Yes, monopoly power is the ultimate power, and the monopoly paradigm of Finance which is to create new money ONLY as debt is the ultimate monopoly power because paradigms are the operant/most significant and powerful concepts…of an entire system, body of knowledge, area of human endeavor. That makes the monetary paradigm, in other words the paradigm of the life’s blood of every individual and commercial agent in the entire economy, the most powerful paradigm within the paradigm of economics.

Keep following my logic here. In my book I introduce the concept of the mega-paradigm which is a paradigm change in a very long term old paradigm the benefits of which not only resolve problems in the primary pattern under analysis but spill over into other systems/patterns/etc. The monetary paradigm hasn’t changed for the entire length of human civilization and there have only been 2 maybe 3 such paradigm changes in the entire history of the human species 1) the emergence of human self awareness which was the change from the mere struggle for survival to an awareness of ethics, 2) the discovery and utilization of the tool of fire which was the beginning of human technology and 3) the change from nomadic hunting and gathering to agriculture, homesteading and urbanization which was a tremendous psycho-social and temporal universe change for the species. The change from Debt Only to Monetary Gifting will have additional beneficial effects in sociology, human psychology, ecology/climate change, politics and likely be the next step toward a change in the human zeitgeist which is the only level of analysis above that of the operant concept/paradigm.

An excellent refutation of another orthodoxy smearing the economic doors of perception and helping to clear the way toward perceiving the paradigm change necessary in the economy and the money system. Please consider the following short tutorial on perceiving and confirming genuine paradigm changes.

When you 1) observe a (Gallilean) temporal universe reality described by the new operant/paradigmatic (Copernican) concept (strategic COVID mandated direct distribution of Monetary Gifting) and

2) discover the (Keplerian) missing/most efficaciously problem resolving point in the economic process at which to apply it (a high percentage, say 50%, discount/rebate policy at retail sale) because it

 a) ends inflation by implementing beneficial price and asset deflation, thus rapidly closing the mouth of every austerian monetary economist and pundit

 b) immediately doubles everyone's purchasing power, 

 c) integrates the self interests of consumer and merchant by b above and by potentially doubling demand for every good and service

 d) beneficially effects everyone because it is the single macro-economic, aggregative, universally participated in point in the entire economic process, again, retail sale) and 

3) utilize the same method the Banks use to monopolistically create our money ONLY AS DEBT (equal accounting entries that sum to zero) to

4) finally make the money system serve the individual instead of enslaving 95% of humanity by systemically imposed ever increasing private indebtedness, then

5) it meets the standards for a genuine paradigm change. In fact it qualifies as a mega-paradigm change of which there has probably only been three confirmed universally effecting examples:

 a) the emergence of human self awareness which enabled mankind to begin to exit a zeitgeist of mere struggle for survival by making ethics a reality.

 b) the discovery and utilization of fire as a tool and

 c) the virtually universal change from nomadic hunting and gathering to agriculture, homesteading and urbanization

The tool of money does make the world go ’round. Now we must change its civilization-long dominating paradigm of Debt ONLY as the sole form and vehicle for the creation of new money in order to make it accomplish the common good and hopefully the better survival of the planet and every living thing on it.

You can find the evolving policy, taxation incentive and dis-incentive, and other regulatory program of the new paradigm here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PLNJLRN/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=wisdomics-Gracenomics&qid=1552358772&s=books&sr=1-1-catcorr

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MMT has the SYSTEMIC OPERATION of money creation correct, but they have not yet recognized the problematic operant/paradigmatic/applied monetary concept of Debt Only, nor the new such applied concept of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting. MMT is an excellent reform that conceptually aligns with the new paradigm, but its at least one analytic level below paradigmatic i.e. single operant applied concept analysis…which beats hell out of mere reformist thinking because its a change in the nature/temporal reality of an entire pattern/system.

De-growth is certainly a viable alternative idea, but it shouldn’t and IMO needn’t be an arbitrary argument against the new monetary paradigm and its increase in purchasing power because

1) The abundance as well as increased psychological uplift of guaranteed economic security created by the new monetary paradigm would likely make any eventual consumptive drawback a lot more palatable than would such drawback without it and on top of the current pay check to pay check kind of austerity afflicting most of the general populace. In other words humans tend to make better, more rational decisions after they’ve been graciously treated than if they’ve been long and long forced into austerity…and then told they must endure even more of such shit.

