Working Paper No. 2023-24 Recoupling: The driver of Human Success

The bidirectional arrows indicate that the variability in the scale of our challenges needs to be matched by the flexibility in the scale of our capacities in order for recoupling to occur. [...] In particular, policy makers must work with businesses and civil society at the level of small social groups to enable the mobilization of collective capacities at the appropriate levels to occur and for people to participate successfully in the alignment of these capacities with the existing collective challenges. [...] Decoupling in the scope of our challenges from the scope of our capacities underlies many of the social problems that drive modern populist movements — the anger of the “left behind,” the mistrust of elites, the popular support for protectionism and strict immigration controls. [...] Inequities and inefficiencies in the social sphere cannot be corrected through monetary compensation, since the monetization of a social interaction changes the meaning and value of the interaction (as in the case of sex, for example). [...] When the domain of the market and the state grows excessively relative to the domain of society, then people fall prey to a sense of disempowerment and alienation.