“What is the purpose of the economy?”

The purpose of production is consumption.

The point of consumption (retail sale) is the end of the entire economic process.

Once consumption occurs no valid economic agent has the right to charge the consumer additional costs.

Money has many aspects, but its most basic and important one is that it is accounting and thus must abide by the conventions of that discipline.

Monopolies are glaring contradictions in profit making systems.

For-profit finance has (idiotically) been granted a monopoly charter to do this and it exposes the fact of its economically parasitical nature, its illegitimacy as an economic agent and its de-stabilizing monopoly paradigm of Debt and Loan Only.

Monetary Gifting is the ultimate economic tool, ultimate facilitator of commerce, most ecologically aligned economic factor and most intelligent oppositional force to the tyranny of thermo-dynamics.

Those enterprises that abide by the new rules and don’t raise their prices without concrete empirical and legitimate reasons for doing so will have their new lower tax rates reduced further by 50%.

Those who don’t abide will be taxed at a rate of 100% on any revenue they may have garnered from illegitimately raising their prices, lose their rebate privileges with repeated inflations and risk public scorn and boycotting by the Department of Competition, Innovation, Boycotting and The Individual’s Bully Pulpit.

Me: Economics has gone through a pluralist and empirical revolution. It’s just that THAT is not enough, and of course its just an academic phenomenon not a viral “infection” of the individual’s mind.

Economists and economic pundits are still unconscious instead of self aware, still nomadic hunters and gatherers instead of homesteading agriculturists and city dwelling artisans, still trying to resolve the perturbations of the orbit of Mars instead of inverting the positions of the earth and the sun and still factoring for-profit banking and finance and its monopolistic paradigm of Debt and Loan Only instead of opening their minds to the efficacy of Monetary Gifting with a direct and reciprocal 50% discount/rebate price and monetary policy at the point of retail sale.

In other words you’re non-activists who are failing to analyze on the paradigmatic level and hence, despite your railing against academic orthodoxies and otherwise well taken minor observations and palliative reforms, you’re virtually all stuck in erudite duncery and getting no where FAST.

Meanwhile your children or grandchildren will probably be victimized by either a monopolisitic corporatocracy or a vulgar marxism as climate change and the end of the age of petroleum falls upon them in another 20-30 years. Yes, the end IS near.

It’s the monetary and financial paradigm, stupid!!!

NR: Craig, There’s nothing like a bit of that old-time monetary ‘gifting’ a la Major Douglas, Dietrich Eckhart, Anton Drexler etc. a.k.a ‘quantitative easing’ . Just borrow & print the stuff & any body who objects is just a ‘reactionary’ And top it all off with the meringue of sanctimony. After all “A nation cannot owe itself money”. ’cause it’s just internal book-keeping’ . ‘eh fellas ? Ach, Der ewige spinner !

Me: Norman,

I thought you to be reasonably well informed until you confused quantitative easing which is nothing more than an asset swap with a paradigm changing concept like monetary gifting. Get up to date, boy. And please stop the ad hominem while you’re at it.

Despite the fact that his (very insightful) policies were not informed by a well defined concept of pattern/paradigm because he lived before Kuhn and hence did not fit them to that form of analysis, C. H. Douglas had more of an incisive and iconoclastic intellect than anyone I’ve seen posting here, virtually all of which are stuck in obsessive duality, complexity and hence the regurgitation of heterodox orthodoxies ad nauseum…when as I have repeatedly posted here the key to paradigm perception and real enlightenment is deep simplicity, that is the integrative mindset also known as Wisdom.

DT: Norman is of course quite wrong to ridicule the only justifiable role of money being accountancy, ignoring the problems of it all things to all men and differentially scaleable, but so is Craig when not accepting that what is owed, though not money, is regeneration of Nature’s resources.

Me: Dave,

“…but so is Craig when not accepting that what is owed, though not money, is regeneration of Nature’s resources.”

Your heart is right but apparently you don’t read many of my posts, as I am the only person here who has shown how monetary and financial policy can be utilized to make profit making systems align with and synergize a rapid move toward ecological sanity.

“My suggestion is that money should be valuing people, not goods.”

Well if you want to make your suggestion come true you should start a religious movement, or better still get on the bandwagon to implement monetary policies that continually dramatize and serve to self actualize the impetus behind every one of the world’s major wisdom traditions, namely grace as in love in action.