2) a doubling of purchasing power doesn’t ipso facto translate into a doubling of consumption/economic throughput because not everyone is going to eat twice as much as they do now or like Emelda Marcos develope a fetish for shoes and buy twice as many as they currently have. I think you’d of course see a big uptick in consumption by the poor and unemployed, but rather soon you’d probably see what happens with excess income, namely a lot more saving and investment which if rationally and ecologically incentivized could actually contribute to consumptive sanity. And in the new monetary paradigm where inflation is macro-economically conquered and savings (supposedly, idiotically) no longer have negative economic effect, lets have more investment in innovative energy and conservation technologies.

3) Again, with inflation macro-economically resigned to the dust bin of history that leaves the door open to the fiscal funding of the kind of mega-projects necessary to confront and handle climate change like the under planeting and/or off planeting of at least the worst carbon emitting means of production. So no need to shrink from the size of the task.

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The entire concept of free markets is not only a temporal delusion (just consult the tax code of any nation as well as whether or not any regulations that effectively direct finance are actually enforced), but it confuses the alternately goosed and strangled chaos of overweening financial domination with freedom.

In the human temporal universe there is actually only freedom amongst known and enforceable barriers…except in the economy that is. Its why you, the individual, can’t walk into a theatre and yell fire. A little thing called ethics. But in an economy dominated by Finance and its monetary paradigm of Debt Only as the sole form and vehicle for the creation and distribution of new money, dominating power, profit and control IS the ethic, or shall we say the anti-ethic.

Markets should be abundantly free flowing and serve the individual, not a fetish and delusion, and commercial agents could and would be granted many benefits they don’t have now…so long as they abided the natural philosophical concept behind the new monetary paradigm. In other words there would finally actually be abundant power, profit and reasonable control because the primary cause of out ethics would be replaced by known and enforceable barriers derived from a universally recognized superior ethic. So what is the natural philosophical concept behind Gifting? Ponder that one.

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Yes, power is addictive and as Lord Acton said absolutely corrupting. The only business model that hasn’t innovated in some constructive way (their derivatives debacle in the GFC doesn’t count as constructive) is Finance. And think about it, Finance’s monetary paradigm of Debt Only as the sole form and vehicle for the creation and distribution of new money hasn’t changed for the entire course of human civilization no matter whether it was the Palace or the private banks that was in control.

We live and labor under Finance capitalism afterall. But rather than get into the ubiquitous (false) duality of capitalism vs socialism, which Finance is happy to see us expend all of our mental energies on, why not try finishing Hegel’s dialectic with a true synthesis, that ups our analytic game from mere reform and theoretics to the level of the operant applied concept/paradighmatic level which is the core of the core economic problem. As Dr. Keen correctly said: “Neo-classical macro ignores money, debt and banks”. I’d only add that its the monopolistic monetary paradigm of Debt Only wielded by the private banks that is what desparately needs changing…because it keeps our deepest economic problems in continual suspension and enables them to rise from the ashes of their own folly like in 2008.

We DO need to make competition and innovation not only alive but vibrant. Thats why in my book I suggest creating a new governmental department called The Department of Competition, Innovation, Boycotting and The Public’s Bully Pulpit where weekly press conferences would point the finger at CEO’s and corporations that try to game the new monetary paradigm, whose policies double everyone’s purchasing power, potentially doubles the available demand for every enterprise’s goods and service and ends price and asset inflation by of all things implementing beneficial deflation, and asks the question: Well Mr. John Q. Public, what are you going to do about these guys that are trying to undo the 100% increase in purchasing power the new paradigm just granted you, eh?

