December 27, 2008

INTERDIMENSIONAL ECONOMICS (PART 2): THE ECONOMY OF 5D

Metaphysical Interlude

What, you may ask, ever happened to the 4th dimension in all this? We shall leave that to dreamtime, astral projections and emotional energy and their stuff. The fifth dimension as used generically in spiritual terms is about the energy of the heart. So as we move from the Interlude above to where we are heading in after this section, a dash of metaphysics will come in handy.

If we are to leave the old paradigm of an ego based reality of 3D, then we have to look to creating and living in the new paradigm of a heart based reality of 5D. The confrontational mindset of me-and-mine-first attitude of 3D’s ego reality is sublimated by we-and-ours-first attitude of 5D.

One of the basic metaphysical principles of the universe in that all is mind, the universe is mental. Mind is indeed the forerunner of all things. Thinking makes it so. Marx, who tried to avoid metaphysics as best he could, may not agree with what follows but that is because he had his own ‘metaphysics’ known as the materialist conception of history in which the environment determined man and vice-versa. However, it must be said that Marx was far more spiritual in his ideas than many whom he criticized if only because he was a great humanist.

The reasons for Marx staying away from the term ‘metaphysics’ was because first, he was reacting against the ideas of the great philosopher Hegel (whose mode of thought he used anyway!); second, he had enough of institutionalized religion which supported the class and economic structure of the injustice of capitalism; third, he did not want people to rely on abstract ideas to save them when the problem was right in front of them, that is -- the machine, the capitalist and the way people were turned into machines, etc.

Marx’s ideas themselves seemed inherently contradictory at times not because they are inconsistent in themselves but because he was also using a kind of thinking in which something was either true or false, that is, a binary system of logic. The 3D reality seems suited for this. Anything that could be both true and false, or a variation of the two seems not to ‘make sense’ to most people. “You are either for me, or against me”, “It’s either Yes or No”, “Now or Never”, “If you do this, you can’t do that”. This is really a limitation imposed on the mind by a 3D way of thinking which involves structure, format, templates, a matrix, and way of thought that tends to aim for a mechanistic kind of certainty.

Marx’s idea of a Communist state was an ideal one but built on an ego based reality of what people should do that is good for all in order to benefit from a system free of abuse and manipulation. But that only begs the issue, in the end, of human nature. For as Marx well knew, the source of so many problems is precisely the ego and its clinging on to things out of fear and greed, and the need to assert itself over everything. Any attempts at Communism as history has shown us, inevitably ends up as the reverse side of Capitalism on the coin of human abuse – a currency that is fast falling in value.

Communism was not ever going to create the kind of future society Marx envisioned without bringing back the problems of greed and fear that are the basis of capitalism. And it is no surprise that Marx never gave a clear outline of what this future society was to be like because he would have been aware, that in order to have what he really envisioned he would have to dip into the dreaded area of ‘metaphysics’. Worse, he would have to say things that he criticized organized religion of saying/doing to hide the hypocrisy of its own self interest.

But his vision can be completed here even if The Man would not have quite approved of it. The way to get out of the 3D rut is to look at it from a larger, more inclusive perspective, and one that breaks though and transcends usual channels and structures of thought patterns.

Let's, first, take a look at how intention and the mental aspect of reality is implicit in Marx’s ideas. The fact that everything in an economy depends on human relations, means that it all depends on human perception and thinking. It is exactly because Marx says the mode of production determines how people act and think, and in turn determines how things continue to be done, that it goes to show mental acts shape our reality. Intention is everything.

Use value is there because people think a commodity has use. Exchange value is determined by human ideas and thought. Fear, hunger, greed and affection are realized and acted upon via the mind. The capitalist system shapes people into thinking that they can only exist and subsist in a modern feudal master-slave set up. But we all know that if you change your attitude and thinking, you change the way you see and experience the world and in effect create your own reality.

The man who walks away from an accident cursing the day he was born has a different world view from the man who walks away being thankful that he can still walk away from it. The first man’s reality, or that mental and virtual reality he lives in, is probably strikingly different from the guy who dusts off his shirt and tells his friends that he was really lucky that time. This is similar to the person who wonders how anyone could say “Good Morning” when in their minds it is “What the hell is so good about it?”, while there is another guy who says “I’ve seen worse mornings, and this one is a good one!”

