Yes to virtually all you say here. The only thing I would say is that the spirit of puritanism is more aligned with work/works, legalism/moralism as opposed to the new testament which is aligned with and about Grace/gifting/abundance. Not that prudence, thrift and other virtues aren’t necessary, they are of course as being ethical and hence responsible to both oneself and others is always a part of the honest and whole human being. Its just that Grace, which is Love in action/in the temporal universe we all live in, is the underlying ethic and commandment and what enables one to flow through Life, if imperfectly, with a minimum of hang up and a maximum of Love for all.
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The desire to disconnect from the system is understandable on the one hand as a healthy revulsion toward a system which is onerous, enslaving and already very centralized. The problem though with the Pauls and the Mises institute which is Austrian economic theory is they are market worshipers/equillibrium theorists par excellance to the point of cultism. Ironically Austrians, of all current economic theories, recognize the pricing system to be ubiquitous and their oft used chant of “There’s no such thing as a free lunch!” confirms this…its just that they think if you left the economy completely unregulated it would tend toward equilibrium….when of course the system is inherently cost inflationary as Douglas pointed out. Austrians are the epitome of mere economic theory. They would never countenance integrating a concept like Grace into economic theory. And why wouldn’t such theory be that way when all of its originators were atheists. Bias hides in all manner of different places.
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As an addendum to the above post Russian and Chinese help is all well and good
as business deals, but ultimately their financial systems are going to have to confront that business model’s internal conflicts and economic consequences the same as western Finance Capitalism must….and they have a worse record of governmental tyranny than even Finance capitalism does. The key is understanding that the idea/paradigm/monopoly of Debt must be balanced and transformed by an equal duality creating idea/paradigm of Gifting so that modern technologically advanced profit making economies can actually function and thrive.
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Yes, this kind of cruel and naked dominance by monopolistic Finance must be dealt with in as intelligent and broad minded a strategy as possible in order to dispel the fear reaction the monopolists desire in order to herd Greeks and the onlooking world back into their dominance. Greece is actually a more difficult nation to implement a truly free and free flowing economy because it is dominated by its reliance upon tourism and need to import energy, but utilizing social credit dividend and discount mechanisms could still insure domestic abundance so far as food, housing and the basics of human living thereby negating the worst and most basic aspects of the fear of collapse and severe austerity by EU Finance. This would then give Greeks the calm and the time to address their energy needs with swaps similar to the way Germany used them before WW II, and to re-industrialize in a high tech way that, due to the dividend, would not require the normal very labor intensive template and so would enable them to attract such industry. Public Banking would of course be a part of such a Greek economy as a competitive force to private finance in general and specifically for infrastructure which would increase employment (nothing about a social credit economy necessarily reduces or is biased against employment of course) and aid in the modernization and broadening of the Greek economy.
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Apr 20
Mish my old nascent Social Crediter, libertarian foil who tolerated/ignored me for 7 years despite the fact that I won every economic, monetary and philosophical “debate” on his blog and then banned me the same day that Steve Keen did after I mildly criticized both of them. (but I had also sincerely complimented both numerous times for their free speech tolerance of contrarian viewpoints (Mish) and their iconoclasm (Keen)) It just goes to show that someone who has made a career out of critique (Keen) apparently has scant tolerance of it coming from another quarter, and that libertarian free speech principles can appear to be easy to hold (Mish) …so long as you are ignoring the inconvenient truths someone continually gores your ox with, but when you either see on his website or hear from a buddy of yours who is banning someone on a trumped up charge….those principles are very easily swept aside. Ah, but we’re all too human. I understand that.
To the point. Mish is correct that no taxpayer money should go to bail out a state pension plan, but brand spanking new gifts of money would cancel the onerous debts owed to Banks and not inflate the currency in the process. In fact a Distributive monetary paradigm in the consumer/consumption financial sector of the economy with a for life dividend and a retail discount on prices would eliminate the inutterably wasteful, inefficient and parasitical Debt ONLY monopolistic paradigm enjoyed by the Banking system. That the pundits and leading economists can’t readily see this, is a testimony to both the blindness that paradigms and orthodoxies enforce and to the practicality and problem solving incisiveness of the integrative process itself, i.e. Wisdom.
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Every cost that adds to price needs to be assessed and cleared. And every cost that cannot be assessed concretely must be approximated and GIVEN to the individual…so that both the individual and the system can be free and free flowing. Gifting is the idea/paradigm that economic theory must confront and integrate…otherwise totalitarianism will inevitably be the result.
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Wisdom being the dynamic integrative process itself and hence the ultimate non-linear discipline, I would respectfully suggest that both economic theory and Humanity would be very well served by its use in crafting macro-economic policy. It happens that the world’s three major Wisdom traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity share a common pinnacle concept known respectively as satori, atman and grace. Specifically and economically speaking then, and for the Western mind that would be crafting policy on grace the individually freeing and the systemically free flowing and costless gift.
One cannot win a debate against someone whose argument, properly understood, includes and expands upon the opposing debater’s own viewpoint.
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It is entirely true that economic orthodoxy has become tyrannical, however in order to avoid a prolonged period of doubt/inaction/possible orthodoxy of disequilibrium I suggest that theorists integrate the two most basic realities of a profit making monetary economy, cost and a logic of efficiency, and how money can be utilized to bring better balance, flow, individual economic freedom and equilibrium to the inherent disequilibrium of a complex temporal system. The overall goals of economics remain even after the basic reality of disequilibrium has been established. Modernity is afflicted with a fragmented mindset, and economics is both the foremost example of this and the area of human life and living which can most effectively raise the quality of human life so that civilization can thrive and attain a permanently higher plateau. Let us utilize Wisdom which is actually the science of both ethical and temporal wholism to craft macro policies so that economics can go from a system that Man must serve to one that serves him/her instead.
