Speculation can be a legitimate economic activity. It also can be the second most illegitimate and economically destructive one right behind private control of the money creating process. Speculation in the Wisdomics-Gracenomics economy will be extremely ethically regulated and analyzed for its purposes. Anti-social and immoral purposes will not be tolerated because they are anti-grace asin love in action/policy.
Post On Ellen Brown’s Forum
WM: Steve et al,
While I still have trouble visualizing how all the retail discounting and gracenomic generosity pencils out, I appreciate both the spirit and objectives of your proposed system. I thought of it today when I came across the below Abstract from J.D. Alt in New Economic Perspectives which is part of a patent application for a macroeconomic monetary system designed to finance corrective infrastructure for cllmate change. It may be a bit overwrought since our current sovereign system could (theoretically) also finance dramatic investment in the field, but I thought you might find it of interest.
BB: Thanks for posting that, Walt.
I proposed a simpler way of converting to a sovereign fiat currency, while also taking into consideration the crimes committed by the cartel in the process of seizing control over our central bank and printing private bank notes to acquire global assets
Me: Yes I agree with Bob that it’s too complicated. It’s Bill Black’s/MMT’s take on how to deal with the current monetary paradigm. It’s problem is just that…it’s thinking remains firmly within the current paradigm. It’s like Ptolemaic cosmologists perturbating the orbit of mars in order to make their theory work. It’s certainly meant to go in the correct direction which is to deal with individual income scarcity and governmental/systemic monetary austerity, but does not “Cross the Rubicon” into actual paradigm perception and implementation.
Public Banking has always been onto the solution Debt Only IS the current monetary and financial paradigm and changing that is the key part of any actual economic solution. As Bob says getting control of the central bank is also key because it is the correct source of monetary creation…not the private banks who now actually have that power. This is why IMO a national banking system and central bank are necessary. I mean, in an allegedly free enterprise system how glaringly contradictory and morally and ethically rediculous is giving already dominant profit making entities the monopoly power of the life’s blood of every individual’s and the entire system’s most important factor? Of course public banking could be problematic….unless it was aligned with and guided by an unimpeachable ethic like monetary graciousness as in Gifting.
I just posted this on my blog wisdomicsblog.com I hope it helps to clarify the discount/rebate policy and show how it is the single integration point of the micro and macro-economy and hence the fulcrum point at retail sale that can invert the problematic realities of the current paradigm into a new one.
The Point of Retail Sale….
…is the single integrative point of the micro and macro-economy. If you doubt this consider that retail sale is the terminal aggregative point for all costs and so prices for every consumer item and service produced in the micro-economy. Yes, there are other business models other than retail, but their costs including profit are already factored into final retail sale because it (retail sale) is the terminal end of the entire legitimate economic process and the cost accounting convention that all costs must go into price is, necessarily and correctly, applied. If anyone doubts that retail sale is the terminal end of the legitimate economic process just ask yourself when was the last time you bought $100 worth of groceries and when you got home the grocery store called you and said: “Sorry, we have to have another $50 for those grocies.” Never. Because consumption is the ending point of production…and that is what occurs at retail sale.
The Point of Retail Sale….
The Point of Retail Sale is the single integrative point of the micro and macro-economy. If you doubt this consider that retail sale is the terminal aggregative point for all costs and so prices for every consumer item and service produced in the micro-economy. Yes, there are other business models other than retail, but their costs including profit are already factored into final retail sale because it (retail sale) is the terminal end of the entire legitimate economic process and the cost accounting convention that all costs must go into price is, necessarily and correctly, applied. If anyone doubts that retail sale is the terminal end of the legitimate economic process just ask yourself when was the last time you bought $100 worth of groceries and when you got home the grocery store called you and said: “Sorry, we have to have another $50 for those grocies.” Never. Because consumption is the ending point of production…and that is what occurs at retail sale.
Thread on RWER Blog: Capitalism’s Deniers
Me: Competition and innovation are economic virtues and both need to be fostered. You can’t have two versions of “THE TRUTH”, but you can have an integration of ONLY the particles of truth in those “TRUTHS”. This thirdness greater oneness is wisdom and should be the mindset of every theorist left or right. The socialist variety need to re-visit Hegel’s dialectic and the capitalist, especially the rigid variety thereof, need to sit down, shut up and CONTEMPLATE the same.
Arrogance and rigidity have never been intellectual virtues, and historically, the various aspects of the unifying and integrative concept of the natural philosophical concept of grace are the route toward intellectual breakthrough.
