“天下英雄入吾彀”

"All the Heroes Under Heaven Have Entered My Range"

——殖官主義怎樣把人性扭曲為“彀性”，K→Q的因應之道

— How Bureaucolonialism Distorts Human Nature into “Range-Conditioned Nature,” and the K → Q Response

錢宏（Archer Hong Qian）

重建組織信託的K→Q理論，是共生經濟學《殖官論》，超越《資本論》階級鬥爭路徑和《21世紀資本論》徵稅再分配路徑，同時，也是超越凱恩斯政府管控與哈耶克市場自由鐘擺困境的診→療新範式。

——《共生經濟學概論（修訂版）》

秦制漢儒以降，官位官階大一統與名教教化相互嵌合，逐漸形成了一種把天下之人納入組織之“彀”的深層政治遺產。

相傳唐太宗李世民曾私下視察端門，看見新科進士們排着隊伍走出來，十分高興地說：“天下英雄入吾彀中矣！”

“彀”（gòu，音垢），本義是張滿弓弩。“彀中”，就是弓箭射程以內，後來引申為牢籠、控制範圍。“盡入彀中”，就是全部進入控制範圍。

唐代通過科舉制度，把天下讀書人的前途與國家選官制度連接起來。後世因此還流傳着一句意味深長的話：“太宗皇帝真長策，賺得英雄盡白頭。”

當然，科舉打破門閥對仕途的世襲壟斷，使更多普通讀書人獲得進入國家組織的機會，這是它重要的歷史意義。

但“天下英雄入吾彀中”還提出了另外一個問題：英雄入彀以後，會發生什麼？

這恰恰是殖官主義（Bureaucolonialism）政治經濟組織行為學值得研究的問題。

一、“彀”，不只是把人關進去，而是把人變成“彀人”

一個組織最初約束的只是人的行為。

可是，當一個人的收入、晉升、榮譽、住房、資源、社會地位、人際關係、信息來源乃至安全感，都越來越依附於同一個組織體系的時候，組織對他的影響就不再只是“上班”。它開始進入人的語言、判斷、關係、利益乃至人格。

我們生活中常有這樣的經驗。一個原本十分熟悉的朋友，甚至父母兄弟，一旦進入官場——其實商場、情場乃至各種高度封閉的組織關係中也存在類似現象——人慢慢就變了。

台上與台下不一樣；會內與會外不一樣；公開與私下不一樣。

私下聊天，他可能告訴你：“其實我也知道不是這麼回事。”到了會上，卻立即換了一套語言：“我們必須統一認識。”在家裡，他按照生活常識判斷；進入組織以後，他首先判斷的卻可能變成：“上面是什麼意思？”

一個人開始同時生活在兩個世界：一個是生活世界，一個是組織世界。開始的時候，他也許只是“演”；演得久了，角色便進入自己。

於是，人性之外逐漸長出官性；官性進一步接受組織規範，又可能形成所謂黨性；當組織的獎懲、資源、信息、安全和身份把一個人越來越完整地包圍起來以後，則形成一種更一般的東西：彀性。

所謂“彀性”，不是說進入組織的人一定道德敗壞，而是指：一個完整的生命主體長期處於封閉、高度等級化的組織控制範圍以後，為了適應組織的獎懲、資源和安全結構，逐漸形成的一套穩定行為傾向。

所以俗話所謂“官身不由己”，真正值得研究的不是“官”，而是那個“不由己”。

是誰讓他不由己？靠什麼讓他不由己？為什麼那麼多原本完全不同的人，進入同一個組織以後，最後卻越來越會說相似的話、做相似的事、迴避相似的風險？

這不是簡單的個人道德問題。這是組織行為問題。

二、“五子登科”：一個完整的“彀”是怎樣形成的？

我曾在《論社會生活動力之動力》（1980）中，用“五子登科”概括殖官主義走到極端極權時的政治組織形態。

五子指的是：槍桿子、筆桿子、錢袋子、秤桿子、刀把子。今天重新來看，“五子登科”最值得研究的，不只是權力集中本身，而是五種不同的組織能力一旦匯入同一套官位、官階體系，就可能構成一個完整的“彀”。

槍桿子裡面出政權必然靠槍桿替代政權安全；筆桿子掌握宣傳、教育、信息與公共敘事；錢袋子掌握財政、金融、國有資產與重要資源配置；秤桿子掌握標準制定、統計計量、統計口徑與考核尺度；刀把子掌握司法、執法、懲戒與爭議裁決。

這五種能力原本都是現代國家不可缺少的能力。問題不在於有沒有它們，而在於：如果五種能力最後都匯入同一套縱向官位官階體系，每一個進入場中的人還有多少“彀外空間”？

說什麼，關繫到評價；做什麼，關繫到晉升；怎樣統計，關繫到政績；跟誰交往，可能關繫到安全；是否服從，又關繫到資源乃至命運。

於是，“天下英雄入吾彀中”便不再只是一句帝王收羅人才的得意話。它變成了一個嚴肅的政治經濟組織行為問題：當天下英雄都進入同一個彀以後，還有多少力量能夠站在彀外檢驗這個彀？

問題從來不是有沒有要不要“五種權力”，而是：五種權力究竟服務生命，還是反過來操縱生命？

三、從“人性”到“彀性”：組織為什麼能夠改變人扭曲人？

把一切歸咎於“人性貪婪”，解釋不了為什麼一些原本正直的人進入某種組織以後，也逐漸學會了另一套行為方式；同樣解釋不了為什麼同一個人離開某種組織環境以後，又可能恢復原來的常識判斷。

真正發揮作用的是：人性 × 組織結構。

組織通過獎與懲不斷篩選人的行為。符合組織要求的行為得到獎勵；不符合的行為承擔成本；能夠準確判斷組織意圖的人不斷晉升；始終堅持“彀外判斷”的人，則可能逐漸被邊緣化。

久而久之，組織甚至不需要每天告訴每個人應該怎樣做。人已經學會了自己校正自己。這才是“彀”最成熟的時候。

真正牢固的牢籠，並不需要每時每刻有人站在門口，因為住在裡面的人已經知道哪裡是“黑屋子”的邊界。

這裡的“黑屋子”，沿用了魯迅“鐵屋子”的寓意：最深的禁錮，不只是門鎖在哪裡，而是身在其中的人已經熟知、甚至內化了它的邊界。

我早在幾十年前討論形式主義、官僚主義時就曾用過一個樸素的比喻：即使是一群通常只會吃草、看起來溫順無害的動物，如果被長期圈在一塊封閉草地里，那塊草地也可能被弄得屎騷尿臭、凌亂不堪。問題不能只歸咎於哪一隻羊“壞”，還必須追問那塊地怎樣被圈、怎樣被管、怎樣形成了持續的行為環境。

彀性也是如此。它不是替個人免除責任，而是要求我們在個人責任之外繼續追問：什麼樣的組織形式，在持續生產什麼樣的人？

四、從“彀性”到四種政治經濟組織行為定勢

當彀性從個人行為逐漸變成組織習慣以後，一些原本可能只是臨時性的手段，就會固化為政治經濟組織行為定勢。其中至少有四種特別值得研究：貪腐、維穩、賣國、備戰。

這裡的“貪腐”，不能只理解成收紅包。當組織掌握土地、金融、審批、工程、採購、礦產、市場准入等稀缺資源配置權以後，權力本身就可能創造租金，於是形成創租—抽租—尋租。發展到某些階段，還可能出現以跨地區執法、凍結、罰沒等方式汲取企業資源的所謂“遠洋捕撈”。

