GH:  Craig, your question is rhetorical.You’re not really interested in why we are not all proselytising for monetary gifting. You know what you think and it’s a long time since you listened to any counter-argument.

Me:  I will listen to any argument/theory that adds to the list of policy solutions I have advocated here that the new monetary and financial paradigm of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting accomplishes.

Virtually everyone here is engaged only in rhetoric. Several times I have asked for posters here to give their specific policies. Nothing but crickets. Instead of complaining about how arduous a nomadic existence is, how the rains haven’t come, the game is scarce and the lions that lurk are increasingly hungry this name dropping debating society should be looking to discover that if you put seeds in the ground and corral a male and female bovine your world is turned upside down in incredibly beneficial ways. In other words think paradigmatically.

So please do not lecture me about being rhetorical. Ya know what I mean?

NR:  I still think Mr. Edward Ross makes some very valid points about the age-old practice of a needy “STATE” shoveling” printed & stamped coinage {plus borrowed money in the form of the glorified I.O.U’s; known as bonds, bills, debentures & notes} at any problem that cannot be solved otherwise. And he does so with a trenchant wit. ‘Monetary gifting” was once called “Prairie freigeld” back in the 1930’s when the social credit government of Alberta started printing the attractively designed stuff, as “social dividends”. But when their pulp ‘n paper product was proscribed as not acceptable as legal ‘coin of the realm’, it suffered the same fate as Confederate dollars during Reconstruction. But, rest assured that Ralph Hawtrey, Keynes & several other chaps from the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos & British Actuarial Society, whom you may not respect very much, were quite gentle in their debunking of the rather temperamental Major Douglas’ s opus magnum.
“Major Douglas’s monetary theories are about as useful as a misprint in a multiplication table”, said M. Hawtrey. Not to mention the Major’s rather curious misunderstanding about Say’s ‘law of markets’ embodied in the “A + B theorem”. That one can be easily ‘offed’ by a couple of Venn Diagrams’. Thank you for your patience. My critique is intended only as a didactic argument which I hope benefits all; In the old German academic sense of “erklarung”.

Me:  Hawtrey did not understand money at all and was rebutted quite thoroughly by Douglas. Keynes actually plagiarized Douglas by simply restating one of his major points and claiming it as his own. How convenient and covert it was that the Canadian federal government declared Alberta’s monetary gifts ultra vires.

I’m not a social crediter by the way. Social crediters are stuck in classical ideas of equilibrium, I’m not, as all of what I advocate aligns with what Steve Keen has written regarding the financial instability hypothesis of Minsky with the exception that he, who even though he has correctly complained that an economist can get his PhD in economics without taking so much as a rudimentary course in accounting, still does not recognize the fact that the entirety of the economy is embedded in an accounting cycle that invalidates the quantity theory of money and the velocity of its circulation.

Your Telos and Technos is a quite good philosophical book. However, like virtually every present tome on economics its ideas and abstractions need the focus on present time reality that the garden variety accountant, mostly unaware of the underlying economic significances he deals with every day, could bring to it.

DT:  Craig, you and Norman are here saying some interesting stuff, but as a “jonny come lately” Englishman who can only imagine the history you North Americans are talking about, I would appreciate a few references. For example, I know about Venn diagrams, Norman, but apart from the fact that Douglas has been accused of misunderstanding Say’s Law, not in what way. I didn’t know about the ‘ultra vires’ as against the suggested logical put-down, Craig, but I do know that the financial instability Minsky wrote about and Keen simulates is what happens when one uses PID control logic to achieve an equilibrium, and uses D corrections to avoid danger faster than one uses I feedback to re-correct one’s aims. This is standard chaos theory, applied to (representing) financial entrepreneurs shuffling nominal investments to make monetary profits. I do recognise as fact your bit about the entirety of the economy, but that only explains the error in the theories, not the chaotic implications of the facts.

Me:  The instability/chaos comes from the monopolistic onlyness of the monetary and financial paradigm, and allowing private finance to maintain that paradigm is the height of idiocy. There are plenty of legitimate private financial services that can aggregate and find investment for prior-ly created money and savings, but money creation is not one of them

Money creation either as debt or as monetary gifting must become a public utility guided by the supreme ethical concept of grace as in love in action and its applicable monetary, financial and economic policies. Anything less is folly and/or non-confront.

Helio-centrism and the discovery of the ellipse ended the unstable anomalies of Ptolemaic cosmology and the policy of a 50% discount/rebate at retail sale and the concept of monetary grace as in gifting will end financial instability.

Money is non-neutral. The current MONOPOLISTIC paradigm of money creation, Debt ONLY, is WAAAAYY non-neutral. A universal dividend and the 50% discount/rebate price and monetary policy at retail sale, the latter of which is the very expression of the new monetary and financial paradigm of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting, resolves seeming unresolvable opposite economic realities, universally benefits and unites seeming opposite economic and political constituencies and ironically could enable both a bottom up consumer and top down fiscal means of navigating man made climate change.