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Ardeshir,
I’m not sure that the “no derivatives and rent seeking investments” is specifically spelled out/disallowed although Iceland having been the victim of such economic and financial vices you would think they would make that a central part of their regulations. Actually the problem I have with such a system is as I alluded to in my prior post the lack of a constitutional separation of powers that keeps the credit creating agency away from political and lobbying compromising that would eventually if not immediately negate or even eliminate the advantages of a Public Bank. Finally, if Public Banking were to become the central bank without specific mandates that created and maintained the economic freedom of individuals as well as the equilibrium and free flowingness of a technologically advanced economy…we could just end up replacing one monopoly with another. The money creation power is inherently powerful and problematic. It therefore demands specific mandates and separation from both political and private entities/forces which will always be present.
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While I’m happy that the idea of giving individuals money is beginning to carry less of a stigma and becoming a viable option for more of the populace, it is still an indication of how unconscious activists and economists are of the lower end of the costing/pricing system that they still are requiring such “gifting” to be from re-distributive taxation. This current blindness/economic orthodoxy along with the “envy and resentment toward the rich”/socialist mindset is deeply ingrained. Finance does not fear Basic Income via re-distributive taxation they only fear Social Credit which is what will actually break up their monopoly powers. Hopefully we can persuade economists to consider a true gift with the dividend and the macro-economic equalizing mechanism of the discount so that we can truly integrate and solve the Duality of the Austrian/libertarian and socialist viewpoints.
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I’m definitely saying that in order for the market to consistently clear a supplemental gift is necessary, especially for technologically advanced economies. Necessary because there are factors both intrinsic to the economic system itself that enforce a scarcity of macro-economic individual purchasing power and also external factors like innovation AI that are also reducing it. So the responsible thing to do with an economy that is inherently unstable and in a state of disequilibrium…is to encompass it with costless and cost reducing policies that encompass it, enable true economic freedom for the individual, are the anatomy of equilibrium by their + and – nature and not coincidentally hone in on and resolve the two things that plague and resist economic theory, namely scarcity/erosion of purchasing power and inflation.
Dr. Keen has done an excellent job of iconoclastically exposing many of the orthodoxies associated with DSGE theory, but is apparently still looking for policies up to the task of doing the above. I’m saying that the above policies are necessary to transform and transcend current theory and inadequate/self interested policies and that there is every reason to additionally include rational and ethical regulation of the transformed economy…as well. As I have said many times before my motto is Transformation first! Rational and ethical regulation, right along with it!
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Not at all. Along with the freeing transformation that an adequate gift/dividend would bestow upon individuals/the economy, goes the adult recognition of the fact that there is only freedom within known and responsible barriers. Hence rational/ethical regulation of Finance in general/speculative borrowing specifically….is a part of again, an adult society. Gone should be the days of Finance wanting to give everyone and their dog’s uncle 5 credit cards with a $10,000 limit and the facile creation of “liars loans” for mortgages. Something like a reasonable regulation like “you cannot take on more than 25% of your monthly dividend in new loan service…..unless you can pass a rigorous standard of creditability would be a good example of adult regulation for both individuals and the Banking system. Finally, cynicism in the last analysis is irrelevant. That’s another thing that follows from the realization that ethics is an integral part of being fully and actually human. Economists, their pundits and the millennially problematic business model of Finance…would just have to FINALLY cognite on that reality.
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It could easily be done and “policed” effectively. The problem is getting economists to conceive/perceive/embrace it and pols with enough balls to push the policy in the face of the Banks’ absolute opposition to a free gift of money breaking up their monopolistic paradigm of DEBT ONLY if only in the area of consumer finance….there being less or no need for it gifting for investment/production…only for consumption.
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Why Grace?
Because Grace is consciousness, not just intelligence. Because ethics trumps utility. Because you are real….and so is everyone else. Because you cannot escape that fact without damaging or losing your humanity….your Self. Because Grace is highness, abundance and increasing consciousness which ties it in with ethics, (spiritual reality) more accurately reflects our technical and productive capacity (physical reality) and also plugs into the underlying tendency of the cosmos which is increasing self organization/awareness.
Yes, the Christian with his/her example of Grace is surely closer to the truth than the well meaning modern with the less complete and less edifying disciplines of science, rationality or even philosophy. Happy Easter Wally!
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To Steve Keen:
The convention of cost accounting that all costs must go into price is never not, that is, IS ALWAYS in effect in commerce. This fact, along with the fact that the costs of capital equipment etc. plus the depreciation costs of replacing that capital equipment will all inevitably end up in consumer prices means the rate of flow of total costs/minimal prices will always tend to exceed the rate of flow of total individual incomes…unless a direct supplementary GIFT of income is GIVEN to individuals….and then because the system will still continue to be disequilibrated by the above enforced convention (and yet necessary discipline of cost accounting because it is the tool for deciphering the rate of profit for businesses and whether or not profits are being made at all)…a discount to retail prices (which is where costs for any item are totally and terminatedly summed) is also necessary in order to maintain the approximated equality of total available to spend individual incomes and total consumer prices through time.
Its THE COST of depreciation which is additionally charged to the consumer…without an additional creation of individual incomes….except via borrowing by businesses and individual….both of which entail more costs…on top of all other costs. (labor/individual incomes are only a fraction of total costs which include the costs of capital equipment etc.) It all seems roundabout….until one becomes conscious of the underlying costing/pricing system which is a ubiquitous and ever present reality of every enterprise and hence of the entirety of commerce….that is, macro-economically. I teach accounting, and as Dr. Keen would I’m sure agree, not having a formal education in current economic theory…can actually be an advantage. That plus an understanding of Social Credit which, like Dr. Keen was a disequilibrium economic theory which recognized the importance of Banks and Debt…over 90 years ago…is an advantage most economists don’t have.