Now imagine a situation where the mind of a person is centred on the heart, that is, the person’s world view, mindset and intentions are based on love, compassion, understanding, empathy and forgiveness. This changes everything. This changes the relations between people, the way they do things, and the entire setting of the home, friendship, work place and international relations. A change in this kind of mindset leads to radical changes in economic processes which then in turn react to change human thinking and so forth upwards in a virtuous cycle.

The universe is mental. If it can be thought and imagined, then it can be done. And as astrophysicists are apt to tell us there are dimensions beyond our 3D ego based linear form of thinking trapped in duality (separateness between ourselves and others). They say that the known universe (nevermind the unknown one/or parts) is composed of 4% matter, 23% dark matter, 73% dark energy: what is now known as ‘scientific’ is really more ‘metaphysics’. The scientists are beginning to grow up.

Dark energy, dark matter and light from stars and suns streaming in. Scientists use the term 'dark' simply because the human eye cannot perceive it nor can our current blunt instrumentation quite capture it; but its power and effect is inescapable. The term 'dark' here really means the absence of the 'light' of perception. It is no more 'dark' than the colours of the rainbow are dark just because the human eye cannot see them in 'white' light unless there is refraction. So what is 'dark' here may be mind-bogglingly full of light containing a spectrum of colours beyond the most hallucinatory of imaginations.

It is just that we have not got the right angle of refraction in which to produce that stunning vision. But that does not mean we cannot do so for we are aware of its influence and existence.

Which brings us to another great principle, that of polarity.

The cosmos is based on the polarity of dark and light, what we term ‘positive/negative’, ‘good/evil’, ‘life/death’, ‘male/female’, ‘up/down’, ‘depression/elation’, ‘bust/boom’. But there is a whole range in between. The 3D ego based mind sees duality of one extreme or the other, but fails to see that actually polarity can be transcended by balance and harmony into a state that puts it into a higher paradigm of light. The principle of Yin/Yang embodies this. Light prevails or there would be chaos. Light is the underlying reality of all (including mind) and we can bring ourselves to reside in that state of illumination.

Dark is the absence of light. You cannot get light from dark. Hate is the absence of Love. You cannot get love based on hate. But we certainly can reverse the polarity of any negative situation into a positive one. That is a mental act based on the heart. From there we can develop our progress into a natural state of balance if we choose to make it so. This is the sublimation of the dialectic that Hegel and Marx were on about but failed to push to its conclusion because they did not go beyond into the fifth dimension.

The 3D ego is stuck into thinking that duality and separation and multiplicity of identity is the truth. It thinks the physical world is all that there is, but Science now tells us that the physical is about 4% of the whole deal! There are dimensions and realities beyond limited 3D perceptions obscured by the ego's web of illusion. So imagine dimensions beyond the 3D body, imagine a dimension existing over and around the 3D heart (that somehow conveniently keeps pumping to keep us alive without any effort on our part). Think about it.

Imagine tapping into this dimension of the heart to go into 5D and create a reality that is heart based transcending the framework of what we perceive as the 3D world of matter and duality. We can create systems of thought and economic activities that emanate from this. We can move beyond the ego based illusion of separateness to the 5D one of Oneness. This is called the Law of One. The universe and all life in it is One, but it is perceived and experienced as being separate by the 3D ego. You cannot get One from multiplicity, you can get multiplicity from Oneness. You cannot get an Ocean from a wave, but you do get waves on an Ocean.

The Transition to the Heart

So let us take Marx’s ideas and where we were going in those interludes above to see where this goes from here. When a 5D reality exists, the economic relations of production change radically. You can be sure that in most cases any system of production, hiring, discharging from work, sharing of profits, treatment of the individual, welfare schemes, financial growth and banking will be based on a just, fair and equitable system of trust and understanding.

The quality of life will shoot up. Money is just a tool of exchange that will not keep people away from the enthusiasm of getting to work and being creative. When a product is made and exchanged based on 5D you know where it is coming from, and you want it to go where it can make a difference. An ethical approach to all commerce, societal and political relations will develop from this. It is no more about creating Widgets A to Z for profit maximization.

