The Dimwits Among Capitalists See "Deficits In Fiat" As Public Investment In The "Wrong Types Of Citizens"

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

I've got news for capitalists. People like spawning recombinant diversity, including sexual and psychological AND cultural diversity.

And, they naturally cherish the outcomes ... if not perverted by ideology to sociopathic behavior which inevitably triggers tragic outcomes, leaving bewildered perps to claim "nobody could have predicted that!"

Can't Every Aggregate Afford To Generate Their Needed Diversity ... And Have It Too?

Of course they can. In fact, they can't survive if they don't!

As one example, take current Russian culture, PLEASE! :)

"The good news. The deficit is growing, although Gurdgiev interprets this as bad news."

Why? Who convinced Gurdgiev that a "deficit in fiat" is bad news? Does he even know what that means? Did any social democrat ever care about a nominal "deficit in fiat" ... until they came out of the closet as a confused, capitalist gangster?

This brings us back to the recent spate of reconsideration breaking out in yet another generation, and of course in the politicians who pander to any and every forming crowd.

If we're an evolving culture, what is it that we aren't teaching to our students, to prepare them for unstoppable evolution, instead of fitful emergency changes? Does cultural evolution HAVE to involve Boom/Bust/Boom/Bust cycles, aka repression/escape/repression/escape?

Of course not. So what would YOU suggest as ways to smooth out our tortuous paths? Here are a couple of items now on my short list of "stupid educator tricks" that aren't at all funny.

1) teach all students, by age 10, the simple reality of fiat currency operations
(actually, that was done, over 100 years ago, in a game called "Monopoly" .. but then the key lessons were mysteriously removed from the game's directions; go figure! It's not like reality is difficult to absorb. A surprising number of key bits of knowledge are active taboos. Ya gotta wonder why. Gang competition?)

2) teach all students, also by age 10, the simple reality of aggregate biology, culture & teamwork
(It's still amazing how many PhD's one meets who know seemingly everything about a narrow discipline, but NOT what it's for. It's not like reality is difficult to absorb. For whatever reason, it's actively deprecated. It's as though some don't want citizens asking too many questions.)

3) teach all students, also by age 10, the simple rudiments of scalable project coordination
(These rudiments are published periodically in the news, and promptly ignored yet again. Here's yet another example of 2 simple messages I now wonder why they never taught us in what was supposed to be a "graduate" school. It's not like they're difficult to absorb. [Are you getting the sense that there's a LOT of misguided repression floating around? No surprise. Anthropologists find that every culture is chock-full of arbitrary taboos.*])

“The key to the success in any business is strong controls in two areas. Administrative and finance.
a) You have to enforce [aggregate] discipline. . . . You've got to make the numbers work.
b) On the administrative side, it’s controlling people once you hire them.”

Pity capitalists can't extrapolate that - through indirection - to making the RIGHT numbers work, and letting aggregates control themselves. Understanding the art of extrapolation via indirection requires understanding the Fallacy of Scale, another simple thing every student should learn by age 10.

Isn't it odd that the biggest critics of Central Planning are themselves obsessed with controlling others? 

Dominance seems to go hand-in-glove with a wide stance.

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* ps: The half-life of taboos in a culture are a good indicator of that culture's Adaptive Rate. Why? Because there's a solution to every novel cultural challenge, and that solution involves yet another layer of indirection ... to circumvent our own, bureaucratic taboos.

Everything Must Go? Including Students, Population ... and Sovereign Future?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Portugal vows quick budget action after court block

This reminds me of the Bill Black Conundrum.

Every country's Fx rate will be above average,
..Every country will be a net exporter,
Everyone's fiat will be "balanced" ...
.... and now ..... everyone's S&P Rating will be below average!

Just be sure to add students, pesky electorates and national futures to the list of exports. :( Then sit back and enjoy the mosquitos in Swamp WeBeGoners.

If our current mentality keeps up, the same will happen here, voluntarily!

It's either austerity or sovereign culture.

Which will go? Neither, without a fight, it seems. A war between "international creditor" parasites and local populations. Which of them, in every nation, will win the battle to own that nation, and it's citizens?

This excerpt [re Portugal] says it all.

