffs or other import restrictions. The notion of local industry itself is changing. Because China-West production cost differentials are enormous, Western factories are doomed to lose in the low-tech-low-end mass-products segment and, more and more, also in the segment of high-tech-low-end mass products. In these two segments, globalization and the Chinese offensive deprive them of the economic rationale to continue operating. It is a new globalized World, and it is high time to change the mentality. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

In a way, it is very simple. Here is the World—your World—and if you want to manufacturer a particular item, find the place in this World where you can make it most efficiently and the markets where it will sell well. If you stick to a different way of thinking and want, by all means, to produce in your home country (it is understandable: In spite of globalization, many people, perhaps the majority, would still prefer to live and work in their homeland), then you have to find an answer to the key question: What particular products does it make sense to manufacture there and why? Basically, today’s Western factories have no other rational option but to drift to the segments of low-end-differentiated products but to drift to the segments of low-end-differentiated products and, especially, high-end products—in other words, to aggressively differentiate their products raising nonprice competitiveness. This drive has to be accompanied by the increase in exports, especially to the most dynamic Chinese and other Third World markets. Governments have to do much more for exports promotion. Exportability of the product—its acceptance by consumers around the World—is becoming the major criterion of whether or not it should be manufactured in this or that particular place. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

The number of West-based manufacturers is and will be declining, and only “excellent producers” capable of differentiating their products and competing on their quality and uniqueness will feel good at home. Others will either have to move to China and the like to produce mass products or continue a bitter fight for survival. Sixth, though China is becoming an increasingly important player in the global market of services as well, it is not a strong service economy. To become one, China has shown traditional, committed and skilled human resources, and know-how. China has gained a competitive edge in the service industry. Seventh, China has become one of the World’s leading financial powers (that is why BMW changed the 750iL to the 760Li), and, technically, the number two creditor nation, but its financial might first and foremost reflects the strength of the Chinese state. The major manifestation of this strength is the unprecedented amount of foreign exchange reserves. They are working as a very important factor in global politics, letting China set terms on a wide range of issues. On the other hand, they are brining very modest returns and are not used efficiently enough to solve China’s development problems and raise the living standards of its people. As far as household wealth is concern, China is on its way to becoming a World superpower. Chinese families’ saving rates are exceptionally high. China is a rich state and the wealth of its people is growing rapidly. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

The subject matter of social science is the behavior of human beings. When people are the subjects of any particular study, their permission if not their active co-operation is indispensable. Whether people will permit themselves to be observed, whether they will answer questions truthfully or at all, whether they will carry out experimental tasks, whether indeed they will give of their means to maintain the professional investigator, are all field problems which have to be solved before any new knowledge of their behavior can be gained. After their infancy, it is only in their public behavior that human beings remain indifferent or unaware of observers. One alternative is for the observer to secretly intrude on people’s privacy. To be admitted with their consent as an observer to their private behavior requires the establishment of trust in the investigator and eventually of some kind of reciprocity, some quid pro quo. The significance of these commonplaces of social research may be overlooked or unrecognized when social research is thought to be too closely analogous to natural science. It would be unrealistic to insist that social science cannot be conducted as if it were a natural science. Much of what goes on under this name follows the model of natural science. Its phenomena—its subject matter and subjects—are assumed to be passive objects, indifferently receptive to contemplation or manipulation, and findings of a sort do accrue. Moreover, the goodwill of persons used in this way seems almost inexhaustible, with a manageable modicum of recalcitrant exceptions. However, meanwhile the potentialities of the alternative assumption remain relatively unexplored. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Social science is the only branch of science which needs the co-operation of its subjects and where the results are of interest to the subjects. This is acknowledged every time the subjects of a survey are promised a later look at the findings. To recognize the subjects’ stake in the social sciences does not infringe the principles of scientific methods; it only demands an acceptance of empirical fact. Yet acceptance of such a pregnant axiom fundamentally affects everything that the social scientists does. The potentialities to be derived from this axiom are so extensive as to raise the question of why they have attracted so little attention up till now. The predominant prestige of the contemplative-manipulative model of natural science may be the reason, or perhaps the blame lies in the social scientist’s failure to appraise one’s professional role. Due to its origins, social science has been pursued mainly as an avocation or as a derivative branch of liberal education; only recently has social research become a full-time paid occupation. In defining one’s profession, the social scientist may conceive oneself as serving several employers or audience. One may conceive oneself as applying one’s techniques to predicting or manipulating the behavior or one group on behalf of another, such as buyers and sellers, voters and office-seekers, workers and managers. Research adds dimension and devices for self-regulation to the persons and groups which before they did not possess, or experienced only through flashes of genius. In this sense social science represents the democratization of critical insight about behavior; it is both the product and means of generalized access to social knowledge and self-control. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