Why in the hell don’t all of you have your hair on fire advocating for it, especially in view of the fact that the corona virus has recently shown the efficacy of fiscal and direct monetary gifting???

AT:  But the point is this! Many Trump supporters, especially the anti-war Q followers, are talking about federalizing the Fed…and that being a good thing. This is really a teaching moment!!!

Me:  The problem is, nationalizing the FED is probably leaping from the frying pan into the fire. It’s a further consolidation of power and into a class of people who are at least as unethical as the financiers, namely the pols. Make no mistake….politics is about power. And this is why the real solution lies at the paradigm concept level….not just the reform or structural one. Power, profit and control are the watch words of the current monetary and financial paradigm of Debt Only and of the current zeitgeist of power. Monetary grace as in gifting is the new monetary and financial paradigm, and grace as in love in personal action/systemic policy is the emergent realization of the new zeitgeist.

EB:  Yes agreed, Steve H., Steve Mnuchin isn’t necessarily the guy we want in charge. But it’s still a promising development, one we can work with and capitalize on. Here are questions I just asked one of our advisory board members who is a professor and lawyer. If anyone here knows the answers, great!

Retail sale is the treminal aggregative point for all costs and prices including profit. It is also the terminal expression point for all relevant economic factors, for instance inflation.

As it is where production becomes consumption it is also the terminal ending point of the entire actually productive/economic process for every consumer item and service. It is hence a potentially extremely powerful point for corrective problem resolving and/or beneficial policy effect.

True ending points are always powerful because they are also potential pivoting points and a 50% discount/rebate policy at retail sale pivots both backward/downward with ending costs and prices and reciprocally backwardly and upwardly to the merchant and hence benefits both producer and consumer. Discounts are credited and rebates are debited back to the merchant so he/she can be made whole on their overheads and margins of profit. Every agent benefits with increased purchasing power and potential business revenues.

Yes, a 50% discount to virtually every consumer/retail item and service which is rebated back to the merchant giving it to the consumer. This immediately doubles everyone’s earned income purchasing power and simultaneously not only terminally ends any possibility of inflation, but miraculously from an orthodox perspective, beneficially integrates price and asset DEFLATION into profit making economic systems. Of course, because the 1/10th have shown a propensity for trying to game this paradigm changing policy you’ll want to tax at a rate of 100% any price inflation that isn’t a result of empirically verifiable ADDITIONAL costs and if they object or persist then they will lose their 50% discount/rebate privileges. After such a policy, paired with a $1000/mo. universal dividend is implemented, additional costs will be very difficult to find considering all transfer taxes that businesses and individuals pay for welfare, unemployment insurance and social security will become redundant and can be cancelled. Personal and corporate income taxes can also be greatly reduced in the stabilized fiat money system the 50% discount/rebate policy enables. The potential for a discount/rebate monetary and pricing policy at retail sale IS the new insight/new tool of the new monetary and economic paradigm the same as was the invention of the telescope, moveable print and agriculture of past paradigm changes.

You can get the full (so far developed) program here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PLNJLRN/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=wisdomics-Gracenomics&qid=1552358772&s=books&sr=1-1-catcorr

Don’t let this crisis, the just passed stimulus bill and the realization that our fiat money system can work to serve us instead of oppress us go unperceived.

A continuing universal dividend IS INDIVIDUALLY distributed monetary and financial power. The negative things you mention are POSSIBLE problems and can be avoided with the correct regulation. We already have a privately controlled digital debit card system which needs to be better regulated and made publicly administered. Unnecessary fears regarding the payment system play into the resistance to them by the financial elite banking system.

No one should ever consent to being chipped in return for a universal dividend because it is a completely irrelevant to the purpose of such a monetary and financial remedy, and suggesting it would probably be the beginning of a huge mass movement to prevent it.

This situation is an incredible opportunity to increase consciousness of the efficacy of integrating monetary gifting as the new paradigm concept into the monopolistically restricting current one of DEBT ONLY so let’s not blow that opportunity. A mass movement that would communicate the necessity of BOTH that long over due advance AND the admonishment against privacy and tyrannical stupidities like chipping is what we should be doing.

The two 1 trillion dollar coin idea is a less effective reflection of the 50% discount/rebate policy. Why? Because with the perceived new money coming into the economy (which in reality is actually an inadequate amount even if it completely equals the present amount of demand) corporate decision makers WILL tend to raise their prices in order to increase their business revenue. This will get the libertarian and conservative right yapping on and on about inflation and then you’ll have to fight the monetary fight we’ve done for centuries if not millenia. Because the 50% discount at the terminal ending point of the economic process completely eliminates any possibility of inflation (which means it’s where production becomes consumption/economic possession which means no further costs can be added to it) we can avoid all of that, enable people and policy makers to awaken to the universal benefits of the policy for individuals and businesses, how the policy also enables huge transfer and individual and corporate income tax reductions, combined with a universal dividend immediately ends poverty and also enables us to create a green consumer products upswell and a fiscal expansion of funding to fight climate change. That’s all.

