In the general case, it is necessary to compare prior expectations with the reality that resulted from a policy to determine that a 'mistake' occurred. Rationalization takes the form of not trusting the obvious conclusion that intentions did not match results, and instead manipulating the description of history such that no such mistake occurred. For example, describing the invasion of Iraq as having the purpose of "spreading democracy" instead of what many would have said at the time which is that it was to "find weapons of mass destruction". It is partly for this reason that statements of intentions are important, so that mistakes and therefore inaccurate standards of evaluation can be identified. There are other symptoms that there is, in fact, low awareness of the lack of "broad awareness of the varying reliability of primary signals" but this has been described elsewhere so no point in repeating it. Just thought I'd clear that up. Also I was going to mention the Evil Overlord list as a sort of example of how people take at face value things that aren't very realistic.
As I was saying, I was going to link to a post on this site which said something to the effect of "when the system is broken, you shall exploit the system to encourage people to fix it" but there are no Google search results for "you shall exploit". But that's the general idea. As I said above... the previous post is a reasonable argument that the system is broken and therefore the norms of society, held by a majority of the population, about what will lead to the best results can be ignored. For example, Confucius has a role in Chinese culture but his advice did not lead to the rapid adoption of energy and metal technologies and so China was subject to military exploitation, unlike Japan which rapidly modernized when the problem with its previous strategy became apparent.
This means it is up to business leaders in the private sector to use the accelerated work week if people want to fix unemployment etc., and of course this was an option from the start. I just didn't want to accuse people of slacking at work without evidence, due to the misinterpretations that this could lead to if managers tried harder to eliminate that inefficiency without a reduction in the average work week.
However, with the various assumptions having been countered—such as the assumption that "the US needs more rich people because lack of wealth is the only explanation for high unemployment!!1"—it is more likely that such a plan can proceed with confidence. One of the key points of previous posts was that people with high intelligence are likely to attempt to use "lack of conflict between their goals and society", or to put it another way behavior that is consistent with both the "conflict-avoiding" and "conflict-welcoming" strategies, as a signal to other people of similar intelligence.
For a business, what this means is simple: in addition to the advantages to the business and employees mentioned in previous posts, there is the additional advantage of attracting people of high ability who would like to have a lifestyle that benefits the economy, using the metric described in the post "The unemployed are just lazy!" of comparing the amount of money earned that comes from people richer than you to the amount spent, including housing costs, that goes to people richer than you.
An existing example of this premium to a business is found in a recent New York Times article on Apple's retail workers. The fact that people are reluctant to work for a business that pays lower-than-average wages is seen from this poll, where 20 out of 20 people rejected the idea of working for a company that paid lower than a "fair" wage rate. The fact that part-time work currently pays less is seen from a study by the Economic Policy Institute, although another article interestingly mentions that part-time workers are not covered by the Affordable Care Act which might make it easier to use different types of health insurance plans that are better at controlling costs as described in an earlier post.
The goals of the Republican party generally align with the principles in that previous post, people just need to recognize that, as another recent NYTimes article mentioned, it currently isn't practical to compare prices for different health care providers and so the method described in the previous post on this site would help with that.
Hmm... compare this description of how a company captures a monopoly market with this article about how the wealthy have roughly the same standard of living as everyone else, by the author of "Eat People: And Other Unapologetic Rules for Game-Changing Entrepreneurs". There is also another recent article which says we should work less.
A final note, about the whole "buy local" thing. Imagine that money used to purchase goods from China went to a black hole, or maybe an extra-dimensional market that will sell any amount of goods at a constant price. Normally you would expect prices to go down if that money never returned to the United States, but of course the US can always just print more money to replace what was lost. Since the money leaves the system, it doesn't even cause inflation. Taxes could go to zero and printing money would support all government services. I don't know what people see wrong with this. On the other hand, if money does come back, then there is no reason to discriminate about the country of origin for goods, is there?
I don't know what to expect for how people will use the information on this blog. A different author said that conflict is indirectly the result of lack of choice; I later concluded that conflict can also be seen as "the search for the optimum global strategy and the attempt to eliminate local factors from the decision-making process without regard to inter-region movement and overall quality level"... if you could say that someone might want to choose to have a clear explanation for the origin of problems and what to expect from human behavior, or perhaps even a way to explain to someone else these things or judge the behavior of someone in terms of their expected current and future capabilities, I hope this blog has illuminated the relevant concerns.
(That "final note" was a while ago wasn't it...) It is well-known that money and existing connections are important in deciding who is elected for political office, especially at the national level. There can be little expectation that the system will lead to the accurate selection of the most competent leaders when so many voters expect other people to do their thinking for them. When people with influence within the existing framework are unwilling to support positive change, it is only natural to bypass that system and accomplish goals through other means.
"usagi" = reference to the rabbit in Rainbows End... and this video or maybe this one
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