There tends to be a decidedly unskilled dimension to property theft transactions, as thieves seem to prefer to keep things simple. Take, for example automobile theft. As many as 20 percent of all auto thefts require little or no skill on the part of the offender as the offender gains entry through an unlocked door or takes advantage of the keys being left in the vehicle. If a would-be offender is not lucky enough to happen upon a defenseless automobile, then he or she needs only a minimal amount of expertise to close the deal. Very little skill is required to smash a window or gain access using a coat hanger or “slim jim” (a tool designed to assist tow truck drivers or police officers in opening unlocked doors). One inside, the steering column can be easily broken with a hammer or crowbar and the car can be started in seconds with the turn of a screwdriver. Research also shows that automobile thieves, especially seasoned violators, are well versed at defeating antitheft devices such as alarms and steering column locks. An observational study of shoplifters reveals further evidence of the unskilled nature of common property crime. Of the 105 persons observed stealing products in a retail drug store, less than 15 percent relied on anything more than their unmodified clothing to conceal the stolen merchandise. A sizable number of thieves (15 percent) made no effort whatsoever to conceal the merchandise and simply walked out of the store with the product(s) in hand. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

Ecological factors play an important role in our understanding of property theft transactions. For starters, the setting play an important role in the property theft equation. Victimization data reveal that 40 percent to 50 percent of all automobile thefts occur from areas immediately surrounding one’s homes (id est, streets, parking lots, garages). Automobile theft victimizations are also likely to be concentrated in certain places such as parking lots for railway stations, shopping centers, and select public parking lots. The hallmark of these auto theft “hot spots” is that they represent impersonal public venues with large numbers of unoccupied vehicles and low levels of guardianship. Research suggests that retail thieves also try to blend into their environment. Shoplifters seem to prefer a moderately crowded store wherein they can rely on employees to be busy with other customers while at the same time being able to access and conceal merchandise in a secluded location. Similarly, pickpockets seem to thrive in crowded streets or transit stations where they can operate with little fear of detection. The offenders and victims of common property crime are disproportionately young men. The motor vehicle theft victimization rate for a household headed by a person under the age of 20 (27.5 per 1,000) was more than 8 times the rate experienced by households headed by a person 65 years of older. A nearly identical pattern is observed in the offender pool. Persons under the age of 25 accounted for 66 percent of all motor vehicle theft arrets and 56 percent of all larceny-theft arrests occurring. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Conversely, only a small fraction of the arrests for these two offenses (4 percent of all larceny-theft arrests and 1 percent of all motor vehicle theft arrests that year) involved persons over the age of 50. Self-report data provide further evidence of juveniles’ willingness to engage in common forms of property crime. It was found that nearly one in three high school students admitted to shoplifting to engaging in thefts in excess of $50 (12.5 percent) and motor vehicle theft (5.2 percent). Race also appears to play an important role in the dynamics of common property crimes. For example, data suggests that European American households experience below average victimization rates for motor vehicle theft (8.2 per 1,000), whereas African American (16.1) and Hispanic American (19.8) households experience victimization rates that far exceed the national average. Less pronounced race-based trends are observed in the theft victimization data. Less pronounced race-based trends are observed in the theft victimization data. Shifting to offender-based data, African Americans comprised 31 percent of the larceny-theft arrests and 40 percent of the motor vehicle theft arrests. This means that African Americans are overrepresented by a factor of 2 to 1 in larceny-theft arrest figures and a factor of 3 to 1 with regard to motor vehicle theft arrests. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Next, we consider the way that gender manifests itself in the common property theft equation. Males accounted for 64 percent of the larceny-theft arrests and 84 percent of the motor vehicle theft arrests occurring. It is worth nothing that no other form of crime posts female arrest percentages that even approach the 37 percent that is observed for the crime of larceny-theft. This anomaly is likely a function of women’s high level involvements in shoplifting. If fact, 51 percent of person who were secretly observed stealing from a chain drug store were women. Most property crime transactions occur quickly, before the unsuspecting victim even knows what happened. Most offenders are able to perpetrate their crimes in a matter of minutes or even seconds without drawing much attention to themselves. Offender-based research reveals that thieves are willing to conceal merchandise on their person within plain view of shoppers or even employees. Property criminals tend to have relatively flat but drawn-out criminal careers. In other words, they tend to perpetrate numerous thefts over the course of their lives but the intensity of the violations remains predictably low. A full 60 percent of the persons charged with a theft-related felony (grand theft, grand larceny, or motor vehicle theft) had a prior felony arrest record. In fact, almost one in eight had a rap sheet containing ten or more prior felony arrets. Only burglary and drug defendants had more involved criminal histories. Over 40 percent of the felony theft defendants had prior felony convictions on their record (10 percent had five or more) and 38 percent were in active criminal justice status (id est, on parole, probation, or pretrial release) at the time of their felony theft arrest. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

