…is that it is a deeper and more inwardly changing reality. As the ecological crisis is extremely important and one of the major aspects of the philosophical concept behind the new monetary and economic paradigm is ongoing dynamic balance driving that inward reality home to the individual is the way to get better ethical thinking and cooperation from the him/her. Ethics being the rational and integrative contemplation of morals, and ethical sensitivity an inherent aspect of graciousness which is also the highest experience of Wisdom…all of the reflectivities, alignments and relevant  deepening of experiences connect with each other.  And of course another of the major aspects of the concept and experience of grace is heightened connectedness.

Steve Keen    Modern economies are in an unstable state of disequilibrium due to debt deflation….which by the way is just another way of describing cost inflation. The question Keen needs to ask himself is are technologically advanced capital intensive economies inherently cost inflationary.  Examining the various datums of cost accounting and using calculus on their relationships to each other will answer that question, and then Keen can then become a conscious Social Crediter/advocate of Wisdomics-Gracenomics instead of holding onto Minsky whose insights are genuine but incomplete.

MMT   Money systems can be directly distributive and can and should reject austerity and embrace fiscal deficits.

Public Banking   Finance is unnecessarily costly and dominating and needs cost reduction and structural balancing

Michael Hudson   Finance and rentiering are the keystone problems of the economy

David Graeber   Debt has been the problematic business model for at least the last 5000 years

All of these movements are unconsciously moving toward the insight of Douglas’s Social Credit that in modern technologically advanced capital intensive economies the rate of flow of total costs and so total prices always tends to exceed the rate of flow of total individual incomes simultaneously produced, and hence a scarcity ratio of incomes to prices which results in inherent cost inflation as their most basic problematic reality.

Wisdomics-Gracenomics integrates all of these insights and extends the policies of Social Credit to better align them with temporal universe realities and much more thoroughly saturate modern economies with the new paradigm of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting. It also fully fleshes out the philosophical concept behind the new paradigm so as to bring increased consciousness and ethical regulation to its applicability to economics and to money/payment systems, and finally to its general human mental empowerment. 

Keen is right of course, but what is the more underlying insight we can discern from that fact so that we can intelligently craft policy to resolve it? If you notice the GENERAL trend of the above graph is continuously upward, that is from peak to peak the trend line is up through time. As continuously rising private debt is an ever increasing cost even at 0% interest that means that an economy forced to obey the paradigms of debt, loan and for production only….is inherently cost inflationary. This is why the 5 cent Milky Way candy bar of my youth is now $1.34 at Walmart despite a tremendous increase in technical innovation in its production.

I have told Dr. Keen numerous times over the last 3-4 years that I thought his de-bunking of DSGE neo-liberal economic theory was deserving of a Nobel Prize and I stand by that. However, the originator of Social Credit C. H. Douglas came to the above underlying conclusion almost 100 years ago and crafted policies that deal with it. My further policy extensions and philosophical exegesis of the concept underlying Social Credit that I call Wisdomics-Gracenomics enables an even better understanding of the concept behind the new paradigm required to resolve modern economies’ deepest problem and policies that more thoroughly saturate them with that new paradigm which is Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting.

Perhaps Dr. Keen could acknowledge Douglas and myself if the Nobel committee is wise enough to award it to him at some future date.

This is why reformers at best accomplish little change and always end up palliating the problem reformers want to resolve.  This is also why the real basis of problems, unethical and/or outmoded/unworkable paradigms, tend to remain unresolved until they fester and engender the over reaction known as revolution. Thus history is largely a long string of failures only very occasionally punctuated by the actual and significant progress  known as paradigm changes.

We live at a time when the paradigms of Finance have not evolved for over 5000 years; and the paradigm of reductionistic science, namely that temporal-physical reality is the only true and ultimate reality, has reigned for over 300 years and generally refuses to validate let alone integrate the significance of consciousness,  even if it is considered an entirely natural phenomenon, into a coherent whole.

Both of these lingering old paradigms are resolved by separate aspects of the concept behind their mutual new paradigm grace as in monetary Gifting and grace as in a dynamic trinity-unity-oneness-wholeness-process.

….are re-discovering Wisdom.

Scientism and the economic fallacy that we are homo economicus instead of homo sapiens, wise and discerning man, are crumbling.  Yes, there’s still plenty of folly and arrogance to spin off and be dramatized in economics and in scientism, but the re-discovery of Wisdom in its fullness is IMO on the rise and can continue to strengthen, deepen and broaden our lives. And all it will really take is the realization that you can say shit and still find personal salvation because the contemplation and cultivation of grace/graciousness is the universal solvent of every rigid mental duality and the route to true unitary understanding and joyous inner freedom.

Democrats detest Trump and under their breath most Republicans probably do the same. They’re both right to dislike the third rate populist intellect Trump espouses. Problem is both orthodox liberalism and orthodox conservative/libertarianism can only muster at best a second rate intellectualism. Wisdom has always been a closer, discerning integrative look at the the truths in opposites so as to find the thirdness and greater oneness that results from such an integration. That dynamic difference is not the typical mealy-mouthed compromise or poison pill amalgam that merely engenders further conflict without progress which both parties have honed to a near science, and again neither is the false third rate populist counterfeit of wisdom that Trump stumbles around in. The closer look, the honest, objective look sans the arrogance and bias that so often attends orthodoxy…that is what wisdom is.

Saying that macro-economically the system requires continual borrowing to prevent recession/depression and that the systemic costs of the resultant continual borrowing is the problem (Keen), is exactly the same as saying the system is inherently cost inflationary (C. H. Douglas) and that policies must counter that fact. So Keen has unconsciously rediscovered Douglas’s insight from almost 100 years ago. I’ve told Keen numerous times over the last several years that I thought his de-bunking of neo-liberal DSGE economics was worthy of a Nobel prize, and I stand by that, but if it is somewhat ego deflationary that someone discerned and declared the same thing before him…that is beside the point. Perhaps Keen could accept the Nobel and graciously cite Douglas’s  Social Credit and myself as the integratively philosophical and temporal policy extender of Douglas’s thinking with Wisdomics-Gracenomics.

Sadly, any significant change is likely to be glacial or even third rate populist intellect and so regressive. What economic and monetary reform actually needs is a mass social movement akin to MLK, Jr.’s civil rights movement in the USA in the 60’s. Because aggregate individual income is inherently scarce in ratio to total costs and so total prices 90% of successful business is marketing. We need to sell monetary abundance to those people whose interests dovetail with it like students, the small to medium sized businessman….and probably 75% of the general populace. That’s the only effective way to get terminally orthodox economists and terminally power craving pols focused enough to act.

The Mind is both a window and a filter, and self awareness, if rigorously pursued by any of the world’s major wisdom traditions, removes both.

Steve Hummel 10/05/2017