DT:  Craig, I’m very much with your conclusion here. What worries me is that destroying employment or being employed in the management of money rather than people and the countryside also destroys the opportunities to care and to see where care is needed. Giving is an alternative to taxation which enables the giver rather than the government to choose what projects to support, but when the rich don’t live anywhere in particular they too cannot see where the needs are until these amount to complete destitution. Polanyi also strongly made the point that the evil of the Speenhamland wage support system was to deprive paupers of even what little reason they had left for living. So the giving has to real and where the need is, with work-sharing leaving skill and dignity but also the need for precisely what you say, about helping individuals find their own constructive purposes in addition to employment in efficient mass production. With money as we have it the motivation to do this is counter-productive, which is why my vision is of a credit card or “hitch-hiker” economy.

While quoting Chesterton, I found this. It seems to me very apt. The monetary system has lasted a long time, but is it fragile? “[To] be breakable is not the same as to be perishable. Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years. Such, it seemed, was the joy of man, either in elfland or on earth; the happiness depended on NOT doing something which you could at any moment do and which, very often, it was not obvious why you should not do”. Like loving money. Replace the money with credit and work worth doing, and that too will be durable,

Me:  Yes. One of the best ways to turn a problematic factor into a solution is to re-define it. For instance we could re-define the concept of full time work into 20 hours of employment + 20 hours of volunteerism and/or self determined positive self development + a $1500/ mo. dividend paid to every individual 18 and older. Of course if you and your employer wanted you to work 40+ hours/week that would be an available option as well and you would still get your dividend. Re-definition/philosophical transformation is what I call Wisdomics which is my idea of a multi-disciplinary integrative body of thought instead of the intellectually fragmented thing we currently call economics.

KZ:  Craig, I admire your forbearance. Humans have never been free. They always owned obligations and duties to one another. But humans’ invention of agriculture, government, and then monarchy forced human freedom be possessed by some more than others. And with it the invention of slavery. In one form or another slavery has been with humans ever since. And contrary to views of many the current versions of slavery in serving capitalism and corporations are not either more humane or more democratic than its predecessors. So far except in short time periods democracy has been no match for the slavery of either monarchy, totalitarianism, or capitalism. Marx was wrong about a lot of things. But he was not wrong that most of us live in chains.

Me:  Yes, this is not for lack of intelligence, but rather lack of the pragmatic and ethical consciousness that attends wisdom. That is why economics needs to become Wisdomics.

KZ:  Craig, humans today, mostly as a result of rationalism’s sway have a narrow understanding of intelligence. Intelligence is about all cognitive abilities. Analysis, emotions, perception, loyalty, commitment, etc. I do like your term, Wisdomics.

Me:  Perhaps if we defined love as a movement outward from self and toward another it would help. That way mutual aid would be a form of love as would a handshake and any cooperative situation. Scientifically, everything in the cosmos is an electro-magnetic outflow toward a perceiver…..who is also radiating back. That could make the world look a lot friendlier, and contemplating that most basic fact and integrating it into our thinking could be the start of a wise and more wholistic philosophy.

And I certainly also agree with your values of loyalty, duty, obligation and trust, but aren’t those all aspects of love? I think we’re all much more in agreement than we are in disagreement.

KZ:  Craig, love is not required for loyalty, duty, obligation, or trust. In fact, love often hampers these. And they certainly are not all aspects of love. Each of us carries out obligations, duties, loyalties, and trust regardless of individual feelings of love. That’s one of the things that allows collective common life to emerge and continue.

Me:  “That’s one of the things that allows collective common life to emerge and continue.”

I would say that lack of love is undoubtedly the thing that prevents actual community from being reality in every aspect of life. I certainly don’t deny the reality you point at, but again, if we integrated those two perspectives I think a third and more unified reality would present itself. Integration of opposites is wisdom. For instance, in zen buddhism the koan is a question/device for overcoming habitual rationalism/dualism and/or glibness in the noviate in order to experience the thirdness-oneness depth of satori/wisdom. Economic theory, I assert, is stuck in dualism, and badly needs the integrative and wise third alternative.

KZ:  Craig, I agree with your conclusion on economic theory and dualism. However, I can’t quite see how love, even of the Zen variety can cure this problem. After all, love is one of the oldest dualisms — eros and agape.

Me:  All dualisms need to be integrated, even those of love. And then, in order for love to be relevant to the world we live in it must be integrated with action…because the temporal universe is in continual action, continual process. Integrate love and action and you get loving, i.e. love in action otherwise known as grace/graciousness/gracefulness/flow. And relevant to our monetary economy the way to make it flow and remain flowing would be to integrate policies of grace as in continual monetary gifting into the debt based system that currently dominates.

And then we’re not finished integrating.  If modern economic systems are inherently cost inflationary due to the additional costs of ever increasing concrete capital, waste and energy dissipation, then we need to integrate directness and immediacy into economic policy.  Finally, statistical equilibrium is an orthodoxy itself to be overcome. Finance as a business model has been problematic for over 6000 years. In order to effectively correct this the moment to moment reality of scarce total individual incomes in ratio to total costs/prices….must be inverted, so that individual freedom and systemic free flowingness are ascendant instead of inevitably and forever failing to attain orbit due to the gravity of the monopoly paradigms of debt, loan and for production only.  That way the tyranny behind all forms of government begins to “wither away”, and governance can be guided, even if imperfectly, by politicians and the general populace attending to the new paradigm, ethic and zeitgeist of grace.

KZ:  Craig, I agree with most of what you say. But neither gifting nor grace require love. Many native American economies are based on tribal identify (not racial) and gifting. But members of a tribe do not love all other members. They do consider them kin and thus deserving of gifting relationships and followers of the same path. During the 1970s this changed with some native Americans being Indian in name only. Apples is the pejorative used for these Indians.

Me:  Okay. Systemically, what is more relevant and constructive, that the policies/actions of that system are loving and gracious or that people be up to the full understanding, experience and expression of love? I happen to believe, with perhaps a few exceptions, that virtually everyone wants to do and is trying to do the right thing even if imperfectly and/or incompletely consciously. We “see through a glass darkly”. If you kept giving $5 bills to even the most dedicated “there ain’t no free lunch” arm chair pundit eventually 99% would either stop going harumph and say thank you or stop throwing them back at you after a consult with his more practical, socially aware and commonsensical wife.

Systems were made for Man, not Man for systems. Our current economic and monetary situation has that completely inverted, and current economic theories lack a fully integrative philosophical and policy concept that would effectively invert that inversion.

Consider that if the philosophical concept of grace is both an idea and simultaneously its integrated/integrative action, and as per the example above tends to either raise awareness of an agreed upon healthy state of mind and/or elicit a healthy urging of so by others who see both its efficacy and their self interest in it, then it could be entirely relevant to economic and monetary theory, and the way out and the way home to sustained prosperity and stability. We’ve tried, mere calculus and mere science, why not complete the trinity with a new philosophy of economics?