We now have a trickle up effect. The people make the difference. It slowly but surely becomes government of the people, by the people, for the people and will always remain so. It can finally and aptly be called Democracy.

With a situation like this there will be a trend towards global realization of Oneness. Whatever is done will reflect the justice and fairness in the life of the individual and community up towards national, regional and international issues. Individual interest is aligned to community interest which is aligned to national interest. National interest is aligned to regional interest. Regional interest is aligned to international interest. International interest is about the world's interest. And the whole chain works in reverse again.

Please see The Economy of Abundance.

Briefly, based on the proposals above a 5D reality would reflect:

a. A four tiered type of monetary system with the return to something similar to the gold standard

b. Active use of local/complementary currencies

c. Thereby more community based projects and economic activity which is modeled on C-M-C. This helps ensure that economic production is balanced into useful commodities being exchanged for M which is transacted for more useful commodities, because that’s what economic creation is about.

d. Abolition of the golem of money markets, or M-C-M, which has bedeviled us for eons.

e. To avoid surplus value exploitation, there must be a fair and reasonable share of profits that come from sale of products that are made from the combination of labour/people and capital. Example, a 50-50 split of profits so there are no stolen products by capital anymore. But if banks join in with interest free loans (using credit/reward ideas that stem from banking examples given above like the JAK Bank and Islamic financial practices) they can, with shareholder/investors, come out with a fair and equitable system of sharing between investors, labour and management in which labour gets the lion share everytime. This is no longer capitalism. This is a social economy founded on GPF (Green and People Friendly) solutions.

f. Shareholders are rewarded as above. No stock markets or speculation exists anymore as financial markets belong to virtual museums and libraries only. Gambling means gin rummy or mahjong, not the economic system of the world or a country.

g. No overproduction of commodities but reasonable amount of stockpiling is acceptable. Due to a more decentralized economic and political system that develops from this, accurate feedback loops that lead to sufficiency are created for what is needed to support the best interests of people. Where necessary, governments at home and abroad can cross boundaries to be of help to one another and their communities.

h. Mutual support, help and reciprocity is the driving force of nations and the world.

i. This in turns means that most ventures would be cooperative based including the financial organizations that grow and support this.

j. This entire system would work in tandem with Rawl’s idea of Justice as Fairness. This means that communities, societies, nations and the world work together on a political constructivist approach of reciprocity and overlapping consensus free from ideology. A heart based reality is a perfect fit for Rawl’s notion of justice as fairness.

k. The UN is there to ensure that just and fair practices exist and are sustained throughout the world. There will be less time for war and less resources needed for the military-industrial complex. The peacemakers will be the main guardians of the planet. About time too.

All these ideas formulated on a 5D system of heart based intentions also mean letting go of past hatreds, land grabs and whatnot. If a system of recompense for people and individuals for being exploited needs to be made through some system of finance or kind to get some form of redress and balance, then so be it. If the recompense is financial, then it would be done within the framework of money in a fixed exchange rate system, as no more fiat currencies would exist anymore.

This approach will also help the survival of and our balanced symbiosis with the environment. A heart based reality can only be real if there is respect for all life and that includes our obviously living and breathing planet. The earth is our home and it should be treated with unconditional love and respect and caring. We did not create it, but we certainly need to pass it on to other generations intact, richer and more beautiful: this is our duty as a species.

Not Endgame: the End of the Game

The ideas here are not, by the greatest stretch of any imagination, the be-all and end-all. They are only a platform on which people with better and sharper ideas and minds can take things to the next stage of formulation and, most importantly, implementation.

What we all need to do is to start speaking out, writing petitions and putting pressure on governments to start getting their act together to begin immediately on a new 5D paradigm of doing things. As I write this the IMF, and other such luminaries on the international scene, have announced that the world is headed towards a second great depression.

But this is really a phase of planetary detoxification that we are undergoing and any process of cleansing is uncomfortable at first. Yet we need to be clear on what this means and realize that we have to now start planning and working on ways of making a permanent change for a healthier and balanced lifestyle for all.

