Me:  Paradigm changes are penultimate cultural events, and long over due paradigm changes like the monetary and economic paradigm of Debt Only which has been in force for at least the 5000 year old course of human civilization have the potential for effecting multi-disciplinary leaps of human cultural evolution including that of consciousness studies.

KZ:  Craig, before we go listing the “penultimate” cultural changes in human history, perhaps we need to look closely for what some of these might be. For example, Sapiens invention of religion, of government, of economics. Are these penultimate? Or what about the invention of monotheistic religions. Or maybe the invention of atomic energy? Some ideas about distinguishing penultimate from everyday would be useful.

Me:  Cultures are patterns…and so are paradigm changes. That’s evident by definition. I’m referring to the known classical paradigm changes like from Hunting and Gathering/Nomadism to Agriculture-Homesteading, Hand written communication to mechanical with the invention of the Guttenberg Press, the Copernican Cosmological paradigm change from terra-centrism to helio-centrism which was in many ways responsible for the rise of the scientific viewpoint, the change from analogue to digital/cybernetic.

I probably misused the word penultimate as it refers to second to last, although the paradigm change from Debt Only to Monetary Gifting being such an integrated part of human existence and so long overdue may actually be penultimate in that it could possibly lift the so called curse of Adam (only by the sweat of thy brow shalt ye eat your bread) and enable the ushering in of an age of leisure (self chosen constructive activities) and enable the first technologically advanced contemplative society which in turn could eventually enable what I would consider an ultimate paradigm change from religiosity/dogmatism to spirituality (focus on the self actualization of the beneficial experiences behind such dogmas).

RL:  True, Craig, but how do we assess the pertinence of leadersship to success as opposed to group coordination and cooperation. If one lives in the United States, which is besotted with leadership, CEOs, military elites, etc, it is almost impossible to get people to appreciate the superiority of the group, leadership that is group rooted, which is considered to be far superior to US leadership concepts, of MBA, military academy training. Each side argues relative strengths or weaknesses, the superiority of strategic theory and instrumental implementation in the US system, the superiority of the German, on the operational level.

KZ:  Robert, excellent comment. I concur in full. Craig, you present some interesting notions. But aside from Robert’s arguments, you should keep in mind that most cultural changes are not planned and certainly not planned in the detail you describe. But more importantly cultural changes develop via group consensus. Achieving such consensus is difficult. Wars have been fought over consensus.

Me: Robert, yes that is a good point. I would say that cultures take on the character of their paradigms, and since the nature and the way that the policies of the new paradigm of Monetary Gifting would be best integrated into our culture is the utterly integrated/integrative/decentralized tool of double entry bookkeeping that would help influence the mindset of the group toward the wisdom of enlightened leisurely anarchy which I would define as the individual freed into what he/she thought was their own ideal scene/utopia combined with and guided by a hierarchy of human needs like Maslow’s pyramid including his final level that he added after the first pyramid was introduced…self transcendence.

It’s just another example of Wisdom’s process of the integration of opposites.

Ken, IMO lack of conscious planning is part of the problem. However, having the leisure time, the relative guaranteed security of great technological productivity provided by the new paradigm of Monetary Gifting and the valid psychological guidance of a Maslow or any of the world’s wisdom traditions thoughtfully acculturated is undoubtedly the direction to move.

Wisdom is integration/integrating.

And finally, there is no end to history and not everyone has to be or can be wise (as part of wisdom is the positive and constructive integration of one’s experiences youth will inevitably be lacking it to one degree or another), but if the dominant ethic of a culture is wisdom rather than by definition any other lesser (and less inclusive) consideration…I trust we’ll be progressing.

KZ:  Craig, Sapiens history shows it to be a pernicious and creative species. The changes you suggest would need to not just blunt but eliminate for all time both these aspects of Sapiens. That seems impossible, not to mention futile. As to “conscious” planning I’m not certain I know what that is. Neither does anyone else I know of.

Me:  Well, as you might have noticed I’m not into counsels of despair. Wisdom isn’t just airy-fairy nonsense it’s the positive integration of the practical and the ideal. I would only say that one of the cures for cynicism is getting a new hobby that breaks up one’s intellectual fallow ground and hopefully brings them into closer contact with the glories of present time that they may not have experienced since they were a child.

