Trinity-Unity-Oneness-Process…the ultimate, everyday, all the time and in every way…. conscious reality.

Evolving the economic and money system are the linchpin systems necessary for the even more important thing that humanity must “up its game” in, and that is human awareness.

What we really badly need is intensified (and even subsidized) research into innovation that will integrate and synergize both democracy of consumption and reduction of resources…at the same time.

That makes it a continually integrated Duality, a Trinity and a Monism….all at the same time…and through time. And as every human being is a partly conscious continually integrated Duality of body and mind, potentially a fully conscious Trinity of body, mind and self awareness, and in fact, even if only partly conscious, a unitary oneness-monism of all of these states….all at the same time and through time. So people are in a state of grace…even if they don’t fully realize it yet. Please try that on for size for a while.

DT:  Craig, I’m very much with your conclusion here. What worries me is that destroying employment or being employed in the management of money rather than people and the countryside also destroys the opportunities to care and to see where care is needed. Giving is an alternative to taxation which enables the giver rather than the government to choose what projects to support, but when the rich don’t live anywhere in particular they too cannot see where the needs are until these amount to complete destitution. Polanyi also strongly made the point that the evil of the Speenhamland wage support system was to deprive paupers of even what little reason they had left for living. So the giving has to real and where the need is, with work-sharing leaving skill and dignity but also the need for precisely what you say, about helping individuals find their own constructive purposes in addition to employment in efficient mass production. With money as we have it the motivation to do this is counter-productive, which is why my vision is of a credit card or “hitch-hiker” economy.

While quoting Chesterton, I found this. It seems to me very apt. The monetary system has lasted a long time, but is it fragile? “[To] be breakable is not the same as to be perishable. Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years. Such, it seemed, was the joy of man, either in elfland or on earth; the happiness depended on NOT doing something which you could at any moment do and which, very often, it was not obvious why you should not do”. Like loving money. Replace the money with credit and work worth doing, and that too will be durable,

Me:  Yes. One of the best ways to turn a problematic factor into a solution is to re-define it. For instance we could re-define the concept of full time work into 20 hours of employment + 20 hours of volunteerism and/or self determined positive self development + a $1500/ mo. dividend paid to every individual 18 and older. Of course if you and your employer wanted you to work 40+ hours/week that would be an available option as well and you would still get your dividend. Re-definition/philosophical transformation is what I call Wisdomics which is my idea of a multi-disciplinary integrative body of thought instead of the intellectually fragmented thing we currently call economics.

KZ:  Craig, I admire your forbearance. Humans have never been free. They always owned obligations and duties to one another. But humans’ invention of agriculture, government, and then monarchy forced human freedom be possessed by some more than others. And with it the invention of slavery. In one form or another slavery has been with humans ever since. And contrary to views of many the current versions of slavery in serving capitalism and corporations are not either more humane or more democratic than its predecessors. So far except in short time periods democracy has been no match for the slavery of either monarchy, totalitarianism, or capitalism. Marx was wrong about a lot of things. But he was not wrong that most of us live in chains.

Me:  Yes, this is not for lack of intelligence, but rather lack of the pragmatic and ethical consciousness that attends wisdom. That is why economics needs to become Wisdomics.

KZ:  Craig, humans today, mostly as a result of rationalism’s sway have a narrow understanding of intelligence. Intelligence is about all cognitive abilities. Analysis, emotions, perception, loyalty, commitment, etc. I do like your term, Wisdomics.

Me:  Perhaps if we defined love as a movement outward from self and toward another it would help. That way mutual aid would be a form of love as would a handshake and any cooperative situation. Scientifically, everything in the cosmos is an electro-magnetic outflow toward a perceiver…..who is also radiating back. That could make the world look a lot friendlier, and contemplating that most basic fact and integrating it into our thinking could be the start of a wise and more wholistic philosophy.

And I certainly also agree with your values of loyalty, duty, obligation and trust, but aren’t those all aspects of love? I think we’re all much more in agreement than we are in disagreement.

KZ:  Craig, love is not required for loyalty, duty, obligation, or trust. In fact, love often hampers these. And they certainly are not all aspects of love. Each of us carries out obligations, duties, loyalties, and trust regardless of individual feelings of love. That’s one of the things that allows collective common life to emerge and continue.

Me:  “That’s one of the things that allows collective common life to emerge and continue.”