Natural monopolies like water and electricity need to be broken up and regulated. UNnatural monopolies like money even more so because it is such a facile tool and has such ability to warp and/or disrupt exchange, which incidently effects everyone, and so shows the power and control it has on….everyone.

Structural monopolies are bad enough, but when you have a pattern/paradigmatic monopoly like the current monetary and financial paradigm of Debt ONLY the problem is much more subtle, unconscious and manipulable. Conversely however, because paradigms ARE patterns new ones have tremendous power to change things for the better.

Grace is the human focused and heightened awareness state that enables us to sense the flux reality present in each moment around us. It is a unitary, natural and ecstatic experience available at any moment simply because it is, it exists, it is from whence we have evolved and can now sense it if we only open ourselves to it and look around until we see/sense it.

Steve Hummel 03/11/2020

Me:  You can argue forever and a day about the merits and shortcomings of Capitalism and Socialism. Or, you can find the most efficacious way to implement monetary gifting and the economic system it would create, namely Direct Monetary Distributism.

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

Me:  Hunting and gathering was much more secure and abundant than cave dwelling or whatever was the reality before hunting and gathering, but agriculture was much more secure and abundant than hunting and gathering. Otherwise we wouldn’t have changed to AG, homesteading and urbanization.

And direct monetary distributism will be much more secure, abundant and aligned with wisdom….because it is aligned with the natural philosophical/wisdom concept of grace.

By FINALLY unifying economics with the wisdom of the concept of grace, which is the pinnacle unitary concept behind every one of the world’s major wisdom traditions, we’ll much more likely to have the Wisdomics we so sorely require.

“In the final analysis, economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life.”

Exactly. And that is also why the new paradigm in money and finance will become only the second mega paradigm change in human history.

You can run from a mega paradigm change, but you cannot hide from it.

KZ:  “Since hunter communities were so successful economically and in other ways, are there somethings we can learn from them to help reorganize failing economies and societies today? Particularly in the US. I believe there are.”

Me:  Do an exegesis of the many aspects of the wisdom concept of grace. It’s the ultimate guidepost.

MC:  There are historically closer examples of how to evolve more sustainable economic relations than hunter gatherers and far more realistic I think. David Ruccio’s RWER post Abraham Lincoln and the road to despotism is a good place to start.

Me:  Actually not correct. As I have pointed out here numerous times before there has only been one mega paradigm change, which is a paradigm change that has major “knock on” effects in areas of human endeavor/bodies of knowledge (scientifically developed or not) other than the specific area that the new paradigm applies to. And that was the change from H & G to Ag, Homesteading and Urbanization.

The signature of a mega paradigm change is its immediacy and continuous-ness of effect…for literally everyone. And a monetary, financial and hence economic paradigm change fits that description perfectly, so H & G is the perfect example.

If we hadn’t discovered Ag etc. we’d probably still be propitiating the great god mugjub who lives up the yap-yap river. And if we don’t cognite on the mega paradigm change of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting….the human race could end up in precisely that same situation.

KZ:  If early agriculture were organized along the same lines as hunter-gatherer communities you would be correct. However, with domestication of animals and plants came greater abundance, and, not curiously, the notion that needs are great and always growing, while resources to meet those needs are always inadequate (scarce). And the fight for control of resources began.

Me:  You’re correct that Ag, homesteading and urbanization despite being a mega paradigm change also led on to the excesses, imbalances and out ethics of capitalism, but like everything else economics and anthropology are in process and finding the most underlying process will enlighten the way forward with the least error and ethical missing of the mark.

The beneficial aspects of every historical paradigm change have always and always will be aspects of the natural philosophical concept of grace, and paradigm change is simply the process of becoming more consciously aware of that concept toward the even more laborious mental process of a change in zeitgeist. The current zeitgeist is Power/Otherness, the next one will be Grace/Unity and the new monetary and financial paradigm will be the second mega paradigm change in human history and hence the most progressive toward the goal of change in zeitgeist.

(several back and forth posts between two posters regarding the duality of capitalism vs socialism)

Me:  You’re both correct in your observations, however, Capitalism vs Socialism is simply the longstanding and now obsessively contentious dualism standing in the way of the new monetary and financial paradigm/thirdness greater oneness of Gifting and hence also the process of going from the zeitgeist of Power/Otherness to Grace/Unity.

When in doubt integrate the truths, workabilities, applicabilities and highest ethical considerations of opposites….and keep on integrating.