Portugal's prime minister vowed on Friday to find alternatives "as quickly as possible" to a key austerity measure in its 2014 budget that was blocked he previous day by the country's top court. 

Pedro Passos Coelho told reporters on the sidelines of a European leaders' summit in Brussels that they would scramble to find a "new, durable and efficient measure" that would "satisfy the objectives fixed by the international creditors" of the country. 

Can't some of Portugal's objectives be FIXED by their own citizens? Must they stoop to selling citizens to pay international banksters just to denominate their own, internal fiat? The semantic tricks involved in this are insane.

"I will do everything possible to end the climate of uncertainty created by this situation,"

That's what he said at a news conference.

Exactly which uncertainty is he talking about?

The uncertainty as to whether Portugal will retain any semblance of sovereign independence? 

Or the uncertainty as to exactly when the banksters can exercise ownership to Portugal itself, through a hostile take over .. er, outright theft?

The court case was a major blow to the bailed-out country and came just three days after international auditors from the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank had given Lisbon the all-clear on the terms of its 78-billion-euro ($104-billion) aid package.

Apparently, no one told the Portuguese court that public fiat was supposed to go to Portuguese citizens, not to foreign banksters.

The cuts were a key plank of the government's target of bringing the public deficit down to 4.0 percent of output next year and the government must now find the savings elsewhere.

Must? Who's threatening them? The dreaded TINA? They still have the option of deposing Empress TINA and nationalizing their own liquidity units. And they'll pay for an escalating tax on output by REDUCING output? Can somebody find a semblance of sanity in this?

Or, they could at least give the ECB & Euro Parliament an ultimatum. Scrap the arbitrary local budgetary caps, and let all currency creation return to sovereign management of national fiat. Or, how about something equally mundane, but at least democratic: insist on a Universal Employment Guarantee for all citizens in every EMU member country, with the same Minimum Living Standards for all. 

If they want their nations to survive as credible contributors to their favorite toy, NATO, then something more sane than gutting Portugal seems like the simplest, rational step. If we in the USA don't speak out now, this roll-up strategy will reach our doors too, by hook or by crooks.

What Kind of Letter Might Immunology Students Write?

commentary by Roger Erickson

Or medical students?
  Law students?
    Math students?
      Engineers?
        ALL CITIZENS?

Open Letter by German Economics Students demanding change & an end of mainstream economics brainwashing.

(note, there's a translation button at the top of the page)

This is a healthy sign.  We need similar letters, from youth in all known and emerging professions.  Basically, all letters would be variants of the following:

***

"To accelerate our Adaptive Rate, keep all education & training faster, more succinct and context-relevant.

If a picture is worth 1-thousand words, then a sensori-motor experience is worth 1-million, and adequately distributed feedback & discussion from a coordinated group-experience is worth 1-trillion words. We never have time for enough words. Operational experience is far faster.

Just as very few emerging operations are financialized, 70% or more of all operational knowledge is never verbalized. Don't let too many words insulate or delay us from contact with evolving operations.  We need agile tolerance limits."

[In short: "Give us some minimal orientation, but then get out of the way!"]

***

Are we seeing the messy, 1st marriage of the OEs & KM?  Of Orthodox Economics, Operational Experience and Knowledge Management? That could make a great reality show, for those dull enough to be distracted by the slow pace.

Wake me when rthodox economics & KM have the same operational experience as Henry the VIII, or Elizabeth Taylor.

What kind of letter would teenagers write to those administering Marriage Licenses and Marriage Counseling? Sure, the median letter would be different from that that they would have written in retrospect - if still married decades later - but there's no one alive today who can write the right letter in time.  That's what makes life fun.   I'm beginning to think that life would be a whole lot more fun for all of us without either religious or economic ideologues.

Here's what's missing from economics, even more so than most other professions. Just as most products are progressively irrelevant to succeeding contexts (e.g., useless within 50 years), SO IS MOST ADVICE, THEORY AND PERSPECTIVE. Get over it.  Data, and advice, is meaningless without context ... and context changes.  Screw the theory, let's have some fun with the operations - and let the control-freak theorists worry about keeping up.  As long as they realize their limited utility, we can lead, and they can follow.