I would say that lack of love is undoubtedly the thing that prevents actual community from being reality in every aspect of life. I certainly don’t deny the reality you point at, but again, if we integrated those two perspectives I think a third and more unified reality would present itself. Integration of opposites is wisdom. For instance, in zen buddhism the koan is a question/device for overcoming habitual rationalism/dualism and/or glibness in the noviate in order to experience the thirdness-oneness depth of satori/wisdom. Economic theory, I assert, is stuck in dualism, and badly needs the integrative and wise third alternative.

KZ:  Craig, I agree with your conclusion on economic theory and dualism. However, I can’t quite see how love, even of the Zen variety can cure this problem. After all, love is one of the oldest dualisms — eros and agape.

Me:  All dualisms need to be integrated, even those of love. And then, in order for love to be relevant to the world we live in it must be integrated with action…because the temporal universe is in continual action, continual process. Integrate love and action and you get loving, i.e. love in action otherwise known as grace/graciousness/gracefulness/flow. And relevant to our monetary economy the way to make it flow and remain flowing would be to integrate policies of grace as in continual monetary gifting into the debt based system that currently dominates.

And then we’re not finished integrating.  If modern economic systems are inherently cost inflationary due to the additional costs of ever increasing concrete capital, waste and energy dissipation, then we need to integrate directness and immediacy into economic policy.  Finally, statistical equilibrium is an orthodoxy itself to be overcome. Finance as a business model has been problematic for over 6000 years. In order to effectively correct this the moment to moment reality of scarce total individual incomes in ratio to total costs/prices….must be inverted, so that individual freedom and systemic free flowingness are ascendant instead of inevitably and forever failing to attain orbit due to the gravity of the monopoly paradigms of debt, loan and for production only.  That way the tyranny behind all forms of government begins to “wither away”, and governance can be guided, even if imperfectly, by politicians and the general populace attending to the new paradigm, ethic and zeitgeist of grace.

KZ:  Craig, I agree with most of what you say. But neither gifting nor grace require love. Many native American economies are based on tribal identify (not racial) and gifting. But members of a tribe do not love all other members. They do consider them kin and thus deserving of gifting relationships and followers of the same path. During the 1970s this changed with some native Americans being Indian in name only. Apples is the pejorative used for these Indians.

Me:  Okay. Systemically, what is more relevant and constructive, that the policies/actions of that system are loving and gracious or that people be up to the full understanding, experience and expression of love? I happen to believe, with perhaps a few exceptions, that virtually everyone wants to do and is trying to do the right thing even if imperfectly and/or incompletely consciously. We “see through a glass darkly”. If you kept giving $5 bills to even the most dedicated “there ain’t no free lunch” arm chair pundit eventually 99% would either stop going harumph and say thank you or stop throwing them back at you after a consult with his more practical, socially aware and commonsensical wife.

Systems were made for Man, not Man for systems. Our current economic and monetary situation has that completely inverted, and current economic theories lack a fully integrative philosophical and policy concept that would effectively invert that inversion.

Consider that if the philosophical concept of grace is both an idea and simultaneously its integrated/integrative action, and as per the example above tends to either raise awareness of an agreed upon healthy state of mind and/or elicit a healthy urging of so by others who see both its efficacy and their self interest in it, then it could be entirely relevant to economic and monetary theory, and the way out and the way home to sustained prosperity and stability. We’ve tried, mere calculus and mere science, why not complete the trinity with a new philosophy of economics?

Let’s be honest, the business model of finance has been enslaving every other business model and 95% of the general population for the last 6000 years. This is not to suggest summary executions or anything, but that problematic dragon must be slain. It must go the way of the city horse manure shovelers after the invention of the internal combustion engine. Manure shoveling is a bracing experience. It brings one into present time. Hence it could very likely be a positive and enlightening next step for many economists and financiers who have become ethically challenged via their hypnotism by the monetary paradigms of Debt, Loan and for Production only. In fact the positive aspects and intentions of both capitalism and socialism can be integrated and the first step in that process is integrating direct monetary gifting and strategically placed, so as not to injure any economic agent, reciprocal price gifting at the end of the economic/productive process into the economy. That would balance and resolve the monopolistic financial paradigms of Debt, Loan and for production only and free both the individual and enterprise….at the same time. It would also restore the social contract at a time that the pace of innovation and artificial intelligence is poised to destroy employment at a rate 20 or 30 times faster than it has ever done before. Then modern societies, with the aid of the helping professions, the clergy and public service announcements from the government, could help the individual find their own self chosen positive and constructive purposes in addition to employment. That way we could begin to create a gracefully growing society based on freeing man and enterprise to do the work of better survival. Without a vision the people, the productive system and civilization perish.

