Cost accounting is the essence of the micro-economy and money is basically accounting because it adheres to the debit-credit accounting convention. Retail sale is presently the single integrative point between micro and macro-economics because retail sale is both the terminal ending point of the economy (where production leaves the economy and becomes consumption) and also the aggregative cost and price point for every item or service in any economy.

These truths and realities are the infrastructure within which the entirety of the economy operates and is inextricably embedded in, and they also expose private for profit finance as totally parasitic and de-stabilizing.

Economics has been analyzed every which way from the middle while missing these basic points. Steve Keen has belatedly realized the importance of double entry bookkeeping as he uses his debit-credit Godley tables to follow flows of money and debt in the economy but still does not recognize that a single policy (the 50% discount/rebate at retail sale) utilizes all of the above realities to accomplish beneficial paradigm changing effects for all economic agents.

Life and economics are as obscure, unworkable and ethically challenged as they are (unnecessarily) complicated, and as enlightening and enjoyable as the directly observed deep simplicities of science and wisdom.

In response to a poster on RWER Blog:

IK:  However, our logic works in the “classical” world of classical physics and human physical scale. Such “classical” logic does not necessarily work at the quantum or cosmic scales.”

Me:  Correct. That’s why the temporal universe can be both “a veil of tears” and yet also be in a state of grace. Both are necessary or there would be no real understanding of either.

Bliss is directly, effortlessly and yet intensely experiencing each flowing moment where space and objects are still space and objects except space has virtual palpa-bility and you experience the solidity of objects at a distance. You also experience colors with a vibrancy you’ve long forgotten because the last time you experienced them as such was when you were 1 year old. Been there, done that, and not with any pharmaceutical help.

It’s like the T. S. Eliot quote I’ve posted here before about the end of one’s search has always been where you started….just slightly more personally informed.

The dualism intellectuals get caught up in their acculturated abstract figure-figure-figuring is generally the final hurdle they have to overcome to properly experience such integration.

IK:  Craig,

Each to his own of course. I don’t take “logic can’t explain existence” to mean “dogma can explain existence”. I question the principle of sufficient reason as much as I question the principle of non-contradiction. They are both simply human logical precepts or hypotheses. In any case, I am not sure if you are suggesting revelation or gnosis as a source of truth.

Me:  It’s gnosis. As I have many times said here I’m not positing any religious dogmas, only experiences. And it isn’t about one or the other mode of experience in opposition to each other as much as it is an integration of the two which results in a higher more present thirdness.

And that thirdness is imminently applicable to any system or body of knowledge because they all exist within the temporal universe reality and human experience which can be described as an integrated duality within a trinity-unity-oneness higher consciousness process. And all of that process and experience is natural I might add, and yet none of the ecstatic nature of the experience is lost by knowledge of that fact.

Macro-economics is largely (not entirely) a misguided distraction from micro-economics and was a fall back created discipline that de-volved out of the failure to confront the de-stabilizing effects of the current monetary and financial paradigm after The Great Depression.

It can redeem itself only if it continues to contemplate the emergent qualities of chaos (which is really a misnomer for the ever evolving dynamic, interactive and integrative natural philosophical concept of grace which is the actual state of the temporal universe) and applies that knowledge to change the above current paradigm with policies and regulations that economically and ethically align with it.

Me:  As I have repeatedly stated here for years I am using the concept of grace in its natural philosophical and ethical sense and NOT in the context of a religious belief. Applying aspects of grace like abundance, the free unmerited gift and/or choosing to act in the height of rationality in perplexing and seeming unresolvable circumstances gifting is precisely what is called for in the looming ecological crisis we face. Instead of being unconscious of the monopolistic present paradigm of Debt, i.e. cost, Only, the policies of monetary gifting like a 50% discount at retail sale and also at the point of note signing could double everyone’s potential purchasing power by cutting every good and service’s costs in half would not only end any possibility of inflation, but beneficially integrate price DE-flation into profit making systems, and finally enable a bottom up green consumer good reduction process of carbon in the atmosphere. In other words a $60k Tesla auto becomes $30k and then $15k at note signing. A $300k home with solar technology becomes $150k and then $75k.

Better than endlessly ruminating over the problems of the economy or trying to find some abstract data or theoretical point, no?

GH:  Forgive me for stating the obvious: unless the discount is applied to “green” goods only your proposal has no particular effect on the pattern of demand and therefore does not address the ecological issue. If you make the discount discriminatory that is equivalent to taxing different goods at different rates which is what is required. Many ills in the economy result from the maldistribution of real resources. They are not necessarily addressed by reform of the monetary system. We can deal with the ecological crisis or fail to deal with it (sadly, the more likely) whether or not we change the monetary system. I respect your enthusiasm Craig but not your attempt to trace all problems to a single source. If only the world were that simple.

