Commentary by Roger Erickson
CB Chief Draghi, we've read C.H. Douglas, and euro no C.H. Douglas! :(
However, your recent contemporary, Wynne Godley, Had It Right 20 Years Ago.
Yes, and Marriner Eccles 60 years before that!
Some Fraction of People Always Have Things Figured Out.
Recruiting Faster Than Population Growth is the Real Task. It's called reaching a noticeable Signal-to-Noise-Ratio.
Gerald Grattan McGeer had much of it figured out too. And Abba Lerner & C. H. Douglas, etc, etc. Heck, even Abe Lincoln, Ben Franklin & various American colonial civic groups pre 1750 had it largely figured out. Not to mention John Law.*
That is all interesting trivia. However, where do we go from here. And HOW?
The deeper quid pro quo all need to agree on is that we willingly cede SOME local degrees of individual freedom in return for SOME degrees of group freedom - and reap insane benefits when that investment is wisely selected.** The difficulty is in simultaneously coordinating the selection process, even while populations grow rapidly. We're in a desperate race to organize our own thoughts. Every culture is. Which culture will actually be first to use more than 1% of it's collective group intellect? This shouldn't be too hard, but we're making it difficult.
It's simple. Accumulate Coordination Skills, Not Fiat.
Or, to make it even simpler, for Joe & Jane Sixpack:
Save teamwork, not deferred effort?
Save citizens, not gold? (I could say "money," but gold, for now, cuts across all the failed education about money vs currency.)
* (The more one reads of Keynes, on the other hand, the more you wonder about his lack of courage - in sanitizing & summarizing the work of all the above, so as to make it more acceptable to, and hence controllable by, aristocracy. "Lord" Keynes? One can't be a real economist, a free man and a Lord at the same time. I sense the roots of pre-arranged kneeling & surrender every time I read Keynes. The guy strikes me as wishy washy, conflicted and - I'll just say it - a coward. Writing 4 thousand words to skirt one sentence, because it would upset his Lordly peers, and cost him his own peerage.)
CB Chief Draghi, we've read C.H. Douglas, and euro no C.H. Douglas! :(
However, your recent contemporary, Wynne Godley, Had It Right 20 Years Ago.
Yes, and Marriner Eccles 60 years before that!
Some Fraction of People Always Have Things Figured Out.
Recruiting Faster Than Population Growth is the Real Task. It's called reaching a noticeable Signal-to-Noise-Ratio.
Gerald Grattan McGeer had much of it figured out too. And Abba Lerner & C. H. Douglas, etc, etc. Heck, even Abe Lincoln, Ben Franklin & various American colonial civic groups pre 1750 had it largely figured out. Not to mention John Law.*
That is all interesting trivia. However, where do we go from here. And HOW?
The deeper quid pro quo all need to agree on is that we willingly cede SOME local degrees of individual freedom in return for SOME degrees of group freedom - and reap insane benefits when that investment is wisely selected.** The difficulty is in simultaneously coordinating the selection process, even while populations grow rapidly. We're in a desperate race to organize our own thoughts. Every culture is. Which culture will actually be first to use more than 1% of it's collective group intellect? This shouldn't be too hard, but we're making it difficult.
It's simple. Accumulate Coordination Skills, Not Fiat.
Or, to make it even simpler, for Joe & Jane Sixpack:
Save teamwork, not deferred effort?
Save citizens, not gold? (I could say "money," but gold, for now, cuts across all the failed education about money vs currency.)
* (The more one reads of Keynes, on the other hand, the more you wonder about his lack of courage - in sanitizing & summarizing the work of all the above, so as to make it more acceptable to, and hence controllable by, aristocracy. "Lord" Keynes? One can't be a real economist, a free man and a Lord at the same time. I sense the roots of pre-arranged kneeling & surrender every time I read Keynes. The guy strikes me as wishy washy, conflicted and - I'll just say it - a coward. Writing 4 thousand words to skirt one sentence, because it would upset his Lordly peers, and cost him his own peerage.)
** The Return-on-Coordination is always the highest return, by far.
8 comments:
Had no idea that some CH Douglas radio speeches are actually on YouTube.
Major C.H. Douglas on "Causes of War" - part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw28HmmvNNs
A very smart guy. Many of this thoughts are far more insightful than anything I've heard in current politics. What he's discussing is age-old tribal logic, and recognizes the immense value in maintaining a pass-through economy.
The problem is an organizational one. How to keep rapidly growing populations organized, so that they can avoid frictions and instead simply explore their group options.