第二種是維穩。任何社會都需要公共安全。但是，當維護社會秩序逐漸轉變為防止一切非組織化思想、社群和社會自組織行為時，“穩定”就發生了含義變化：它保護的究竟首先是生命安全，還是組織自身？

組織控制越強，社會自組織能力越弱；社會自組織能力越弱，組織越覺得必須加強控制，於是形成“控制—失去自組織—更加不安全—繼續控制”的循環。

第三種，我仍然願意使用一個強烈的詞：賣國。國家之間當然需要外交，也可以進行國際援助和資源合作。這裡所謂“賣國”，不是指正常外交，而是指組織未經充分授權和價值承兌，把本應屬於本國國民的資金、土地、礦產以及其他資源，當成維繫自身對外關係、購買政治支持或者擴大組織影響力滲透力的籌碼，而成本最終由國民承擔。

所以“賣國”說到底，首先是賣國民：把國民擁有的資源，當成組織自己的資源去交換。於是，便可能出現所謂金錢外交、土地外交、資源外交。這種把國民資源置於組織對外關係需要之下的配置邏輯，並非某一朝一代、某一個人的偶發現象；一旦沉澱為政治遺產，便可能跨越政權更迭，以不同名義和形式反覆出現。

第四種是備戰。一個國家當然必須具有必要的國防能力。但當組織越來越把內外關係都理解成潛在威脅的時候，“安全”就可能成為一個不斷擴張的概念：對外防敵，對內防亂，上面防下面，組織防社會。

於是備戰與維穩開始在組織邏輯上匯合：一個防“外”，一個防“內”，共同的思維卻是把生命首先視為需要防範、管理和動員的對象。

五、為什麼經濟繁榮，普通人卻未必得到相應承兌？

一個國家完全可能同時出現GDP高速增長、對外貿易快速擴大、巨額貿易順差、外匯儲備增加、城市建設日新月異、基礎設施越來越漂亮，整個社會呈現一派經濟繁榮。

可是，這些事實並不能自動推出普通人的生活也按照同樣速度改善。

因為財富創造出來，是第一回事；財富通過什麼組織通道流動，是第二回事；最終有多少承兌為生命福祉，是第三回事。

錢可能流向哪裡？

一部分通過創租、抽租、尋租進入權力利益網絡；一部分被越來越龐大的組織維持成本消耗；一部分用於缺少充分公共授權與價值承兌的對外政治性資源配置；一部分進入不斷擴大的內外安全體系。

於是，問題根本不是一句“國家有沒有錢”，而是：“錢最後到哪裡去了？”

民間廣為流傳的“寧贈友邦，不與家奴”，常被歸於慈禧太后，但確切出處尚需考證。真正值得注意的，不是這句話究竟出自誰，而是它為什麼能夠長期流傳：它觸碰到了一種更深的政治遺產——當組織把國民資源優先作為維繫自身對外關係的籌碼，而不是首先向國民確權、承兌時，政權可以更替，名義可以改變，這種資源配置邏輯卻仍可能以新的形式延續。

這正是GDP無法單獨回答的問題。GDP記錄經濟活動，卻不會自動告訴我們這些活動最後有沒有改善普通人的生活；貿易順差說明一定時期內出口與進口的差額，卻不會自動告訴我們這些財富最後怎樣在生命之間承兌；外匯儲備可以十分龐大，卻也不能自動證明普通人的健康、收入、自由時間、社會信任和生活質量同步提高。

於是，張養浩那句古老的話突然獲得了現代政治經濟學意義：“興，百姓苦；亡，百姓苦。”

“亡，百姓苦”不難理解。《殖官論》真正需要解釋的是：為什麼“興”，百姓依舊可能苦？

六、“興，百姓苦”：增長與生命之間隔着一個組織

答案逐漸顯現：增長與生命之間，隔着一個組織。

如果組織是受託者，它會不斷把經濟增長轉化成生命賦能；如果組織發生殖官化，它就可能把越來越多增長成果轉化成組織擴張、組織維持、組織安全、組織利益以及組織對內控制和對外影響力。

所以殖官主義最難被識別的時候，未必是國家衰敗的時候，恰恰可能是在GDP高速增長、城市燈火輝煌、出口不斷擴大、外匯儲備不斷增加的時候。因為“興”最容易遮住“百姓苦”。

這也正是“秤桿子”留下來的那個問題。GDP這桿秤稱出了經濟活動，可是它沒有稱出生命究竟獲得了多少效能。即使GDP數字完全真實，這個問題仍然存在。

因此，共生經濟學（Symbionomics）不是要把GDP扔掉，而是繼續追問GDP沒有回答的問題：成本究竟有沒有下降？生命究竟有沒有得到賦能？生命是不是更加健康？人與組織是不是更加信任？人與人、組織與組織、國家與國家是不是更加和平？

也就是C—E—H—T—P，並由此進一步進入GDE。

不是為了再造一杆由組織掌握的新秤，而是為了追問：經濟究竟有沒有回到生活？

七、K不是貧富兩條線，而是生命轉動力的結構性斷裂

到了這裡，“興，百姓苦”就不能再只被解釋成貧富分化。

貧富差距只是K最容易被看見的一條裂縫。K真正要描述的，是政治、經濟、組織行為作用以後，財富、機會、權利、創造、承兌、信任、健康以及生命轉動力發生的多重結構性斷裂。

因此，K的上端並不天然是“壞”的。企業家創造產品，科學家創造技術，投資者承擔風險，優秀的組織者提高效率，他們獲得更高收益，本來可以是價值創造得到承兌的結果。

問題不在於有人向上，而在于越來越多生命還有沒有向上的轉動力。

如果創造能夠得到承兌，承兌能夠重新賦能生命，被賦能的生命又能夠進入新的創造，那麼差異並不會自動變成斷裂。真正的K發生在價值創造與價值承兌斷裂、財富與創造財富的生命斷裂、組織能力與普通生命主體斷裂、上升通道與越來越多生命斷裂的時候。

殖官主義的“五子登科”會使這種斷裂更加嚴重：資源可以被截留，尺度可以被扭曲，表達可以被壓縮，社會自組織可以被削弱，安全成本可以不斷擴張。

於是，一個經濟體完全可能一面高速增長，一面不斷生成K。

GDP可以是真的，繁榮可以是真的，工業化、技術進步和基礎設施建設也可以是真的；與此同時，K也可以是真的。

這就是為什麼不能因為發現了殖官主義的病理，就否認發展中真實發生的生命創造；也不能因為取得了驚人的經濟成績，就否認越來越多生命可能正在失去轉動力。

K，是發展發生以後仍可能出現的結構性斷裂。

八、兩條老路：推翻K，或者重新分配K

面對K，人類幾千年來反覆走過兩條路。

第一條路，是推翻、取而代之。當舊組織把矛盾積累到難以承受，下面的人起來推翻上面的人，新的力量取得權力，再建立新的組織。從王朝更替到現代革命，這條路一再出現。

它當然可能打破已經僵死的舊結構，在特定歷史階段打開新的空間。但如果製造“彀”的關繫結構沒有改變，昨天的Object取得權力成為今天的Subject以後，仍可能重新把別人變成Object。

