KZ:   Craig, since humans make-up the causes, they can change them. The important part played by these stories is to help humans prepare for the inevitable uncertainty faced in all actions and events. Our earliest Sapiens ancestors were hunters and gatherers. How they chose to organize these activities reflects the many uncertainties of hunting and gathering. Economists (and others from religious followers to physical scientists) depict humans as now the masters of these uncertainties. Which is, of course nonsense creating dangerous consequences and a large number of sociopathic members of society.

Me:   I’m not disputing your anthropological observations….only your tendency to utilize an anthropology ONLY point of view. It’s just that it (still) neglects to integrate the cognitive aspect of the phenomenon and study known as paradigm perception/wisdom.

In other words anthropology is the abstract scientific half of paradigm perception/wisdom because it focuses on the culture/pattern, but like every other scientific/social scientific study it still clings to the patina of the present monopolistically demanding Science Only paradigm which (still) blunts if not robs it of potential insight.

We need to Integrate…and keep on integrating…because the deepest truth of the cosmos is that it is in a dynamic, interactive, integrative state of grace…with just enough uncertainty enforced perhaps by time itself….to make it interesting.

The irony is that with the NATURAL cognitive enhancing disciplines of wisdom applied it not only remains interesting it’s potentially joyously so.

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Me:   A lot of genuine and heartfelt commentary regarding the problems of present economics, and no actually new insights….because critiques are not insights and reforms lack the depth and focus that permanent changes from genuinely new insights have always historically reaped.

A list of things to consider:

1) It’s a monetary economy, not “a veil over barter.”

2) Money has enormous facility and pattern inter-penetrative applicability.

3) Money has various qualities, but its most basic character is its accountancy.

4) Accounting is probably in the top five human inventions, but economists can get their Phd in economics without taking so much as an elementary course in accounting.

5) The POINT of retail sale is the single genuinely aggregative point in the micro-economy. You would think therefore that it would get the attention of macro-economists. Consult #4. It is also the terminal summing, ending and relevant factor expression point for every good or service in the economy. Consult #2.

6) Recognizing the potential reality inverting power of a price and monetary policy at the point of retail sale in a basic debit/credit accounting format is the insight equivalent of the discovery of agriculture and the invention of the telescope in the historical paradigm changes of Nomadic Hunting and Gathering to Agriculture, Homesteading and Urbanization and the Copernican Cosmological inversion of the positions of the earth and the sun.

KZ:  Craig.

1) Yes, ours is a monetary economy. But that’s a choice we can change.
2) Money itself is not powerful. The cultural norms and expectations in which money is utilized can make money powerful. But the cultural configurations make the money, not the reverse.
3) The most basic quality of money is it carries out one or more cultural necessities.
4) In a monetary economy, particularly one using open access markets,accountancy is extremely important. In non-monetary economies, accountancy is unnecessary, unless we include moral accounting. In state-market economies (e.g., China) accountancy is useful but not vital.
5) Right now, in terms of education and experience most economists in the west seem fitted to study only open-access market economies. At last check this includes less than half the world’s economies.
6) Excellent suggestion. But it’s applicable for less than half of economies in the world. What do we do about the rest?

Me:  Ken,
1) It’s the smart and accountable choice. So why change it?

2) Money IS empowering, especially to the individual. From an abstract cultural anthropological standpoint you are correct. From a conscious temporal individual standpoint it’s empowering and freeing. Debt is enslaving when its monopolistic paradigm for the creation and distribution of money and credit of Debt Only is compulsively enforced, and monetary gifting is the solution to that problem.

3) That’s its most basic USE, and its present paradigm prevents the best facility thereof.

4) Yes, that’s China’s mal-investment problem. They’re stuck half way between the old and the new paradigm. We can rationalize and apply real and honest ethics to the flow of investment with a government that is both sovereign and benevolent, and by aligning that government’s thinking and acting with the integrative/unitary concept of grace.

5) Doesn’t really matter, and here’s why:

6) Historically, everything adapts, even if imperfectly, to a new paradigm, and not the other way around.

KZ:  Craig,

1) Half of work in advanced economies is not “accounted for” today. Makes it a 50/50 decision which direction we go.
2) Persons are empowered by the cultural pathways provided for empowerment. Today, one of those pathways is money. No reason to consider this inevitable, or even necessary.
3) The basic use of money is to meet cultural requirements, to the extent it can.
4) Still doesn’t change the fact that China, and many other nations do not employ open-access markets. Others use various versions of closed markets. Money in these markets finds its value through other means than buyer-seller interactions.
5) and 6) Yes, everything adapts. Two things remain uncertain, however. The pathway adaptation will follow. The result of all the adaptations together.

Me:   Ken,

1 & 2) If that is true, then the best remedy of that is the excellent and facile tool of money. No need to change or deny that, just recognize it as the new paradigm. Part of the reason we haven’t banded together a couple hundred years ago to rectify the situation is because we so love our abstractions that we fail to actually act. The financial elites know this and are happy to see us debate, or not even debate, using money, as they do…to force their cultural aspirations on the 99%.

3) Correct. Consult 1 & 2 above.

4) The efficacy of the new paradigm WILL change those countries. If not completely, then partially. If we implement Monetary Gifting, no longer have to worry about inflation, unemployment and poverty and hence can re-industrialize the nation in the most advanced, efficient and prosperous way possible we won’t have to rely on the export platform of China. You don’t think that will make them change? Sure the Chinese control their media etc., but the word will get out. They can’t totally restrict travel etc. If the Chinese or whomever want to bastardize Monetary Gifting…so be it. It will be such a permanently progressive phenomenon, even a squirrely version of it will be better.

5) Already answered above, and how many times have I said on here that there is no end to history….but paradigm changes ARE permanent progressive phenomena….otherwise they wouldn’t be paradigm changes.