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EB:  Hi Steve, I am doing a much longer paper for the Democracy Collaborative where I’ll be raising those issues. Two questions:

Me:  A sufficient dividend would automatically restore the social contract as employment needs are increasingly eliminated, but for an assessment of the percentages of job losses try this article. It fears leisure, but that’s because the author (and nearly everyone else) has a misunderstood definition of leisure which is self directed and attentive activity, not idleness.

http://www.businessinsider.com/robots-will-steal-your-job-citi-ai-increase-unemployment-inequality-2016-2

As for the reciprocal price, the money and pricing system are both digital, and hence if you found a place where costs were summed for any product or service you could reduce the price of that product or service…even by a quite high percentage, say 40-50%…so long as the merchants were reciprocally re-paid for their discounts by a monetary authority mandated to do so. And the real beauty is, given the digital nature of the pricing and money systems, that there would be no more money/credit creation with the discount than there would be if the merchants were to (impossibly) be compelled to rely on the scarcity of actually available demand.

I would appreciate if you cited me on this, and perhaps my blog (wisdomicsblog.com) and mention the book I’m compiling entitled Wisdomics: The New Integrative Economics.

Actually, let me amend that. Even though there would be additional credit created, it being applied instantaneously, directly and at the very end of the productive process for any product or service it cannot possibly be inflationary because again, in the above case it reduces prices by 40-50% at the very end point of any product’s journey through the system and where it becomes consumption as well as where its costs/price is terminally summed.

No one has suggested this percentage level for the discount, not even Social Crediters. It came to me upon realizing that integration of opposing viewpoints is always wisdom and that the rules of integration/wisdom are combining only the truths, best workabilities and highest ethical considerations of those opposing viewpoints. Thus knowing that there was truth in the theories of both Social Credit (scarcity of macro-economic demand) and Austrian economics (price deflation is both good for the consumer and aligned with the perfectly valid economic value of efficiency) that a substantially deflationary percentage of the discount would effectively integrate the insights of these seeming diametrically opposed theories. I also concluded that the valid Social Credit observation about the cost accounting convention that all costs must go into price tends to keep cost inflation in effect….was actually incomplete and needed an extension in view of the second law of thermo-dynamics which states that energy was dissipative and hence INHERENTLY economically costly as well, adding scientific validity to Douglas’s A + B theorem.

I’ve tried to get Mish Shedlock, a leading Austrian economic blogger to see this for years, but his mind is so allied with Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises that he doesn’t seem capable of looking at it let alone seeing it. I’ve also been banned twice by Steve Keen, whose iconoclasm regarding neo-liberal general equilibrium theory I have repeatedly complimented. Of course iconoclasm is at best half the battle won, a new vision and aligned policies being the essential second half. Keen has called for a new economic philosophy, but seems relatively oblivious to the fact that his call for a “modern debt jubilee” is perfectly reflective of the very concept that Social Credit and Wisdomics are based on, namely grace as in monetary gifting.

EB:  I guess I still don’t understand the reciprocal part, but thanks for the link.

Me:  The reciprocal gifting of price, first to the consumer as a discount to prices, and back to the merchant giving it by the monetary authority changes the entire vector of the economy from inflationary to deflationary. And yet such policies fit seamlessly within profit making economic systems resolving both the “death” by continual erosion of profits and buying power of inflation that Keynesians think is inevitable and/or necessary, and transforming the agonizing and unjust economic punishment of deflation that the Austrians amazingly are so de-sensitized to. It also increases everyone’s purchasing power by 40-50%, enables greater profits and greater likelihood of profitability for many more businesses, begins the process of downsizing the 6000 year old problematic and dominating business model of finance and puts a maraschino cherry on top of all that by stabilizing the economy at a higher level of prosperity.

That’s all. 🙂   And its all based on a teeny tiny but incredibly powerful linguistic and philosophical concept known as grace.

JD:  Current “economics” is the neoliberal scam to maintain an elite.