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To Ellen Brown:
Public banking is an effective and necessary competitive component in restraining the business model of Finance in the future, but the only way that the monopolistic powers of Banking and their paradigm of Debt will be balanced, de-throned and de-toothed, especially as innovation and AI acceleratingly reduce total effective demand….is to integrate/implement Gifting into macro-economic policy via a modern debt jubilee, an ongoing universal dividend and a periodic retail discount….as quickly as possible. Otherwise we are doomed to extending stagnation and increasing austerity as the best possible scenario, or more likely, an historically rhyming war in an age of modern weaponry where no one’s life/productive capacity is safe…not even the Bankers. Both economic theorists and the mass of the populace must be awakened to this situation and the necessity of its resolution with the above actions/policies. Finance’s obsessive speculating with money is bad enough. Speculating with other people’s lives and the technological achievements of civilization…is utterly intolerable!!!
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Post to Electric Cosmology Facebook post: Their dire suspicions may become fact….unless we/humans ascend to an ethos/zeitgeist of focused Consciousness/Wisdom. I have my doubts about AI ever acquiring consciousness, however, the speed, distractiveness and consequent hypnotizing effect of technology must be matched by the ability to focus and cut through to the experience/experiencing of the present time moment….or humanity may fall into a very low state of consciousness as a result. Wisdom, amongst other things, is just such ability to focus and experience the present moment.
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That’s to your credit John. But I don’t think we are done with crises, and I think a dividend can be “sold” to individuals and a retail discount that is then rebated back to businesses can be “sold” to businesses. Timing and alliances such as the latter with businesses are important.
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Social Credit’s discount mechanism solves the asset inflation problem for the system and individual, but it still leaves open a door for the rentier/CEO of a corporation with global reach to conspire with the financial tycoon to commit the greedy sins of profit and savings hoarding, tax evasion, financialization/derivative instrument gambling etc. I think these mortal economic sins might tend to lessen in a truly transformed Social Credit economy, and many of the “filthy” rich do end up being philanthropists, but in the mean time I would have no big problem with discouraging the tendencies. Perhaps after the first $5-10 million/year of personal income you could do a philanthropy tax of the remainder at 90% that went back as a dividend, to modernizing/making more efficient national infrastructure and/or research on ways of doing more with less resources. Maybe for those who do not have or cannot seem to develope a sense of enoughness and who consistently evade, hoard, gamble etc. you could offer a “pet the monopolist/rentier/corporate/financial CEO” as a way to assuage and cure their obvious use of money as a substitute for Love. Or, for the totally impenitent and terminally puritanical/judgemental have them run a gauntlet of their fellows. Yes I’m fantasizing here somewhat, but I think there is merit in my motto of Transformation First!…rational and ethical regulation right along with it.
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I’d mention that even if all loans were able to be 0% there would still be a gap. Eastman is an authoritarian, puritanical and overly contentious reactionary crank who much like Marx makes a fetish of a wrong why in this case Interest instead of profit (Marx). The open minded, non-reactionary and inclusive viewpoint recognizes that yes, both interest and profit are aspects of the over all and larger problem of the gap.
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I would say it (the cause) is the tendency/inevitability for multiple processes within even more complex systems to put time between cause and effect and hence create a lack of simultaneity of the two factors most economically relevant, namely total individual incomes and total costs/prices….in every passing moment of the flow of moments. The economy cannot bring this state into being as DSGE theorists mistakenly postulate.
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Fragmentation of thought and the ethical de-sensitivity that will inevitably engender will remain the bane of Modernity…unless one has an idea sufficient to balance and integrate them. The idea of profit is paltry and along with the above inevitability, insufficient as an ethic. The idea of grace/graciousness as in the free and additional gift….as policy, can encompass, balance and humanize profit. Its integration into economic theory and policy is necessary…with post haste.
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The first thing that makes helicopter money problematic is it does not go to the correct target (the individual) and so leaves either the Banks or the government still in a political football game that will never end and never actually benefit both the individual and the system. Now no one denies that a political fight is ultimately necessary, but if one doesn’t get that the individual is and should be the beneficiary of policy first, last and always, and that getting adequate and actually available spending money into the individual’s hands is the key to making the system stable and robust…then you might just as well give up and save yourself the mentally frustrating effort. The second thing that is missed by theorists and policy makers is that simply giving the individual money still does not resolve the system’s inherent tendency to disequilibrate and hence it requires a macro-economic equilibrating policy….like for instance a retail discount to consumers (all of which is rebated back to participating merchants) based on a simple ratio formula of the total cost of consumption over the total cost of production for a given period of time. Thus the dual macro policies of costlessly gifting the individual with a supplementary income and eliminating inflation for the consumer by equating the relevant and correct over all monetary statistics in a dynamic ongoing fashion that fits seamlessly within profit making economic systems…is exactly what is called for. And yes, even after that Wisdom is implemented you might also want to pass tight regulation on leveraging up of savings on speculation, especially on purely financial vehicles. Mammon and Leviathan will always be problematic…so do the wise thing and impose ethics upon them.
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To Ellen Brown:
I wouldn’t disagree that we face an eventual deadly ecological crisis. I wouldn’t disagree that Public Banking is a desirable competitive influence on the Banking system. I wouldn’t deny that rents are an economic vice that need to be regulated in a fashion that reduces them and encourages investment in traditional productive enterprise. I’m entirely inclusive in my recognition of valid insights its just that I think Social Credit’s policies undercut all of them and would make those that might remain more easily handled because it would bring an even deeper balance to Banking, because it would break up the monopolistic enforcement of the only credit vehicle presently allowed by it, namely loans, with a new paradigm of Gifting. Social Credit brackets the entirety of the macro-economy with mechanisms that directly address the two main problems of modern economies:
1) the chronic scarcity of adequate aggregate demand to keep the economy in equilibrium and
2) creeping inflation, the actual solution of which(as opposed to a palliation of it) eludes all present economic theorists.
At the same time it decentralizes and democratizes the economy with policies that free and empower the individual, and that also reduce the power of both government and the Banks. Inclusiveness and integration of realities is an intellectual virtue. I hope someday that leads on to a greater Good.
