Ideas, particularly paradigmatic ideas, resolve problems. Reforms just push them around….even sometimes pushing them in the wrong direction as we see what occurred to Keynesian reforms.

GM:  It is true that Social Credit was never proposed or discussed by the Fathers of the Church, the Doctors of the Church, or even the great Reformation theologians. It may be one way of improving the distribution/sharing of wealth, but not the only way. According to Acts of the Apostles, the earliest Christian community held all goods in common.

Me:  Community ownership of resources may be workable for a period of time and be a temporary local solution to scarcity as well, but they aren’t sustainable against entrenched wealth and power, and most importantly they are not systemic solutions like Social Credit.

GM:  Steve, two points:

As one who speaks often about grace, you should know that Grace is not systemic, but personal, a gift of God.

As far as how sustainable community ownership may be, Mount Athos has been sustaining itself since at least the year 800 A.D.

Me:  That is the merely transcendental definition of grace, yes. However the linguistic and philosophical concept of grace as in abundance, gifting and flow are completely applicable to human affairs and their systems. And I would argue that my concept of Grace as a trinity-unity-oneness-process experience of love in action, coming from and expressed wholly and/or in part in virtually all of mankind’s major wisdom traditions, is a broad spiritual reality that can be self determinedly embraced in whole or in part by naturalists and supernaturalists.

As far as Mt. Athos is concerned my wife, my son and myself boated past the peninsula upon which it is located in 1996 as actual landing there is very strictly regulated by the Orthodox Church, and women in fact are not allowed to set foot on it at all. So the isolation/localization premise still holds, and in fact the reason it is even still existing is because it has a major source of wealth and power that is maintaining it so its actually an inverse example of the premise that such monetary “solutions” cannot survive wealth and power….that is intentionally opposed to its existence.  The point being that the way to get the concept of monetary grace as in gifting actually implemented is to intelligently integrate it into the existing system in the form of aligned policies, and to do so by marketing its economic workability, its political solvency and its ethical ascendency to constituencies whose self interests it also serves. That’s how the church (incompletely) implemented Grace into the Roman Empire after all.

Yes, Soddy’s economic insights are valid, and Douglas’s even deeper insights into the monopolistic paradigms by which the business model of finance dominates all other business models and 90+% of the general populace have been incorrectly characterized and shunted aside. The latter is most often lumped in with the “interest is the entire problem” cranks when the actual problem it exposes is the systemic rate of flow of total costs (of which interest is merely a subset) in ratio to the rate of flow of total individual incomes. It is important to recognize the difference, and also to understand that Douglas was not a general equilibrium theorist nor an advocate of austerity, and that his recognition that the monopolistic paradigms of finance were the real and deepest economic problem was way ahead of his contemporary Keynes and even of current leading edge heterodox economists who still have not come up with policies that would break up that monopoly and reverse the above problematic ratio.

This is a law of Wisdom-Integration and it leads to true progress for all. Political compromise on the other hand almost always ends up re-inforcing only obsessive contention and the continued dominance of powers perceived or unperceived; and political power, even if it results in breaking up unhealthy deadlock and some forms of change that may appear important will inevitably end up in a reactionary situation unless the laws of Wisdom-Integration are adhered to. The genuine thirdness of the laws of Wisdom-Integration apply at all times, to all parties and all situations.

Even in times of war the sanity of Wisdom-Integration apply as in:

[ (Attack x Counter Attack)    Stop Attacking ]

When in doubt….integrate.

We currently have a virtual private monopoly on credit creation and absolute systemic monetary paradigmatic monopolies of Loan, Debt and For production only.  In other words one can get money for consumption, but it can be only in the form of Debt, i.e. a loan. This despite an inherent systemic scarcity of total individual income and the increasingly disruptive erosion of same by innovation and artificial intelligence. Likewise, individual enterprise, even within a system that is inherently income scarce in ratio to costs and despite ever increasing additional depreciation costs of fixed capital, cannot receive any help to rectify these systemic realities….except to borrow new money or become further indebted via a bond, both of which increase their costs….when again systemic costs exceed individual incomes making the system monetarily unstable and every enterprise to exist within that unnecessary monetary austerity. Is it any wonder why 80% of businesses fail within the first three years?

Private financial monopoly requires the establishment of financial structural duality probably best accomplished with the creation of a public/state banking system to insure true competition and cost efficiency. The monetary system requires an encompassing trinitarian structure of private banks, public banks and an ultimate funding monetary authority whose philosophy is based on the concept of grace as in flow and grace as in gifting and which creates all new monies as well as regulates dual policies of an abundant universal dividend and a reciprocally gifted retail discount that positively effects price deflation within a profit making system.

These paradigmatic changes would transform the austere and unstable character of the entire system, break up the private financial monopoly, free and empower the individual, free businesses from the monetarily austere, hamstrung system and instantaneously accomplish more of the agendas of both the left and right than both these half brained political institutions have brought us in the last 100 years of their continual and short sighted obsessive contention.

Liberals generally unconsciously wallow in and/or glorify conflict. Conservatives generally despise it because it threatens their dominant position economically or politically. The alt-right brandish it as a confusion tactic for their power consolidating agenda, and the truly wise are able to see the particles of truth and untruth in every side and integrate the truths in such a way that a genuine thirdness is created that not only resolves the conflict into a unity, but ethically evolves the matter at hand as well.