A prison stay does not appear to deter common property criminals from future offending. In fact, 79 percent of the automobile thieves and 75 percent of the larceny inmates in a recidivism study were rearrested within 3 years of release. Perhaps more significant is the fact that one-third of the larceny-theft offenders and slightly more than one-tenth of the motor vehicle theft offender found themselves under indictment for the exact same offense within 3 years. Interviews with known juvenile car thieves speaks further to the issue of offense specialization. It appears that a sizable portion of juvenile car thieves (approaching 50 percent) concentrate their illegal activities in the area of car crime. Those who stray outside the ream of auto theft tend to concentrate their offending in the areas of property and/or public order crime. Regardless of their level of specialization, a career portrait emerges in which individuals start out engaging in minor property and public order crime at an early age and then graduate to more serious types of crimes as they move into their late teens and early twenties. The career dimensions of youth automobile crime suggests that most persistent property thieves begin their criminal careers while still in their early teen years. They tend to dabble in a variety of offenses, guided mostly by opportunity and pressure. The frequency and intensity reaches a peak during their twenties while their sill and comfort level with the crimes is at a high and the rigidity of their domestic and employment lives are at a low. Only hardened few see their criminal careers persisting into the middle-age years. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

The development of identity in a person or a group, is established by the pattern of recurrence of related events. The paradox of personality is that it changes; identity is the thread which unites episode to episode, as much as they are untied, but it is a wandering thread, and often not one thread but several. Moreover, there are many transitions and turning points, and each is a dramatic event, which may be appraised as news or as development—as either a subtle or discordant variation on the previous theme. When people help each other in self-examination they greatly alter their notions about themselves. Self-examination alters relations within the group, confirms some tendencies, and discourages others. In a group of affectionate friends, the adjectives used as are potent to cultivate growth as the views of the hostile to curb it. A person flourishes in one group, fails in another, and remains unchanged in a third because no appraisal has been given, it being either repressed or ignored. The secret of self-examination and the secret of families, friends, and foes is that only those can hurt or help us whose view—whether hostile, helpful, or a mixture of both—is close enough to us to be known and respected. From the static view of personality, nothing could result from such a game. According to this there is only one truth, which does not change and it is only enlarged by additional knowledge. However, the developmental view recognizes the reflexive effect of another person’s evaluation. Each description is all the more constitutive as its speaker supposed it fact, and acts accordingly toward the person one so described. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