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Yes Joe, debt is digital/dual/creditary, and a gift of money is just as good as earned income and actually better than the latter because it does not add a cost to the system like a loan or subtract from income as enterprises/the entirety of commerce do because they have other costs than the cost of labor/individual incomes…and yet the major convention of cost accounting says that ALL costs must go into price. Hence because of the additional costs of commerce (interest on loans, depreciation charges that businesses must charge in order to replace capital productive capability and the additional costs that result when savings and profits are re-invested) and the laundry list of diminutions to the flow of total individual incomes that includes business profit, individual savings, cancellation of principle on loans, taxes and increasingly the elimination of employment by innovation and artificial intelligence to name but a few. The result is the absurdity of increasing inability to liquidate retail prices by individual incomes, and so increasing poverty in the midst of increasing abundant production,….and the new consumer financial paradigm of a Universal Dividend/monetary grace the free gift and retail price reduction/Discount mechanisms of Social Credit will enable macro-economic equilibrium where there is no such equilibrium without them.
The above is a part description of the ever present lower bound of fixed and increasing costs and the simultaneous diminution of individual incomes that is part of the woof and warp of commerce itself known as the costing/expensing/pricing system. Its actuality and effects is apparently missed by 99% of economists whose focus is entirely on the upper bound of cost associated with supply and demand which of course also tends to increase prices, especially in profit making systems.
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Feb 19
Yes, and yet ideals are “things” to strive toward. How does one integrate the pragmatic with the ideal? This is something I’ve thought about for awhile and referred to in a thread posted here some time ago. Its the concept of Duality within Trinity. Duality is the apparent signature of Physical Nature and human activity, and yet If one looks closely at it, its actually Trinity that is being expressed. For instance the duplicate sides of a leaf expresses Symmetry/Duality, but what about the stem that is also a part of the leaf and that actually provides the conduit through which water and nutrients etc. are conveyed to both sides of the leaf. Trinity is actually everywhere in all spheres of nature, physical, mental and spiritual if looked at closely. Roots, Trunk and Branches, plus charge, minus charge and the result of their interaction/integration electricity, Body, Mind and Spirit, Start, Change and Stop which is the cycle of action of Time and the physical universe. The concept of Duality within Trinity is that Trinity completes, enables, ends cycle on a process, is the integration of both realities in a Duality and an actual ascendant third concept/experience….but only rises to such quality if the Duality within the Trinity actually expresses a bona fide form of Duality such as balance/equilibrium, symmetry/reflection or opposition. When these requirements of Duality are met the integration of the particle of their mutual relevant truths can be/is the concept/policy/experience of the Trinity, and Trinity’s larger reality governs both of the realities of the Duality by preventing either of them from falsely claiming ultimate reality which is Trinity, i.e. unity within diversity, 3 in 1.
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“…the cosmology f a given age is not the result of a unilinear, “scientific” development, but rather the most striking, imaginative symbol of its mentality – the projection of its conflicts, prejuidices and specific ways of double-think onto the graceful sky.”
Arthur Koestler
The Sleep Walkers
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The costing system and its convention that all costs must go into price is ubiquitous and always in effect on every dollar that is actually in the economy. Thus money “circulating” in the economy never adds a cent to actual purchasing power and the only way the money supply increases is by loans from the Banks and to a much smaller extent deficit spending by governments. However loans increase the costs that must be retrieved and both of these methods of increasing the money supply go into the economy and are immediately subject once again to the costing/expensing system of every enterprise. Macro-economically speaking this means that the rate of flow of total costs/prices will always tend to exceed the rate of flow of total individual incomes.
And in view of this how can you ever ring about stability and equilibrium to the economy? Go outside of the costing system by DIRECTLY GIVING the individual a supplementary gift of money so there is a virtual equality of total individual incomes available to liquidate total prices…that does not add a cost to the system. Then, because the costing system will still continue to disequilibrate, you implement a retail discount mechanism that negates any inflation and that also re-establishes that virtual equilibrium. The discount retail merchants give is also rebated back to them enabling them to be whole on their profit margins and overhead payments. The effects of the costing system….what virtually every economist misses.
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The catch is that within the Trinity there must be a legitimate Duality whose integration transcends, completes, evokes and/or enables a conscious awareness of the higher reality of the Trinity. Without a conscious awareness of the Trinity one or the other aspect of the Duality will generally be grasped by Man, who in the half sleep of “normal consciousness” mistakes it for ultimate reality.
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Genius
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.” — Steve Jobs
A new study suggests that when brilliant people are thinking creatively, they all do this weird thing: They basically switch off a big part of their brain.
We have this incredible ability to remix everything we take in and combine it all into something new and amazing.
Scientists in their eureka moments, athletes in the zone, musicians, technicians, anyone who has a sudden creative breakthrough that takes them to a place they — and sometimes nobody else — has ever been. They’re all in the flow state.
When neuroscientists observe the brains of creative thinkers as they do their thing, they see this normally lit-up part of the brain go dim. Go silent. Shut off. What it suggests is that creative thinkers have learned to shut off their self-editing when it’s time to imagine. Wow.
So perfection’s not just about control. It’s also about letting go.
When self-judgement and self-criticism are suspended, the magic begins.
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Financing and business revenue neither immediately nor completely becomes individual income as they are injected into the economy because cost accounting’s conventions are never not in effect in the economy, and capital costs persist through Time while the individual incomes disbursed at the moment of a business’s financing persist for a much shorter time than do the costs for that capital.
The directness aspects of the dividend and discount are their true power to resolve the problems of individual scarcity of income and the price inflationary aspect of the economy itself. Directness eliminates delay (time lag) and makes real and actual, instead of merely the abstract and theoretical idea and supposed possibility, the equality of total individual incomes and total prices…in each present moment as Time flows. This actual equality in every flowing moment integrates the dual aspect s of Time and so brings full consciousness of the dual nature of Time ….to whomever allows themselves to perceive it, and also makes apparent the otherwise chronic scarcity of individual incomes available to liquidate prices without a dividend and discount.