There is no going back and thank goodness for it. There is only a going forward to finally creating that reality which is the birthright of the human race and all beings on this planet. Switch off the mobile phones and TVs and try this exercise: do some deep breathing and centre yourself, and try to look at things as they really are.

a. We are a species on a planet with infinite life forms

b. There are dimensions and life forms beyond our current 3D knowledge

c. Time is not linear it is multidimensional. For instance, that is why we have wormholes in space and possible alternate realities/time lines which are fact rather than fiction.

d. We can shift our sense of time and thinking into many time frames at once and can live them simultaneously: we can have a conversation now, think of the past evoking emotions from that time, and anticipate the future and create a sense of excitement at the same time

e. So our reality is multidimensional if we choose to explore and realize it

f. We are on a planet hurtling around with other planets also going around the sun and miraculously not crashing into one another

g. There are infinite galaxies out in the ‘known’ universe, so just imagine the ‘unknown’ parts

h. Capitalism, greed, selfishness, excessive sensual indulgence, war and egomania is sort of out place in this expansive scheme of things. It is more like the attitudes of a spoilt and ridiculous kid who insists on playing with the toys of brathood when he has actually gone well past middle age

i. This is no longer a zero sum game of winners and losers, or of checkmate. This is the end of the ‘Endgame’ because it is the end of the game of polarity from which we have to awaken

j. We need to take the lessons from the game of polarity we have been playing and move on to the next phase of reality as a species

k. We need to start waking up to the reality that quite soon, we have to act like adults and take on the responsibilities of a galactic human race

l. We are not alone

m. We have never been alone

o. We will never be alone

p. The Light always prevails

Welcome to the (R)evolution

August 14, 2008

A new kind of economy: the economy of scarcity (part 1)

That's the Way it Goes

Things seem to fall apart, and the centre cannot hold. The economy is going into a shambles, exploitation in all fields of life still goes on, violence and mistrust among people and governments are rampant. Somehow, this is what we have come to create as we have come to believe what we have been indoctrinated to believe among many things, such as the ‘free market' and that Capitalism is God.

But Capitalism has turned out to be the God that has failed.

This piece will look at how we have come to be hoodwinked and have tragically bought into the myth of Scarcity and what this means as current economic events unfold inexorably before us. It will also look at a possible scenario for the future, if we so choose to take that route, which can be described as the path towards Abundance.

The first thing we need to do is take a look at the Triumvirate of Trouble, meaning interest rates, fiat currency, and a closer look at the surplus value of labor (henceforth, referred to as the Triumvirate).

The first two have been dealt with in these posts (as well as posts embedded within them) and for those who would like an in-depth look at those notions, these are good starting points.

The two links are:

GPI

Money the beginning of the End: Part 1

But a little should be said about the first two aspects of the Triumvirate before more is said on the third aspect: the surplus value of labor (SV).

It is the Triumvirate that has led us to believe in what the capitalist system has done for us: apparently great material wealth, money all around, high growth, military and political power, and well, what more could you ask for?

Yet not all is well. Throughout history and over the last century in particular, abuse and violence domestically and internationally has seemed the norm. Poverty has been the defining characteristic of many in so-called poorer states at the end of the last century and the beginning of the current one. Now, poverty and uncertainty are fast becoming the hallmarks of even more countries including some of the most developed ones.

What has gone wrong? Naturally, there will be numerous theories and reasons for this. But one aspect of the situation that cannot be ignored anymore is the abject failure of the capitalist system. The Triumvirate in seeking to carve up the known world into areas that it can govern indefinitely has inevitably led to creating the contradictions that are now coming home to roost, big time.

Some of the major culprits in this game of debt and deceit are Big Businesses, Banks and Governments affectionately known as 3BG. Through ignorance and willful manipulation, the Triumvirate has been the ruling façade for many 3BGs.

Interest rates on money loaned are usually nothing short of usury which has been frowned upon by virtually every major religion in the world. Simply making money out of lending money has been a traditional way of forcing people to compete among themselves for even more money to pay off the interest on loans. A useful story to look at on how this works is the one on "The Eleventh Round" here:

The parable of the Eleventh Round

As for fiat currencies (see link on A new kind of money to end Money above), they have been the bane of economies in creating currency devaluation, unstable money, and constant inflation. A useful example is one taken from Ellen Brown's The Web of Debt.