所以，推翻K的上端，不等於消滅生成K的機制。

第二條路，是改革、調節、再分配。不把上端推翻，而是通過稅收、福利、轉移支付、公共服務以及各種政策調整，把已經形成的差距重新拉近一些。

這種辦法能夠救急、托底、緩和貧困和社會衝突，現實作用不能否認。但是，如果製造K的機制仍在運行，就可能出現“生成K—調節K—緩解K—再生成K”的循環。

過去一百多年，這兩條歷史老路分別獲得了極有影響力的現代理論表達。

《資本論》把資本—勞動關係中的結構性衝突推到理論中心，由它發展出來的階級鬥爭與革命路徑，試圖通過改變占有與權力關係解決問題。《21世紀資本論》則把財富和收入集中重新推到中心，並把累進徵稅、資本稅與再分配作為重要政策工具。

二者的時代、材料和理論任務當然不同，也都揭示了真實問題。但從K—Q的坐標看，一條主要着眼於推翻或改變K的上端，一條主要着眼於K形成以後重新分配。

《殖官論》因此繼續追問第三個問題：

什麼樣的政治經濟組織行為在持續製造K？又怎樣改變這種生成機制，使生命重新獲得進入Q的轉動力？

所謂“超越”，不是為了宣布前人錯誤，更不是爭一塊理論招牌。唯一的檢驗標準是：能不能把問題解釋得更深，並且真正解決問題。

九、凱恩斯與哈耶克：政府還是市場，為什麼仍然不夠？

如果說“推翻還是再分配”是第一層爭論，那麼二十世紀另一條影響深遠的軸線，就是“政府還是市場”。

大蕭條以後，凱恩斯主義強調：當有效需求不足、失業嚴重、市場自身難以迅速恢復時，政府必須進入，通過財政、貨幣以及公共投資等手段托住經濟。

哈耶克則從另一面提出警告：任何中心都不可能掌握分散在無數個人之中的全部知識。價格、選擇和自發秩序具有計劃者無法替代的信息功能。過度集中計劃不僅可能降低效率，也可能壓縮個人自由和自組織空間。

從共生經濟學看，哈耶克向生命自組織邁近了一大步。他尊重分散知識，尊重個體選擇，反對一個中心把自己當成唯一Subject替所有生命作決定。

但這仍然不夠。

因為自組織並不自動等於共生。

市場主體獲得自由以後，仍可能形成壟斷；資本仍可能殖官化；平台仍可能成為新的超級Subject；政府退後以後，其他大型組織仍然可能把生命重新Object化。

因此，問題不能停在“政府多一點還是市場多一點”。

真正的問題是：獲得主體性的生命怎樣連接？不同主體怎樣確權、交互、契合、承兌？怎樣在保持差異的同時，共襄生成新的價值而不是重新製造新的彀？

這就是從自發秩序繼續走向Intersubjective的地方。

十、羅斯福與里根：兩次重要實驗，為什麼都只解決了一部分問題？

理論爭論最終要進入現實。

羅斯福新政是在經濟與社會發生嚴重斷裂時，由政府擴大救濟、監管、公共投資和制度建設，以組織力量托住市場和生活。這套辦法解決了大蕭條條件下的一系列緊迫問題，也重塑了美國國家與市場的關係。

幾十年以後，里根面對的卻是另一組問題：高通脹、增長乏力、稅負和監管爭議。里根改革轉向減稅、放鬆部分監管、釋放企業與個人創造力，讓市場重新發揮更大作用。

兩次政策實驗方向不同，卻都解決了各自時代的一部分真實問題。

但它們也留下同一個更深的問題。

羅斯福式路徑如果不斷擴大組織能力，就必須繼續回答：誰來約束組織本身？

里根式路徑如果只停留在“政府少一點、市場多一點”，也必須繼續回答：市場主體之間怎樣避免新的壟斷、掠奪、斷裂和Object化？

所以，羅斯福與里根不是簡單的誰對誰錯。

一個讓組織進入市場，一個讓組織退出一部分。

K—Q繼續追問的，則是第三層問題：怎樣重新定義組織與生命、組織與組織、主體與主體之間的關係，使經濟運行本身能夠不斷恢復生命轉動力。

十一、克林頓到奧巴馬：當“彀”通過全球化產生負制度外部性

里根之後，美國經濟進入了一個新的歷史條件：冷戰結束、信息技術革命展開、全球資本和供應鏈迅速跨境配置。

克林頓政府推動中國加入世界貿易體系時，有一個非常明確的判斷：經濟開放不僅能夠擴大美國企業進入中國市場的機會，也會推動中國繼續市場化、縮小國有部門、接受國際規則，並進一步面對政治改革。2000年前後的克林頓政府文件反覆表達了這種期待。

換句話說，當時存在一個重要假設：

市場化會推動制度開放；全球市場會逐漸改變進入其中的不同制度。

這個假設後來至少沒有按照當年的預期完整實現。

更值得《殖官論》研究的，是另一個當時沒有得到足夠重視的問題：當不同制度結構進入同一個全球市場以後，發生跨境流動的不只是商品、資本、技術和管理經驗。

制度造成的成本差異，也可能通過價格、投資和供應鏈向外傳遞。

我把這種現象稱為：

負制度外部性。

如果一種商品的低成本不僅來自技術進步、管理效率和勞動生產率，也部分來自特殊的勞動力定價、政府補貼、資源配置、環境成本、金融支持以及其他制度安排，那麼這種商品進入全球市場以後，參與競爭的就不只是“企業對企業”。

制度也藉助商品、資本和供應鏈發生競爭。

這裡出現了一個極其重要的悖論。

美國企業可以把生產轉移到成本更低的地方；美國資本可以獲得更高回報；美國消費者可以購買更加便宜的商品；中國也可以獲得資本、技術、管理經驗、市場和工業化機會。

這些收益都是真實的。

但如果只看到“美國占據高端、中國承擔製造”“美國得到廉價商品”，就漏掉了生活世界裡最樸素的一層常識：

一個人失去工作，不只是少了一份工資。

工作還是技能的載體、家庭生活的支撐、社區連接的一部分，也是人的創造能力、社會參與和尊嚴獲得承兌的重要方式。

工廠一旦長期消失，失去的也不只是一棟廠房。

產業鏈會斷，技能會退化，社區會衰落，地方財政會削弱，土地與設施會閒置，下一代進入生產與創造的路徑也會發生改變。

這就是我所說的：

空心化，田休耕。

因此，問題不能簡單歸咎於中國。美國資本追逐低成本，美國企業主動重組供應鏈，美國消費者享受廉價商品，美國政策制定者相信貿易與市場開放會帶來制度趨同，這些主體都參與了這一過程。

