KZ: Craig, your suggestions sound interesting. One question, how do you suggest we prevent the monopoly financialists from subverting the changes you propose? Words and even actions can be undermined and directed in wholly new paths. Financialists, who benefit greatly from the exiting economic arrangements are not only smart and creative, but also good at destroying opposition. They’ve proven that repeatedly.
A point related more closely to the subject is “what is mathematically really?” Mathematics is like money, war, or religion – not physical, not mental, but social. Money, religion, and mathematics can only be dealt with in social-cultural-historic terms. This isn’t controversial – it’s a fact of life. Mathematics is another particular, special social-historical phenomenon. Its most salient special feature is the uniquely high consensus it attains. People invent mathematics to do things, to be useful. Is there a mathematics invented that’s beneficial or useful for economics? If there is, I’ve not seen it.
Me: Probably the best way to keep finance from subverting the beneficial effects of the policies of the new paradigm of Monetary Gifting would be for all the economic pedants and pundits (including myself) to start a mass social movement that alerted individuals and businessmen to how such policies are in their self interests. Trying to convince other economists and economic and monetary authorities who have their hands on the “controls” of the economy is a hopelessly inadequate and quite frankly dumb strategy. Ignore/rebut any cry from the bought or confused that such policies will cause inflation by simply playing out the actual temporal universe effects of the policies both at the terminal end of the economic process at retail sale and also at the point of retail product sale from one business model to the next. Stay focused on those effects and communicating them to large targeted constituencies like the above and also students who are being enslaved by the current system/paradigm.
“There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.” Victor Hugo
KZ: Craig, Hugo I think is correct. But it’s not individual self interests whose time has come, but rather public good. Once we can figure out what public good is.
Me: One of the aspects of the natural philosophical concept of grace is the utter integration of the truths in opposite perspectives to the point of thirdness and greater oneness which means that self interest and the public good CAN BE so integrated.
KZ: Craig, could you explain how this integration is possible with “grace.” I face this issue routinely with my clients. I always advise choosing the alternatives that provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number, where we can specify such clearly.
Me: You implement policies that reflect the various aspects of the concept of grace and so integrally effect those aspects in the temporal universe, for instance monetary grace as in gifting. A universal dividend is a direct gift of money to the individual. A 50% retail discount/rebate is both a direct and reciprocal gift of reduced price to the individual, a reciprocal gift of the merchant’s discounts back to him/her, a gift of the potential doubling of sales available to enterprise and a gift to every agent of a system which has become so prosperous and stable that it is in a state of virtual grace as in free flowingness, and finally these policies integrate price deflation beneficially into profit making systems at the terminal ending point of the entire process where production becomes consumption and both sides of that divide are satisfied, agreed and have benefited.
Define the concepts, implement policies that effect its aspects, further regulate in ways that align with the concept and if wise amend with structural changes that dynamically maintain those effects.
Wisdom is the very process of the integration of truths in opposing perspectives (and the simultaneous deletion of their separate untruths, unworkabilities and inapplicabilities), and the pinnacle concept of all of the world’s major wisdom traditions is the natural philosophical concept of grace as in an integral unification of a duality (opposites) to the integrative/continually integrating point and process of thirdness greater oneness.
By the way, these policies actually benefit finance the most of all. How? By giving them the greatest value and highest reward of all, namely grace as in absolution from their 5000 year old a priori dominatingly unethical paradigm of Debt Only.
KZ: Craig, maybe I’m just dense, but I still don’t understand how we bring along in the directions you suggest people who believe your proposals are either dead wrong or just not effective.
Me: In the first place the authorities who think this way and/or are resistant are few which we would be smart to largely ignore. Secondly, monetary gifting is so obviously beneficial to both the individual and commercial agents that simply dramatizing/acting out their various policy effects so that people in general and businessmen in particular can see and feel it….is enough to win the day. Not everybody has to completely understand the accounting principles, the old or the new paradigm etc. etc. etc. they basically need to see and understand that it is good for them and everyone else. Look at half @ssed palliatives and unnecessarily re-distributive policies like social security. Regressives have been trying to get rid of them for almost a hundred years and can’t. How much more difficult will it be to end directly distributed universal dividends and reciprocal monetary gifting with a 50% discount to where consumer price inflation is terminally summed and expressed so that everyone’s purchasing power is immediately doubled, the possibility that enterprise can double their sales and the system flows like a gymnast across the floor? Even the most hardened libertarian or conservative pundit will see the efficacy of such policies and stop refusing to accept their dividend and discounts, if only after their wives see everyone else beneficially receiving them and then hit them over the head with a frigging rolling pin.
Me: The reason Keynesianism morphed into the neo-classical synthesis is because it was a mere reform. It was also the fall back position of Finance as Social Credit had become a world wide movement in the time between the world wars and its policies threatened their paradigm. Douglas was a much better observer and more insightful than Keynes, but I’m not sure even he, let alone his followers, ever truly comprehended the paradigm changing capabilities of Social Credit’s policies as the term was not known at the time, plus Social Crediters were also mostly afflicted with the false orthodoxy of general equilibrium and so did not realize the inversion/transformation of a problematic duality or ratio signature of paradigm change.
You never hear economists talking about Social Credit I suspect because it became so buried by the distraction of the war, relief at its ending, the rise of Keynesianism and finance unfairly tarring it as anti-semitic even though its entire philosophy was based on the natural philosophical concept of grace-graciousness.
JB: Craig,as I was raised in America, Social Credit spoke of the horrid ideas of Socialism. The cultural divide given by the Atlantic Ocean made most Americans believe in opportunity which was to be given to all who worked & kept their eyes open. That’s why my ancestors came from Germany, Sweden, France & Scotland in the 1880’s & 1890’s.
Me: My ancestors came from Germany, England and Ireland in the 1880’s as well in order to find opportunity and to avoid conscription in Bismarck’s wars.
Socialism has almost as horrid and fallacious a history as capitalism and its current horrid manifestation finance capitalism. I will not dispute that some mixed systems of democratic socialism are somewhat less horrid than finance capitalism, but they are still laden with fallacies, unworkabilities and palliative “solutions” for monetary economic systems. For instance, given that MMT has shown that sovereign fiat money systems do not actually need taxes….then why do we need re-distributive taxation? The truth is we don’t, what we need is direct funding by the government and economic and monetary policies that will both prevent inflation and ideally can integrate deflation into profit making systems…..like the ones I’ve been enumerating here lately. These policies would eliminate what all heterodox economists have identified as a problem namely systemic austerity for all agents, and they align with fragmentary suggested policies like UBI and “a modern debt jubilee”. It’s just that the heterodox are not aware of the significances, opportunities and benefits of tying monetary policy directly to the point of retail sale…..yet.
Integrate truths and keep on integrating them, and it will become increasingly difficult to “put a foot wrong”.