DT: But so what? I wrote “Norman is of course quite wrong to ridicule … but so is Craig when not accepting that what is owed, though not money, is regeneration of Nature’s resources”.

Here, he hasn’t shown ME how “monetary and financial policy can be utilized to make profit making systems align with … ecological sanity” or “grace as in love in action”. As I see it, profit-making is precisely NOT giving, nor is depending on it wise.

Me: Well, doing away with profit making economic systems is not only reactionary it’s also a complete non-starter politically (and everything ultimately gets down to politics, that is, if you want to live in the real world of the temporal universe)

I suggest we inhabit and operate in both the heights of wisdom and the temporal universe. And grace being the ultimate unifying of opposites concept, spiritual reality and affirmation of the Good…is precisely what is needed. That and monetary, financial and economic policies like I have posted here many, many times that align with it. Grace after all is not only high it is equally mighty and pragmatic…otherwise there wouldn’t be a book entitled Proverbs and paradigms changes would be mere theory instead of the deep pattern changing simplicities that they have historically proven to be.

DT: Craig, you characterise doing away with monetary profit-making as “reactionary”. Is it reactionary to recognise and try to correct one’s mistakes?

The point anyway is that the understanding of money has changed from it being seen as storing wealth as a valuable durable to it having become a mere number, creatable and erasable at the touch of a keypad but (quantities being always positive) liable to misrepresent directions of value flow.

Me: “Craig, you characterise doing away with monetary profit-making as “reactionary”. Is it reactionary to recognise and try to correct one’s mistakes?”

You questioned profit making, seemingly as a whole in your prior post. I took that as reactionary and too general.

I indeed have questioned and shown how for-profit finance violates the economic convention that every legitimate commercial agent obeys, namely that no one has a right to charge additional costs beyond the point of consumption, i.e. retail sale.

“The point anyway is that the understanding of money has changed from it being seen as storing wealth as a valuable durable to it having become a mere number, creatable and erasable at the touch of a keypad but (quantities being always positive) liable to misrepresent directions of value flow.”

Obsession with storing wealth easily devolves into your frequent criticism regarding the love of money. As for both value of purchasing power and applying actual human values to the economic system I’m the only one here who has shown how the new monetary and financial mega-paradigm concept of grace as in Gifting and its policies transfer seamlessly and evolutionarily into the areas of the ecology and of human ethics.

The Department of Competition, Innovation, Boycotting and The Individual’s Bully Pulpit

Because it creates purchasing power at the very point of purchase/purpose point of economics, and simultaneously and equally benefits both buyer and seller. It is thus unitary of normally temporally opposed interests.

Its place of implementation undoes a mistaken monopoly granted right and monopoly paradigm, therebye de-centralizing and democratizing purchasing power while integrating into economics not only a new paradigm concept (Monetary Gifting), but initiates and enables the rarest of all human and temporal universe phenomenon, namely a Mega-Paradigm/Zeitgeist/Evolutionary change which can result in the occurence of a trans-pattern (economics-money system, human psychology, ecology etc.) trans-prevailing mindset (The Will To Power-Knowledge to The Will To Freedom), trans-mental discipline (Science Only to Science and Wisdom), trans-level of epistemology (Ego to Self Awareness and thus Increasing Awareness of the human Reality of Ethics) and trans-cosmological perspective (the duality of a basically absurd and isolating human-centric aliveness versus dead nature to the unitary concept of a grace-consciousness based evolutionary thrust to nature and the cosmos.

That’s all.

Dave,

Wouldn’t you agree that “the trick” is to attune the economic system so close to the natural state of the temporal universe that it acts as the temporal universe does….and is then approximately just as inexorably flowing as the temporal universe?

In other words time in the temporal/time universe inexorably flows because the temporal universe is almost utterly dynamic, interactive and integrative. Thus integrate the efficacious tool of money throughout the entire economy and at its most purposeful points (point of sale and at the point of loan signing) that it reflects the inexorable free flowing-ness of the temporal universe.

Of course there is just enough randomness in the cosmos to allow for change and circumstance, but that is what time actually is, i.e. change of position of particle in space, and regulations are just such encouragements and inhibititive-ness to guide its inexorable flow.