真正需要反思的是：為什麼全球市場能夠迅速計算商品價格，卻沒有同時充分計算制度成本、生命成本、社區成本和組織信託成本？

從克林頓到奧巴馬，這種全球化結構進一步深化。全球化創造了巨大財富，也使一部分產業、地區和生命逐漸失去轉動力。

於是，K不再只是一個國家內部的分化。

不同制度進入全球連接以後，一方的制度安排也可能通過供應鏈向另一方傳遞成本，並在不同社會中生成不同形式的K。

市場本來被期待去改變“彀”。

結果卻出現了另一種可能：

“彀”也可以借市場把自己的制度影響傳出去。

這正是負制度外部性最值得研究的地方。

十二、為什麼我把川普新政稱為“常識新政”？

理解了“空心化，田休耕”，才能理解為什麼川普的政治出現不能只從傳統左右坐標來解釋。

早在1980年，34歲的川普接受Rona Barrett採訪時，就已經公開談到伊朗人質危機和美國國際威望。他認為美國表現得軟弱，別國才敢如此對待美國。但當主持人問他是否願意擔任總統、為什麼不從政時，他明確表示自己並不想當總統，並把政治生活形容為一種十分苛刻的生活。

到了1987年，他談論的對象已經明顯擴大。他公開批評美國在與日本等國的經濟關係中受到不公平對待，同時仍明確表示自己“沒有政治抱負”。

這兩個早期材料至少說明一件事情：在正式從政幾十年前，他已經從一個商人的經驗和常識出發，持續關注美國的國家能力、國際交易、產業利益以及普通美國人最終承擔什麼成本。

因此，我把後來形成的川普新政稱為“常識新政”，重點並不在於說他掌握了某種完整的政治經濟學理論。

恰恰相反，它首先表現為一種生活世界的追問：

如果一種全球化安排能夠讓資本獲得利潤、消費者買到廉價商品，卻讓越來越多本國勞動者失去工作、技能、社區和尊嚴，這種安排真的只有“效率”，沒有成本嗎？

如果一個國家長期把產業鏈、能源、製造能力乃至關鍵供應能力交給外部，而只滿足於自己占據所謂“高端”，這種結構真的能夠持續嗎？

如果貿易規則在形式上相同，而不同制度內部的補貼、勞動力、資源、金融和監管成本並不相同，那麼所謂自由競爭是否已經包含了沒有被計入的制度差異？

這些問題並不首先來自左派或者右派。

它們來自常識。

川普後來進入政治的個人動機當然不應被簡化成單一原因；一個人的從政決定不可能僅憑几段早年採訪得到完整解釋。但從1980、1987年的公開表達，到後來競選中反覆強調貿易、製造業、工作崗位和國家實力，可以看到一條長期存在的關注線索。

也正是在這個意義上，川普“常識新政”的政策和實踐呈現出一種值得研究的政治經濟組織行為取向：它不只是等K形成以後再重新分配，也不只是重複“政府還是市場”的舊爭論，而是把稅負、監管、能源、製造業、供應鏈、貿易條件、邊境與政府組織成本等放進同一個現實問題中，試圖改變K得以生成的若干條件。

這並不意味着任何一項具體政策天然正確。每項政策仍然必須接受事實、成本、效能和長期結果的檢驗。

但從K→Q的框架看，它提出的問題已經發生變化：

不是只問K形成以後怎樣分；

而是開始問，怎樣讓失去工作、能力、連接和尊嚴的生命重新進入創造。

這正是“常識新政”與共生經濟學發生契合的地方。

十三、從川普、米萊到Q：越出“左—右、政府—市場”的舊坐標

米萊的改革也說明，今天真正值得研究的變化已經很難只用“市場還是計劃”來概括。

削減無效組織成本、改變監管和財政結構、釋放企業和個人創造力，與傳統自由市場思想當然存在連接；但如果改革進一步觸及組織怎樣受託、資源怎樣承兌、生命怎樣恢復創造能力，它所面對的已經不只是“國有還是私有”“政府還是市場”。

川普與米萊並沒有提出Q Economy，也不能因為某些政策與共生經濟學發生契合，就把現實政治人物裝進一個預先設計的理論盒子。

但他們的一些政策和實踐呈現出一個共同傾向：

從處理K的結果，轉向觸及K的生成條件。

這正是從K走向Q需要的政治經濟組織行為轉向。

Q不是把K的上下兩條線重新拉平。

Q也不是平均主義。

生命本來就有差異。人與人的能力不同、選擇不同、創造不同、承擔的風險不同，生成的結果當然也不同。

同則不繼。

真正的問題不是消滅差異，而是差異之間還有沒有連接；生命創造出來的價值能不能得到確權與承兌；承兌以後能不能重新賦能生命；被賦能的生命能不能繼續進入新的創造。

因此，Q的基本運動是：

生命 → 創造 → 確權 → 承兌 → 賦能 → 連接 → 再創造。

Q不是把K壓平。

Q是讓越來越多失去轉動力的生命重新轉起來。

十四、從Subject—Object到Intersubjective：重建組織信託

這樣再回頭看“彀性”，問題就更加清楚。

彀最深的病理，不只是讓一些人拿走了更多錢，而是損害生命主體性。

一個人從“我能創造什麼”變成“上面要什麼”；從“這件事有沒有價值”變成“這件事算不算政績”；從“怎樣與別人生成新的可能”變成“怎樣在組織裡面獲得更安全的位置”。

這就是從生命主體向組織Object的退化。

所以，從K走向Q，首先不是財富搬運，而是主體性的恢復：讓勞動者重新成為主體，讓企業重新成為主體，讓社會組織重新成為主體，讓社區重新成為主體，也讓政府從唯一的Subject重新成為生命授權和受託的組織。

到了這裡，Q Economy便與Everything Intersubjective Symbiosism——萬事交互主體共生——接上了。

從Subject → Object，走向Subject ↔ Subject，再進一步進入Intersubjective。

不是一個主體消滅另一個主體；不是下面推翻上面以後自己成為新的上面；也不是由第三個超級組織不斷把上面的財富搬給下面。

而是讓不同主體保持差異、發生連接、彼此承兌、相互賦能，並在“間”中共襄生成新的價值、新的關係和新的可能。

走出“彀”的組織邏輯，不是讓天下英雄進入一個更好的彀，而是讓每一個生命仍然成為自己，讓不同主體能夠連接彼此、成就彼此，並共襄生成值得信託的組織。

這樣，槍桿子才能接受授權而不是成為授權本身；筆桿子才能接受事實、邏輯和交互驗證；錢袋子才能從控制資源走向確權、受託與承兌；秤桿子才能從GDP繼續走向生命效能；刀把子才能在維護公共秩序的同時，為生命自組織留下空間。

《資本論》所代表的一條現代路徑，試圖改變K的占有與權力結構；《21世紀資本論》所代表的另一條路徑，着力於K形成以後的徵稅與再分配；凱恩斯與哈耶克分別從政府干預與自發秩序回應現代經濟失衡；羅斯福與里根又把兩種不同方向帶進了現實政策實驗；克林頓以後深化的全球化，則進一步暴露出不同制度連接時可能產生的負制度外部性。

這些探索都解決過真實問題，也都留下了尚未解決的問題。

K→Q繼續追問的，是它們之後的那一步：

怎樣改變不斷製造K的政治經濟組織行為，使生命重新獲得自組織、連接、創造、確權、承兌、賦能和再創造的轉動力？

生命是目的，組織是受託。

從Subject—Object走向Intersubjective；

從K-Shaped Rupture走向Q Economy；

從“天下英雄入吾彀中”，走向主體與主體相遇於“間”；

從組織控制，走向組織信託。

萬事交互主體共生。

這是殖官主義解構之後，建設真正開始的地方。

2026年9月25日於 Vancouver

"All the Heroes Under Heaven Have Entered My Range"

— How Bureaucolonialism Distorts Human Nature into “Range-Conditioned Nature,” and the K → Q Response

Archer Hong Qian

The K → Q theory of rebuilding organizational trust, developed in Symbionomics as the theory of Bureaucolonialism, is a new diagnosis → treatment paradigm. It seeks to move beyond both the class-struggle path associated with Capital and the tax-and-redistribution path associated with Capital in the Twenty-First Century, while also moving beyond the pendulum between Keynesian government intervention and Hayekian market freedom.

