Y:  John, perhaps you rely too much on wishful thinking. Paradigm shift does not occur spontaneously. It is not a natural phenomenon. Have you ever imagined why Ptolemaic system continued more than one thousand years and how it came to be overturned?

Me:  Yes that is what Kuhn observed. Yet when a paradigm shift does occur it is both personally spontaneous and (depending upon whether it directly effects virtually everyone in the present moment, i.e. a mega-paradigm shift) it is a rapid temporal universe change as well. The Copernican cosmological paradigm change was genuine, but the shift to agriculture, homesteading and urbanization from hunting and gathering was a mega-paradigm shift. Today a paradigm shift in economics, finance and money would fit this category and given the rapidity and ubiquitous nature of our technological advancement such a change would truly be earth shaking.

Mega-paradigm shifts invalidate long held orthodoxies held by nearly everyone like “You must move about to survive” or “Increase in the quantity of money is the operant factor in inflation” or “The more savings the less money in general circulation”.

Y: Craig

we must distinguish economy and economics, financial economy and economics of financial economy, and financialization or monetization of the economy and economics of those phenomena.

Paradigm shift in economy and finance may proceed “spontaneously” by the technological and institutional change, but paradigm shift of economics does not occur without a group of economists who try to create a new economics. Lars Syll is busy criticizing mainstream economics but forgetting the re-building economics task. Do you want to face paradigm change without change of economics?

Me:  Yoshinori,

Thanks for the reply

“we must distinguish economy and economics, financial economy and economics of financial economy, and financialization or monetization of the economy and economics of those phenomena.”

No, not in my opinion at all. That is an arbitrarily reductive attitude and leads no where but further theorizing about this or that datum. It IS a monetary economy Steve Keen has established that. All of the leading reform movements are about money, finance and its negative effects on the economy. Meanwhile the 5000 year old monetary paradigm of Debt Only goes on and on and on.

We need an integrative perspective on the monetary effects of the present paradigm on the economy….not just another data point discussed….for the umpteenth time.

All the leading reforms are doing their own thing. I’m in touch with several of the leaders of those reform movements and have communicated to them that they all align with the policies of the new paradigm. They’re just not seeing the new insight that a discount/rebate monetary policy at the point of retail sale resolves the two deepest problems of modern economics. I don’t know whether that is because their minds are blinded by orthodoxy, they’re just complacent or they’re just letting their self interests in their own movements prevent them from integrating with the larger paradigmatic movement. It’s probably all of those motives/afflictions/self interests.

If anyone here can say that their ideas, theories, policies or whatever if implemented can immediately do more than double everyone’s potential purchasing power, double the potential business revenue for every enterprise and beneficially integrate price deflation into profit making economic systems….WITH A SINGLE POLICY, and with a couple of additional ones make every mega project necessary for ecological sanity and survival affordable and imminently doable…then I’ll get on their bandwagon. If not….for chrissake get on mine. The friggin’ end is near guys, ya know what I mean? Like a lotta, lotta dead people like yourselves and your families from probable resource wars and/or ecological disaster.

Or we can regurgitate the things we’ve been regurgitating here for years. IT’S THE MONETARY PARADIGM GUYS. Prove me wrong with better and more beneficial policies. I’m ready to hear them.

Y:  Craig reminds me the necessity to re-read Stanilav Andreski’s Social Sciences as Sorcery (1972). According to the book, if I remind it correctly, social sciences develop by fierce fighting between revolutionary idealists and realistic conservatives who question the plausibility of idealists’ proposals. It is a shame that Andreski-type sense of balance has been lost for a long time.

Me:  Ah yes, what we actually need is more dualistic three ways from the middle mental erudition….that makes a fine data point….and leads absolutely no where. NOT! Meanwhile ignore the mathematical, empirical temporal and paradigm changing effects of just one policy insight/breakthrough.

The recognition of the policy power point of retail sale with a 50% discount/rebate monetary policy is the telescope and the discovery of agriculture of economics and finance. You just have to let it settle into your current paradigm conditioned mind long enough to compare the differences it will make to virtually everything in those bodies of knowledge.

And despite the fact that the geo-political flames are leaping higher and the populace is getting more and more angry and impatient with the stresses the current monetary paradigm enforce upon them…..lets discuss other data points another hundred times.

Focus on the pattern change and the pragmatic regulations and structural changes to keep it from being undone by the gamers…..and lets choose life, not death via a thousand excuses and distractions.

R:  Illiberal Reformers tells the story of the progressive scholars and activists who led the Progressive Era crusade to dismantle laissez-faire, remaking American economic life with a newly created instrument of reform, the administrative state. If many of their names are unfamiliar today, the progressives changed everything, permanently altering the course of America’s economy and its public life. (Leonard, Thomas C.. Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era (p. ix). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)

A bit closer to home and shows how idealism doesn’t always play out the way the idealists planned. Not that idealism is not needed, mind you, just that it must be wedded to pragmatism too if it seeks to have long lasting impacts in the world.

Me:  Rob, That’s precisely the point…REFORMS never last…but everything adapts to a genuinely new paradigm….not the other way around.