The key of course is to awaken to the various aspects of the definition of grace as in dynamic, interactive and integrative flow…and how that accurately reflects the native state of the temporal universe/cosmos. That way we can just apply the relevant aspects of grace to everything from spirituality to economics.

It’s the best possible PID system.

If economists want to create equilibrium they must consider doing so with an important enough factor that it cannot be stopped. The graceful flow of Time for all practical purposes CANNOT be stopped, but the dynamic moment can be imminently experienced if we drop our habituation to abstract clock time and let go of the distractive chatter we all “normally” walk around with.

In a monetary economy money, abundantly, directly and reciprocally distributed at a strategic and important point in time, like retail sale which is the terminal ending and resetting point of the economic/actually productive process for every consumer product, is precisely that releasing and freeing factor. All other observations, while perhaps being occasionally helpful in the human world of other intentionedness, pale to insignificance in comparison.

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Every body of knowledge and mental discipline requires BOTH science AND an integrative mindset. Thus it becomes dynamic, interactive and inclusive of truths in seeming opposite perspectives, that is, Wisdom.

Then one needs to decipher the pinnacle concept of Wisdom, namely grace as in love in action, then pragmatically apply its (grace’s) relevant aspects to the temporal problem under discussion, like A Gift/Gifting for instance.

Then economics and the human species might actually get somewhere in the existential problems that it faces.

I. The Integrative Party is bi-partisan and welcomes all rational political perspectives who are willing to integrate their particular particles of truth in order to create a political thirdness greater oneness of truths that serves the individual, affords greater socio-economic and political freedom and higher ethical understanding. It is therefore the quinessential “big tent” political party.

II. The Economy and the New Monetary Paradigm

The Monetary Paradigm of Debt Only as the sole form and vehicle for the creation and distribution of money has been unchanged for the entire history of human civilization. This has lead to an increasingly uncompetitive economy dominated by the illegitimate business model of for-profit finance and all of its intractable if not seemingly unresolvable problems. This situation will be resolved by the following policies:

A. A 50% Discount/Rebate policy implemented at the point of retail sale where the consumer pays for half of the total costs of production and the retail merchant is credited with the remaining 50% cost by the monetary authority. This will directly implement the new monetary and financial paradigm of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting by integrating it into the economy at its most significant and potentially powerful cost summing, terminal ending, exiting and terminal factor expression point. It will also end individual monetary scarcity and integrate beneficial price and asset deflation into profit making economic systems hence resolving the long term seeming problem of chronic inflation. With the end of poverty and inflation there will no longer be any reason to send jobs to foreign export platforms and so a rapid re-industrialization in the most efficient and ecologically sane way possible could be pursued with post haste, and the fiscal mega projects necessary to survive the end of the age of petroleum and climate change will also be imminently doable. Finally, it will accomplish the best and most essential economic intentions of both the Democratic and Republican parties, namely economic democracy, a stable and more profitable economic system and so a more unitary and beneficial integration of the self interests of the traditionally opposed political constituencies of labor and management. This imminently possible freeing reality is the primary impetus for the formation of the Integrative Party.

B. A universal dividend payment of $1000/mo. for every citizen 18 years of age and older for life that with the 50% Discount/Rebate policy will enable every adult to purchase $2000/mo. of goods and services. This will virtually end poverty overnight, form the basis for a guaranteed middle class income for every two adult family and that with even part time employment will enable an upper middle class lifestyle.

C. A $100,000 debt jubilee for everyone 22 years of age and older to reduce student loan, mortgage and other personal debt taken on within at least one year from the initiation of this policy. If one has no or little debt a single payment of $25,000 will be awarded. This will lower the level of total personal debt to GDP by a significant number and thus free it from the debt deflation it has suffered from since the run up of debt before the Great Financial Crisis of 2008.

D. A second 50% Discount/Debt Jubilee policy at the point of Loan Signing for all “big ticket” and/or “green” products. This will make the US the first true “ownership economy” and synergize action toward a sustainable and ecologically sane economics.

E. The creation of a non-profit publicly administered national banking and financial system able to loan at 0% interest. For-profit finance is not a legitimate economic business model as it violates the “sanctity” of the summing of cost and price at retail sale. Non-profit finance, however, is legitimate and necessary.