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To Ellen Brown:
In a Social Credit economy the National Credit Office (NCO) would be the creator of all new credit even that floated to the Banks to loan to whomever, and that initial money to loan would be without interest so it would be difficult for Banks to add an additional percentage to their interest charges on the loans they make…and still remain competitive. The problem of interest on loans, particularly commercial loans, is not actually an unsolvable problem as many monetary reformers imagine it to be. The real problem is the consumer financial paradigm of loan only which makes already scarce individual incomes even more scarce. That does not mean that we have to completely ban consumer loans either, but strictly regulating them very definitely IS called for. For instance you could put a 10% of one’s monthly dividend payment ceiling on new monthly debt service levels unless of course one could definitively prove one had a very secure job and/or high level of income. The NCO is actually the quintessential public bank in that it directly distributes to individuals all Dividend and Discount monies as well as new credit for the Banks to loan. I am also not against interest free loans for infrastructure and research on ways to do more with less resources as these will benefit everyone and should not be subject to private determination or concern for profit only. As I have said before monetary reformers should work together for the benefit of all in a fashion that does not require us to enable monopoly of credit with either private banking or by government.
Not to be-labor this point, but complementary currencies and greenbacks are virtual admissions of the validity of the Social Credit claim that a chronic scarcity of individual incomes actually available to be spent to liquidate all consumer prices is the most basic problem of modern technologically advanced economies. That basic problem does not in any way invalidate the insights of Georgism/Financialization/Rentiering which I have at least several times expressed admiration for and acknowledged as a consequent and exacerbating tendency to enlarge “the Gap” by allowing large pools of money to be siphoned off to the wealthy and corporate giants thus extracting it at least for a time from the continuous flow of the economy. The gap is the actual overall and underlying problem, but that is not to say that many of the unvirtuous tendencies of the economic/financial systems do not add to it. I personally would have no problem with a Dividend payment being like a consumption credit voucher that the government accepted as legal tender for taxes and debt re-payment and that businesses could completely exchange with each other and the government for the same purposes, but that businesses would not be allowed to merely salt away as savings/profit, and Banks could not use to aggregate and Financialize ad infinitum. Accurate tracking of such Dividend/Consumption Vouchers is I’m sure well within our current capabilities.
While I think that the above tendencies would actually tend to lessen with the implementation of the transformative and equilibrating nature of a Dividend and Discount, in keeping with my motto of Transformation first! Rational and ethical regulation…right along with it! ….the ability to track such virtual money would be a pragmatic and virtuous regulatory tool.
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Does not depreciation set up a kind of resonance instability with the present moment nature of Time in the economy that cannot be overcome without the direct nature of the policy mechanisms of Social Credit? DSGE theory assumes that simply filling the gap with a generic continuous flow of money from the banking system makes the economy tend toward equilibrium, but the truth is such equilibrium and a continuous simultaneity of the equality of individual incomes available to liquidate all consumer prices cannot be attained (except for the extreme circumstances of massive capital creation noted) let alone maintained even with a Dividend alone because the economy is still continuously tending toward such instability/out resonance with the present moment…and the Discount mechanism is what returns it to resonance with present time and so maintains that equilibrium through the flow of each moment of Time.
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Individually empowering aspect of the concept/experience of Grace…as opposed to the empowerment of Finance or government themselves and for themselves to make policy.
This is what economic theoreticians conveniently forget in their theories and politicians forget in their policy recommendations. A little historical and ethical instruction might awaken them to their obvious folly in considering only those two alternatives instead of empowering the individual directly instead…..or maybe a lot of it might be required.
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Yes, Gold is just another side show/non-solution to our economic/monetary problems. Governments will not honor gold if its price is inflated. We’ve already seen that occur in the US in the first depression. And in the second place as Scott says its probably been so rehypothecated that god knows who has claim on it…which basically guarantees that the powerful will be the ones benefiting from it in any future collapse.
The only way we’re ever going to extricate ourselves from the unstable and oppressive system we currently exist in is to realize that its most fundamental “outness” is that man must serve it instead of it serving man. Anything less than reversing that most basic unethical situation is merely a palliative and so by definition falls short of being an actual solution. There is no palliating the unethical conditions of domination and enslavement…no matter how economists, politicians, financiers and even reformists may parse it. Freedom in a monetary economy is the guarantee of sufficient money to not be extortable/manipulable by the system and its most powerful entities. That general level of material and experiential enjoyment IS the solution because, again it sets the individual free from the extortions and manipulations of the powerful. As costs historically have exceeded available individual incomes to liquidate them, a general discount on retail prices that equates the costs of production with the level of consumption over an equal period of time will eliminate inflation and stabilize the system macro-economically. Individual economic freedom in a stable system covers the basic problems. Ethically and rationally regulate any remaining glitches that in a very complex system will inevitably manifest themselves and you’ll have the Good society if never perfect. What we need is Wisdomics, not Economics, Abundance and Individual economic freedom not scarcity in an age of incredible productive potential and the prospect of being able to do more with less.
Wisdomics: Abundance and Individual Economic Freedom. Sounds like a good book title to me.
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Hi Wally,
I scanned those posts and missed some of what you condensed and included. It’s an extremely interesting and potentially confusing viewpoint that Bill Ryan expresses, but ultimately not incomprehensible in my opinion. The viewpoint that the economy is either in equilibrium or disequilibrium is probably beside the point…because it can be alternately true and untrue (although with the accelerating pace of innovation it is clear that for profit making systems to survive and thrive we are going to have to deal with that disequilibrating factor…and that is exactly what Social Credit does.) This actually makes it the more pragmatic, more whole and also the more ethical third alternative to either capitalism or socialism.
The mystery of Life is that we (apparently) live in a dual universe but it is actually triune…and understanding that ultimate trinitarian nature is what also enables one to see the unity of…all three. My posts on wisdomicsblog regarding the Both/And Primariness of Life and Living expresses my own inclination.
