Chasing the Ignoble Prize of Economic Form Over Real Function

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)



Nominal has been promoted as equal to real, all along, in orthodox economics. Yet reality is re-discovered daily, while supposedly accurate, nominal form insists on "stable prices." Therefore, the two constantly diverge. That's the original sin pursued by the non-science of economics. It just doesn't work to formally presume, and insist, that nominal and real are equally relevant, equally stable, and equally predictive - even though we have zero net predictive power, and only adaptive power.

Take Iowa's world food prize. Please!

First created, then quickly perverted.

What's next?
  World air prize?
  World water prize?
  World SuperfundSite prize?

Or just roll 'em all into a World Functionally OutOfControl Capitalism Prize?

How did the function of evolution get taken over by the form of capital-ism?

Same way democracy got taken over by international "free" trade among merchants?

The excessive practices of our own merchants abroad, which we let build to significant momentum, soon come to constrain us domestically, through the claims of precedence.
   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)



It started with the Church of Capitalism, with it's high priests, the Eco-Gnomists hired by aristocrats to further their class-based aims. The Eco-Gnomist name was later shortened? Like all formal religions, they came to argue that church & state should always remain objectively separated, except for THEIR church, which should become a state religion, guarded over by bevies of ideological lobbyists. Isn't it ironic, that formal religious bureaucracies always exist paired to a narrow class of those who benefit more than others in seeing that particular bureaucracy expand?

Capitalism, as now over-promoted by the rich, has become a Secular State Religion, promoted by the high-priests of mercantilism, er .. hyper-capitalism?

Perhaps we now need to enshrine a new doctrine. Separation of Capitalism and State?

The meaning of life proposed by our current orthodox economists, mumbling their incantations, is to sequester financial capital from your neighbors and sit on it, to make sure it isn't used for group evolution? The purpose of the secular religion of capitalism is to glorify the nominal over the functional? What happened to the old form of community capitalism?

Even the word sequester has now been perverted. In politics, it is now defined as a process for depriving your co-citizens of a minimum threshold for group resource distribution, similar to the one "successfully" practiced in the European Monetary Union, against formerly free & dynamic nations from Greece to Ireland. If this had caught on in our military, our generals would have hoarded all the weapons, and sent soldiers out to do battle with no shoes, let alone functional weapons. Our MICC has always been treading close to that state as it is.

If we can't discriminate nominal from real, we'll wake up one morning and wonder "Who stole our fiat?"

If someone claims nominal control of your quite real fiat, individual or group, just exercise your prior claim of ownership (by usufruct, or ownership by use), and thereby reset the relationship between nominal and real to it's natural relationship, of tool to toolmaker.

In his day, it was revolutionary for Tom Jefferson to say: "I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature." Yet his outlook was terribly needed, due to the excessive intolerance practiced by European state religions of the day.

Today, it is no less needed to say: "I do not find in orthodox Economics one redeeming feature."

That outlook today is necessary precisely because of the excesses practiced by our merchant-state-religion, foisted on us by uber-capitalists running amok, proselytizing form over function. Can we just get back to setting Desired Outcomes for our nation, and being pragmatic about achieving them? Instead of telling ourselves that we've run out of fiat?