I’m not really big on conspiracy theories, but neither am I blind or totally rejecting of them either. People and organizations will act in their own actual or perceived interests with or without a conscious conspiracy. The system and culture have been set up and also devolved to where nearly any action can be thwarted or encouraged by the powerful whether they all stand around some vector analysis board and slaver while laughing evilly, or they truly believe, as Lord Blankfein said that they are “doing God’s work.”

The one thing the powerful actually do not have control over are ideas, paradigms and zeitgeists. And that is why it is so important to find the right and most ethically powerful idea, paradigm and zeitgeist in order to balance theirs and replace it as the primary one.

I’m completely against TPP as an attempt by already dominant conglomerates to make that dominance a fait acompli. It should be fought, but it should be fought intelligently…with ideas that can actually stop it and make it unnecessary.

Tariffs are an economic orthodoxy…that’s why they don’t work. They’re part of the control, encourage and/or thwart everyone three ways from the middle…so that either nothing happens or if some momentary battle is won the war is lost…and then everyone can go back to being cynical, “realistic” or apathetic. Obama is the perfect example of hope betrayed and extinguished. I remember hearing him say at his acceptance speech, after preaching hope and change the whole way through, that “we must be patient and there is a lot of work to do”. I knew right then that nothing significant would happen. It was mere reformist happy horseshit. Ideas. Paradigms. A zeitgeist. Only these and their aligned and reflective policies will actually change things.

Transformative ideas first! Rational and ethical regulation right along with it.

Jim:  Steve said: “I’m completely against TPP as an attempt by already dominant conglomerates to make that dominance a fait acompli.”  Isn’t this a perfect example of a conspiracy?  The fact that it is a secret agreement to achieve a goal makes it so.

Me:  Jim,  Yes it is. The question is whether or not it’s a conscious one or not. It’s probably a combination of both where there are those who actually don’t care and those who actually believe it is necessary in order to prevent the rise of nationalism blah, blah, blah. The real problem is no one believes there are alternatives and so no alternative is considered or conceived. It goes right back to the power of ideas to sway, direct and blind….or enlighten, renew and create freedom for the individual and free flowingness to the system.

Me:  Stuart,

I completely agree with the intention of reform, and environmental regulation is completely necessary, but reform of the money system is “looking through the wrong end of the telescope”. Given the digital nature of the money system policies can be pin pointed to address the underlying most basic problem and then crafted so that they could/would instantaneously resolve both its structural effects and balance and replace the paradigm it currently utilizes to dominate with.

Me:  Yes the Banks and regulators haven’t learned a thing from the 2008 crisis. They still believe the economy tends toward equilibrium instead of having an inherent accounting flaw as an integral aspect of the system itself which disequilibrates it. Hence they are free to “do God’s work” because he (the market) will sort it all out. Meanwhile they re-hypothecate collateral to the nth degree until everyone loses track of who has it and where it is, and asset prices inflate “to infinity and beyond”…the beyond being zero actual value.

Yes, the idiocies of monetary inflation are destructive, but if one never looks at the underlying cost inflationary nature of commerce itself which erodes savings and profits and so drives the desire to preserve them via wild speculations and ever more abstract and surreal hedging….that underlying problem sneaks up and bites nearly everyone in the back side.

Employment Participation Rate: The Inexorably Absurd Trend of Present Economic Orthodoxy

Employment participation rates have steadily declined since the Dot com bubble in 2000. Competitive profit making systems, Artificial Intelligence specifically and innovation generally have internal logics of efficiency. Competitive profit making systems, efficiency of cost, most easily of labor costs, innovation, efficiency of human effort and most recently and most disruptively Artificial Intelligence, efficiency of human input at all. Considering this and the fact that businesses are not going to get rid of any of these forces, anyone who is holding on to the belief that macro-economically the economy will create even the levels of past inadequacy of individual income let alone more in the future as the age of Artificial Intelligence truly kicks in…is deluding themselves. If one cannot or will not bring themselves to acceptance of the Social Credit insight…it does not matter. Technologically advanced profit making economies will force the necessity of the policies of Social Credit anyway.

Economic theorists and pundits: Deal with it. Even if you have to do it by saying you knew it all along despite having bitched at, resisted and invalidated those who steadfastly advocated the broader, deeper and more inclusive philosophy and policies of Social Credit for long and long. Once there is an economy based primarily on the concepts of Grace/graciousness and equally aligned with gracious policies everyone will be much more able to just forgive and forget anyway. No big deal.

