The first and most important question economists and politicians need to ask themselves is:

Are systems made more for Man, or Man made more for systems?

Their answer must then guide their policies.

Money is basically an idea and its accounting.

The economy is the temporal/entropic and human system of allocating money and resources, and the abstract idea that is money, in the form of  individual income, is the means of making it flow in a graceful, ethical and negatively entropic fashion.

To be truly and fully human one must have Ethics which is conscious awareness of and sensitivity to what is highest/best IN both Self and the Other, and since economics is a human system it must therefore be concerned with and aligned with such an ethic.

Wisdom is both the mental process of integration and the result of that process.

Love is the highest ethic and ideal state of being.

Grace is the highest concept and ideal of Wisdom, is both integration and continual integrating at the same time and thus is Love in action, in other words Grace is a state of flow of the highest Wisdom, Love in action, through time and space.

Grace/Love in action is the highest, broadest, deepest and most ethical purpose internally and/or externally.

Love is the experience of consciousness itself and Grace is continuous consciousness of consciousness which is Love in Action.

Grace/Love in action is bothness integrated, bothness/andness/oneness, transformation, encompassment, interpenetrativeness and balance, equilibrium and flow…among many other things and states of being and becoming.

Profit, power and control are all legitimate purposes in and of themselves, but they are poor and inevitably failing primary purposes.

A new philosophy and policies reflecting the various aspects of the concept of Grace/Love in action is the new paradigm for economics and money systems.

Every human being is self aware to one degree or another. It’s the nature of the species. The degree to which they are consciously self aware varies depending on many different factors including level of integrated personal experiences, personal gift, habit, degree of distraction, misunderstanding/opinion about the experience itself, choice of mode of thought and of course happenstance/luck. There is much confusion and misunderstanding  about, and even bias against the experience as well. Self awareness is most essentially your awareness of consciousness itself. It is not ego or any other compiled, constructed, attained, maintained or synthetic product of one’s mental world. There is a stripped bareness quality to consciousness described by the zen expression of a mirror where not even the breath is condensed upon it. The experience of Grace is often described as “the incredibly powerful and humbling experience of God’s Grace falling upon one. I am not here to validate or invalidate anyone’s experience or beliefs. I would however like to point out that we are all made in the image of God and so the spark of the divine is necessarily within each of us as human beings, and thus the experience itself is logically valid. I am simply saying that it is a very, very  self empowering and beneficial experience….and that it is an experience anyone can and should be aware of for those reasons alone.

I also write this entry is to illustrate the sameness of self awareness/consciousness and the experience of Grace, and to point out that it is not necessarily to be equated to the intelligent, the accomplished, the reverent, the orthodox or anything else. It simply is, and anyone can experience it, and when they do it is generally a life changing experience. There are also degrees of intensity of the experience of Grace, Self awareness, Consciousness as well as levels of integration of the aspects of the experience within oneself.

Furthermore, as three of the major aspects of both the definition and experience of Grace and the classical and correct goals of economics are balance, equilibrium and flow, a higher consciousness of this fact is supremely logically important. After all A = A denotes logical alignment so the applicability of Grace is logically relevant to the study of economics.  Now this does not mean that we are to think that modern economies naturally tend toward equilibrium…they in fact do not;  what it does mean is we need to look for and discover the deepest, most fundamental reason(s) why the economy is not in equilibrium….and then craft policies that will result in the greater stability and freedom that economic balance, equilibrium and flow would insure.

Likewise the hallmark of increased consciousness is mental clarity, focus and integrated understanding of whatever personal and/or temporal issue is at hand. That in fact is an excellent description and definition of Wisdom at its pinnacle expression and ability. Again, as logic is expressed in the syllogism A = A, so the experience of Grace, Self Awareness, Consciousness and the pinnacle of Wisdom are all essentially the same thing. 

Often, the truth is that the degree to which one is unaware of the characteristics of Grace, Self Awareness and Consciousness and the benefits of same, the less self aware/conscious one actually is, and so one could be extremely erudite, accomplished, etc. and still be missing this essential experience. The sad truth is that the combination of modern distraction and all too often a modern bias against what is seen as a religious pursuit works against the mental focus and discipline often required for these experiences, as well as against a general interest in them at all. The biblical quote appears to apply to our modern world: “Thinking themselves wise, they become fools.”

The physical reality is actually a constant and continuous electro-magnetic emanation/emanating change/process from every object, sensory differentiation and from space itself. Getting “on the same wavelength” as this is likely what the state/experience of Grace actually is.

Focusing one’s attention on present time is probably the best way to attune oneself to these potential experiences and this has been a part of many of the world’s wisdom traditions best exemplified by the Zen Buddhist tradition.

The newness of nowness is an exhilarating revelation in comparison to the dullness of the habitual “garden variety” state of consciousness we moderns are habituated/accustomed to and that passes as normal. A good breaking up of this mode of consciousness would not only be a relief it would be enligtening, and an integration of the two modes an optimal state of mind.

Macro-economic/Economic Metric:   Inherent, systemic, continuous and hence dynamic scarcity of total individual incomes in ratio to total costs/prices simultaneously produced. This most basic macro-economic metric is being missed by virtually all economists.

Accounting:  The cost accounting convention that all costs must go into price. Every honest business needs cost accounting as a tool to determine profitability or loss is bound to this convention, but it is is flawed because it correctly allows for capital depreciation for businesses but fails to compensate the individual for capital appreciation. Thus cost inflation is the inherent, systemic result.