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This is a great discussion. It confirms that the gap is actually both a statistical and a dynamic reality….and that integrating both of those understandings, with policies that address both the statistical (dividend, statistically approximating the gap) and the dynamic (discount, dynamically maintaining it through time) …is the answer. Wisdom is both the integrative process itself and also the third and higher result of that process, in other words understanding…and unfortunately orthodox/conventional wisdom in macro-economics neither understands nor applies such Wise/Integrative policies…..and hence cannot ascend to the higher state of Wisdom.
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You have to set up a system that is actually different from what we have…and solves the actual and deepest problem of the current system (the rate of flow of total costs/prices always tends to exceed the rate of flow of total individual incomes AVAILABLE to purchase something)….otherwise you’re just setting up another basically unworkable system owned and controlled by a self interested elite.
Interest is a cost, but it is far from the only cost, and the time lag that Keynesian economics does not and cannot bridge in order to bring a continuous equilibrium between prices and incomes to liquidate them will not be bridged. That requires a supplement.
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The Russians and Chinese setting up their own system that ALSO has inflation cooked into its utter inherent workings….isn’t going to actually solve their situations let alone free the individual and the system. Gold? It’s never worked before and it ain’t gonna work again. Get real. Economic and monetary thinking has been behind the curve for a long time. It needs to come into present time where there is fantastic productive capabilities and even if you don’t want to buy the social credit insight of an inherent inadequacy of individual incomes and hence of aggregate demand….a laundry list of external factors are increasingly resulting in exactly the same.
The only way to resolve the situation without adding an additional cost to the system is to GIVE THE INDIVIDUAL THE SUPPLEMENT TO THEIR INCOMES (OR LACK THEREOF) THAT CONTINUOUSLY EQUATES TOTAL SPENDABLE INDIVIDUAL INCOMES WITH TOTAL CONSUMER PRICES….and enables a free flowing system in fact instead of only theory. AND AS AN AFTER THOUGHT TO NEARLY ALL ECONOMISTS, OR SO IT SEEMS, that serves the individual INSTEAD OF HE/SHE HAVING TO SERVE THE SYSTEM???????????????
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Dec 17, 2014
The alternative no one is considering is Social Credit which supplements individual incomes so debts never attain unrepayable status because there is always sufficient individual incomes to liquidate production as it comes to the market…..no matter how little or how much consumption takes place. Public Banking fits within a social credit economy as an effective means of keeping private Banking’s feet to the fire efficiency wise, infrastructure wise and even to fund governments on all levels so long as that does’t mean building bridges to no where or idiotically re-distributive taxation which is redundant as a result of more efficient and effective dividend and discount mechanisms implemented.
The world is unfortunately blind and ignorant of the underlying problems and their actual solutions and Finance is there to exploit that fact and history as well. If Russia would implement Social Credit they would become even more of a target of Finance and be railed against as reverting to communism even though socializing THE PURPOSE of the money system is the only thing that will enable profit making economic systems to survive and evolve. Ironies abound when an idea whose time has come is thwarted for over 90 years if not for the last couple of centuries.
The best thing that could happen is for there to be a financial evolution of the money system in the West which would enable it to be more stable, more in equilibrium, more efficiently productive, more decentralized, more able to re-industrialize without having to worry about the effect of technological unemployment and more individually and systemically free than systems dominated by Finance. A kind of second coming of the fall of the Iron Curtain….except its the Iron Curtain of Finance that falls in the West….and then Europe, Russia and China will have to internally adapt their own money systems….or be saddled with the inherent negative effects that attend them.
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“As a man thinketh, so is he.” This reality underlies all other problems one
confronts personal or systemic. The world suffers from dominance by the consideration of power. This is not to denigrate thinking about power in any way, simply the recognition that the above statement is a fact. It does however require a balancing consideration which is actually even more powerful and underlying than power, and that consideration is love in action which is another way of describing the concept and experience of Grace. This is not religious but spiritual/experiential, this is not opposition but integration, this is neither a “realistic” nor unrealistic analysis but complete, this is neither merely theory nor an enforced totalitarian regime but an indication of policies which align with and effect freedom for both the individuals and the systems they are applied to.
Man must decipher Wisdom and apply it, most urgently to the economic and money systems, but also to himself and all of his other systems as well. The age of Wisdom…..must arrive.
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The World is not fully integrated. Not Man, not Science, not any of Man’s systems or bodies of thought…except for the most basic and most powerful experiences pointed at by the world’s major Wisdom traditions. Understanding those experiences and integrating them thoroughly into our minds, our mindsets for dealing with the world and into each of our systems is the necessity that confronts Mankind which is hurtling toward destruction without such integration and yet has a bountiful and wondrous future if it does.
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The economic effects of cost accountings’ conventions is not the same thing as marginal cost. Cost accounting’s conventions can actually be considered either an intrinsic or and external factor in economics, but its factoring must be considered and dealt with…otherwise the economic theorist surrenders either equilibrium as a goal and/or the ethical effects it has on the individual.
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Theory plus temporal reality is what economics needs. If the economy is in a continual state of disequilibrium AND external factors like innovation and artificial intelligence also tend to disequiibrate it….how can one oppose policies that will virtually do the job of rectifying that disequilibrium?
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The truth is not even Social Credit will perfectly equilibrate the economy, but number one it is the most thorough and ethical means of approximating an equilibrium….and we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the Good.
I agree with the reality that the economy is in a continual and radical state of disequilibrium. That begs the question: How can it be equilibrated? And the policy answers to that question is why all economists are nascent Social Crediters.
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The velocity of money operates entirely within the costing/pricing system of commerce itself. Hence any alleged increase of individual incomes, emphasis INDIVIDUAL, is more than completely negated. Just because there is more money in the system and it may circulate at a rate higher than 1 does not mean INDIVIDUAL incomes are sufficient to liquidate all consumer prices as they come to the market. The velocity of money may, emphasis may be an indication of more business activity, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with increasing INDIVIDUAL purchasing power and hence nothing to do with making the economic system serve the individual. The fact that an increasing number of individuals are bound to and in actual fact increasingly enslaved to and by the system is a glaring sign that the system requires a free supplement to individual incomes.
