Me:  Keen is brilliant and in the introduction of my book I say that his de-bunking of DSGE is probably worthy of a Nobel Prize all by itself. He’s still very much into the complexities of economics, and that’s fine although I think one of his next moves toward simplifying economic theory is to realize what I have said here several times which is that macro-economics is a young discipline and consequently has a rather short cultural horizon that was born into private finance as a business model that was in a state of high integration into the economy and so it has not realized yet that it (private finance and their ability to create money) isn’t actually a legitimate economic/PRODUCTIVE business model at all. He says such in one sentence in the above video, when he says that neo-liberal DSGE can’t dispose with equilibrium because if they did they’d have to consider the monetary system which would de-stabilize it. Of course the paradigm of Debt Only goes even deeper than recognizing that private finance is not a legitimate economic business model, but unless one has paradigm perception they have to climb the ladder of cognition one rung at a time.

Keen, Hudson, Public Banking and MMT all align with each other’s intentions and with the concept behind my Wisdomics-Gracenomics, it’s just that the one thing they are missing is the conscious understanding of what the new paradigm concept precisely is and how, where and when its policies can be implemented so as to cut through all of the complexities of modern economies, integrate all of the “epicycle” attempts to reform it…and instead create the new pattern.

KZ:  Craig and Michael, just two general comments on paradigms. To understand paradigms, they must be situated within a culture or cultures. Since the end of World War II all western cultures are scientific. And remain so today, though representatives of other cultures continue to challenge. Most notably, certain radical Christian cultures and certain radical Islamic cultures. This means that every paradigm (exemplar of knowledge and understanding, and the tools that support and fulfill these) in the west today with major influence on our lives is scientific. Each paradigm is slightly different in the scientific exemplars it supports, but each is drawn from a scientific culture. Second, since the 1970s the two cultural alternatives to science listed above are exerting increasing pressure on western cultures in particular to either give up science entirely or push it to a subordinate role to either radical Christianity or radical Islam. It’s these struggles and their possible impacts on human civilization with which we need to concern ourselves today.

Me:  Radical (read dogmatic) Christianity or Islam are both the height of reactionary dualistic nonsense. I’m not advocating, and we must not surrender to such anti-integrative dogmatic nonsense. Does that mean that wisdom and the experience of grace/graciousness are not possible if you literally believe the various dogmas of those two religions? Of course not. You can, IF AND ONLY IF you contemplate and self actualize the unitary experiences BEHIND all of the dogmas. Wisdom is the deeper look, the deeper understanding, religion inevitably leads to reactionary dualism…..and scientism does exactly the same thing when it falls back into dualism by reacting to religion.

We have to “up our game” to the thirdness greater integrative oneness of wisdom and its unitary concept and experience of grace/satori-kensho/samadhi-Moksha/atonement/the Friend….and then take that deeper unitary look and mindset and apply it to economics and economic policy.

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MM: Has any economist or RWER commentator (other than moi) ever considered factoring in the reality of organized crime, corruption, manipulation and war for the sake of exploitable social chaos and degeneracy, for the sake of sick enjoyment, status & ill gotten gains?

Buffett admits that his class (the hyper-rich class) started and won their war against the rest of us. I would liken the behavior of the hyper-rich and the market makers & lesser takers to the strategy & tactics of a pod of orcas, or maybe to a feeding frenzy involving several species of sharks, but that would slander the orcas and sharks. A mo betta analogy would be the overkill hunting strategy where the herd is our whole species, driven over the cliff into a bottomless abyss, along with most other species.

Hence, my interest in dealing with first things first: reality, ethics, axiology and the shoddy, fractured foundation of incomplete metatheory (of economics). As others have also pointed out or implied, until economics as a whole is a realistic social science–dealing with the actualities of personal and communal experience & interaction–there will be no majority of economists saying or doing anything to help us do the job of saving ourselves from ethicide & ecocide-for-profit.