F. Taxation and Regulations: A directly distributive fiat money system that insures prosperity for all and that conquers inflation technically need not tax at all, but that of course would tempt non-compliance and chaos. What is needed is a gracious and gracefully free flowing economy that recognizes that there is no such thing as total freedom in the temporal universe populated by humans who occasionally have intentions other than the Good. Thus it recognizes that real freedom only exists amongst known and agreed upon barriers. The Integrative Party’s paradigm changing policies enable very large reductions to both individual and corporate tax rates and gives the very wealthy a gracious choice to reduce their tax burden on income above a very high level and yet curbs oligarchic accumulation of wealth and income.

Rates 2-10% from $50,000 to $10,000,000/yr. Choice of 70% rate for income above that, or 10% if the individual gives 70% of the total income above $10,000,000 is given to a list of community approved charities and/or investments deemed necessary to resolve human and planetary problems.

Corporate tax rates from 2-10% on revenues from $50,000 to $10,000,000,000/yr. Choice of 70% rate for revenue above that, or 10% if the corporation gives 70% of its taxable revenue above $10,000,000,000 is given to a list of community approved charities and/or investments deemed necessary to resolve human and planetary problems.

Post accounting tax rate of 2% of 50% of gross revenue for any corporation that owes no taxes according to a new reformed tax code.

G. Guidelines for penalties and eventual loss of 50% Discount/Rebate policy for inflating prices despite the cost savings to enterprise of the new monetary and financial paradigm.

1. Businesses who do not raise their prices and do not cut their prices in order to solidify their near or actual monopolistic status will be rewarded with a 50% reduction in their tax rate.
2. Businesses that raise their prices despite the large reduction in current costs and tax rates will pay a 90% tax on any revenue garnered from such inflation.
3. If there is inflation in the normal 1-3% range despite the new regulation the discount/rebate policy will be indexed to it.
4. Repeated inflation of prices will receive graduated taxation punishments and periods of loss of rebate privileges and “three strikes and you’re out” will be the final result if an enterprise persists in its de-stabilizing conduct.

Mandatory examination of personal and corporate accounts as opt in rule for consent to receive the rebate aspect of the 50% Discount/Rebate policy.

Elimination of transfer taxation for welfare, unemployment insurance and social security.

New Government Department of Innovation, Competition, Boycotting and The Individual’s Bully Pulpit.

The direct fiscal funding of a variety of ecological and industrial policy projects that will enable us to deal with and prosperously survive climate change and the end of the age of petroleum.

“Philosophy without science is empty. Science without philosophy is muddled.”

— Paraphrasing A. Einstein,

Correct. But even philosophy is inadequate for actual and thorough change. The levels of forms of analysis from the bottom up are: Data Gathering, Theorizing, Philosophy and Paradigm Analysis and Perception. I would posit that we need a third axiom: Science without paradigmatic analysis is static and prone to religion.

We’re still seeing the changes to scientific philosophy wrought by Einstein, Planck, etc. And what might the conceptually opposing, reality inverting paradigmatic thirdness in science be? Why the fundamental change from a dogmatic Reductionistic ONLY scientific mindset to a more inclusive one that incorporates the ultimate unitary concept of Grace as in simultaneous separateness and oneness.

The NATURAL, PHILOSOPHICAL AND PARADIGMATIC concept of Grace is not a colloquially religious pronouncement, but rather a spiritual one.

‘The “fractured, obsessively opposed and continually regurgitative nature of analysis that does not actually rise to the level of paradigm/the total pattern analysis” ‘

I forgot to capitalize (for emphasis) the words OBSESSIVELY, CONTINUALLY and ACTUALLY in that sentence which to the TRULY discerning reader would help them understand that my critique was of the orthodox mindset of scientific analysis, NOT OF THE MODE OF ANALYSIS ITSELF.

“You seem to be looking for something that extends beyond this.”

Yes, indeed I am. I’m looking at and advocating for the integrative mindset AKA Wisdom within which the set of science is wholly included, but which also includes the human capacity for creative imagination.

“But in the end that is what human life is all about. Debate, confrontation, and choices.”

Yes, that and creative imagination and the dynamic, interactive, integrative and cosmic force of evolution. All of which are aspects of Wisdom and its pinnacle concept the NATURAL, PHILOSOPHICAL concept of grace.

“We will need to look at that process, if it exists to understand it.”

It’s natural so it does exist, and yes, let us proceed with utilizing it with post haste.