If all behavior were determined by the ascriptions of others, then the self would be left with no room for movement, or for self-determination; when consensus prevails there is no choice. However, there are always discrepancies in the estimations of others. Even the smallest child soon learns to distinguish between his father’s and mother’s differing evaluation of one’s behavior. And given the chance, one gravitates toward that audience which helps one develop one’s self. At least this hypothesis of the thematic selection from the stream of events appears the only one which can offer the person potential control over the course of one’s own development and prevent the diffusion of one’s identity in episodic flux. Some ascriptions by others are taken as true, some not, and some are problematic and are either rejected or assimilated. Some we wish were true, some not, and there are some perplexing maybe’s. Yes we must tarry to act righteous or else one may be rudely awakened. Take time to think your thoughts through. Do not live on the wrong side of the law. There is a lot of good out in the World, but one has to make sure to surround themselves by people who have morals, ethics, values, and follow the law so they do not go astray. There is a time of development where we learn what is right and wrong, and when we selected actions that are good and noble, opportunities will open up for us. Just as there are numerous academic disciplines which bear upon family behavior from one theoretical aspect or another, so there is a wide range of public and private agencies which attack one kind of practical family problem or another—medical, economic, protective, psychological, educational, or recreational. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

And just as the disciplines tend to segment the family, so do the professions. For example, a strong case has recently been made that family welfare agencies, in the interests of efficiency and effectiveness, ought to coordinate their efforts in order to deal with problem families rather than with family problems. The ultimate measure of the effectiveness of any such agency is take to be the observable change it produces in the behavior are so interconnected within the family that efforts which deal only with one aspect of a person, and that disregard this network have only partial results. Family research, therefore, is here confined to generalization at the level of the family unit. When reduced analytically to the constituent aspects and processes, it is with the idea of reconstituting them as a more direct means of realizing the family’s functions. They very phrase “family research” raises many problems about what include or exclude. Fortunately the issue of reductionism has been threshed out so fully that it may suffice simply to state that a study of the family on its own level is intended. While the network of relationships based on occupation is thus reorganized, consumption patterns likewise shift qualitatively and substantially with inflation and general rise in real family incomes. Even where most gratifying, these gains often have unsettling effects in the development of persons and families. Mass distribution methods and industrial research confront consumers with a frequently bewildering array of incentive to buy. At the same time, amidst general prosperity, the massive fluctuations in particular segments of the national economy are especially disruptive to certain disadvantaged populations—unemployed workers in heavy manufacturing, farmers, aged people on small fixed incomes, the lowest-salaried, the dependent.  #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

Moreover, the strenuous pace of competition for advancement puts severe strains on even the most successful. The takes us to another leg of the power triad: knowledge. The wildfire spread of the computer in recent decades has been called the single most important change in the knowledge system since the invention of movable type in the 15^th century or even the invention of writing. Paralleling this extraordinary change has come the equally astonishing spread of new networks and media for moving knowledge and its precursors, data and information. Had nothing else changed, these twin developments alone would warrant the term knowledge revolution. But as we know, other related changes are transforming the entire knowledge system or “info-sphere” in the high-tech World. They hyper-speed of change today means that given “facts” become obsolete faster—knowledge built on them becomes less durable. To overcome this “transience factor,” new technological and organizational tools are currently being designed to accelerate scientific research and development. Others are intended to speed up the learning process. The metabolism of knowledge is moving faster. Equally important, the high-tech societies are beginning to reorganize their knowledge. As we have seen, the everyday knowhow needed in business and politics is growing more abstract every day. Conventional disciplines are breaking down. With the help of the computer, the same data or information can now easily be clustered or “cut” in quite different ways, helping the users to view the same problem from quite different angels, and to synthesize meta-knowledge. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Meanwhile, advanced in artificial intelligence and expert systems provide new ways to concentrate expertise. Because of all these changes, we see rising interest in cognitive theory, learning theory, “fuzzy logic,” neurobiology, and other intellectual developments that bear on the architecture of knowledge itself. Knowledge is being restructured at least as profoundly as violence and wealth, meaning that all the elements of the power triad are in simultaneous revolution. And each day the other two sources of power themselves become more knowledge-dependent. This, then, is the turbulent background against which the rise and fall of civilizations and of individual nations needs to be seen, and it explains why most current power assessments will prove misleading. Diplomats like to talk about the balance of power. The powershift principle helps us gauge not only the balance of power but the “power of balance.” Nations (or alliances) can be divided into three types: those whose power is based predominately on a single leg of violence-wealth-knowledge stool, those whose power rests on two legs, and those whose global clout is balanced on all three of the main sources of power. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