Me: Gerald,

The discount applies to ALL goods and services (with a few obvious exceptions like the price of hard core pornography, tobacco products and alcohol whose sales will benefit nonetheless by virtue of the policies of a universal dividend and 50% discount/rebate more than doubling everyone’s purchasing power. Both of the discounts at retail sale and at the point of note signing will also apply for ALL big ticket items like autos and homes and any obviously green products like electric vehicles, solar panels etc.

Doubling purchasing power does not necessarily equate with a doubling of economic/resource throughput, but the ability to reduce atmospheric carbon by virtually eliminating the tremendous outputs of such by the internal combustion engine, by coal fired power plants and our dependence on petroleum is the perfect synergizing complement to the fiscal programs also necessary to win the climate change problem.

“Many ills in the economy result from the maldistribution of real resources. They are not necessarily addressed by reform of the monetary system.”

Of course, but they don’t nearly effect the positive changes and enable the rational choices that the new monetary paradigm does.

Paradigm changes are deep simplicities, reforms are shallow palliatives that exist entirely within the present paradigm. And mega-paradigm changes are immediate, continuous and universal in their effects. You tell me which of the above we most need.

The fundamental problem of economics and economic theory is its failure to recognize that the monetary paradigm IS THE ACTUAL PROBLEM.

As the fundamental concept of terra-centrism was the problematic aspect of Ptolemaic cosmology, so is the dominating, de-stabilizing and stymieing economic problem of the present monetary and financial paradigm of Debt Only. And there will be no significant breakthrough until this fact is completely confronted.

I have never invalidated anyone’s content here. In fact I have often praised the valid insights of Keen, Hudson and MMTers. But the problem is on the paradigmatic level which is both simple and complex. Simple in that it recognizes that the problem is the SINGLE concept that defines and controls the COMPLEXITY OF THE ENTIRE PATTERN.

Perceiving the deep and effecting simplicities that resolve dualistic complexity with a pungent thirdness has always been the hallmark of wisdom and is the route to paradigm perception.

When the fire has chased one to the roof of the building it is folly to refuse to grasp the ladder lowered from the helicopter that is offered in rescue.

Both capitalism and socialism are passe’. The way to move beyond that false dualism lies in integrating only the particles of truth in each while focusing on remedying the most relevant problem (the monopolistic and hence de-stabilizing paradigm of Debt Only that private for profit finance dominates with). Then finding the most effective point in the economic/productive process to implement policies aligned with the new paradigm whose ethical concept is not only the highest humans are capable of self actualizing but also resolves the individual monetary scarcity, systemic austerity and lack of stable free-flowingness all heterodox economists say they want to resolve.

Call it The profit making system of Direct Monetary Distributism whose new monetary and financial paradigm is grace as in Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting.

Systems were made for Man, not Man for systems.   C. H. Douglas

This ethical statement is obviously true, and yet economies and money systems have virtually never been organized to make it a reality. This is because they have always been based on the wrong and/or inadequate concepts. Finding the right concept and the ways to apply it to the economy will immediately and continuously change the nature of the economy, benefit every individual and every commercial agent. It will also have dramatic positive effects on systems and bodies of knowledge beyond the economy.

And that is the very definition of a mega-paradigm change of which there have only been two in the entire history of the species. Those changes were the emergence of human self awareness and the process of going from nomadic huntering and gathering to the use of agriculture, homesteading and urbanization. These two changes even though they took a long time to become reality immediately changed anyone and everyone with their fundamental natures. So it will be with the new monetary and financial mega-paradigm change of Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting.

Let’s look at the top three reforms, how the new paradigm broadens and completes their insights and policy potentials and then how the new paradigm qualifies as a mega-paradigm change.

MMT: MMT has the mechanics of money creation correct and its advocates are inclined to utilize fiscal deficits to keep the economy from being sluggish or falling into recession., but its policies all exist within the current paradigm. Take for instance its job guarantee policy which is a good policy that can be incorporated into and expanded much more than what MMTers imagine when one recognizes the new monetary paradigm concept and the significance of the discount policies at retail sale and the point of loan signing.

MMTers believe that inflation will not be a problem with fiscal deficits and with their job guarantee policy, but that is not recognizing that injecting more money into the economy is by itself not the operant cause of inflation, but rather the chronic individual monetary scarcity that tempts the decision by corporate executives to inflate when they perceive more money coming into the system. In other words money is a secondary if not tertiary factor. The system itself and most deeply the current paradigm concept of Debt Only, which keeps all of the economy’s seemingly unresolvable problems in suspension, are the real causes of inflation.