Me:  Exactly JD. And it was and still is a complex intellectual theory…that is largely false. Steve Keen has done an excellent job of exposing this fact. But expose’is, again, only a small step forward. Thesis contending with antithesis is a mere intellectual pissing match. One has to get to synthesis-integration-wisdom to arrive at anything of complete and lasting worth. Wisdomics, the integration of economics and Wisdom, the highest philosophical concept of Wisdom, is exactly what is needed. One can be incredibly smart and knowledgeable, but without wisdom they’re still just an erudite dunce, incompletely conscious. That’s how a smart guy like Keen can advocate a “one off” policy of economic grace as in “a modern debt jubilee”, but lacking both the economic knowledge and the wisdom that everything in the temporal universe obeys the process of Start, Change and Stop, hasn’t recognized that economic and monetary policy must obey and fulfill that process if it is actually to be effective through time. And that is why a dividend, a continuing gift of money distributed directly to the individual is necessary and effective because it interpenetrates and spans that entire process. It’s also why, in order to defeat inflation and even create a benign and beneficial deflation, a reciprocal price/monetary gift at the Stop point of any product or service is equally wise. We need to put on the full armor of Wisdom in economics.

JD:  If you add PB to the mix – eliminating the private monopoly on money and credit -then you would truly have a regenerative system of money as public utility.

nearly as big to be effective.

Me:  As I’ve said here numerous times Public Banking is a vital structural aspect of the solution.

I agree PB would help bring interest rates down, but interest is only one of numerous flows of additional costs. And then you also have to deal with the inevitable inflationary tendencies associated with a “free” economy itself. You have to bring knowledge, ethical responsibility and gracious yet effective control to the economy.

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Me:  

http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/the-dangerous-philosopher-behind-putins-strategy-to-grow-russian-power-at-americas-expense?utm_source=Big+Think+Weekly+Newsletter+Subscribers&utm_campaign=1da0cbaecc-WeeklyNewletter_122116&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6d098f42ff-1da0cbaecc-40677205

The above article is about Alexander Dugin whose curious mixture (not an integration) of geo-political thought, economics and Russian authoritarianism is another example of modern intellectual dwarfism. It’s very smart, but fraught with contentiousness and various streams of cultural conservatisms. It’s a mirror image of Trumpism.

Real paradigm change has a way of making ideologies like this guy’s, what I fear Trump will stumble toward and Financial Triumphalism to go back under their rocks. We in the west need the deep and swift changes that wisdom and its pinnacle concept can produce so that we can win the cold philosophical war that is rapidly shaping up before our very eyes.

I’m the only one whose policies will give us stable prosperity and continuing falling prices. Not even Social Credit has a complete understanding of what the specific policies should be. My economic philosophy and policies has transcended even them. I have integrated the best and highest truths and highest workabilities of the seeming opposites of Social Credit and Austrianism. Wisdom exists, it’s real, and not just somebody’s fantasy. The integration of Wisdom into economic theory can resolve opposites and create a new third and unified body of thought. Wisdomics, it’s what the Austrians need to look at….instead of invalidate like all of the other orthodox economic theorists do to each other. 

He’s currently caught in a confusing web of half truths, untruths, unyielding mental allegiances and so refusal to combine and unify truths so as to create a third and higher reality. Wisdom is integration, clarification, exposition and elicitation of truth and Man has never needed such so much as now. I have discovered the model for Wisdom and its rules. I pray Mankind discovers these and uses it to ascend to a gracious and beautiful future because I fear without it chaos or complete deception will descend upon us.

I have no problem with either justice or mercy. Justice would be the sentence for those PROVEN guilty, mercy for those who went along with injustice largely unconsciously. But IMO worrying about justice and mercy comes after we make the necessary changes. One of the best and fastest ways forward for real change would be to start a grassroots movement showing how monetary gifting was in the interests of both individuals and businesses. This is what I refer to as the new SCH/Powell memo. You can only effectively fight an idea/paradigm with another better one, and monetary gifting to both the individual and to business is that new idea/paradigm. We could call it Operation The Wisdom of Gifting.

You’re free to integrate opposites.  As an integration is always and only a combination of the highest values and ethical considerations you would be willing and able to integrate the highest values and ethical considerations of both capitalism and socialism, i.e. profit and individual freedom and economic democracy and freedom from domination.

A full and complete integration is always a win-win for both sides because it is this combination of both sides’ highest values and ethical considerations, and hence any objection to such an integration exposes an intention, even if unconscious, to dominate and control rather than see their own truths and highest values and ethical considerations become policy and temporal reality.

Finally, as an integration  is always and only a combination of truths you would be willing and able to integrate the highest truths of both science and spirituality. Hence one would be willing to take the fact that there exists both a temporal and a “quantum” universe, and the existential realities of both love and consciousness…and integrate these most basic and highest truths….into a Wisdom/integrative viewpoint…in any and all spheres of human life.

And economically that would be a Wisdomics and philosophically and spiritually it would be a Gracientialism.