Here we have an example of how 30 cents can get you a dozen eggs, but due to the currency fluctuations of fiat currency, the next day your 30 cents is actually worth 5 cents in purchasing power. But, does it mean that a dozen eggs are now transformed into 2 eggs (worth what 5 cents should be able to buy)? This is the price of not having a type of fixed exchange rate, but one that moves wildly depending apparently on the ‘free market'.

Thirty cents should be worth 30 cents, not 5 cents the next day. Twelve eggs are just that, not two. Yet that is the system we have bought into. We have allowed the manipulation by the US Federal Reserve and many other banks to issue currency based on nothing more than double accounting and a pyramid scheme with interest to boot. This is a system in which we are taxed in every sense of the word to sustain the interests of 3BG.

Think about it, a game of Monopoly has more stability built into it than the fiat currency system which we have taken to be as ‘normal'. In a game like Monopoly you get the same $200 dollars when you pass Go, you know what the fee for getting out of jail is etc. But in the game world of our current lives, we have allowed 3BG to determine the impossible, that is, we allow them to morph 12 eggs into 2 eggs overnight via the fiat currency system of arbitrary finance.

Does this make sense? Does it accord with any sense of reality? Does this sound like a just and fair system? Does this sound like what capitalism promised? Is there even a vague semblance to what democracy is supposed to be about? Who actually gains and is enriched by this? Look at your current economic situation and bank accounts and see part of the answer there. Think about this for a moment.

Let us take a look at a concept that is regaining prominence and use as a means of analyzing what has been happening around us, the surplus value of labor.

The Economics of Scarcity

We have been led to believe by neo-classical economists that there are limited resources for which we have to compete to create a sound economy. We have been led to believe in things called ‘factors of production' and how income comes from these factors; and that via the use of money and productivity we create growth. But pause for a moment and ask ourselves how we have come to believe such myths, which in the end increasingly hold no more credence than the story of Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty in the minds of many.

Simply this, that there has been an unprecedented amount of material growth and so-called wealth created since the start of Industrialization from the late 19th century onwards. We have bought these products, and seen many of them on TV, and are convinced that they ought to be sought after by media, marketing and advertising. A system that can deliver all this stuff and then some, surely WORKS. Communism has also failed (meaning the USSR and its brand of ideology) and remaining Communists (e.g. China) seem quite capitalistic these days. And yet, the housing crash in the US and the upcoming demise of Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, and all that this is symptomatic of this tells of a different narrative.

To the surprise of many, Marx is coming back into intellectual fashion. It is also worthwhile looking at his notion of surplus value of labor (SV). My interpretation is an extrapolation of the ideas from the key works of Marx, including some brilliant expositions of his ideas in the form of David Harvey's The Limits to Capital and Resnick and Wolff's New Departures in Marxian Theory.

Basically, one of Marx's many conceptual breakthroughs in understanding how the economy, and capitalism in particular, works is his idea of SV. What we term as profit is basically skimmed off the value gained from what is produced by labor or all the rest of us working stiffs (irrespective of whether you sit in front of a computer...).

To simplify, when we pay labor X amount and sell its product for X + n amount and after cost deductions we have P as profit. The reason for that P is due to the fact that we have paid labor less than what it should have been paid for in the first place. It is exploitation plain and simple that allows for profit and, thereby, capital to grow.

What we think of as income that comes from various ‘factors of production' like land, labor and capital is essentially skimmed off SV that is recycled back into the economic system. So that the wages we receive are also from SV taken not only off our backs, but the backs of others.

Marx, of course, has a whole body of work to show this in all its complex and myriad forms. And most frightening of all, he not only largely makes sense these days, he seems to be well on the way to being proven right about capitalism in the way we are experiencing it today with all the hindsight and bloodbath of history to support it.