The new paradigm completes and expands the correct but lesser observations and policies of MMT, and of course MMT does not have the positive trans-systemic, trans-body of knowledge effects that the mega-paradigm concept of Monetary Gifting  has.

Steve Keen’s Minsky Financial Instability Hypothesis and Debt Deflation:  Steve Keen’s excellent debunking of the current macro-economic orthodoxy of Dynamic Stochastic General Equillibrium and his recognition that the build up of private, not government debt resulting in debt deflation are undoubtedly worthy of a Nobel Prize or a better accliam, namely our admiration.

He’s also recommeded some policies that are worthy (his Pll policy for instance), but again they do not have the the real world trans-systemic, trans-body of knowledge benefits that the new monetary and financial mega-paradigm enables.

Keen’s belated recognition of the significance of double entry bookkeeping/accounting and its digital system of debits and credits equaling out to zero is also enlightened, although he has not fully recognized that the entirety of the economy is embedded in that accounting infrastructure and how monetary and price policies could utilize that digital nature to profound effect.

Michael Hudson’s Historical Financial Parasitism: Hudson’s chutzpa in calling out the historical dominance of finance and the unethical machinations of financialization is very admirable. It enlightens the civilization long negative effects that finance has had on humanity and in so doing should tell us that the time for further palliatives is over and that the time for the permant progression of paradigm change has arrived. About the only thing Hudson lacks is the conscious knowledge of the specific new monetary and financial paradigm concept and the where, when and how much of implementing policy to make its temporal universe benefical effects most immediate, universal and irresistible. That’s what Wisdomics-Gracenomics does.

The new monetary paradigm and its policies are a strategically pinpointed and powerful assist to the entire economy, a direct assist to the the long suffering mass of individuals who have never been granted the full benefits of our cultural heritage of technological and productive processes built up over the last several centuries, and most importantly, an ethical setting right of the dominance that the current paradigm of Debt Only has afflicted humanity with for the entire history of civilization.

Smith naively trusted finance to obey the second tier force of markets and Marx and his interpreters naively thought that outright ownership of the means of production or that palliative re-distributive taxation could tame and make ethical Finance’s monopolistic powers, but we who have even a little knowledge of history need to realize that it requires the depth of a new paradigm, a new single concept to fully change the world. Therefore, we must awaken to the new paradigm concept of  Monetary Gifting and integrate it into the economy. Only then will systems be made for Man.

Humanity Unite! You have nothing to lose but your paradigmatic chains!

The truth is macro-economics has become much more of a theoretical “straining at a knat while swallowing a camel.” I’m not saying there aren’t insights to be discovered there, but when otherwise brilliant guys like Steve Keen and Michael Hudson correctly discern that the economy is financially unstable and that private for profit finance is a giant parasite on the legitimate productive aspect of the economy and yet can’t recommend other than palliative policies in order to remedy those facts…it’s time to drop the abstract fugue one has habitually fallen into via macro-economics and look more directly at the economy in order to find insights that run much more deeply and that with an understanding of historical paradigm changes evoke and reveal the land beyond the current muddle.

That is what the micro and macro insights that 1) the economy is inextricably embedded within an accounting infrastructure, 2) that the monopolistic paradigm of Debt Only is just that, an un-economic monopoly concept that must yield to the ethical and evolutionary process of change and that 3) retail sale is currently the terminal ending and thus extremely powerful application point for policies logically aligned with the new paradigm concept,  can reveal.

And then, with the historical insight that paradigm changes are characterized by 1) conceptual opposition, 2)  inversions of present realities,  and 3) the discovery of a new tool and/or insight that resolves the major problems of the old paradigm and reveals the efficacy of the new paradigm concept, we can more effectively apply those insights to the macro-economic monetary and financial insights of instability and parasitism.

Yoshinori:  It seems for me that what Craig demands as monetary reforms is still in an old paradigm of the efficacy of monetary policy.

Me:  Yoshinori,

That would be true if those monetary policies were of the indirect, largely fallacious and monopolistically enforced kind that neo-classical economics foists on us. Fortunately the 50% discounts, universal dividend and debt jubilee monetary policies are direct to the consumer and equally direct and reciprocal back to the merchant. As I have often posted here one of the primary aspects of the natural philosophical concept of grace which is the operant concept behind the new monetary and financial paradigm is directness. In fact that same aspect of the operant concept was the one effecting the new paradigm of The Reformation, that is that humans could have a direct relationship with god instead of having to slavishly perform the Church’s monopolistic sacraments in order to obtain grace.