I predict that if Andrew advocates pairing his enlightened policy of a UBI with a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale that his Forward Party will be able break through and become the majority with a politically integrative coalition not seen since FDR. Why? Because of the following facts: 1) a 50% discount at retail sale immediately doubles everyone’s purchasing power. Do the math! 2) It would also potentially double the available demand for every enterprise’s goods and services making it integrative of the tension if not full blown opposite self interests of both the consumer and business. 3) It ends inflation forever by implementing BENEFICIAL price and asset deflation. Whew! Do the Math! 4) It makes a $1000/mo. UBI able to purchase $2000/mo. of goods and services. 5) If everyone 18 and older is guaranteed $2000/mo. of purchasing power why would we need the payroll taxes working people and enterprise pay for welfare, unemployment insurance and even quite quickly for social security??? 6) Everyone wants to end inflation, the democrats want more economic democracy and the republicans want to lower taxes. The pairing of UBI and the 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale effectively integrates the best parts of the economic agendas of both parties and also enables a political integration the nature and size of which we have never seen.

Ants despite nil ability to abstract are smart. Humans despite relatively great ability to abstract are way too often stupid. Ants attention is probably almost entirely on the moment. Humanity’s attention is so often distracted from distraction by distraction that they miss not only the incredible detail available to experience directly in the moment in their present time environment but become so habituated to abstraction that they’re stuck inside their own heads…and barely experience the moment let alone perceive it as the vibrant and by all accounts by saints and poets like Blake, the place where wisdom and ecstatic experience can only be had. Do I advocate pre-frontal lobotomy or something? No, only to heed the following two quotes: “The mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

“Technological advance has nothing to do with true human, humane progress, because it has always served economic interests and because these interests have never allowed technology to be informed by philosophy, social relations, and other things to do with advancing the human cause and the human spirit.”

So true. This is not to despair of technological advance it is the recognition that technological advance is a temporal universe “thing” when “true human, humane progress” is an internal human change for the better/higher. Temporal universe reality and individual human reality are so often at odds. The point is to integrate them so as to create a thirdness greater oneness of only the truths, most efficacious applicabilities and highest ethical considerations of any chosen problematic duality. An example of this process is Hegel’s Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis. Politically, socially, economically and probably most importantly psychologically we too often get caught in the duality and forget to conclude the wisdom insight that necessarily includes the thirdness greater oneness of the Synthesis.

The very mindset and process of Wisdom is integration, most especially of opposites. The full integration of opposites should be our motto and our mental tool because Wisdom is always about solutions, higher and better solutions. And what is the highest set of opposites to integrate? Why the opposites of the internal and the temporal reality of course. And this kind of occasional phenomenon is what is referred to as a paradigm change. A paradigm change is a SINGLE efficaciously applied MENTAL concept that changes an entire TEMPORAL universe COMPLEXITY, system, life pattern, body of knowledge. (for instance geo-centrism to helio-centrism or nomadic hunting and gathering to agriculture, homesteading and urbanization) New paradigms are always Wisdom insights, in fact a wise integration of the supreme opposite realities of the MENTAL and the TEMPORAL.

And yet almost no one analyzes on the paradigmatic level (the single operant applied concept level), and thats why Keynesian economics gets morphed into the present neo-classical macro-economics, that so many rightly abhor, because reforms are always gamed and over turned…when if you find the correct paradigm that requires changing its a permanent and comprehensive change. Have we gone back to Ptolemaic cosmology? Nomadic hunting and gathering as an enforced lifestyle?

We should ask ourselves what is the most problematic paradigm in the economic system, and as new paradigms are always in conceptual opposition to the old/present paradigm (examples above) what is the opposite concept to be applied? Well, after all reductive analysis we live and labor in Finance Capitalism. So finance/money seems to be a good indicator for a new paradigm. And what is the heart and strength concept that Finance utilizes to dominate with? It is the monopolistic concept of Debt As In Burden To Repay ONLY. It’s the word ONLY that designates it as a monopoly paradigm. And what is the concept in direct opposition to Debt as in burden to repay ONLY? Why Monetary Gifting of course. All of the major economic reforms align with this (still largely unconscious) concept. What is UBI? Monetary Gifting. What does MMT suggest we need? Larger Fiscal Deficits, in other words Monetary Gifting to government contractors/various bureaucracies. What does Steve Keen say de-stabilizes domestic economies? Ever increasing PRIVATE debt. And what does he suggest we do about it? “A modern debt jubilee” which is a great form of Monetary Gifting…but still not the most most efficaciously resolving and universal way to integrate Monetary Gifting into the Debt Only based system. And that would be a 50% Discount at retail sale (everyone participates in retail sale) all of which discount is rebated back to the retailer by the monetary authority so that they can be whole on their overheads and margins of profit. It is the precise expression of the new paradigm which is Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting. It immediately doubles everyone’s purchasing power without increasing any business costs while potentially doubling the demand for every enterprise’s goods and services and as a kicker it implements BENEFICIAL price and asset deflation. There’s a nice temporal universe complete inversion for you.