Then again, the nearly total lack of interest in discussing the horrific whole of our situation (all but 62 of us having lost the war) probably means that we’re long past the point of no return and no recourse. If so, that would make most of the papers & Comments here equivalent to debating the issues of The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party or rearranging the deck chairs after the HMS Titanic hit the iceberg.

Sadly, I came to agree with the late Carl Sagan, who saw our worst problem being that “we are too easily bamboozled, and the longer and worse we’re bamboozled, the less we want to know about it.”

The late, great Edward R. Murrow learned that the hard way. So, in accord with him, I wish us all, “Good night and good luck.”

RL: “As others have also pointed out or implied, until economics as a whole is a realistic social science–dealing with the actualities of personal and communal experience & interaction–there will be no majority of economists saying or doing anything to help us do the job of saving ourselves from ethicide & ecocide-for-profit.”

OK, you are talking about what people do or experience as the base upon which economics should be built. What are the actualities of personal and communal experience? See how the work of economists (not their writings) lead to decayed industrial communities, or unemployable people, or manufacturing decline, etc and you will make the study of economics relevant.

KZ:  Robert, why is economics irrelevant and how can it be made relevant? First, economics is irrelevant because the sources of the questions or concerns studied by economists are theories made up by economists, mostly based on supposedly axiomatic principles and detailed mathematics. This makes economics relevant for economists, but few others. Second, economics can be made relevant by economists drawing the concerns or questions they study from events and actors outside the formal discipline of economics. This makes economics relevant for economists as a vocation and for non-economists as a source of data and research for everyday areas of concern.

RL:  Robert, why is economics irrelevant and how can it be made relevant? First, economics is irrelevant because the sources of the questions or concerns studied by economists are theories made up by economists, mostly based on supposedly axiomatic principles and detailed mathematics. This makes economics relevant for economists, but few others. Second, economics can be made relevant by economists drawing the concerns or questions they study from events and actors outside the formal discipline of economics. This makes economics relevant for economists as a vocation and for non-economists as a source of data and research for everyday areas of concern.

RL:  D’accord! As to your first point, I never have understood why we discuss the principles enunciated in the works of great economists in this blog when we are seeking insights into the real world, which is your second point.

Me:  Economics in other words requires a philosophy and set of policies based on wisdom and its pinnacle concept of grace/graciousness, no?

RL:  Craig, just to prove that there is nothing new under the sun, I started thinking about paradigms and wrote about one in particular in my 1989 book, Management and higher education since 1940 (Cambridge Univ Press), in which I called my first chapter The New Paradigm, defined “as an old Greek word which means pattern, model, example, exemplar — paradigm, which signifies a logical or conceptual structure serving as a form of scientific thought, within a given area of experience, that provides model problems and model solutions to a scientific community.” In the book “the subject matter is the new paradigm in management studies — the applications of science to the solution of managerial problems, which became a focus of higher education after the Second World War.” p. 1

1989 was 30 years ago; I haven’t chosen your particular philosophy or pinnacle concept, but I have considered paradigms in economic sciences long enough to lose my naivete.

Me:  Yes Robert, and you were correct to think paradigmatically about managerial problems. However, there are paradigms in a particular sector or aspect of the economy and then there is THE most important and influential paradigm of finance which dominates and controls the ENTIRETY of the economy. Again, the psycho-analytical insight applies. When the neurotic’s/economy’s most basic problem is confronted and re-integrated all of the directly related and many of the ancillary things the basic neurosis has glommed onto disappear and/or tend to dissipate as well.

RL:  “I live in Germany, for one reason, because the culture does not let the paradigm of finance dominate the economy.