To judge how well the United States of America, Japan, or Europe will fare in the global power struggle to come, we need to look at all three of these sources of power, focusing special attention on the third: the knowledge base, since this will increasingly determine the value of the other two. This knowledge base includes far more than conventional items like science and technology or education. It encompasses a nation’s strategic conceptions, its foreign intelligence capabilities, its language, its general knowledge of other cultures, its cultural and ideological impact on the World, the diversity of its communication systems and the range of new ideas, information, and imagery flowing through them. All these feed or drain a nation’s power and determine what quality of power it can deploy in any given conflict or crisis. Going beyond the triad, the powershift principle introduces a further useful insight by asking about the relationship of violence to wealth to knowledge in any given period. If we look at the power balance, as distinct from the balance of power, we discover that throughout the Cold War, the power of the United States of America has been extremely broadly based. America not only had massive military might but supreme economic clout, and the World’s best supply of power-knowledge, ranging from the finest science and technology to a popular culture much of the World wished to emulate. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

By contrast, the Soviet power was, and remains, totally unbalanced. Its claim to superpower status derived exclusively from its military. Its economy, a shambling wreck at home, counted for little in the World’s system. While its Research and Development was excellent in a few defense-related sectors, its general technological know-how was backward, cramped by paranoid secrecy. Its telecommunications were abominable. Its education system was mediocre, its centrally controlled media, tightly censored and backward. Over the long run of the Cold War, it was the power-balanced United States of America, rather than the one-legged Soviet Union, that won the enduring race. This insight, only half-understood by the main global players, helps explain much of what China, Europe, the United States of America, and Japan are doing as they race toward their coming collision. In 2022, the total household wealth in China was USD $2.6 trillion, now ranking second in the World. With the rapid development of financial markets and the increase in family wealth, the importance of family finance has become increasingly prominent. In relative terms, the Chinese save much more than Westerners. It is a well-known and frequently mentioned fact. In the 2000s, households’ net savings in China stood at a 20-25 percent of their disposable income. The average American savings account balance is $4,500. Between 1959-2022, the average U.S.A. saving rate has been 8.96 percent. The average household savings rate in the United States of America was only 5.1 percent in the second half of 2022. In total, gross personal savings in the U.S.A. is worth USD $2.3 trillion. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

The gross financial assets of Chinese households increased 13.6 percent to USD $29,689 billion in 2020. The financial position of the United States of America includes assets of at least USD $117.72 trillion in 2021. At this point China’s strength as a global financial power does not stem from the wealth accumulated by Chinese people. It is rather the opposite: State coffers overfilled with cash on the one hand and mostly not-so-wealthy, if not poor, households on the other This situation may be socially explosive, as there are 560 million people in China is zero in saving. Is China already a new major financial power? Yes, definitely yes. However, it is a financial superpower of a very special kind. Its financial strength does not stem from the wealth of the vast majority of its citizens. First and foremost, it reflects the might of the state, which, due to soaring exports and inward investment, accumulated a -tremendous amount of foreign currency reserves. The Chinese ruling elite feels very comfortable on the international area using this financial might as big leverage to win concessions from its counterparts and push its own interests and priorities. This is one of the major reasons why it is not that eager to reduce the country’s trade surplus and to speed up the appreciation of yuan. The weak yuan is a political choice whose main goal is to strengthen the system of Communist Party rule. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

France—household saving rate was 17.43 percent in December of 2022, Germany household saving rate is 19.96 in December of 2022, in Italy the gross saving rate in December 2022 was an average of 20.3 percent. Households’ saving ratio as of the second quarter of 2020 was 23.9 percent in the United Kingdom. The household saving rate in the euro area (EA-19) was 14.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022. In the fourth quarter of 2022, financial assets held by households in Japan amounted to USD $15.02 trillion. IN 2021, China had 6.2 million millionaires, up by more than a million from 2020, while globally total number of millionaires increased by 5.2 million. That number in China is expected to double to 12.2 million in five years time. Global household wealth reached USD $463.6 trillion by the end of 2021, mainly propelled by a strong rise in financial assets, which worsened inequality in 2021. Global household wealth is expected to increase by USD $169 trillion by 2026 to USD $632.6trillion. China is rapidly emerging as a leading international lender. Its major state-owned banks are feeling more and more confident as major players in the global banking community. In other important respects—effectively all the respects unrelated to the state and state-owned financial entities—today’s China is still becoming a financial superpower in the true meaning, and as it does, life will change around the globe. The role of its companies (not to say its individuals) as international investors remains comparatively small, though it is growing. Most companies are still gaining international experience and expertise. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