There is a complete policy and regulatory program in my book that fills out and stabilizes the new paradigm. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PLNJLRN/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=wisdomics-Gracenomics&qid=1552358772&s=books&sr=1-1-catcorr

Many authorities often bandy the word paradigm around without truly understanding what they actually are or how they’re deciphered. Here are some of the reasons this is so:

Defining paradigms

Paradigms are operant applied single concepts that due to their integrative analytical depth and breadth of beneficial effect change the character/nature of entire patterns.

Habituation to reform

The impulse to reform is good, and reform analyses can be good sign posts for the discovery of new paradigms. However habituation to reform is a major stumbling block to new paradigm perception.

The hurdle of the near monopoly modalities/mindset of Science

The mindset and modalities of scientific inquiry are logic and reductionism. This itself is an excellent and necessary ethic, but habituation to it alone is deadly to perceiving new paradigms as paradigms are integrative/wholistic phenomena, nay the quintessential human and cultural integrative/wholistic phenomena. Science is best when it is open minded even about its mindset/primary modality, and this is shown by the historical fact that scientific breakthroughs more readily occur when scientific inquiry is understood as a process and its findings are accompanied by/realized due to insights derived from an aspect of consciousness itself like imagination.

The courage/audacity to confront conceptual opposition

New paradigms are historically always in complete conceptual opposition to the current/old paradigm. Given the fact of the modalities and mindset of science and the almost understandable human proclivity to guard one’s reputation and career principled courage/audacity tends to be the exception.

Understanding and practicing thirdness greater oneness

We need to re-discover and completely comprehend Hegel’s dialectic. Pundits and theorists have become overly innured to the dualism within the trinity/unity/oneness/process that the dialectic actually is, i.e. thesis, antithesis AND synthesis/INTEGRATION OF ONLY THE TRUTHS, BEST WORKABILITIES, GREATEST APPLICABILITIES AND HIGHEST ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS OF THE DUALITY.

Embracing the superlative intellectual discipline of Wisdom

Science is wonderful, necessary and delicious, and it exists entirely within the digestive tract/mindset of Wisdom. Why settle for partial understanding when essential and both temporal universe and individual mental change is possible?

Recognizing the essential sameness of Wisdom insights and Paradigm perception

Cogniting on the pinnacle concept of Wisdom and the deepest secret of all new paradigms

T: Consider that monetary sovereignty won’t make it to home base because it’s too good to be true. How many jobs would be eliminated that are strictly money making jobs? Where would all those people go; what would they do? And the migrants at the southern borders? What about all those lawmakers who love the noteriety, attention, power and influence while tending to our problems? All those big, tall, empty buildings: No need for insurance and all those 9 to 5 office people? All the police with too much time and little crime on their hands just driving around and around eating donuts? No more of the usual nightly bad news? Just think when it suddenly becomes obvious monetary sovereignty means freedom from Bullshit! How can we function if money is no longer Bullshit?

Me: Everything adapts to a new paradigm…not the other way around. Historically that has always been true. I take that you’re being ironic, but as for all the jobs lost, the more abundant money spread generally will not only create plenty of new and different jobs, but also a lot more investment. My response to conservatives when they raise such objections is: “Hey, creative destruction and all of that…and what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

BG: “Unfortunately, the pandemic induced inflation certainly hasn’t helped MS/MMT arguments in the broader populace. This oversimplification of the issue has really hampered any ability to have any rational discussion, bi-partisan or otherwise, regarding Social Security and FICA taxes.”

Me: True. That’s why we require a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale (along with others) that will forever banish inflation to the dust bin of history by of all things implementing macro-economic BENEFICIAL price and asset DEFLATION. What a mind blowing and orthodoxy destroying thing that would be. The present monopolistic monetary paradigm of Debt Only as the sole form and vehicle for the creation of new money is the core of the core problem. Change it and you change the entire pattern of economics because money/finance is such an integral and ubiquitous part of the economy.