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Are all of our problems economic? Of course not, and this enlightens the one ultimate and absolute fact of human existence:
Ethics and its consideration is never NOT a necessity for every individual.
And so long as you don’t become obsessive about that fact, you can be in a relatively happy, flowing and gracious state of mind throughout your life.
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Peter Abelard said in the th century: Doubt is the beginning of Wisdom. He was right back then. Today, because we live in an age dominated by Science, whose entire mindset is one of Doubt, the exact opposite is actually called for, if we are to begin the process of discovering the true internal and external stepping stones to Wisdom, namely Faith/Confidence, Hope, Love and Grace. Now as for the mindset of Science, while keeping its positive temporal benefits vouchsafed, Doubt regarding its superiority as a single or unifying means of enlightenment….is indeed Wisdom.
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If we act with both Wisdom/Knowledge and Love, that is not only ethical it is satisfying and Good. Having love, doing love and being love is Grace. Understanding Life as a noun, a verb and an experience enables it to be an ongoing 4 dimensional reality.
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Austrian Economics = problem is the solution
Keynesian Economics = solution is palliation
Social Credit = Solutions are the solution and they are recognized via Integration/Wisdom and their reflection in policy
There’s particles of truth and untruth in both Austrian and Keynesian theory.
Keynesian Economics = solution is palliation
Social Credit = Solutions are the solution and they are recognized via Integration/Wisdom and their reflection in policy
There’s particles of truth and untruth in both Austrian and Keynesian theory.
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Defining, understanding and fully aligning the experience of Grace, as both a natural and yet still powerfully mystical experience, is the beginning of economic breakthrough and cultural and individual renewal.
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Refusal to integrate the reflecting concepts and human experiences of spirituality, in other words Grace, satori, Atman, balance, equilibrium, the bothness of nature/Duality etc. into economic theory, philosophy and policy….is what turns Disequilibrium theorists into the authoritarian, judgmental and unmoving DSGE like economists.
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To Steve Keen/youtube
Mysticism? Indeed, capitalism IS unstable….and the only way it will ever approximate stability and a continuing simultaneity (philosophical concept and NATURAL equivalent aspect of the NATURAL experience Grace) of total individual incomes and total prices…is to integrate policies reflecting the anatomy of equilibrium (+,-) as in an individual dividend (+) and a retail discount to prices (-). And that is Social Credit.
Or we can attempt to embrace the nihilist delusion, characterized if not embodied by the expression TruthIsThereIsNoTruth….and everybody and the system will be happy and just fine. Ironies abound in Life and economics. Remember?
Or we can attempt to embrace the nihilist delusion, characterized if not embodied by the expression TruthIsThereIsNoTruth….and everybody and the system will be happy and just fine. Ironies abound in Life and economics. Remember?
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Excellent iconoclastic expose of DSGE….but when are you going to stop reacting to it and offer an economic theory, philosophy and policies thoroughly integrated with full human nature? You’ve nascently begun to do that as I have pointed out. You just need to finish the job. How many times did I compliment you on your website for your iconoclastic talents in the midst of the delusion of a discipline fraught with orthodoxy? Probably 5-6 times. But you have to transcend the academy eventually. But alas, its already been done.
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To Steve Keen
The philosophy/theory of value that non-equilibrium economists need to embrace is Integration…itself. And as Wisdom is the integrative process itself….they therefore would be embracing a philosophy/theory of Integration/Wisdom. Find and integrate: the legitimate dualisms, the missing/incomplete/unbalanced dualisms (where the monopolies and asymmetries of power exist), the problematic factors that have always afflicted economics like Time (its dual nature, the lack of actual simultaneous balance in each moment of the flow of Time, of for instance, total effective demand and total prices).
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Minsky’s insight is actually just a human frailty and not a true systemic economic insight. As for dialectics, over a year ago I posted a dialectical formula on your debtwatch website that is able to identify the core economic problem, the financial paradigmatic problem, and their Wise/Conscious and valid economic solutions. First the basic formula itself:
[ (D) X (a)G/C/SA ] where (D) is a legitimate opposing, reflecting and or balancing Duality (Duality being the signature of nature and the physical universe), X is the sign for Integration and is actually two upward pointing and intersecting arrows, (a) = an aspect of G/C/SA the NATURAL experience of Grace/Consciousness/Self Awareness.
Here is the formula for the resolution of chronic systemic insufficient aggregate demand, the needed change in the consumer financial paradigm to do so and the resolution of Finance’s unbalanced domination of the economy:
[ (Monopolistic paradigm of Debt Only, Monetary grace-Gifting) X Individual Self Sufficiency/Economic Balance/Equilibrium/Flow ]
[ (D) X (a)G/C/SA ] where (D) is a legitimate opposing, reflecting and or balancing Duality (Duality being the signature of nature and the physical universe), X is the sign for Integration and is actually two upward pointing and intersecting arrows, (a) = an aspect of G/C/SA the NATURAL experience of Grace/Consciousness/Self Awareness.
Here is the formula for the resolution of chronic systemic insufficient aggregate demand, the needed change in the consumer financial paradigm to do so and the resolution of Finance’s unbalanced domination of the economy:
[ (Monopolistic paradigm of Debt Only, Monetary grace-Gifting) X Individual Self Sufficiency/Economic Balance/Equilibrium/Flow ]
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[ (Space, Time) X Self ] Experience of Grace
[ (Philosophy-Thought, Policy-Action) X Wise and Graceful Flow of Mind and Life/Living ] Wisdom
[ (Primary Price Inflation, Supply and Demand) X Inevitable Inflation ] Inflation
[ (A, A + B) X Inevitable Wage Deflation ] Wage Deflation
The dialectic of Grace both naturalizes spirituality and re-sacralizes nature…at the same time! And the truly important thing to take from that fact/realization is that naturalizing spirituality in no way diminishes the awesomeness of the integrative experience itself and in actual fact confirms the vitalizing and primary power of the spiritual aspect of that integration!!!!!!