Financial:   The Banking/Financial System will brook no competition for either money creation or for variety of vehicle for doing so. It will only allow loans, and will not allow monetary Gifting which is the only economically valid way to resolve the inherent. systemic cost inflationary nature of the economy.

Paradigmatic:   We are habituated to and hypnotized by Debt, and by the puritanical attitude that ” there is no free lunch” and that “man must be condemned to make his living only by the sweat of his brow”/only via employment. These despite the cost inflationary nature of the economy and the monopoly control of the financial paradigm of “Debt Only” which excludes the Free Monetary Gifting which again is the only valid economic solution to the problem.

Entropy/Non-Entropy:   The economy itself is utterly embedded in the temporal/physical universe and hence is governed by the laws of thermo-dynamics. Thus it is subject to randomness and the resulting increasing costs to maintain itself. The money system is basically an idea and hence is not subject to the laws of thermo-dynamics and can thus be utilized to intelligently eliminate (and even reverse) the inherent excess costs and scarcity of individual incomes created by the economy.

Money/Grace-Consciousness:  Money is the analogous concept to Grace-Consciousness in the money system and its complete integration with the economic system. Thus it (money/the money system) must thoroughly reflect the nature and various aspects of Grace-Consciousness including the ethical consideration of the individual as the essential and primary point of the system, continuous, moment to moment, complete and simultaneous reach of policy to the individual so as to free both the individual and the system. As the economy is temporal/entropic and the money system is static/non-entropic, they must be thoroughly integrated in order to attain and maintain a third and unified graceful and abundant flow. This graceful continuous maintaining would be best accomplished by reversing the current moment to moment unequal macro-economic metric of a scarcity of total individual incomes in ratio to total costs/prices into an excess of total individual incomes in ratio to total costs/prices and thus creating a continuous flow of individual abundance and systemic free flowingness. This state would be created by the policies of a universal dividend and a discount to retail prices that effected actual price deflation integrated within a profit making system. Thus is economic stability achieved via “a higher disequilibrium metric.”

Wisdom, i.e. the open minded and integrative intellectual stance and the natural concept of Grace-Consciousness in all of its many aspects is the the way out of these subtle and complex problems and the way home for human individuals and for the economy and society as a whole. 

Grace is consciousness. One can argue whether it is the Grace of God, or simply Grace as consciousness itself, that is an entirely different question, but the experience of Grace is a state of consciousness, a non ordinary state of consciousness. As a conscious being Man cannot get away from himself. As the zen saying goes: “Wherever you go….there you are.” He can deny himself, neglect or invalidate himself or even distract himself from himself to the point of forgetfulness of his self hood as way too many modern individuals have done, but he still remains conscious.

Steve Keen correctly asserts that confusing money stocks with flows ….is mistaken.  What he misses however, is twofold:

1) the ADDITIONAL costs over and above total financial costs distributed that contribute to creeping cost inflation on the lower end of price, and

2) the utterly unethical domination of every other business model and of probably 97-98% of the general populace by the business model of finance who will not countenance any competition to their monopoly control of the monetary distribution paradigm, namely loan only and so the flow of such additional costs cannot be paid except via a loan which of course adds cost to the already inherently disequilibrated system.

3)  the fact that, even if it doesn’t collapse or appear to be doing so, as the economy trundles along fitfully for long periods of time, that entire time it is unethical in the deepest and most important way possible because it makes probably upward of 95% the individuals in it….serve that system instead of it serving them.

Austrians in their saying, “There ain’t no free lunch!” are correct in their assessment, but they also miss the destabilizing additional flow of costs as per above and so their “solution” of deflation ends up being an inverted  moralistic mistake and mereness of economic philosophy that compounds the pain and stress of an already onerous system whose only valid economic resolution is monetary Gifting to address All (not just the excess costs) elements of the real time gap between total costs/prices and total individual incomes moment to moment and actually available to liquidate such costs.

The first is a structure that could easily become just as tyrannical as Finance Capitalism, the second is a Banking structure guided by policy mandates that perfectly reflect and effect Grace as in benevolent monetary Gifting directly to the individual, reciprocally to consumers at retail sale and then back to merchants and which is, again, graciously and hence sovereign  in the best benevolent sense of the word. The intention of Grace is both power and freedom. So much so that it intends to take power….with the idea of giving it back to the individual.  And that is exactly what those policies do.

No agency and no institution can be trusted with power, and this is particularly true of monetary power, save it be guided primarily and inextricably by both gracious intentions and effective policies completely reflecting it.

Having said this, I completely agree that a structural Banking system that is guided by Grace and its reflective policies so that all profits over and above its payroll and operating expenses are placed in a general fund and/or distributed to the individual IS necessary, but it would not actually have the freedom to issue a loan on its own….until the gracious governmental agency described above and overseeing the entirety of the banking and money systems approved such a loan based on its constructive purpose, the actual individuals benefiting and/or receiving such loans and only after that governmental agency has established that the underwriting of the loan was rigorous.

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Liam:  This message is primarily directed at those of you who prefer to focus on the social and spiritual dimensions of our problem, whereas I have advocated the mechanics of the problem.  It greatly surprised me to read that Douglas was more of your minds than mine.  Here is the quote from the attached paper that compelled this thought – the first part being a quote from Douglas and the second, Vic Bridger’s comment on it:

Me:  Yes, Ideas and generally held ideas, paradigms, are where the power truly exists for change. As my new thread indicates structures are also very, very important, but those structures must be guided by the BEST and MOST RELEVANT ideas and policies perfectly reflecting those ideas.

The experience of Grace and one’s own consciousness are synonymous and interchangeable, and their aspects are completely aligned with, and reflectively applicable to economics and its problems.