Dr. Keen,

Considering that your de-bunking of DSGE and discovery that when the rate of change of private debt/credit falls that the economy will enter recession unless more credit/private debt is injected into the economy, and that yet such injection merely results in the continual build up of debt to the point of unservicability is the macro-economic re-discovery of C. H. Douglas’s cost accounting analysis/calculus and A + B theorem which established him as the first disequilibrium theorist,

Considering that Michael Hudson has correctly identified the dominant business model of finance as a titanic parasite that sucks both a vast percentage of the profits out of our highly productive capabilities not to mention much of its vitality and human hopefulness, that macro-economics is an extremely young body of knowledge that only came into being after the coalescence of finance and its money creating power and paradigm of Debt Only, and so has never considered that it is not a legitimate economic/productive business model at all despite its money creating powers having increasingly become necessary for middle class necessities like homes, automobiles and  education, and is also a flow of additional costs post retail sale which is presently the actual legitimate end of the entire economic/productive process for every item or service,

Considering your support for “QE for the people” is a tacit admission that there is a scarcity ratio rate of flow between total individual incomes and total costs/prices which was C. H. Douglas’s Social Credit insight,

Considering that employment participation has no where to go but down with innovation and the virtual inevitability of the disruptive force of AI and the only other way to increase individual incomes is the current paradigm of the flow of Debt/Additional Cost/Continual Build Up Only, then a new paradigm is absolutely necessary,

Considering that you yourself have critiqued economists for having little or no education in accounting and have found it effective in tracking stocks and flows of money, that one of the requirements for a new paradigm is that it fit virtually seamlessly within most current structures and at the same time transform them by creating a whole new pattern, and that double entry bookkeeping is the integrative infrastructure within and upon which the entirety of commerce sits and is classified and codified, it would undoubtedly be fruitful to analyze and craft the new paradigm’s policy effects so as to fit within it and its digital nature,

Considering that if you take rational and ethical control of the terminal ending and summing points for all costs and so prices for every item or service as well as the terminal expression point for all forms of inflation with a large percentage digital debit/credit discount/rebate monetary policy at final retail sale, and hence you can provide a better alternative for commercial agents than inflating their prices, namely with a 50% discount/rebate a doubling of every individual’s potential purchasing power and so the doubling of potential money for every enterprise’s products or services….and so the consequential integrating of price deflation painlessly and beneficially into profit making systems,

Considering that the two major signatures of historical paradigm changes are conceptual opposition to the old/current paradigm and inversion/transformation of its problematic dualities, and that the current paradigm for the vehicle and form for the creation and distribution of money/credit is Debt Only, how can the new paradigm be anything but monetary free gifting to the point of inversion of the current scarcity ratio between total individual incomes and total costs/prices into an abundance ratio, and hence the transformation of the economic and monetary systems from austere, balky and unstable to stabily prosperous and dynamically free flowing?

Considering that paradigm changes are penultimate cultural events, and long over due paradigm changes like the monetary and economic paradigm of Debt Only which has been in force for at least the 5000 year old course of human civilization have the potential for effecting multi-disciplinary leaps of human cultural evolution including that of consciousness studies, do we have to wait another 5000 years, as David Graeber has shown us, to change the current monetary and economic paradigm from Debt Only  to Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting, or can we begin a grass roots movement to communicate your researches and the obvious self interests of the dual policies of Douglas’s Social Credit that I have extended, innovated and philosophically plumbed, raising it from merely a better theory to the point of paradigm change and so get somewhere with political and paradigmatic change? ….instead of concentrating our efforts on only trying to change the minds of ego involved academics and theorists?

Why not take rationally beneficial and ethically ascendant control of our financially smothered chaotic system at the terminal expression point of all types of inflation with a 50% digital discount/rebate monetary policy at the point of retail sale, and kill the two chronically problematic birds of individual income scarcity and inflation….with one policy stone?

The four most important characteristics of what will most likely become a good new theory are:

1) Does it actually consider conceptual opposition

2) What is it willing to thoughtfully dispense with like for instance today, private finance’s money creating ability. In other words how radical is it?

