As we are all self aware and hence a reflection of God, it is the ultimate anti-naturalism to deny the validity of God and spirituality. The task is not denial of what is, but an affirmation of Grace so as to be gracious.

Albert Camus was incredibly insightful and brave. He just worked the opposite side of the street from Grace is all.

Bob:

I agree with 90% of the article, but there are some loose ends; for example, what is to prevent the Anglo-Euro-American banking cartel from using their huge stash of FRN (or printing them) to buy Rubles and Yuans?

Right now, through market manipulation of currency, stock markets, and lower prices (the cartel using its proxy, Saudi Arabia, to do this), the Ruble and the Yuan are devalued versus the dollar. This means that using FRN to buy Rubles and Yuans on the cheap is an excellent strategy for those who own the FRN printing press.

Yes, pumping oil is a huge commodity and is much like printing money ex nihilo (except that it is a limited commodity), but the largest traded commodity is not oil, its still FRNs.

Comments?

Me:  Bob,

Your thinking is macro-economically sound, but remember if we are to have a complete micro and macro-economics they must be integrated in order for there to be a third and more unified theory. The ruling theory DSGE/neo-liberalism/the neo-classical synthesis claims to be such but all the leading edge thinking shows us that these are an emperor without any clothes. Micro-economics is ruled by cost and utterly embedded in Time and so is subject to disequilibrium by additional costs like depreciation, extraction and diminutions of income like savings and re-investments and time…lags in such disequilibrium that cannot be equilibrated by the current means of increasing both money and individual income, i.e. ONLY lending and borrowing at interest. Interest is one cost, but not the totality of additional costs and/or diminutions of money/income from the circular flow. This results in there being much more total money in the system…than there is, moment to moment, individual incomes with which to liquidate both the total money costs (principle and interest) and the additional costs of depreciation and the diminutions as per above. This basic micro-economic insight is what is missed by theorists, and is macro-economically resolved by policies of monetary grace/Gifting directly to the individual (the Dividend) and also reciprocally within the system (the rebated back to merchants retail Discount to consumers).

Bob:  Steve,

You write: “Micro-economics is ruled by cost and utterly embedded in Time and so is subject to disequilibrium by additional costs like depreciation, extraction and diminutions of income like savings and re-investments and time…lags in such disequilibrium that cannot be equilibrated by the current means of increasing both money and individual income, i.e. ONLY lending and borrowing at interest.”

Me:  It’s true the Italians are very “inventive” :), but their compulsion/needs to be so are more a result of the onerousness of the system…brought about by the fact that costs/prices exceed individual incomes as a flow than it is their native criminality.

And remember, I’m not talking about a capitalist system, but rather a Distributive one. Capitalism is about profit, power and control. A Distributive system is a universally abundant system, not an enforced onerous and unstable one like finance capitalism, and, because its underlying philosophy and aligned policies are based on Grace/graciousness it also has a much higher and more refined sense of ethics than does capitalism.

Also, the Dividend and Discount mechanisms release both businesses and the individual from the onerousness enforced by the current cost accounting convention.

John R.:  Steve, please explain that comment in detail.
A discount system would require very careful accounting, that would be one of the problems with trying to implelement it, and I don’t see shareholders doing witnout records just because business is a bit more profitable.
That would be on top of the army of inspectors needed to establish “just prices” for every article in every part of the nation.

Me:  John,

I said “…the Dividend and Discount mechanisms release both businesses and the individual from the ONEROUSNESS ENFORCED by the current cost accounting convention.” ….not from the the accounting conventions THEMSELVES which are a necessary tool for businesses to assess whether or not they are making a profit.