Oh c’mon Robert. Germany dominates the EU WITH THE SAME FINANCIAL PARADIGM THAT PRIVATE BANKING DOMINATES THE US AND VIRTUALLY EVERY OTHER COUNTRY WITH. Try gagging Greece with your claims. Get real, Finance doesn’t care about your little fish bowl “paradigm” of managerial capitalism. Why? BECAUSE IT ISN’T AN ACTUAL SYSTEMIC PARADIGM CHANGE, THAT’S WHY.
It’s just another reform of capitalism like Keynesianism or Public Banking or MMT or Keen’s and Hudson’s excellent work that that STILL EXISTS WITHIN THE PARADIGM OF DEBT ONLY so finance can morph or replace them with their ACTUAL paradigm of Debt Only.

Me:  “I live in Germany, for one reason, because the culture does not let the paradigm of finance dominate the economy.

Oh c’mon Robert. Germany dominates the EU WITH THE SAME FINANCIAL PARADIGM THAT PRIVATE BANKING DOMINATES THE US AND VIRTUALLY EVERY OTHER COUNTRY WITH. Try gagging Greece with your claims. Get real, Finance doesn’t care about your little fish bowl “paradigm” of managerial capitalism. Why? BECAUSE IT ISN’T AN ACTUAL SYSTEMIC PARADIGM CHANGE, THAT’S WHY.
It’s just another reform of capitalism like Keynesianism or Public Banking or MMT or Keen’s and Hudson’s excellent work that that STILL EXISTS WITHIN THE PARADIGM OF DEBT ONLY so finance can morph or replace them with their ACTUAL paradigm of Debt Only.

KZ:  Craig, thinking and living in dualities is a major part of western culture. Dualities such as rich/poor, good/evil, etc. are useful placeholders for the complex experiences we want to study but must never be allowed to replace or obscure those experiences, even if that means long and uncomfortable times for researchers. Describing how dichotomies are created and used is one of the more difficult aspects of social scientific research. But it’s also an essential part of that research. Another issue that faces the social scientist about dichotomies is how to and with what to replace them in everyday life if the social scientist insists on removing them.

Me:  Who is blaming duality? Not me. I blame duality ONLY…..which is what most intellectuals constantly dramatize. And as I have posted on here many times what is needed is the inclusive of the truths in opposing dualities concept of a trinity-unity-oneness-wholeness-process, in other words the process and means of self actualizing wisdom and the many resolving aspects of its pinnacle concept….the NATURAL PHILOSOPHICAL concept of grace.

MM:  BTW, I suppose it’s incorrect to think that economics ever had any unitive foundation of valid metatheory, unless opinions, contested assumptions, conjectures and fictions are good enough for a logically self-contradictory multipartate metatheory of economics.

Me:  Try my trinity-unity-oneness-wholeness-process concept of grace…applied to economic thinking and policy….or any other aspect of life for that matter.

RL:  “Craig, you view of German banking doesn’t follow mine. I wrote in the rwer: (long list of structural reforms)

Me: Those are all good, wonderful, excellent REFORMS of banking….but NOT a new paradigm in finance, money systems and the economy.

The Copernican Cosmological paradigm change was a genuine paradigm change because it was a DEEP AND PROFOUND CONCEPTUALLY OPPOSITIONAL IDEA AND BECAUSE IT COMPLETELY INVERTED TEMPORAL UNIVERSE REALITIES. Those two signatures are the litmus test for paradigm changes.

RL:  Craig, the description of German banking I gave are not REFORMS of new paradigm in finance, but a German cultural heritage that resisted them. You must develop an historical sense or no dialogue about human experience can take place. You don’t deal with counter-argument based on serious research, you just dismiss it.

Me:  Genuine NEW paradigms are an integrative mental level or two above culture because cultures are guided consciously or unconsciously BY paradigms and are transformed by NEW ones. I NEVER dismiss any genuine scientific thought….instead I ALWAYS attempt to integrate such well considered “conclusions” with wisdom/paradigm perception…..and when one perceives a genuinely new paradigm there is no need to dismiss or invalidate…because the particles of truth(s) in the (generally obsessively held) opposing opinions are present WITHIN the new paradigm which is a genuine thirdness greater oneness….of the two.