“I set before you life and death, Therefore, choose life.”
JN: It seems to me that the comments so far miss the gist of the article. Its key point is that the fundamentalists — along with many economists — treat capitalism as a competitive system BY DEFINITION, and therefore every power aspect of capitalism as NON CAPITALIST to start with. With this assumption, the notion that capitalism, like every other broad social system since antiquity, is a MODE OF POWER, becomes a logical impossibility.
Me: Not my post. You ARE right that this was the point of the article. All I’ve ever done on here is suggest we come off regurgitating what has already become obvious to heterodox economists and get on with completing the Hegelian dialectic with the insight that the new paradigm is Abundantly Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting and that policies aligned with and crafted around the significances of the micro and macro-economically integrative point of retail sale are the means of making that new paradigm a temporal universe reality.
JN: To which heterodox economist the notion of “capitalism as a mode of power” has already become obvious?
As far as I can tell, the very notion of an “economy” is already antithetical to that of a mode of power.
But I’m willing to stand corrected.
Me: My use of heterodox was meant to represent those economists who have at least turned the corner of capitalism (or socialism) as sole thesis, but again you’re right none of them on either side of that oppositional duality has successfully intellectually broken through to the synthesis/thirdness greater oneness that always characterizes a new paradigm….except me, with the profit making economic system of direct and reciprocal monetary distributism….and which with the pinnacle concept of wisdom is able to successfully integrate the two seemingly oppositional aspects of grace, namely benevolence and sovereignty/power.
The Need For The “Perennial Philosophy”
How Do You Transform Economic and Financial Power?
Personal Quote
Grace as in patience and understanding is always the most imortant lesson to learn in life. However, there is a rational end to patience and the non-reflective occasionally need to be jolted back into present time regarding that fact.
Steve Hummel 01/07/2019
Corporate Power and The New Paradigm
E: In this blog many times we are advised to reread Karl Polanyi’s classic, The Great Transformation. Good advice, which I am heeding. My view is that underlying both the euro and neoliberalism (and associated things such as austerity) is the power of unfettered multinational corporate capital. I try to include this view in everything I say to anyone about economics.
Me: Yes, but what is the power behind the corporations, and what is the current paradigm of that power? Finally, what is the new paradigm that will replace the primacy of the old one and resolve its problems?
E: Good questions Craig. No simple answers to post here. My point is to encourage all discussions of politics and economics to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, the dominant institution of our time. The power of modern corporate capital (an expression I prefer to the ideological “capitalism”) is 419 years old this year. The concept of corporate “personhood” is at least 150 years old. These are long times for the development of complexities, so none of it is simple.
Its current expression of increasing dominance is rentier, or unearned, capital (as contrasted with capital that actually accomplishes something, the core of the “real” economy).
The current fascination with “sustainability” offers some focus for investigating corporate power. Hyman Minsky’s work shows how it is unstable, different from Marx’s focus. If it is unstable, likely it is unsustainable, and so will an economy where that power is dominant. Perhaps not crashing for good in my lifetime, but still … .
Me: I can certainly get behind curbing the power of multi-national corporations global reach (or even domestic ones who choose domination over cooperation). If corporations want to be legally considered individuals then they should be subject to the same legal sanctions as individuals and also be able to benefit from the policies I suggest….so long as they do not commit accounting fraud or any other economic vice. Humanizing the economy, like life, grants both freedoms and demands ethics.
Beyond The Paradigm Change
As the beneficial abundance and equally beneficial deflationary cost cutting effects of the discount/rebate policy and Wisdomics-Gracenomics are instituted we would probably be wise to counter both any arbitrary and greedy price increases by enterprise before retail sale and any attempts to destroy competitors by near monopoly businesses with large price cutting. Both could be taxed for such after scrutinizing their books which would be a regulatory part of implementing the new paradigm policies of the universal dividend and the discount/rebate.
The Awakening Point
Recognizing the monetary and economic significance of a high percentage discount/rebate policy at the point of retail sale is absolutely the awakening experience of the new paradgm. With it you do not have to worry about inflation and you can directly and reciprocally inject virtually as much money into the economy as you desire thus transforming the current systemic realities of individual income scarcity, by definition business revenue scarcity and the balkiness and tendency toward recession and instability as well. It is THE insight. It’s the observation of the moons of Jupiter and the discovery of the ellipse of economics.
In fact C. H. Douglas was the Copernicus of economics as he first posited its monetary disequilibrium. I am his Kepler and Galileo.
Social Credit/Wisdomics/Gracenomics/ Gracientialism 