As for your contention goes that “That would be on top of the army of inspectors needed to establish “just prices” for every article in every part of the nation.”, you must “get over the hump” of conceiving the administration of the Discount as complex. It’s a macro-economic policy, hence its percentage deals with aggregates of costs…like the 40% of costs that represent interest, the large percentage of depreciation costs, the costs of waste and of re-investment…so its not an intrusive individual calculation of the cost of every product or service. That is what every business does anyway, or should do if they want to know where they stand, and then after THEY do that calculating of their best competitive price the Discount looks at the aggregates and assigns an equal (and if we are wise a proactively large) percentage….for each and all products and services.

And remember, Douglas said that balancing the books of the economy and/or the government was self destructive folly. Equilibrium is just another orthodoxy to overcome because there are multiple equilibria possible at varying levels of individual income and at varying levels of prices….because businesses are fully rebated their discounts.

Bob:  Yes, Steve, that is what I am saying, that the system is onerous. What I’m proposing is what I see as the simplest way of keeping the system in balance.

Yes that’s true. However this article is much more inclusive and comprehensive than most recent thinking. It still lacks an essential aspect, namely the discount mechanism which will keep the economy from running off the rails with inflation. We also have to understand that we’re going to need an increasingly abundant dividend and discount #1 to counter businesses’ abilities (and competitive need) to lower their wage rates so much that even with a (basic) dividend and discount the over all income level would tend to devolve toward near austere levels and #2 in order to get the small to medium sized business community to “buy into” such policies and ally themselves with any such movement they must be awakened to the fact that both the individual and small to medium businesses suffer from inadequate demand and as Robotics and AI are just actually starting….without an increasingly abundant dividend and discount the system still remains unstable and will go down. In fact better to proactively have an abundant dividend and discount percentage thus you go from being behind the curve to being in front of it…and the market for consumer finance and finance in general are downsized wrecking Finance’s dirty little game of extortion on all levels of society and the system.

Finally, resistance is important, but focused resistance on the actual culprits is even more important. Finance and the huge conglomerates with global reach that are allied with finance are those culprits…but not the garden variety “mom and Pop” small to medium sized businesses that could be our allies in economic and monetary change…are not. So hopefully their website becomes financial and global corporate resistance instead of Popular Resistance which is a little too fuzzy.

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

A.:  There is no such thing a ‘debt free money,’ as any reader of Soddy and others ought to know.

A.

Me:  Adrian,

Soddy was smart, but he did not perceive the scarcity of individual incomes in ratio to costs/prices that is the reality for every enterprise (the micro economy) and which “everyness” also makes it a macro-economic problem to be solved by costless policies like the dividend and discount mechanisms. He also apparently did not realize the importance of the digital nature of the money system where a scarcity of $5 in individual incomes in ratio to $10 of costs/prices is resolved with $5 of direct individual income and any tendency on the part of any or even all of the system to inflate prices when seeing more demand coming is reconciled by a percentage discount to retail prices.

Utilizing these two mechanisms is what will prevent the regressive economic forces from being able to harp on and on about inflation and so devolve the system back to dominance by finance.

I’m not trying to invalidate Soddy or yourself, just trying to integrate all factors and realities.

A.:  Whether scare or abundant, dollars, or rubles, or whatever, are a claim upon existing resources. A dollar is a certificate in hand (or electronic entry in someone’s account) which is a legally binding demand for goods and services when exercised in any market. Whoever issues that certificate (unit of currency) is issuing an IOU upon the goods and services available in the market.

A.

Me:  Okay, I’m not disputing that. Money IS debt as in a loan or as an exchange/a call upon goods and services….but if there is a moment to moment scarcity of individual incomes in ratio to costs/prices (and it IS that way by cost accounting convention which rules every enterprise) then the market is never going to be stable, the economy will remain austere and way overly onerous, perpetual growth and monopoly will be the only recourse for every business and history will continue to repeat/severely rhyme….unless a sufficient universal dividend equates that ratio and a sufficient discount keeps it that way and actually reverses the problem with price deflation.