Modern man knows only becomingness, reform and palliation of power and problems. Wisdom knows beingness within becomingness and hence is able to perceive resolving essence within the duality of conflict, able to maintain focus, clarity and vision and so advocate for transformation of conflict into meaningful, actual progress that brings lies, trickery and dominating power to its knees before the superior ethics of love and grace.

The only way for tough mindedness, which is an intellectual virtue, to keep from degenerating into angry and egotistical contentiousness is to have an even greater ethic of love and love in action in the midst of one’s life and living, i.e grace/graciousness…as one’s intention and purpose.

GM:  I’m finished with these Group discussions. When people deny saying what they said, it’s a bit pointless to engage with them. A wise man told me today that, “If a journey is going nowhere, there’s no need for you to be on it.” Social Credit has gone nowhere for 100 years. Discussions in this group, nowhere but in circles.  I’m sure it would be futile for me to present evidence to show why your “analysis” of Gadhafi is Jejune.  If experience is any indicator, the stronger the evidence, the greater the likelihood that you or someone else will deny tomorrow what you wrote and sent today, or claim that it really means, not what the words actually say, but instead something that Major Douglas said a hundred years ago about Alberta or Scotland someplace completely irrelevant to Libya. For me to expect any different in this Group would be the triumph of hope over experience. I’m betting on experience. Happy New Year of the Fire Rooster!

Me:  Adios. Your opaque mind (lets light neither in nor out) is the one needing wisdom. I don’t necessarily agree with every opinion expressed here, but an economic philosophy and policies based on and aligned with the pinnacle wisdom concept of grace, wisdom being the best integration of the practical and the ideal, not convention or the irrelevance of a mere transcendentalism ….is light enough for me to affirm and advocate for it.  You couldn’t manage that  because your entire stay here consisted of refusals and inabilities to look and perceive….amongst other intellectual flaws.

[ (Free Trade x Fair Trade)  <–>  Social Credit ]  –> Economic/Monetary national self sufficiency and hence trade subsidiarity as opposed to the present monetary scarcity and hence hierarchical Financial instability.

The evolution of the human species and of civilization has been marked by breakthroughs of aspects of the state of Grace (Love in action).  Thirdness-Manyness/Hindism, Oneness/Buddhism, Loving Ascension-Thirdness-Oneness-History-Procession through Time/Christianity. The latter elaborated on the concept of Trinity-Unity-Oneness-Process. Other major changes reflect other aspects of Grace. Hunter-Gatherer to Agriculture/increased abundance, Gutenberg printing press/increased communication-knowledge, Reformation/broadening of path to God/Self Knowledge/Grace, Industrialization/increased abundance, Rise of Science/increased knowledge of the temporal-physical universe, Cybernation-Computerization/increased knowledge and access to knowledge….and hopefully now monetary gifting-grace/increased economic abundance, systemic balance, equilibrium, flow, increased leisure, increased economic democracy.

All of these breakthroughs have their dualistic opposites still attending/bedeviling them and of course dualism is fine so long as one does not get “hung up” in it, but with each the concept and experience of Trinity-Unity-Oneness-Process (TUOP) is enabled and becomes more manifest….so long as it is applied to our thoughts and actions.

Also, the lesson of Love which is Ascension/Encompassment/Procession of both external and self knowledge. Whenever a conundrum apparently presents itself the answer is integration (Wisdom) to the point of Thirdness, Oneness, Ascension, Encompassment, and Procession ….in other words the major states of the experience of Grace.

We also see that science, philosophy and spirituality are an ascending Trinity-Unity-Oneness-Process of the nature of knowledge itself.

And the key to everything is an initial and underlying postulate of Love-Grace because they increase consciousness of both self and the world, increase tolerance of diversity and also increase knowledge of Time as a conscious moment and flow of moments and hence reflect the basic naturalistic Trinity-Unity-Oneness experience of loving grace expressed by The Cosmic Code, that is:

Love and Love in Action/Grace = [ (Space, Time) and Conscious Self Awareness ]

I/L —>   [ (A x B)    G/C ]    or   [I/L —> (A x B)    G/C ] which are Trinity-Unity-Oneness- Process reflections of the supernatural and natural perspectives.

Note:  These are the Scientific-Temporal-Process-Philosophical, Consciousness and Spiritual expressions of The Cosmic Code

[ (A x B    G/C ]  Scientific-Temporal-Process-Philosophical

[ G/C    (A x B) ]  Consciousness  (inversion/reversal of formula)

[I/L —> (A x B)    G/C ]     or    I/L —>   [ (A x B)    G/C ]      Spiritual  ( Both Natural and Supernatural expressions)

Couldn’t possibly agree more that current theory is flawed and that austerity is a complete inversion of correct policy. However, present heterodox reforms are just that, reforms, structural reforms. What we actually need is to integrate a new monetary paradigm and reflective policies into the present debt based money system. Doing so would enable us to accomplish more of the agendas of both the left and the right than their continual contention has given us for 80 years, and would greatly stabilize national and international macro-economics as AI erodes aggregate demand at rates higher than it ever has before.