 China’s domestic financial market is heavily regulated. Still, the global market is dominated by the West, but Chinese financial institutions have already joined the leaders’ ranks. Demand for the yuan as an international currency is growing, but we are not sure how it will challenge the dollar or euro until it is allowed to appreciate. Western governments have become increasingly dependent on China as a creditor. With $1.1 trillion in Treasure holdings, Japan is the largest foreign holder of U.S.A. debt. Japan surpassed China as the top holder in 2019 as China shed over $250 billion, or 30 percent of its holdings in four years. Chinese state-owned banks will establish a key position among the World’s major lenders to clients not only in the developing, but also in the developed World. A relatively narrow circle of big companies, especially state-owned ones, will rapidly develop as important foreign direct investors. On the other hand, the formation of a wider range of strong Chinese multinationals, include private firms—a range comparable to the one in the major countries of the West—will take a longer period of time, as well as the emergence of a cohort of Chinese largescale investors into securities around the World. In these areas, competition from China is still relatively mild. The wide-scale and rapid growth of leisure—through shorted working hours, vacations, lengthened schooling, and retirement—has created vast new wants which American culture as yet does not fully satisfy. The aspiration for leisure is often associated with a lack of involvement in work, but with everything costing so much, many people are looking to pick up more hours at work, instead of shallow and restless pursuit of a good time. Many see that our students need to become more serious so they can compete with China. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Personality has become an object of popular concern, as much as the soul was formerly. The belief in fostering the optimal development of children, in psychosocial respects as well as physically and mentally, is propagated through countless media and organizations, among which the parent-teacher associations are pre-eminent and characteristic of the American scene. Due to the desire for scientific sanction for practices adopted, it is not too early to speak of the professionalization of parenthood, or at least of motherhood. Except for those who remain thoroughly confident of traditional recipes for child-rearing, many parent exhibit some uncertainty and even anxiety over the satisfactory performance of their own roles and their children’s development. This effortfulness may therefore somewhat limit the joy and ease with which they conduct their family living. Popular concern with mental health and hygiene, which are professionally recognized as primarily the responsibility of the home, adds a special edge to the concerns of certain families. Stray psychiatric thought lends a faintly ominous tinge to some of the literature intended for normal parents of normal children, and may thereby accentuate—among those who expose themselves to it—the hazards as against the satisfactions of family life. It is possible that in retrospect his decade will be seen as a transitional to one in which professional emphasis will be upon the joys of competent performance as parents, rather than upon the difficulties and threats of failure. It is unlikely, however, that a later decade will witness any decline of parental self-awareness, as long as better knowledge and recommended practice continue to be evolved. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Life has many functions. People are to be logical, aesthetic, ethical, and social. These spheres, theoretical and practical, are concerned with the fulfilment of meaning for the self-actualized. Thus, in the sphere of knowledge, culture attends to conditioned forms of being and their unity. In the sphere of law, the unconditioned person learns the personal grounds of every right; and, in the social sphere, to unconditioned love. Self-actualization is the practice of learning to use one’s power and meaning in unity to designate the human dimension of life to causes that improve humanity, environment and self. Life is the actualization of potential. Life actualizes itself in several dimensions or realms which, while distinct and often in conflict, compenetrate one another. In each of these dimensions life is actualized in three basic functions: self-integration, self-creativity, and self-transcendence. Self-integration appears as morality; self-creativity, as culture; and self-transcendence of life under the dimension of morality. The goal is to adhere to the ultimate concern, and this state cannot be restricted to a special realm. The unconditional character of this concern implies that it refers to every moment of our life, to every space ad every realm. The subjective unconditionality of the ultimate concern means it encompasses the total engagement of the person, is linked with objective unconditionality, the ground and abyss of being and meaning. Once in the grasp of such ultimates, man cannot limit his response to an isolated area. The scope of life and self-transcendence is not another horizontal line of actualization, but a striving in the vertical direction toward the ultimate and infinite being. Self-actualization has no horizons; its only dimensions are the unlimited height and dept of being and meaning. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19