The thing is Marx has captured the essence of the way we live our lives in a world of duality. Because we believe we are all separate and are not One, we naturally fall into economic belief systems that lend ourselves to support the system of belief of 3BGs that convince us we live in Scarcity. There is a need to scramble for things and fight even more to keep them, and keep on fighting even much more to get more of them. It is Us against Them. The whole class structure to Marx is predicated on SV.

As long as one group of people live off and profiteer from the SV of others, they are the class of capitalists. So you can have people who profit from SV in the common work place or offices, and you can see the class structure there immediately: in the form of conspicuous consumption - the larger office, the bigger PC (or newest mobile phone), the car, the private secretary, the jet, the etc, etc. And due to duality we have been ingrained into thinking that it is what we should be aiming for as well. So we need to compete more (thinking that means being more productive), to move up the scale (class) so that we can be on the higher end of the food chain (SV exploitation), and finally we can then be the ones others kow tow to (success).

And yet we are so unhappy about many things, and the economy is falling around our ears. The thing is this, as Marx wonderfully points out, the whole capitalist system of duality leads to contradictions. Capital takes on a life of its own. In order for the system to sustain itself, it must create more capital. This leads inevitably to devaluation and the destruction of capital.

Capital has to insist on more 'productivity', more innovation to increase 'productivity', more markets, lower salaries (meaning ‘competitive') for most in the work force so that SV can be increased, and this can also be recycled as big bonuses for corporate bosses and shareholders (rewards).

The workers in the firms and those who buy the products are mere cogs in the system: the whole purpose of the engine of capitalism is to create more capital ad infinitum.

Just talk to those you know in the corporate world and those who run large companies and they inevitably tell you about answering to the board of directors about growing markets and raising profits, and answering to shareholders. Where in all this is the welfare of their staff and the quality of products that they are churning out?

It is all about profit and SV (even if they are worried about the quality of their products). The more the drive for SV ratchets up, the greater the need for even more capital accumulation. Couple this with interest on loans and fiat currencies and you begin to see why most people seem to be working harder, and yet not knowing how they are going to afford to retire in peace (if at all).

But it gets better.

You see, there is a terrible price to pay for all this capital accumulation -- it devalues. This is part of the contradiction that sets in. And in order to prevent and counter the devaluation yet more capital must be produced, more people and markets must be squeezed as even more devaluation sets in.

Among the many aspects of the price of devaluation:

Currency devaluation (inflation) and collapses due to excess fiat money being created.
Economic bubbles start and burst as in the Asian currency crisis in the mid 90s and the current housing collapse in the US.
More manipulations of financial markets to counter devaluation which leads to more financial and banking problems (as in Europe). The current shocks to the banking industry are a prime example of capital devaluation of playing the SV game in an unbridled manner. And there will be more to follow.
Globalization and the discontent this seems to be bringing to many. Not only does capital need newer markets to expand in, but cheaper labor to skim SV from, or how else does capital sustain itself and pay CEOs their fat salaries and shareholders their ‘hard earned' bonuses? And many in the West are wondering why they are facing unemployment as jobs flow to other places where it is easier to gain the edge on SV through much lower wages there than in the capitalists' home countries.
The ultimate form of devaluation: war. This also comes from the need to grab more resources (which we are constantly told are scarce) and expand markets to keep Capital alive and kicking. Also, when you have that much capital there's nothing like expanding your military, testing its equipment and munitions, and doing some population control at the same time.
Devaluation of human life which has become a means to an end, because people become capital. An entire matrix of politics and economics is created through the mythology of ‘free markets', ‘democracy' and ‘freedom' to allow capital and the 3BGs to gain from this (and those who hope to gain from this by aligning themselves to this class structure). People are there to fit into GDP figures and fight wars.
Alienation of humanity from doing any form of meaningful work or leading their lives the way they think they should be able to lead it. To many people, work is ‘just a job', it ‘puts food on the table' and it doesn't have to mean much more than feeding the three headed hydra of the Triumvirate and trying to stay alive.

One of the things Marx also introduced, especially in the path breaking volume 1 of Capital is to show that there are three basic ways of placing values on things, that is, we have value, use value and exchange value. The question Marx was aiming at but never seemed to quite ask and answer (though he may have done so in a way that was not clear enough to me at least) is what exactly is the value of something, or a product?

