Me:  All that you say about neo-liberal macro is true. In addition economists, who could get their degrees without taking so much as an elementary course in accounting, have also lost track of total actual costs accumulating moment to moment and their increasing ratio to total individual incomes. Hence we see fixed capital assets and their depreciation costs accumulating for literally centuries while the easiest mark for increasing profits, labor costs, have steadily been raided. Now we have robotics and AI becoming increasingly disruptive economic forces that will reduce labor costs/aggregate individual demand especially for the mass of employees probably 30 times faster than it ever has before. And that is why monetary gifting must be integrated into our current monetary paradigm of Debt ONLY, for the individual and reciprocal price gifting to the consumer and then back to the merchant who gave the discount so that the productivity of innovation and AI is not diverted to the monopolistic business model of private finance.

DT:  Craig, I admire your summary of how much worse our problems are being made by robotics and AI, much as happened when steam powered factories enabled 19th century Britain to mass-produce surplus for international trade rather than use. In a way I’m also with you on the need for “monetary gifting”, but how is that going to resolve the problem of ” fixed capital assets and their depreciation costs accumulating for literally centuries”?

Me:  Viz the financial system perhaps we could have an integration of both partial and complete change in that the particle of truth of the current system, Debt, is integrated with an entirely new financial idea, Gifting, and this integration is so deep and sweeping that an actual third system arises out of it. This way the virtual financial monopoly of credit creation curiously enjoyed by private finance would be balanced, and additionally the complete restriction on the idea and vehicle of that creation, Debt and Loan Only, would be balanced by Gifting as well.

Dave, I think the idea of integrating employment with more leisure is an excellent one. Number one, combined with monetary Gifting it would enable more rapid change in the economy and economic theory and number two it simultaneously begins a positive and constructive acculturation of leisure which is not idleness, but self determined and directed purposeful activity. Perhaps we could also have an integrated effort by government, the helping professions and the clergy in making individuals aware of the multitude of positive, constructive and satisfying purposes available to them in addition to employment.

I think we should embrace the financial and economic effects of innovation and AI. Technology has been trying to lift the so called “curse of Adam” for centuries, and embracing that fact along with monetary Gifting could enable not only resource efficiencies but actual resource reductions. And even though with Gifting I’m sure we would see an increase in consumption at first (the reality even in advanced economies is relative austerity for a large majority) rather quickly I think we’d see a balancing there, especially if we are smart and comprehensively emphasized man as homo sapiens sapiens, wise and discerning man as opposed to homo economicus.