3) Does it have paradigm perception via historical examination of actual paradigm changes

4) What are its philosophical bona fides

Social Credit was always a superior economic theory to Keynesianism and the neo-classical synthesis which it got morphed into, but what not even Social Crediters realized was how to take a superior theory and raise it to the level of paradigm change.
You do that by first realizing that the temporal universe does not allow a static/statistical equilibrium so attempting to merely fill “the gap” will not resolve the problem. Then you study paradigm changes and realize that one of their major signatures is inversion/transformation of the major problems of the old/current paradigm which in the economy and money system means inverting individual income scarcity and systemic austerity into an overflowing abundance of same, and in a dynamically ongoing and continual way….not just a statistical/numerical equilibrium which is a full stop and hence does not flow.

Douglas was a very bright and insightful man, but his Social Crediter followers who lived during the infancy of quantum physics and the birthing of macro-economics fell back into classical economic ideas of statistical balance. Also, they did not fully realize the full and true power of their second policy besides the dividend, the retail discount. If you implement a high percentage debit-credit monetary and pricing policy (of say 50%) only at the terminal expression point for any and all forms of inflation and which is also the terminal ending point of the entire legitimate economic process where production becomes consumption….then you would not only double everyone’s potential purchasing power you would also double the potential free and available income for every enterprise’s goods and services. And remember, the policy only takes effect at inflation’s terminal expression point and at every good and service’s terminal ending point…..so a 50% discount/rebate policy not only eliminates any possibility of inflation it almost miraculously….but only transformationally 🙂 ….integrates price deflation painlessly and beneficially for all agents individual and commercial….into profit making economics.

So the two policies of the dividend and discount/rebate invert/transform an austere/balky/rigged to collapse system into a paradigm changed one of free flowing abundance for all agents.

Of course homo sapiens not being a wholly rational or ethical species some rules and regs will need to accompany these basic policies, but despite the protestations of those somewhat too obsessed and enamored with (legitimate) research and details, the historical record shows that everything adapts to a new paradigm….not the other way around. Just align policy and the rules and regs with aspects of the concept behind the paradigm itself and you’ll “never put a foot wrong”.

I also look forward to Derryl Hermanutz’s interview. It appears his electromagnetic theory about consciousness pretty much dove tails with my ideas about the several extraordinary experiences I’ve had and attributed them to having an increased awareness of the electromagnetic waves that exist continually around us. So much so that space was experienced as almost palpable, and even though I didn’t see anything quantitatively different there was a vibrancy to everything and I was able experience tactile sensation of objects from a distance. These types of experiences are synonymous with descriptions from virtually all wisdom tradition’s of those possible if one’s attention is focused on the present moment. A state of dynamic, interactive gracefulness and flow.

…rules and regulations. Thus it will be until makind is a completely rational and ethical species. Paradigm changes DO change everything permanently, it’s just that not everyone realizes it or has the ethics and good sense to understand that fact.

Me:  The smartest thing we could do is actually consider that accounting is the integrative infrastructure upon and within which the entirety of commerce is embedded. As one of the requirements for a paradigm change is that it must fit seamlessly within virtually all of the structures of the area of human endeavor it applies to while simultaneously effecting a transformation of same…accounting fulfills that integrative requirement. As accounting’s rules (all costs must go into price) and tools (debits and credits) are digital all you would need to do is find the terminal ending point for the entire economic process (retail sale) which would also be the terminal summing point for all costs and so prices because its where production becomes consumption….and then implement a digital debit/credit monetary discount/rebate policy of high percentage (say 50%)…and you will have cut through all of the dynamic interactive complexities of the economy, doubled everyone’s potential purchasing power and so doubled the potential sales of any and every enterprise…..and implemented the new single concept that represented the new paradigm of Monetary Gifting.

This might insult the intellectual vanities of the genuinely erudite, but then paradigm changes are always as philosophically simple as they are permanently progressive and earth changing.

G:  I hear echoes of Bitcoin, blockchains, VATs, carbon tax rebate systems, and of course, more than a bit of Universal Income proposals, Craig.