— Symbionomics: An Overview (Revised Edition)

Since the institutional legacy of Qin rule and Han Confucianism, a unified hierarchy of official rank and position became intertwined with orthodox moral instruction, gradually forming a deep political inheritance that drew people throughout the realm into the organizational “range” — the gòu.

According to tradition, Emperor Taizong of Tang, Li Shimin, once privately inspected the Duanmen Gate. Seeing the newly successful imperial examination candidates filing out in a line, he reportedly exclaimed with delight: “All the heroes under heaven have entered my range!”

The character 彀 (gòu) originally means drawing a bow or crossbow to full tension. 彀中 means the area within the range of an arrow, and by extension a sphere of confinement or control. To “enter the range” is to be brought within that sphere of control.

Through the imperial examination system, the Tang dynasty connected the prospects of the empire’s scholars to the state’s system of official recruitment. A later saying captured the deeper implication: “Emperor Taizong devised a truly masterful strategy, keeping the heroes striving until their hair turned white.”

Of course, the examination system also broke the hereditary monopoly of aristocratic clans over official careers and gave more ordinary scholars an opportunity to enter state organizations. That was an important historical achievement.

Yet “all the heroes under heaven have entered my range” raises another question: what happens to heroes after they enter the range? That is precisely a question worth examining through the political-economic organizational behavior of Bureaucolonialism.

I. The “Range” Does More Than Confine People: It Turns Them into “People of the Range”

At first, an organization constrains only a person’s behavior. But when income, promotion, honor, housing, resources, social status, personal relationships, sources of information, and even a sense of security become increasingly dependent on the same organizational system, the organization’s influence no longer ends when the workday ends. It begins to enter a person’s language, judgment, relationships, interests, and eventually personality.

We often encounter this in ordinary life. A friend we once knew very well — even a parent, sibling, or other close relative — enters officialdom and gradually seems to change. Similar phenomena can also occur in business, intimate relationships, and other highly closed organizational settings.

The person onstage differs from the person offstage; inside the meeting differs from outside it; public speech differs from private speech. In private, someone may tell you, “I know that is not really how things are.” Yet in a meeting the language immediately changes: “We must unify our understanding.” At home, the person judges by ordinary common sense; inside the organization, the first question may become: “What does the leadership mean?”

A person begins to live in two worlds at once: the world of life and the world of organization. At first, perhaps he is merely “performing.” But after performing long enough, the role enters the self.

Thus, alongside human nature there gradually grows an official nature; as official nature is further shaped by organizational norms, it may develop into what is called Party nature. When an organization’s rewards and punishments, resources, information, security, and identity increasingly surround the whole person, something more general emerges: range-conditioned nature — gòu-xìng.

By “range-conditioned nature,” I do not mean that anyone who enters an organization necessarily becomes morally corrupt. I mean a stable set of behavioral tendencies gradually formed when a complete living subject remains for a long time within a closed and highly hierarchical sphere of organizational control and adapts to its structure of rewards, resources, and security.

The old saying that “an official no longer fully belongs to himself” is therefore worth examining not for the word “official,” but for the phrase “no longer belongs to himself.” Who makes him unable to act as himself? By what means? Why do so many very different people, after entering the same organization, gradually learn to say similar things, do similar things, and avoid similar risks? This is not merely a question of personal morality. It is a question of organizational behavior.

II. The “Fivefold Monopoly”: How Is a Complete Organizational “Range” Formed?

In The Driving Force Behind the Dynamics of Social Life (1980), I used the expression “Fivefold Monopoly” to describe an extreme totalizing political-organizational form of Bureaucolonialism.

The five are: the gun, the pen, the purse, the scale, and the judicial sword. Seen again today, the most important issue is not simply the concentration of power. It is that when five different organizational capacities converge within the same hierarchy of official positions and ranks, together they can form a complete “range.”

The gun controls coercive force and security; when political power is born from the gun, political security can in turn become dependent on the gun. The pen controls propaganda, education, information, and public narrative. The purse controls public finance, finance more broadly, state-owned assets, and the allocation of major resources. The scale controls standards, statistical measurement, statistical definitions, and performance criteria. The judicial sword controls adjudication, law enforcement, punishment, and dispute resolution.

All five capacities are necessary to a modern state. The question is not whether they should exist. The question is this: if all five ultimately converge into one vertical hierarchy of official rank and position, how much “space outside the range” remains for anyone who enters it?

What one says affects evaluation; what one does affects promotion; how one measures affects political performance; whom one associates with may affect security; and whether one obeys may affect resources and even one’s fate.

“All the heroes under heaven have entered my range” is therefore no longer merely an emperor’s boast about recruiting talent. It becomes a serious problem of political-economic organizational behavior: when all the heroes have entered the same range, how much power remains outside it to test and examine the range itself?

The issue has never been whether the five powers should exist. It is whether those five powers serve life, or whether they turn around and manipulate life.

III. From Human Nature to “Range-Conditioned Nature”: Why Can Organizations Change and Distort People?

To attribute everything to “human greed” cannot explain why some originally upright people gradually learn a different behavioral pattern after entering certain organizations. Nor can it explain why the same person, after leaving a particular organizational environment, may recover ordinary common-sense judgment.

What actually operates is: human nature × organizational structure.

Organizations continuously select behavior through reward and restraint. Conduct that conforms to organizational expectations is rewarded; conduct that does not carries costs. Those who accurately read organizational intentions keep advancing, while those who persist in judgments made “outside the range” may gradually be marginalized.

Over time, the organization no longer needs to tell everyone what to do every day. People learn to correct themselves. That is when the “range” becomes most mature.

A truly durable enclosure does not need a guard at the door every moment, because those inside already know the boundaries of the “dark room.” Here the “dark room” draws on Lu Xun’s metaphor of the “iron house”: the deepest confinement lies not only in where the locks are, but in the fact that those inside have learned — and even internalized — its boundaries.

Decades ago, when discussing formalism and bureaucracy, I used a simple analogy. Even a group of animals usually thought to be gentle and grass-eating, if kept for a long time inside one enclosed pasture, can leave that ground foul with dung and urine and in complete disorder. The problem cannot be reduced to which sheep is “bad.” We must also ask how the field was enclosed, how it was managed, and how it became a persistent behavioral environment.

Range-conditioned nature is similar. The concept does not absolve individuals of responsibility. It requires us, beyond personal responsibility, to ask: what forms of organization continuously produce what kinds of people?

IV. From “Range-Conditioned Nature” to Four Recurring Patterns of Political-Economic Organizational Behavior

When range-conditioned nature gradually becomes an organizational habit, measures that may originally have been temporary can solidify into recurring patterns of political-economic organizational behavior. At least four deserve special attention: corruption, stability maintenance, selling out the nation, and war preparedness.

