The I Ching and Capitalism
Any system that acknowledges and works under the YANG and YIN cycle will survive. In essence any system that tries to harmonize with its YIN and YANG movements will thrive. We can find this in nature with its seasons in harmony.
Capitalism survives because capitalism is a system that allows for the free movement of YANG and YIN. When there is a weakness or a YIN or depressed area capitalism will find the way to fill the area. Thus YIN eventually becomes YANG.
On the other hand, where there is much yang in the consumer side, it will take away its demand as more and more producers try to compete for the same market. Once the market is saturated the producers will look for another area to compete and abandon the yang position.
Closed systems that do not allow for supply (YANG) and demand (YIN) to interact are doomed to fail.
Communism was doomed to failure because it did not allow for the interplay of changes based on the YANG or YIN or the supply and demand to take effect. A centralized government was interfering with its natural law of change.
Communism is based on the whims of a single leader who decides for everyone else what is best for all the citizens. The same applies to the aristocracy where a single Duke could hold the most talented musician in bond for as long as he pleased. Such a system could never thrive.
Capitalism allows the free exercise of each individual’s will much like nature allows the free intervention of everyone’s choice or will to come into play.
Microsoft error was in not allowing the free flow of ideas. When an influential group holds on to the past – windows and its obsolete systems- and does not allow the other groups to bring in new ideas – Internet based -then the corporation is doomed to fail.
The I CHING says: “In times of prosperity every able man called to fill an office draws like-minded people along with him, ‘just as in pulling up ribbon grass one always pulls up a bunch of it, because the stalks are connected by their roots. In such times, when it is possible to extend influence widely, the mind of an able man is set upon going out into life and accomplishing something.”