The dialectic is Trinitarian. There is a material aspect of Trinity and a spiritual one as well, and their integration is again the definition and experience of Grace.
[ (Dialectical materialism, Dialectical Spiritualism i.e [ (Space, Time) X Self ] ) X Integration of material and Spiritual = Grace ]
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Just had this cognition pop into my head listening to Steve Keen talk about Marx, the Phillips curve blah, blah, blah…..:
Economists are still trying to use science and mathematics to understand economics when they need to use philosophy and spirituality because time is running out on profit making systems unless they do so….and likely civilization right along with it. Not that they shouldn’t use science and math concurrently, that’s fine, especially for the less urgent, less significant and more peripheral economic problems, but if we don’t make economics serve humanity instead of humanity having to slavishly serve it we will obviously reap the whirlwind.
Now, having said that, research like Jim’s recent graphing of the gap is extremely important in that it attempts to deductively conclude Social Credit’s primary insight and thus leads one to the doorstep of the philosophical and spiritual questions which underlie all of Life and Living. However, to listen to Keen and even lesser theorists etc. carry on brings to mind the following: “Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.”
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There is no difference between what Steve Keen says and I say except I have fully integrated the economic thinking philosophically and spiritually …and guided by C. H. Douglas’s engineering and mathematical skill…been able to see the dynamic factor of more costs than Individual incomes simultaneously created as the most basic economic problem to be overcome by policy.
In other words, I have conceptually, consciously, mathematically and more quickly and accurately been enlightened by Douglas while Keen, stuck in the plodding, unconscious and fragmented modern religious biases of using scientism and mathematics only, still has neither recognized the exact problem nor consciously understood that his utterances are generally mimicking the solutions Douglas priorly prescribed.
Now, having said this, am I in any way decrying Science or Mathematics? Absolutely not, I’m foursquare and unequivocally for both. What I am saying however, is that the additional integration of Philosophy and Spirituality, that is Wisdom, into Economics and money systems is a faster, more complete and more whole analysis….because that is what Wisdom is…the ability to see, fully include and integrate all relevant data coupled with its swiftest and most ethically optimal temporal action and/or policy. And not coincidentally I’m also saying that an aspect of Wisdom’s highest integration has also and actually been the historic hallmark of scientific breakthroughs…as well.
So let us have Wisdomics/Graceology/Social Credit….and Wisdom in all of our human systems. It’s the most scientifically advancing, most urgently needed and most ethically correct thing to do.
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Accrural accounting, the invention which enables both costs and revenues to appear to be present when they actually aren’t is very poorly understood by economists. Likewise they do not understand the deep significance of cost accounting, where the reality of a scarcity of individual incomes in ratio to even minimal costs/prices is discovered when the rate of flow of total costs of business are shown to be inherently greater than the rate of flow of the cost of individual incomes (a subset of the above total costs) simultaneously produced. Thus understanding the actual realities of costs and revenues is discovered and policies can be crafted to bring actual simultaneity and free flowingness to the economic system….instead of tenacious but false orthodoxies and the historical balkiness and instability of the system.
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This is extremely insightful. And it is occurring in areas other than astronomy and cosmology. Economics for instance is in such a state of flux that people routinely look at problems and think they are solutions or state problems but cannot (or dare not) suggest policies that actually align with their thinking…mostly because their minds are either so conditioned by orthodoxy or they are so intimidated by same. The watch words of science, hard or soft need to be: Both and Integrate. Remember Wisdom is the integrative process itself, and Wisdom is precisely what is needed in times of crisis/paradigm change.
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In other words economics being embedded thoroughly in the physical universe is entropic. However, in order for it to be completely human and heading toward an equilibrium it REQUIRES an anti-entropic balancing paradigm to Debt only. Figure it out.
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Not quite an accurate picture. It’s actually the picture I painted in the CAFR thread. It’s an extremely slow-mo and arduous way to carry the Banks, debt and maintain the elite control of the current system….instead of transforming it with monetary grace the free gift to individuals.
Social Credit: Bringing Economics to Mysticism….That is the naturalized monetary concept of Simultaneity!
That’s my Book title.
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Here’s my answers.
1) When my son was young I made a point of hugging him chest to chest as a means of expressing both emotional and physical warmth. At the same time in some ways I took a “hands lightly on” approach to discipline and rules, trying to show by example that character and dedication to ethics and what was right in each particular situation was more important than merely restrictive rule setting. I also saw emotional excess and volatility at times, and yet that volatility and excess was generally expressed within a love and concern for and about our son.
2) I would continue both of the first two and yet in the latter method I would probably emphasize a little more the fact that there actually IS a good, a better and a best way to act in any given circumstance. In other words pragmatism and morals both have legitimate value but there always should be a tension between them that results in a balanced consideration of both one’s own rights and those of the other, one’s own desires and the effects of one’s desires on the other, and that results in a learning process and character building. As with everyone this a process.
3) I would have some of the emotional content somewhat more muted and less prone to argumentativeness. Emotional vibrancy is good and emotionality helps one experience life more deeply and intensely, but constructive expression of it is very important as well.
4) There are positive and negative influences and tendencies in society. Trying to help a child Integrate these in a balanced and adult way is important. There’s nothing wrong with partying. Continually getting drunk to the point of stupefaction and “the dry heaves”…not very balanced.
Society will often push one toward shallowness without an overriding ethic to guide oneself. In my opinion a personal ethic of Love and graciousness and that same ethic applied as policy in our human systems…and in the institution of family and parenting would be the best way to deal with and overcome Life’s challenges.
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Social Credit/Wisdomics/Gracenomics/ Gracientialism 