“Corruption” here cannot be reduced to taking envelopes of cash. When an organization controls scarce resources such as land, finance, approvals, projects, procurement, minerals, and market access, power itself can create rents. A chain emerges: rent creation → rent extraction → rent seeking. At certain stages, this may even develop into the so-called “deep-sea fishing” practice of extracting enterprise resources through cross-regional law enforcement, account freezes, confiscations, and penalties.

The second pattern is stability maintenance. Every society needs public security. But when maintaining social order gradually turns into preventing all non-organized thought, associations, and forms of social self-organization, the meaning of “stability” changes. What is being protected first: the security of life, or the organization itself?

The stronger organizational control becomes, the weaker society’s capacity for self-organization becomes; the weaker self-organization becomes, the more the organization feels compelled to tighten control. A cycle forms: control → loss of self-organization → greater insecurity → more control.

The third is a deliberately strong expression: selling out the nation. States of course need diplomacy, international assistance, and resource cooperation. What I mean here is not normal diplomacy. I mean an organization, without sufficient authorization and value fulfillment, treating funds, land, minerals, and other resources that should belong to the country’s citizens as bargaining chips for maintaining its external relationships, purchasing political support, or expanding organizational influence and penetration, while citizens ultimately bear the cost.

In this sense, “selling out the nation” first means selling out the nation’s people: treating citizens’ resources as if they belonged to the organization itself and using them for exchange. This can take the form of money diplomacy, land diplomacy, or resource diplomacy. Such a logic — subordinating citizens’ resources to the organization’s external needs — is not necessarily an accident of one dynasty, one regime, or one individual. Once sedimented as a political inheritance, it can recur across changes of regime under different names and forms.

The fourth pattern is war preparedness. A state must of course possess necessary national-defense capacity. But when an organization increasingly interprets both internal and external relations as potential threats, “security” can become an endlessly expanding concept: guarding against external enemies, internal disorder, those below, and society itself.

War preparedness and stability maintenance then converge at the level of organizational logic: one guards against the “outside,” the other against the “inside,” but both begin from the same premise — treating life first as an object to be guarded against, managed, and mobilized.

V. Why Can an Economy Prosper Without Ordinary People Receiving Corresponding Fulfillment?

A country can simultaneously experience rapid GDP growth, expanding foreign trade, large trade surpluses, rising foreign-exchange reserves, rapidly changing cities, and increasingly impressive infrastructure. The whole society can appear economically prosperous.

Yet none of these facts automatically implies that ordinary people’s lives improve at the same speed.

Wealth being created is one matter. The organizational channels through which wealth flows are another. How much of that wealth is ultimately fulfilled in the well-being of life is a third.

Where can the money go? Some can enter power-interest networks through rent creation, rent extraction, and rent seeking. Some can be consumed by ever-growing organizational maintenance costs. Some can be used for externally oriented political resource allocation that lacks sufficient public authorization and value fulfillment. Some can enter expanding systems of internal and external security.

The fundamental question is therefore not simply, “Does the country have money?” It is: “Where did the money ultimately go?”

The widely circulated saying, “Better to give to friendly foreign powers than to domestic servants,” is often attributed to Empress Dowager Cixi, although its exact provenance remains uncertain. What matters is not finally who said it, but why it has circulated for so long. It touches a deeper political inheritance: when an organization gives priority to using citizens’ resources as bargaining chips for maintaining its own external relationships, rather than first confirming rights and fulfilling value toward its own citizens, regimes and names can change while the same allocation logic persists in new forms.

This is precisely what GDP alone cannot answer. GDP records economic activity, but it does not automatically tell us whether that activity ultimately improved ordinary people’s lives. A trade surplus measures the difference between exports and imports over a period, but it does not automatically tell us how the resulting wealth is ultimately fulfilled among living people. Foreign-exchange reserves can be enormous without proving that ordinary people’s health, income, free time, social trust, and quality of life improved in parallel.

Thus Zhang Yanghao’s old line suddenly acquires a modern political-economic meaning: “When the state prospers, the people suffer; when the state falls, the people suffer.”

Why people suffer when a state collapses is not difficult to understand. What the theory of Bureaucolonialism must explain is: why can the people still suffer when the state “prospers”?

VI. “When the State Prospers, the People Suffer”: Between Growth and Life Stands an Organization

The answer gradually becomes visible: between growth and life stands an organization.

If the organization is a trustee, it continually transforms economic growth into the empowerment of life. If the organization becomes bureaucolonialized, it may transform an increasing share of the gains from growth into organizational expansion, organizational maintenance, organizational security, organizational interests, internal control, and external influence.

Bureaucolonialism may therefore be hardest to recognize not when a country is declining, but precisely when GDP is growing rapidly, city lights are brilliant, exports keep expanding, and foreign-exchange reserves keep rising. Prosperity can most easily conceal the suffering of ordinary people.

This is also the question left by the “scale.” GDP weighs economic activity, but it does not weigh how much real efficacy life has gained. Even if every GDP figure is completely accurate, the problem remains.

Symbionomics therefore does not propose throwing GDP away. It continues to ask what GDP does not answer: Have costs actually fallen? Has life been empowered? Is life healthier? Is there greater trust between people and organizations? Are people, organizations, and nations more peaceful with one another?

That is C—E—H—T—P, and from there we move further into GDE.

The purpose is not to create another scale controlled by the organization, but to ask: has the economy actually returned to life?

VII. K Is Not Merely Two Lines of Rich and Poor, but a Structural Rupture in Life’s Capacity to Move

At this point, “when the state prospers, the people suffer” can no longer be explained simply as wealth inequality.

The wealth gap is only the most visible crack in K. What K really describes is a multidimensional structural rupture, produced through political, economic, and organizational behavior, in wealth, opportunity, rights, creation, fulfillment, trust, health, and life’s capacity to move.

The upper branch of K is therefore not inherently “bad.” Entrepreneurs create products, scientists create technologies, investors bear risk, and capable organizers raise efficiency. Higher returns can legitimately be the fulfillment of value creation.

The question is not whether some people move upward. The question is whether more and more lives still possess the capacity to move upward.

If creation can receive fulfillment, fulfillment can re-empower life, and empowered life can enter new creation, then difference does not automatically become rupture. The real K appears when value creation is severed from value fulfillment, wealth is severed from the lives that create it, organizational capacity is severed from ordinary living subjects, and pathways of upward movement are severed from an increasing number of lives.

The “Fivefold Monopoly” of Bureaucolonialism can deepen these ruptures: resources can be intercepted, measures distorted, expression compressed, social self-organization weakened, and security costs continually expanded.

An economy can therefore grow rapidly while continuously generating K. GDP can be real. Prosperity can be real. Industrialization, technological progress, and infrastructure construction can also be real. At the same time, K can also be real.

That is why recognizing the pathology of Bureaucolonialism does not justify denying the genuine creation that occurs during development; nor do remarkable economic achievements justify denying that increasing numbers of lives may be losing their capacity to move.

K is a structural rupture that can still emerge after development has occurred.

VIII. Two Old Paths: Overthrow K, or Redistribute K

Faced with K, humanity has repeatedly followed two paths over thousands of years.

The first is overthrow and replacement. When contradictions within an old organization accumulate beyond endurance, those below rise to overthrow those above; a new force acquires power and establishes a new organization. From dynastic change to modern revolution, this path has appeared again and again.