For a world of citizens, at least in the US, but, given the portrayal of social democrats in Varofakis’ “Adults in the Room,” I’d better add Western Europe, who haven’t been able to absorb Modern Monetary Theory despite the Federal Reserve slyly demonstrating how it worked in 2008-2009 and beyond, and the ECB and BOE as well, this would be a huge leap in understanding without the infrastructure steps in education to get them “there.” After all, in our federal system of tax collections, federal, state, local, we couldn’t get our national act together on taxing online sales from Amazon, for example, decades after the IT Revolution – “don’t leave home without it” has rewritten a good part of the economic structure of our world.

I don’t want to throw a huge cistern of cold water on your presentation, though, since in Greece’s tribulations Yanis V. with the help of James Galbraith, was preparing a portion of such a system, to issue new electronic credit cards tied in to the Greek tax system when the ECB cut off the ATMs from Euro replenishment. There would be new “Greek” money in those citizen accounts, the bottom 40% or so, so they could pay at least some basic bills. A paving stone on the step to your financial Appian Way.

Me:  The key is starting a grass roots movement directed at the large constituencies of indebted students, the small to medium sized business community and the generally more grounded female half of the species showing them the obvious self interest of the policies I advocate, and forgetting about the futility of trying to convince ego involved academics and theorists.

Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting is the new paradigm. Bitcoin, Blockchain, et all are mere reforms and in some instances are exactly opposite of what is required. Paradigms accomplish permanent progress via transformation, and even though that is anathema to researchers and scientific types….everything adapts to a genuine paradigm change….not the other way around.

Yes, and He and Bannon believe in “fourth turnings” which are relatively accurate historically but miss the real point which is that they are the result of failure to accomplish the wisdom of integrative thirdness greater oneness of the particles of truth in opposing perspectives.

In other words Trump and Bannon are chaos merchants when what we need is re-integration. They are third rate intellects without a plan and only know how to bash ideas together rather than re-combining them in rational and beneficial ways.

If you craft a digital policy of relatively large percentage and implement it at the point and time that is the terminal expression point for all forms of inflation, you can cut through all of the erudite complexities of the economy and pour all manner of money into the system and so invert its nature from individual monetary scarcity and systemic austerity to abundance. Inversions are one of the major signatures of paradigm change.

MMT has the mechanics of money correct as well as the belief that austerity is stupid, but their idea of a Job Guarantee is squarely within the current monetary and financial paradigm of Debt Only. Of course there’s nothing about a job guarantee that couldn’t be incorporated into the new paradigm…undoubtedly in a much smaller way for anyone who was having trouble finding purpose without putting in their 40 hrs/week, but the idea and policy is still captured by the current paradigm.

Steve Keen is an insightful macro-economist, even though he’s still unconscious of the fact that with his “when the rate of change in credit falls the economy enters recession” he has merely re-discovered C. H. Douglas’s empirical cost accounting insight about the fundamental scarcity flow of total individual incomes in ratio to total costs/prices, by coming to it from the opposite abstract direction.

The fact is, macro-economics is a very recent tool which lacks both historical insight regarding the operant factor of private indebtedness in the collapse of civilizations and also was born into the fully obscured nature of the current paradigm and so simply considered private money creation to be a legitimate business model instead of it obviously being a titanically costly parasite as Michael Hudson has accurately assessed. It’s also post retail sale which is currently the only legitimate end of the economic/productive process because it is where production becomes consumption, and if possession is 90% of the law possession as in consumption is 99.99% of economics.

Economists have become so caught up in their abstractions that they have failed to recognize the paradigm changing policy insights to be derived from the digital nature of the empirical tool and invention of double entry bookkeeping. They have also not recognized the terminal expression point for any and all types of inflation, and simultaneously with that, the fact that terminal ending point of the entire economic process as per above that enables the discount/rebate policy to cut through all of the complexity that confuses and obscures and makes the simple, but not simplistic, accomplishment of the new paradigm.

No, it took a non-economist with an open mind to educate himself in heterodoxy and who had the right set of intellectual curiosities to take a superior 100 year old theory and raise its policies to the level of a very long over due paradigm change, so long term and over due that it will have multi-systemic “knock on” effects not seen since the kind of change that took place from Hunting and Gathering to Agriculture-Homesteading.

Too bad. Too sad. But paradigm changes while being terrifically beneficial….are just as unforgiving of those unable or unwilling to see them.