The problem With MMT is it focuses way too much on government debt when personal and private corporate debt and asset inflation what and where of the problem.

Of course if you integrated price deflation painlessly and beneficially into profit making systems by tying a discount/rebate monetary and economic policy to the point of retail sale you slay both the austerity MMT correctly abhors, the build up of personal and private debt and all forms of inflation in one fell swoop.

It won’t be the “withering away” of the state as both Marxism and libertarianism advocate, but the illegitimate monopolistic monetary and financial paradigm of Debt/Burden/Additional Cost Only….that dominates the state, the individual and all of the other actually legitimate business models in the economy.

An integration of the valid insights of micro and macro-economics is clearly necessary. The realization that the point of retail sale is the single aggregative/macro-economic intersection point of the micro-economy and hence the place to implement monetary and economic policy is the key to beginning that process.

To be truly free you have to question everything, including the way religiosity weadles its way into the scientific perspective. And the only exception to that dictum is the necessity of contemplating ethics/wisdom which is the rational, differentiating consideration of morals and natual philosophy.

Steve Hummel 01/13/2019

KZ:  In his book “Man for Himself” Erich Fromm speaks of “orientation of character”. He differentiates his theory of character from that of Freud by focusing on two ways an individual relates to the world. Freud analyzed character in terms of libido organization, whereas Fromm says that in the process of living, we relate to the world by: 1) acquiring and assimilating things—”Assimilation”, and 2) reacting to people—”Socialization”. Fromm asserted that these two ways of relating to the world were not instinctive, but an individual’s response to the peculiar circumstances of his or her life; he also believed that people are never exclusively one type of orientation. These two ways of relating to life’s circumstances lead to basic character-orientations. Fromm lists four types of nonproductive character orientation, which he called receptive, exploitative, hoarding, and marketing, and one positive character orientation, which he called productive. Receptive and exploitative orientations are basically how an individual may relate to other people and are socialization attributes of character. A hoarding orientation is an acquiring and assimilating materials/valuables character trait. The marketing orientation arises in response to the human situation in the modern era. The current needs of the market determine value. It is a relativistic ethic. In contrast, the productive orientation is an objective ethic. Despite the existential struggles of humanity, each human has the potential for love, reason and productive work in life. Fromm writes, “It is the paradox of human existence that man must simultaneously seek for closeness and for independence; for oneness with others and at the same time for the preservation of his uniqueness and particularity. …the answer to this paradox – and to the moral problems of man – is productiveness.” Love, reason, and productive work are what Fromm asks of humans in the 21st century. I’m not certain we’re up to it.

Me:  Fromm is one of my favorite authors and references. His thinking is as integrative and wise as any I’ve read. His books The Art of Loving and Escape From Freedom set the stage for the kind of personal mental integrative process we need to foster and acculturate in order to evolve.

FS:  I don’t believe in unicorns.

Me:  Frank, I don’t know if you were referencing me in your unicorn statement. If so, I would only ask: Do you believe in wisdom? And even if you don’t, don’t you think that it is preferable to a counsel of despair?

JV:  You could have saved yourself the trouble of writing this sermon. I don’t think it’s going to convince anyone here. Perhaps you should look for a pulpit somewhere else? Over and out.

Me:  John V: Your sermon reference is a false, scientistic conflating of religion with what I’m actually saying. The wisdom/natural philosophy I’m advocating is a lot more in line with cutting edge science than the pre-quantum physics scientistic/quasi-religious orthodoxy you’re dramatizing. Also, am I supposed to say everything in some stoic and completely ineffective way? No, that’s only for the orthodox, SELF assured and static to intone.

And apparently you and your reality filters missed this:

The definition of the natural philosophical concept of grace is a dynamic, interactive, integrative and abundant free flowingness which also describes the cosmos and the temporal universe on the planet we live on.

KZ:   The committee for my clinical degree (clinical psychology) was made up of an Adlerian, a Freudian, two students of Rogers, and a student of Fromm. They fought constantly. I learned a lot from the fights but took me an extra year to complete the degree because I had to satisfy each of them.

Me:  Ha! Such is the educational hazards of higher education. Congratulations on that integrative effort. 🙂

RL:  Ken, Through much of my life I suffered from recurring bouts of “heart hysteria,” fear of death through heart failure. My first bout happened when I was 18, in the Air Force, and I was treated in a San Francisco military hospital. I was sent to a psychologist where a very young and attractive assistant interviewed me with questions that I found quite surprising: she wanted to know about my sex life and my relations with my family of a possible intimate nature. I thought she was screwy. Then the psychologist had a few sessions with me during which he asked nothing, he simply sat in a chair, with a pencil and pad and said, “tell me what comes into your mind.” Since nothing much came into my mind not much happened in the sessions. He sent me to take physical therapy without ever giving me any explanations. Twenty years later, in a stressful time, I had another bout of heart hysteria. I visited a psychologists in the Veterans Hospital in Nebraska. He was a pill pusher mostly. I concluded that in the first case I had been treated by a Freudian and in the second by a behaviorists. Neither did much help. I just decided, when driving one day, to stop taking the Valium pills the behaviorist had prescribed, rolled down my car window and threw the prescription box out. So much for psychology.

Me:  Robert, Yes, an excellent example of the stupidities of psychological scientism and the commonsensical quality of wisdom which cuts through all of any extraneous complexity by simply acting in present time……with finality. It’s a perfectly reflective demonstration of the resolving power of tying a digital monetary policy directly to the point of terminal ending, summing, expression and tipping point of retail sale.