It can of course break a rigid old structure and, at particular historical moments, open new space. But if the relational structure that produces the “range” remains unchanged, yesterday’s Object may acquire power and become today’s Subject, only to turn others into Objects again.

Overthrowing the upper branch of K therefore does not eliminate the mechanism that generates K.

The second path is reform, adjustment, and redistribution. Instead of overthrowing the upper branch, taxation, welfare, transfer payments, public services, and other policies are used to narrow already existing gaps.

Such measures can provide emergency relief, establish a floor, and ease poverty and social conflict. Their real-world role should not be denied. But if the mechanism that generates K continues to operate, a cycle can emerge: generate K → adjust K → alleviate K → generate K again.

Over the past century or more, these two old historical paths have received highly influential modern theoretical expressions.

Capital placed the structural conflict between capital and labor at the center of theory, and the class-struggle and revolutionary paths developed from it sought to resolve the problem by changing relations of ownership and power. Capital in the Twenty-First Century returned the concentration of wealth and income to center stage and advanced progressive taxation, taxes on capital, and redistribution as important policy instruments.

Their periods, evidence, and theoretical tasks are of course different, and both exposed real problems. But viewed through the K → Q coordinate, one path focuses primarily on overthrowing or changing K’s upper branch, while the other focuses primarily on redistributing after K has formed.

The theory of Bureaucolonialism therefore asks a third question: What forms of political-economic organizational behavior continually generate K? And how can those generative mechanisms be changed so that life regains the momentum to enter Q?

To “move beyond” does not mean declaring earlier thinkers wrong, much less competing for a theoretical label. The only test is whether we can explain the problem more deeply and actually solve it.

IX. Keynes and Hayek: Why Is “Government or Market” Still Not Enough?

If “overthrow or redistribute” is the first layer of debate, another axis that profoundly shaped the twentieth century is “government or market.”

After the Great Depression, Keynesianism emphasized that when effective demand is insufficient, unemployment severe, and markets unable to recover quickly on their own, government must enter through fiscal policy, monetary policy, public investment, and other measures to support the economy.

Hayek warned from the other side that no center can possess all the knowledge dispersed among countless individuals. Prices, choice, and spontaneous order carry informational functions that planners cannot replace. Excessively centralized planning can reduce efficiency and also compress individual freedom and the space for self-organization.

From the perspective of Symbionomics, Hayek moved an important step closer to the self-organization of life. He respected dispersed knowledge and individual choice and opposed a single center treating itself as the only Subject authorized to decide for all lives.

But that is still not enough.

Self-organization does not automatically equal symbiosis.

Once market actors gain freedom, monopolies can still form; capital can still become bureaucolonialized; platforms can become new super-Subjects; and after government retreats, other large organizations can still turn life back into an Object.

The problem therefore cannot stop at “more government or more market.” The deeper question is: how do lives that have regained subjectivity connect? How do different subjects confirm rights, interact, achieve mutual fit, and fulfill value? How, while preserving difference, do they co-generate new value rather than create another range?

This is where spontaneous order must continue toward the Intersubjective.

X. Roosevelt and Reagan: Two Important Experiments — Why Did Each Solve Only Part of the Problem?

Theoretical disputes ultimately enter reality.

The New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt responded to severe economic and social rupture by expanding relief, regulation, public investment, and institution-building, using organizational capacity to support both markets and everyday life. It addressed a series of urgent problems under Great Depression conditions and reshaped the relationship between the American state and the market.

Decades later, Reagan confronted a different set of problems: high inflation, weak growth, and controversies over taxation and regulation. Reagan-era reforms turned toward tax cuts, partial deregulation, and the release of entrepreneurial and individual creative energy, allowing markets to play a larger role again.

The two policy experiments moved in different directions, yet each addressed real problems of its own era.

But they left the same deeper question.

If a Roosevelt-style path continually expands organizational capacity, it must still answer: who constrains the organization itself?

If a Reagan-style path stops at “less government, more market,” it must still answer: how do market subjects avoid new monopolies, predation, rupture, and Objectification?

Roosevelt and Reagan therefore cannot be reduced to a simple question of who was right and who was wrong. One brought organization further into the market; the other withdrew part of it.

K → Q asks a third-level question: how can we redefine the relationships between organization and life, organization and organization, and subject and subject, so that economic activity itself continually restores life’s capacity to move?

XI. From Clinton to Obama: When the “Range” Generates Negative Institutional Externalities through Globalization

After Reagan, the U.S. economy entered a new historical condition: the Cold War ended, the information-technology revolution unfolded, and global capital and supply chains were rapidly allocated across borders.

When the Clinton administration supported China’s entry into the world trading system, it held a clear expectation: economic opening would not only expand opportunities for U.S. firms to enter the Chinese market, but would also push China toward further market reform, reduce the state sector, bind it more closely to international rules, and ultimately force it to confront political reform. Clinton administration documents around 2000 repeatedly expressed this expectation.

In other words, there was an important assumption: marketization would promote institutional opening, and the global market would gradually change the different systems entering it.

That assumption, at least, was not fully realized in the way then expected.

What deserves even more attention from the theory of Bureaucolonialism is another issue that was not sufficiently recognized at the time: when different institutional structures enter the same global market, it is not only goods, capital, technology, and management experience that cross borders.

Differences in costs produced by institutions can also be transmitted outward through prices, investment, and supply chains.

I call this phenomenon negative institutional externalities.

If the low cost of a product derives not only from technological progress, management efficiency, and labor productivity, but also in part from particular labor-pricing arrangements, government subsidies, resource allocation, environmental costs, financial support, and other institutional arrangements, then once that product enters the global market, competition is no longer simply “enterprise versus enterprise.”

Institutions themselves begin to compete through goods, capital, and supply chains.

A crucial paradox appears. U.S. firms can shift production to lower-cost locations; U.S. capital can earn higher returns; U.S. consumers can buy cheaper goods; and China can obtain capital, technology, management experience, markets, and opportunities for industrialization. All of these gains are real.

But if we see only “the United States occupies the high end while China undertakes manufacturing,” or “Americans receive inexpensive goods,” we miss the simplest common sense of the life-world: when a person loses a job, he loses more than a paycheck.

Work is also a carrier of skills, a support for family life, a part of community connection, and an important means by which human creative capacity, social participation, and dignity receive fulfillment.

When factories disappear for a long time, what is lost is more than a building. Supply chains break, skills deteriorate, communities decline, local public finance weakens, land and facilities lie idle, and the next generation’s pathways into production and creation are altered.

This is what I call: hollowed-out cities, fallowed fields.

The problem therefore cannot simply be blamed on China. U.S. capital pursued lower costs; U.S. companies actively reorganized supply chains; U.S. consumers enjoyed cheaper goods; and U.S. policymakers believed that trade and market opening would produce institutional convergence. All these subjects participated in the process.

The real question is: why could the global market calculate commodity prices so rapidly while failing to calculate institutional costs, life costs, community costs, and the costs of organizational trust with equal adequacy?

From Clinton through Obama, this structure of globalization deepened further. Globalization created enormous wealth, but it also left some industries, regions, and lives gradually losing their capacity to move.

K therefore ceased to be only a pattern of differentiation within one country. Once different institutions became globally connected, the institutional arrangements of one side could transmit costs to another through supply chains and generate different forms of K in different societies.