Solomon’s Awesome Decision

Keen is failing his iconoclastic quest and hence has (probably unconsciously) retreated into economic orthodoxy and the palliatives it offers. He has re-discovered a lot of what Douglas found, but due to the intensification of the modern orthodoxy of scientism since Douglas’s time is unwilling/unable to look at grace as in gifting etc. Religionists of course have the same problem with and from their perspective. Being a complete and comfortable agnostic I’m not willing to throw the baby of existential experience out with the twin arrogancies accumulated around both orthodox religion and an equally infected orthodox science, and instead hold forth for an integration of that Duality which is a larger, more true and more individually and systemically freeing reality than their mere sum. If that be a vice…so be it.

Reference prior two blog entries

A truly macro-economic tool/policy is one which deals with aggregates and not just a single aggregate but whatever aggregates are relevant to the problem it is attempting to solve. The money system is digital and hence can be made to costlessly fill a gap in individual incomes or vastly reduce an excess in costs and/or prices and still make its numerical monetary effects cancellable to zero so that no addition or subtraction results in any harmful effect.   Thus if a deficit of $5 in individual incomes in ratio to costs/prices exists a free gift of individual income that does not have to be paid back results in the ability to cancel costs and prices to zero.  Likewise, if the true and deepest purpose of production actually is simply consumption (of course profit can still exist within it) then the system, that is the macro economy, can be made to zero out ALL costs over and above original financial credit totals by the retail merchant discounting all of the prices of each of their products by a single percentage rate equaling the percentage of total costs above original financial costs. Then, as the totals of their discounts are rebated back to those merchants they are able to be whole on their overheads and margins and the resulting consumer price deflation will actually greatly increase individual purchasing power and also enable businesses to make more profits and so become less dependent on credit for normal operations. Thus businesses and individuals can steadily progress toward not only a more efficient economy as a whole, but also toward the goal of making money merely a ticket for the distribution of production…instead of an onerous, rigged to be unworkable and ferociously inhumane and obsessive pursuit of  mere profit, power and control.

After all one of the aspects of Grace applied to the economy is immanence as in nowness, fullness,completeness and withinness of the economy. As within, so with out. Wisdom and its pinnacle concept are equally applicable to the beingness of Man and his temporal systems as well.

Depreciation momentarily reduces the pressure on businesses to re-coup the additional costs of depreciating equipment and facilities but it in fact neither eliminates the necessary totality of those costs to them to replace such, nor does it mean they do not continually pass those additional costs on to consumers so those costs will additionally go into consumer prices in an ongoing way. This is one of the factors which makes the system  inherently and dynamically cost inflationary due to a scarcity of total individual incomes in ratio to total costs/prices. If the business does not pass will be forced to borrow all of those costs in order to replace them which will add to their overhead costs and endanger their business. Also, there are no additional individual incomes created so that the individual can liquidate those additional costs except via debt which of course adds considerable additional costs to both the system, and to the individual as well. This rigged and onerous situation cannot be fixed or entirely resolved without a costless means of raising individual incomes, i.e. a direct supplementary free gift of income to the individual.

You are quite correct that equilibrium as an ideology and present reality is….unreal. However, an integration of the Duality of equilibrium and disequilibrium theoretical truths which resulted in an expanded and more inclusive reality based on a new, more encompassing and unifying concept like grace as in forgiveness/cancellation of Debt (jubilee), free as in costless, and thus non-price increasing and abundant as in additional (a universal individual dividend) and also giving/gifting back and forth (a macro-economically derived discount to retail prices to the consumer which in turn is rebated back to participating merchants so that they can be whole on their overheads and margins).

Steve Keen:  You don’t take a hint, do you? I find you the most tedious bore I’ve had to deal with in the last decade. I banned you from debtdeflation.com because you overwhelmed the site with your non-stop comments–frequently commenting on your own comments multiple times, and leaving no room for others to debate. I’ve done the same thing on Forbes, and then on Twitter. A couple of days ago, I deleted all your comments from YouTube. Go and start your own channel and leave mine alone.

My Reply: You’re right, I don’t take a hint when I’m looking at additional economic realities others are missing. I guess its not only DSGE theorists who are orthodox and consequently disinterested in looking. Open minded and dynamic research suffers along with businesses and individuals as a result.