That is an organizational problem of scale. How to scale organization faster than population and frictions. That requires scalable preparation.
Roger:
I believe that human beings inside a monetized economy (an economy that uses money) can be classified in 3 fuzzy non-exclusive classes or roles:
- worker, someone who tries to earn money in exchange for his or her capability to labor L->M
- entrepreneur, someone who tries to earn money in exchange for goods or services he or she produces or coordinates the production L->GS->M
- investor, someone who tries to earn money in exchange for money
M->M
The 3 classes are fuzzy, overlapping (one can exhibit more than one role) and present quite of individual variation inside.
The main function or argumentation (or theorizing) of humans is most of the time to support positions that one perceives as beneficial to one's interests within a given time-scale of prediction of what will happen.
Scientific (wannabe) theories do not escape this fate. They are uttered by people with interests. Hard sciences are easier to get consensus because as a rule they are neutral to people's interests, although they may be plagued by some groups having interests in upholding some theories than others (geocentrism, genetics in the Staline era).
In the realm of social sciences, in particular, in the field of economics, I believe that, in spite how difficult at may seem, a long lasting consensus can only emerge when the roles of who utter the theories will be fully recognized.
For example, it is clear to me that prevailing economic theories are based on the investor role interests.
Paulo Garrido,
Trying to reduce humans to 3 types is laughably naive. The human body has 60 recognized organs & ~300 recognized cell types among the 50 trillion or so cells making up a human-cellular-culture (i.e., YOU).
Supporting positions that various cells perceive as beneficial to their cellular interests within a given time-scale of prediction ... is NOT what happens, at least not in surviving humans.
There is tremendous selective pressure at work, even if most don't see the truck coming down the road they're sitting in.
We - like cells - have ZERO predictive power. Only reactive power. What people call prediction is mathematically constrained to extrapolation of previosly recognized patterns or habits.
Intractible tasks, meanwhile, are always DISCOVERED ... by yet another level of indirection (i.e., trial and error coordination between, not within, system components).
Human cultures already have - per the NAICS Codes - tens of thousands of distinct "types" in the form of exsisting and emerging professions. We also have hundreds if not thousands of recognized "organs" in the form of stable, public institutions.
We can expect that even larger human cultures, when they emerge, will have far more diversity between the core cultural repertoires than is visible between the shared institutions or cultural organs.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6114/1587.abstract
Or, maybe not. Maybe some unpredictably indirect methods will be invented by our descendents, that will largely fix the diversity of our present cultural organs, while over-building them with subtle functions we may have trouble even noticing.
After all, the difference between a mollusk, lizard, whale and human is not so much in their number of cell types, organs or # of cells. Rather, it is in subtle things like the degrees of freedom built into the genome of each cell (might be the siRNA regulatory stock) AND the "programming" practices constituting what we call "education."
oops, meant to say:
"SOLUTIONS TO Intractible tasks, meanwhile, are always DISCOVERED"
Paulo For example, it is clear to me that prevailing economic theories are based on the investor role interests.
Capitalism is about separating fools from their money.
Sounds harsh? It's just a translation of economic purpose as increasing the efficiency of capital.
Roger, I see value in the distinction among makers (workers, managers, and entrepreneurs) and takers (rentiers). Under the present rules of capitalism, rentiers are being inordinately rewarded, which is stressing the system.
Among the grades of makers, compensation is distributed more or less iaw contribution, excepting where economic rent is involved. To that degree, makers become takers.
The notion that workers that are unable to work, or willing to work without a job opportunity are "takers" is absurd.
In my view, the basic problem of capitalism wrt social coordination is the promise of financial independence through money making money. As long as this incentive is in place, social coordination will not be possible, as Marx understood. The incentive of personal "freedom" is too strong to allow for enough cooperation to coordinate sufficiently to meet emergent challenges. when the challenges get big enough, society goes dysfunctional.
"I see value in the distinction among makers (workers, managers, and entrepreneurs) and takers (rentiers)"
Sure, there's SOME beginning utility. Just don't stop there.
"The incentive of personal 'freedom' is too strong to allow ... [coordination]"
Only among the dense, and soon to be extinct.
"when the challenges get big enough, society goes dysfunctional" ... until it invents yet another level of indirection
The sad part is how long it's taking us.
Sadly, we can't save the Bowles from the Simpsons. They're in love with their exalted position in the Lemming death march.
Luddite's DO love parades.
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