Recently, I asked a friend of mine who is a CEO of a company that is part of a multinational conglomerate what he thought was the value of a glass tumbler on the table we were sitting at. I told him discount the water in it, just consider the value of the tumbler itself.

He answered, as we all have been trained, that depending on the market and where it was sold the value of it would vary. This would depend on how useful it was (use value), and what its value was ($ amount). So I asked him, what did he think the so-called $ value of it was. He said that it could range from $5 per piece to even $50 depending on how it was marketed and what kind of demand there was.

So here it is, the ‘free market' and so-called 'demand and supply' are quite arbitrary. It does seem that the whole field of neo-classical economics has grown from this mythology in working out fantastical realms of ‘perfect markets' with ‘perfect equilibriums' while all those wonderful marginalist theories and intricate calculations are there to show that you can just charge what you want for a product if someone wants to pay that amount. There is no value as such, it is an arbitrary amount we place just like our fiat currency, that is, today $10 is worth so much, tomorrow thanks to manipulation or poor policies emanating from 3BGs, it's worth something else, more or less.

What this proves is that there is no way to actually ascertain a value of a thing. Without being too metaphysical, its value is, in all honesty, immeasurable (or im0). If it was not the case, then how is it possible for such wildly fluctuating prices to be given to a glass tumbler depending on ‘the market' and ‘demand and supply'?

Unless we want to insist that it has no value: now that takes us into even deeper waters which we shall stay out of here.

Because everything is im0 we can assign whatever value we want to it, including the failing fiat currency money value based on mythical theories of economic equilibrium (when in reality we are in a constant state of Disequilibrium).

[In due course, a piece will be done on how faulty the neo-classical concepts of economics are and possible ways to work round it and undo the damage it has done to us all. Fortunately there are pioneers in this, and it is a matter of taking the trail up from them.]

But this is the point I am trying to make: if an inanimate object is im0 how much so a human being? Can value actually be placed on humans in terms of $ and their output etc? This is what I believe Marx and many others, who see the severe problems of neo-classical economics, are trying to point out in their own ways.

A slight detour on this: just take a look at the wage system that has been introduced. This is what we believe to be ‘normal' and which we all live by largely because ‘we have no choice', etc. Peter Linebaugh in his The London Hanged provides some interesting insights on how capital punishment in English history (specifically in the 18th century) was a means of punishment by Capital.

That the landed interests of capital introduced and supported the gory mass killings of those who stole and defied the authority of the ruling class as a means of keeping people in their places.

The wage system is a means of telling everyone to know their proper place and not rock the boat and the structure of 3BGs so that everyone gets what they are told they are worth, take it or leave it. If you challenge this, then there will be laws that will deal with you. That seems to be one of the messages from Linebaugh's book.

When you can put a price on a person's head, literally or otherwise, it is easy to take the next step in the commodification of a human being: which is killing them.

Of course, it can be argued by many that severe crime needs to be punished and that psychotic murderers should not be able to walk freely, and many would agree to that if only to preserve some sense of order and sanity.

But the subtle point being made by Linebaugh, for instance, is that many laws and punishment (especially of the capital variety) are a form of punishing many who have come to their ways of crime because of the way capital accumulation and its devaluating effects have shaped people. When you live in duality, it is easy to harm or steal from someone else because after all it is robbing someone else and it is for your 'own self interest and is that not what society teaches we have look out for first and foremost...?'

Coming back to the point on value: the moment we place $ value on a person and his output and relegate this to ‘market' forces which are subject to the dictatorial vagaries of the Triumvirate and the self interest of 3BG, we begin to see why we are to a large extent in the situations we are all currently in around the world.

The cornerstone to this is our sense of duality in which we live in fear of scarcity of products, and $ (even though there is a lot of it, it is just not distributed evenly enough), anxiety over health, family and many other issues. After all, the other guy is out to get us (not that there is never any truth in this). It is this paradigm of scarcity, doubt and fear that lends us to control by 3BG and others. Greed is not good, manipulation of others for personal gain is not the high point of existence.

So where do we go from here? Perhaps, as a form of a thought experiment, we can look at one of many different possibilities. One such modality I would term the new Economy of Abundance.