When you integrate science and wisdom you can eliminate religiosity and recognize deeper insights, and when you fail to do so you’re leaving your mind open to the creeping, creaking orthodoxies that have plagued both science and religion since time immemorial.

….the re-retailization of them. And you accomplish that by taking benevolent and rational control of the money creating process, strictly regulating speculation and if necessary creating rival/competitive exchanges that have the ethical fortitude to obey actual economic values instead of the greedy, gambling obsession to “make a killing” that such markets are now driven by.

ER:  On the call for new text books for students, the way I see it is there is a large number of economic books as described by the RWEA however there are two authors whom i respect, that seem to be omitted from those lists. They are Bernard Guerrien because he cuts through the rhetoric and focuses o the cause of the problem, and g Tony Lawson ,because with his critical reasoning and his call for a new ontology where he argues for a better understanding of humanity, than the out-dated irrelevant concept of Homo Economicus.

Apart from that the way I see it there is a lot of good thought provoking reading available if the student is steered in the right direction. In other words the emphasis so far seems to focus on the needs for new text books, forgetting the important point of how the subject is taught. For example C T Kurien’s emphasis on the importance of teaching students how to think, not what to think. Ideally I think this should start in the home and school then be reinforced in the university, because unless people, students and teachers learn how to think they are indoctrinated into somnambulantly accepting the political economic garbage with its ulterior motives of increasing the wealth and power of the elite.

Me:  Excellent point Ted. It’s perfectly rational to try to re-write economic textbooks, but the best way to actually make an economic and monetary change in everyone’s life is to start a grassroots movement that shows all agents individual and commercial how a new economics will incredibly benefit them personally.

MM:  There can be no valid GUT of cultural economy (or economics) without a singular, unitive, substantially comprehensive, realistic foundation of holotrophic meta-theory, i.e., ethical meta-economics. Further, the forthcoming new Work on that requires ethical ecometrics to balance even next-gen econometrics. Clearly, Lawson’s call for a new ontology is well founded. What must it include for validity & viability? Predominantly, human reality and interaction involve qualitative issues, ethics, natural meta-ethics and meta-logic. Ignore all that and you ignore root causes and the nonquantitative factors that inform and affect sociocultural interaction. Furthermore, lacking ethical meta-economics and ethical ecometrics there is no way to measure, monitor and assess the toxic realities of kleptocracy, the parasitic cancer infecting & ruining civilization & our only habitat, Earth’s biosphere. Without a viable, bio-ethical holonomic paradigm of humane culture there can be no valid legal-financial paradigm and no global civilization worth sustaining. Yes, learning the realities of economics should begin in the home, but that will not become generally possible without an ethically viable cultural paradigm. Additionally, that seems an extremely unlikely possibility as long as the socioeconomic paradigm of kleptocracy rules the world. Hence, a truly effective evolutionary upgrade of text books and teaching of ethical meta-economics seems a vitally important necessity for fostering and supporting a sustainably sane civilization.

Me:  The very process of Wisdom is the integration of the truths in opposites and wisdom’s pinnacle is the utterly integrative natural philosophical concept of individual graciousness and grace applied to our systems. Do an exegesis of its many, many scientific and beatific aspects and craft philosophy and policy around it….and you’re on your way.

***********************************

MM:  We should remember or reread Moore’s “Utopia” before bandying it about while assuming it means something it wasn’t and isn’t. Utopia was a nightmarish mishmash of what was wrong with medieval feudalism and what might be beyond it. Neither case depicted an enviable state of sociocultural reality.

Me:  Correct. Utopias have generally been depicted as unreal, and historically that has also been how they have turned out for theories like capitalism and socialism. The trick with creation of an actually workable and beneficial utopia is to create it by empowering and freeing the individual instead of trying to enforce it from top down. What is required to resolve the conundrum is to find an un-impeachably ethical concept whose aspects are the integration of opposites itself and applying it both systemically and in a way that also simultaneously distributes freedom and personal empowerment “into the many hands of the individual.”

Such a concept is the natural philosophical concept of grace, and viz economics its aspect of Gifting.

Virtually all of politics and economics is the “divide and conquer” side show from where the real problem lies, and that is private finance’s monopolistic money creating abilities and its paradigm of Debt/Burden/Additional Cost. “Burn that fact into the stonewalls” of your mind and you’ll never become distracted again.

KZ:  The important question, as illustrated by Trump’s actions (immigrant bans, military on the border, government shutdown, corruption, etc.) is how much harm to everyday people and to liberal democratic values and institutions will authoritarian populists inflict this time round before they’re defeated? And if there is active conflict, will it remain political, or involve physical violence, perhaps even armed combat?

Me:  Ken, Precisely. That is why the rule of law must be re-inforced and Trumpism be unmistakably intellectually and politically resigned to the dust bin of history.

Populist “Fourth Turnings” are the chaotic historical signatures of humanity’s chronic failure to accomplish integrative thirdness greater oneness.

….are not free markets/free enterprise in action, but rather chaotic price and monetary ones enabled by the current paradigm of Debt/Leverage Only to inflate and de-stabilize the economy.

“If you want to be happy no one in the world can take happiness from you; if you want to be unhappy, no one in the world can make you happy. So choose to be happy.” ~Paramhansa Yogananda