The market had been expected to change the “range.” Yet another possibility emerged: the “range” could also use the market to transmit its institutional effects outward.

That is precisely why negative institutional externalities deserve serious study.

XII. Why Do I Call Trump’s Agenda a “Common-Sense New Deal”?

Only after understanding “hollowed-out cities, fallowed fields” can we understand why the political emergence of Donald Trump cannot be explained solely through the traditional left-right axis.

As early as 1980, at age thirty-four, Trump spoke publicly in an interview with Rona Barrett about the Iran hostage crisis and America’s international standing. He argued that America appeared weak and that this encouraged other countries to treat it accordingly. Yet when Barrett asked whether he wanted to be president and why he did not enter politics, he made clear that he did not want the presidency and described political life as exceptionally harsh.

By 1987, the scope of his concerns had clearly widened. He publicly criticized what he regarded as unfair treatment of the United States in economic relations with Japan and other countries, while still stating that he had “zero political aspirations.”

At minimum, these two early records show that decades before formally entering politics, he was already approaching questions of national capacity, international transactions, industrial interests, and the costs ultimately borne by ordinary Americans from the experience and common sense of a businessman.

That is why I call the agenda that later took shape under Trump a “Common-Sense New Deal.” The point is not that he possessed a complete theory of political economy.

On the contrary, it first appears as a set of questions arising from the life-world:

If a form of globalization enables capital to earn profits and consumers to buy inexpensive goods, but causes increasing numbers of domestic workers to lose jobs, skills, communities, and dignity, does that arrangement really contain only “efficiency” and no cost?

If a country places supply chains, energy, manufacturing capacity, and even critical productive capabilities abroad for long periods while remaining satisfied with occupying the so-called “high end,” can such a structure really be sustainable?

If trade rules are formally identical while the internal costs of subsidies, labor, resources, finance, and regulation differ across institutional systems, does so-called free competition already contain institutional differences that have not been accounted for?

These questions do not arise first from the left or the right. They arise from common sense.

Trump’s later personal decision to enter politics should of course not be reduced to a single motive; no person’s political decision can be fully explained from a few early interviews. But from his public statements in 1980 and 1987 to his later campaign emphasis on trade, manufacturing, jobs, and national strength, one can see a persistent line of concern.

In this sense, the policies and practices of Trump’s “Common-Sense New Deal” display a political-economic organizational orientation worth studying. They do not merely wait until K has formed and then redistribute it, nor do they simply repeat the old argument of “government or market.” Instead, they place taxation, regulation, energy, manufacturing, supply chains, trade conditions, borders, and the organizational costs of government within the same practical problem, seeking to alter some of the conditions under which K is generated.

This does not mean that any particular policy is inherently correct. Every policy must still be tested against facts, costs, efficacy, and long-term results.

But within the K → Q framework, the question itself has changed: not only how to divide the results after K has formed, but how to enable lives that have lost work, capacity, connection, and dignity to re-enter creation.

This is where the “Common-Sense New Deal” intersects with Symbionomics.

XIII. From Trump and Milei to Q: Moving Beyond the Old Coordinates of “Left–Right” and “Government–Market”

Milei’s reforms likewise suggest that the changes worth studying today can no longer be adequately summarized as “market or planning.” Cutting ineffective organizational costs, changing regulatory and fiscal structures, and releasing entrepreneurial and individual creative energy are of course connected to traditional free-market thought. But if reform further touches how organizations are entrusted, how resources are fulfilled, and how life recovers creative capacity, then it is confronting more than “public or private ownership” and “government or market.”

Trump and Milei have not proposed Q Economy, and the fact that some of their policies intersect with Symbionomics does not justify placing real political figures inside a predesigned theoretical box.

Yet some of their policies and practices display a common tendency: moving from treating the results of K toward touching the conditions that generate K.

That is the political-economic organizational shift required for movement from K toward Q.

Q does not pull K’s upper and lower branches back to the same level. Q is not egalitarian leveling.

Life naturally contains differences. People differ in abilities, choices, creativity, and risks undertaken; the outcomes they generate will of course differ. Sameness does not continue life.

The real question is not how to eliminate difference, but whether connections still exist among differences; whether the value created by life can receive rights confirmation and fulfillment; whether fulfillment can re-empower life; and whether empowered life can enter new creation.

The basic movement of Q is therefore:

Life → Creation → Rights Confirmation → Fulfillment → Empowerment → Connection → Re-creation

Q does not flatten K.

Q enables increasing numbers of lives that have lost their momentum to move again.

XIV. From Subject—Object to Intersubjective: Rebuilding Organizational Trust

Seen again from here, the problem of range-conditioned nature becomes clearer.

The deepest pathology of the range is not merely that some people take more money. It is that the subjectivity of life is damaged.

A person moves from asking “What can I create?” to asking “What does the leadership want?”; from “Does this have value?” to “Does this count as political performance?”; from “How can I generate new possibilities with others?” to “How can I secure a safer position inside the organization?”

This is the degeneration of a living subject into an organizational Object.

Movement from K toward Q therefore begins not with moving wealth around, but with restoring subjectivity: allowing workers again to become subjects, enterprises to become subjects, social organizations to become subjects, communities to become subjects, and government to move from being the sole Subject toward becoming an organization authorized by and entrusted to life.

At this point, Q Economy connects with Everything Intersubjective Symbiosism — 萬事交互主體共生.

From Subject → Object, toward Subject ↔ Subject, and then further into the Intersubjective.

Not one subject eliminating another; not those below overthrowing those above only to become the new above; not a third super-organization endlessly transferring the wealth of those above to those below.

Rather, different subjects preserve their differences, connect, fulfill value for one another, empower one another, and within the “inter-” co-generate new value, new relationships, and new possibilities.

To leave behind the organizational logic of the “range” is not to place all the heroes under heaven inside a better range. It is to allow every life to remain itself, to enable different subjects to connect with and enable one another, and to co-generate organizations worthy of trust.

Then the gun can accept authorization rather than become the source of authorization itself; the pen can submit to facts, logic, and interactive verification; the purse can move from controlling resources toward rights confirmation, trusteeship, and fulfillment; the scale can move beyond GDP toward the efficacy of life; and the judicial sword can maintain public order while preserving space for life’s self-organization.

One modern path represented by Capital sought to change the ownership and power structure of K; another represented by Capital in the Twenty-First Century focuses on taxation and redistribution after K has formed. Keynes and Hayek responded to modern economic imbalance through government intervention and spontaneous order respectively; Roosevelt and Reagan carried two different directions into real policy experiments; and the globalization deepened after Clinton further exposed the negative institutional externalities that can arise when different institutional systems become connected.

These explorations all addressed real problems, and all left unresolved questions.

K → Q continues by asking the next question: How can we change the political-economic organizational behavior that continually manufactures K, so that life regains the momentum of self-organization, connection, creation, rights confirmation, fulfillment, empowerment, and re-creation?

Life is the purpose; organization is the trustee.

From Subject—Object toward Intersubjective;

from K-Shaped Rupture toward Q Economy;

from “all the heroes under heaven have entered my range” toward subjects meeting subjects in the “inter-”;

from organizational control toward organizational trust.

Everything Intersubjective Symbiosism — 萬事交互主體共生.

This is where construction truly begins after Bureaucolonialism has been deconstructed.

September 25, 2026 · Vancouver