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This paper uses analytical and experimental methods to assess the effects of fracturing the interests of agents seeking to maintain the competitive status quo in a rent‐seeking contest for a monopoly franchise. Theoretically, it is shown that while "rent‐defending" can ameliorate the social costs of rent‐seeking, these beneficial effects deteriorate quickly as the interests of those seeking to maintain the status quo become fractured. Experimental results indicate that overbidding is persistent when bidders have different sharing rules. In fact, the observed social costs of rent‐seeking often increase just when rent‐defending has the greatest predicted ameliorative effect.

Abstract. Ethics and ethical thinking involve two primary and interdependent elements of analysis: the individual and the society. Economic thought dichotomized these two elements into the individual (competitive capitalism) or the society (Marxist socialism), with one element being the cause, and the other the effect. Views of economic reality were developed not on the basis of the interdependence of the individual and the society but their mutual antagonism.Economic thought is based on the scientific reasoning of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its abstract definition of reality narrowed the significance of the concrete appearances of things in favor of the rules (science) that define things. Science requires both an objective causal order (independent of human definitions and beliefs) and the development of laws (independent of the human observer or participant) that explain the nature of the objective world. Ethical reasoning requires that economic causality be defined to include both the individual and the society. Ethical reasoning is needed to bring together both the scientific and the metaphysical for human meaning. The science of means must be joined to the human purposes of ends.

Communication is seldom what it appears to be. The critical heartland for the understanding of communication is not what is visible but rather what is invisible and hidden. Form and messages are secondary to pre-defined meanings within the organization. Namely, the embedded culture pre-sets communication among people and gives meaning to any messages which are communicated within the organization. Therefore, the hidden and symbolic elements give meaning to the visible communication process.

This article seeks to put the 1980 election in perspective, to discuss its significance for the future of US politics, and to estimate the likely impact of, and some possible reactions to the rapid shift of population, wealth, and political influence towards the west and south. Analysis of the 1980 election results shows a heavy defeat for the Democratic party and not merely for President Carter, but no positive mandate for conservatism. However, if a Democratic recovery were based only on Republicans over-estimating their support, it would be short-lived. For it to be lasting, the party needs to regain the intellectual initiative that it has lost, and to extend its appeal in the increasingly powerful sunbelt states. Mexican-Americans, being numerous, neglected, and strategically placed, form a likely target group. They may be harder to attract than Democratic optimists suppose.