PA: “What I rarely see is explicit criticism of the capitalist system which underpins all of these global problems, and have never seen anyone even suggesting an alternate system as a solution.
Why is this?”

Me: Probably the combination of a lingering tribalism still extant since we went from nomadic hunters and gatherers to agricultural homesteaders and city dwellers, and the fact that humans so love their problems that they treasure them more so than solutions.

Obsessive dualism is both a signature of a failed paradigm and of the need for the historical process and effect of a paradigm change which is an integrative thirdness greater oneness of only the truths, workabilities and highest ethical considerations in the dualing opposing perspectives.

Integration is the very mental process of wisdom. Wisdom insights are deep simplicities. Paradigm changes are the quintessential integrative mental and temporal universe phenomena and logically wisdom insights They are also single concepts that strategically applied change the entire character of a complexity/pattern/system/body of thought/area of human endeavor, for instance nomadic hunting and gathering to agriculture, homesteading and urbanization and geo-centrism to helio-centrism, and thus logically they are deep simplicites.

Paradigms are also operant applied concepts. In other words they are the core problem (old/current paradigm) and the core applied solution (new paradigm).

Find the operant concept holding the deepest problems of the system(s) under analysis in continual suspension and identify the concept that resolves them via temporal universe application, and you’ve got what you want and what we need.

Dare I say I’ve found both the operant new concept and its most efficacious ways of application?

Yes.

R2000: H.L. Mencken: “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents… the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

Written 100 years ago this quote sums up US politics perfectly.

The US is entering the last years of their imperium because:

a courtier class responsible only to oligarchs has replaced genuine leadership and public participation;
US allies and the rest of the world can’t distinguish the US from odious tyrant as the US looks and acts like the worst kind of dictator;
American adversaries now look like soft beds of reason, restraint, and stability;
an immense US military is incapable of winning the smallest wars, or even retaining the allegiance of its junior officers;
praetorian guards are created loyal only to money and cruelty (BORTAC – US Marshals – Blackwater – DynCorp – Executive Outcomes – Sandline International);
the economy is used like a casino to enrich the unworthy;
children are used to punish immigrant families fleeing US imperial savagery in their own countries;
the most recent generations are the worst educated since 1776 as science, schools, libraries, an independent press, and dissenting voices are crushed by corporate design;
resurgent bigotry is aided by brutally stupid police and a corrupt justice system;
ruthless violence is blessed by empty prayers and Hollywood blockbusters;
smug disdain is displayed for any issue that doesn’t touch their own families, or their favourite sport;
vast numbers of citizens parade their ignorance around like they have just married a supermodel.

H. L. Mencken (1880 – 1956): “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”

William Casey (CIA Director 1981-1987): “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

These are all signs of a society about to collapse with only a minor environmental disaster needed to start the landslide, out of the ecosystem armageddon certain to come.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), 1936: “We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace – business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.”

Americans have been lying to themselves for decades, if not centuries, so the logical conclusion has them electing proudly self-serving, bare-faced liars like Obama, Trump, the Shrubs, and Nixon. The world can no longer pretend US citizens know anything about the world, their own best interests, or the best interests of their longest allies and best friends. Americans can’t be expected to defend democracy, expand human rights, maintain an incorruptible rule of ‘law’, or manage a most important part of world’s economy.

Winston Churchill: “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”

America has never been a democracy as the Constitution was designed to ignore everyone but rich, white males. US society has always been defined by greed, legal theft, racism, genocides, and lynch mobs. US citizens are so criminally witless they won’t support human rights by getting down on one knee. They would rather get down on both knees and beg.

George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796: “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.”

Voltaire: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

Me: I couldn’t disagree with a single thing you said…except the cynicism, which on an ascending scale is about 5 microns above total apathy. Find the paradigm that needs changing and all of “tears in the night” will be “joy in the morning”.

We mustn’t fall for the false idea of “fourth turnings” which isn’t progress at all, but the same old empire disintegration/revolution which is simply the failure to perceive and effectively implement the new paradigm/evolution.

I’m four square in favor of profit making economic systems. What I’m not for is the domination of every other profit making business model by private finance’s monopoly paradigm of Debt Only as the sole form and vehicle for the creation and distribution of new money.