Bob,

Your thinking is macro-economically sound, but remember if we are to have a complete micro and macro-economics they must be integrated in order for there to be a third and more unified theory. The ruling theory DSGE/neo-liberalism/the neo-classical synthesis claims to be such but all the leading edge thinking shows us that these are an emperor without any clothes. Micro-economics is ruled by cost and utterly embedded in Time and so is subject to disequilibrium by additional costs like depreciation, extraction and diminutions of income like savings and re-investments and time…lags in such disequilibrium that cannot be equilibrated by the current means of increasing both money and individual income, i.e. ONLY lending and borrowing at interest. Interest is one cost, but not the totality of additional costs and/or diminutions of money/income from the circular flow. This results in there being much more total money in the system…than there is, moment to moment, individual incomes with which to liquidate both the total money costs (principle and interest) and the additional costs of depreciation and the diminutions as per above. This basic micro-economic insight is what is missed by theorists, and is macro-economically resolved by policies of monetary grace/Gifting directly to the individual (the Dividend) and also reciprocally within the system (the rebated back to merchants retail Discount to consumers).

Luck, (as in a random early decision to understand and know)  looking and continual looking, i.e. contemplation are the component parts of genius and eventually Wisdom and its pinnacle Grace.

Iknonoclast,
I agree with your definitions of formal and real systems, but I would add to that complete/completed systems. Three distinctions is always the best way to look at and discern matters because it assumes an integration of opposites which results in a more unified, complete…and third and distinct reality. It’s more dynamic and open ended/open minded.

You could call formal systems pragmatic systems, real systems scientific systems and complete/completed systems wise systems. Pragmatic systems like we have today in economics are problematic given the fact that man is basically good but flawed and without continual vigilance against such flaws its devolution grinds to an unhappy result. The pragmatic DSGE/neo-liberal system would claim to be both a scientific and complete system, but that emperor of course has no clothes on. Scientific systems are definitely a step up in that there is more data and mental rigor involved and so another level of completeness. But science, unless it is very good as in open minded science (and the signature of scientific breakthrough is always a higher and more complete integration and unification) is not sufficient in and of itself….because it is not a completed method or ethic. And that is why wise systems are necessary if we want actual and complete answers because Wisdom is the integrative process itself and an ethic of continual and complete integration is what is required.

So the question should be asked, “What is the epitome of Wisdom?” The scientific and objective study of the world’s major wisdom traditions would conclude that it is the oneness of Grace/graciousness. (Buddhist satori-kensho and Hindu atman are pointing at the same oneness concept and experience, Christianity has no claim on complete and exclusive truth.)

Then if we ask what are the aspects of Grace/graciousness we see that among its many aspects are sovereign, abundant and additional self control/creation of money (MMT), continual temporal/structural and systemic financial presence as a bulwark against dominance and the inevitable change that occurs in the temporal universe (Public Banking) and Gifting directly to the individual and within the system in order to have complete policy follow through and empowerment of individual freedom and systemic free flowingness (Social Credit). Even disequilibrium theory begs the question: How is equilibrium created? which would be integrating the reality of disequilibrium/continual flux with policies that effected balance, equilibrium and flow which not coincidentally are the major aspects of both Grace and the classical and correct goals of economics.

So for the sake of all of us in a troubled world where modern and utterly destructive weaponry is also a reality we would be wise to integrate all of these leading edge theories into a movement that could herd the entirety of the political apparatus toward such workable, scientific and completed policies.

One of the advantages of knowing nothing before one does a study, and also of being self taught is that one doesn’t know what they’re supposed to be wrong about…and if it actually turns out they are right, as is sometimes the case,  its to no small degree because the orthodoxy they missed was false and so their curiosity and creativity had freer reign as well.

Integrating the best aspects of two opposing ideas, theories and/or situations with an eye for the superlative is the key to peace, prosperity and ascending ethics.

[ (Capitalism-Efficient Allocation  X  Socialism-Ethical Distribution)  X  Social Credit ]