Three Assumptions for Addressing Fiscal Policy Intelligently
Whenever an economy grows significantly, it's because it's citizens were successful at sensing value, exploring value paths, and inventing paradigm-specific coordinate systems.
When discussing fiat currency operations, it's absolutely clear that we're all searching for the right jingles that will accelerate public transition from pursuit of static value to pursuit of dynamic value (i.e., from hoarding static assets to hoarding coordination capabilities). Why is this even a bottleneck? Humans are, after all, an obviously social species practicing diverse cultures. We're actually very close to a solution, since we already practice and exhibit the transition mentioned above, in many of our personal & group activities. Yet we simultaneously deny that ongoing transition in much - but not all - of our official rhetoric about our own, "social" cultures. Go figure!
What jingle will accelerate our electorate's grasp of the nature of coin and currency? We can't predict what message will finally resonate. It will have to be selected - from a LOT of options - by the audiences themselves.
Once we find a way to quickly get across what many have already spent too long sumarizing - we'll have made a real difference for future generations. All existing attempts already summarize of the observations of hundreds of authors - but we need something even better. Kudos to all who can diversify simpler versions, so we can explore them all, and discover which ones scale.
It's obviously not easy. As an analogy, Imhotep et al developed the math & geometry to build the pyramids ~4500 years ago - using initially horrendously complicated math notation (it sounded worse than Greek, even to the Greeks). It took roughly another 4000 years before the decimal notation made advanced math accessible to nearly all humans. Seems obvious in retrospect, but what was obvious to some after extensive labor, still wasn't obvious to most. Eventually, however, enough people tripped over appropriate methods - ie., decimal notation - that it's use began to accelerate, for the most mundane of reasons. It was useful to most people.
Methods drive results, after perceived returns drive demand for new methods.
We always need new methods allowing more people to rapidly sense the return on novel forms of coordination. Call this Adaptive Rate in marketing. Subsequently, we always need simpler methods for discriminating the initially obscure paths to newly visualized returns. Call this Adaptive Rate in product application (i.e., group practice).
Once we find a way to quickly get across what many have already spent too long sumarizing - we'll have made a real difference for future generations. All existing attempts already summarize of the observations of hundreds of authors - but we need something even better. Kudos to all who can diversify simpler versions, so we can explore them all, and discover which ones scale.
It's obviously not easy. As an analogy, Imhotep et al developed the math & geometry to build the pyramids ~4500 years ago - using initially horrendously complicated math notation (it sounded worse than Greek, even to the Greeks). It took roughly another 4000 years before the decimal notation made advanced math accessible to nearly all humans. Seems obvious in retrospect, but what was obvious to some after extensive labor, still wasn't obvious to most. Eventually, however, enough people tripped over appropriate methods - ie., decimal notation - that it's use began to accelerate, for the most mundane of reasons. It was useful to most people.
Methods drive results, after perceived returns drive demand for new methods.
We always need new methods allowing more people to rapidly sense the return on novel forms of coordination. Call this Adaptive Rate in marketing. Subsequently, we always need simpler methods for discriminating the initially obscure paths to newly visualized returns. Call this Adaptive Rate in product application (i.e., group practice).
Roger, I think that an important transition step is from the conception of money as a real thing (coin) or stuff (gold) to the idea of money as policy instrument. People objectify money since they are currency users and must obtain it, and they can't get their minds around the idea of currency issuer and what that implies.
ReplyDeletePeople know that money has to come from somewhere and to them that where is "work." Money is something you have to work for. They hate the idea that someone else can just create money. Intuitionally, this seems unfair and shouldn't be permitted.
It's a moral judgment, and it is so widespread and deep-seated, it's going to take a long time to overcome it, its seems. And we don 't have a long time, given the rate at which complexity is increasing.
It's about reductionism versus emergence. "Value" is a reductionist concept and leads to the money illusion. It took me a long time to realize this is a dead end when trying to understand money in a macro way.
ReplyDeleteI've decided the best way to think of money is as an accounting system. When you produce something, you get a credit in the account book; when you consume something, your account is debited. Dollar bills are numbers in the big macro account book that can be removed from the book and put in your pocket.