Sergio Leone Does Adam Smith

Before looking at the issue of markets again and how the so-called Free Market has no relation to what Smith was talking about, it is worth looking at the relevance and application of the IH notion of adjusting irregularities as special providence. So far, Smith’s examples as used here may seem a little abstract but his ideas are far more potent for reasons beyond the claims of FM fantasists and hard core Capitalists.

Take look at A Fistful of Dollars. When Eastwood, or the man with no name, pits one rival faction against the other in the nihilistic town he visits, he is only interested in earning money. He amorally and immorally manipulates and shoots his way into earning his coins. But he decides to help the wronged woman kept as a mistress by the villain of the piece (Gian Maria Volonte) and unites her with her son and husband. In the process he kills her captors and even gives all the money he has to help and her family.

As a result Eastwood pays a terrible price; but on the mend from his punishment he invokes a revenge that brings down total destruction on the rival clans. As Smith says, when Eastwood pursues his own interest (mixed up with greed and a trigger happy style) he ironically -- against his own intentions -- ends up helping the woman and her family, starts a chain of events that rids the town of its corruption thereby playing an unwitting balancing force that allows the town to start anew.

It is almost like there is an IH that sweeps through the drama to provide some form adjustment via the irregularity of self interest and selfishness of the Eastwood character. Just as in Kurosawa’s original masterpiece Yojimbo on which Leone based his film, Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy” and the ones that follow it have a moral centre.

The other fascinating instance is in a Leone film called A Fistful of Dynamite, but now in its fully restored version is known as Duck, You Sucker. James Coburn plays a weary Irish Republican Army man running from his past who ends up teaming up with a notorious bandit, played by Rod Steiger, in Mexico. Though each pursues their self interest and in the case of Steiger, his greed: they both despite trying to avoid getting caught up in the Mexican Revolution end up doing just that. In the process they help the revolutionists fight the fascists of their time through set pieces of violence.

Again, in the most unlikely manner a balance is restored as the characters follow their interests and destinies to the end under the Direction of a greater force, as if by an IH.

Also, on a more personal note, I have rarely (in the Smithian sense) managed to persuade someone to a cause by telling them that it is for the good of humanity. But on explaining to them how this would be in their interest to do so, and that of their close ones, have managed to get people involved in good causes. In that process they bring others onboard and before long a virtuous cycle is created of getting done that which, in the medium to long term, benefits the environment, society and/or the underprivileged. This process happens automatically and adjusts itself accordingly almost as if guided, as in most other cases, by an IH.

And Justice For All

Let us come back to the so-called markets. As can be seen Smith was not promoting Capitalism. Neither was he promoting a so-called Free Market. The idea of the FM is not only a contradiction in terms but does not allow any notion of balance and fairness to come into play. By now we can see that Smith was more concerned with a social-economic system that promoted balance and harmony rather than the free-wheeling framework of wildly shifting disequilibriums promulgated by Capitalism and neo-classical economics.

Back to another passage in TMS, where Smith writes in I.I.36 (bold and italics mine):

To see the emotions of their hearts, in every respect, beat time to his own, in the violent and disagreeable passions, constitutes his sole consolation. But he can only hope to obtain this by lowering his passion to that pitch, in which the spectators are capable of going along with him. He must flatten, if I may be allowed to say so, the sharpness of its natural tone, in order to reduce it to harmony and concord with the emotions of those who are about him. What they feel, will, indeed, always be, in some respects, different from what he feels, and compassion can never be exactly the same with original sorrow; because the secret consciousness that the change of situations, from which the sympathetic sentiment arises, is but imaginary, not only lowers it in degree, but, in some measure, varies it in kind, and gives it a quite different modification. These two sentiments, however, may, it is evident, have such a correspondence with one another, as is sufficient for the harmony of society. Though they will never be unisons, they may be concords, and this is all that is wanted or required.

What this passage encapsulates is the sympathetic vibrations of energy people tend to set up in relation to one another in functioning together as a group of people or society. Emotions and thoughts are adjusted through conscious or unconscious effort when collaboration and consensus is being built to move things forward. A strident tone, no matter how justified, tends to lose support, hence, the need to “flatten…the sharpness” to get some form of harmony among people. Consensus building is a good thing.

This is radically opposed to the rampant egoistic obsessions that many ideas of Capitalism and the FM tend to promote. Smith’s ideas have to do with people getting along not through compromising of values, but by consensus building. Which also means it eschews insistence of things through the barrel of a gun (and the ideologies that go with it).

Smith, in always trying to keep things real, makes it clear that the process of consensus building and cooperative ventures do not create unisons so much as concords and that, indeed, is as good as it gets. It is analogous, in a way, to unity in diversity, or vice versa. Individual identities and ideas are kept but they are adjusted to see what in common can get things working. This somehow resonates with most people’s idea of democracy.

This does not imply being able to suddenly propose revolutionary ideas that can shift paradigms to a new level, but on a closer look this paradigm shift may be achieved through the use of persuasion, and convincing others of how it benefits them individually etc that result in ideas for the good of all.

This contrasts with the jaded and predictable manner that extremists and hard core Capitalists do things. It always has the use of force underlying it or overlaying it or pointed at you in the form a gun. Apparently, that’s a sign of freedom and the way to keep it going. Naturally, when you rob others’ land, property, livelihoods, families, life blood and consciences for the sake of selfishness and blind capital accumulation you have to do it through force and keep it via domestic and international violence.

But as Smith says, even such irregularities from what can be seen as regular peaceable behaviour between peoples is given balance and readjustment which sees a reordering of society. Hence, the current economic crisis sweeping the world which while causing so much problems for us, is the cleansing process which will bring down the old, corrupt, violence drenched past that will get us to work together inevitably to issue in a new age of peace, harmony and prosperity which may also have existed in other times not subject to the ‘officially’ promulgated history of the world.

This process of building ideas up to principles that can be used or applied throughout a society is a process of social constructivism that in a way is in concord with that of the moral constructivism of Kant and, almost without doubt, the political constructivism of Rawls. Smith’s social constructivism allows his economic constructivism to take place. The IH as a function of Divine teleology allows for social processes to be generated thereby creating situations for economic practices to be in concordance with them. Economic ideas come forward for the good of the individual and society, and are balanced, fair and just for all.

A more detailed look at this can be found in Justice as Fairness Revisited and The Awakened Eco-nomy. In the end this post too is just a blog, like any other, and it is hoped that those with sharper minds and a more intense passion will develop things from here to see where it can go.

End of the Reign of the Magicists

So where does this leave those Nobel prize winning ideas for economics and all other dandy econometric models and stuff taught at universities to churn out more intellectually misguided people (having partially suffered from this, I know whereof I speak)?

Hey, what about those Laws or Demand and Supply (DS), Say’s Law, Taylor Rules, NAIRUs (non-accelerating interest rate of unemployment) and those of the sublime perfect market which talk about Pareto optimatlity curves, (false) equilibriums where everyone has to use cost-benefit analysis to fight for scare resources to maximize utility. Everything else outside of this is that inconvenient thing called an ‘externality’.

Milton Friedman delusionally described the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ externalities where being charitable would be a ‘good’ thing but aiming for so-called corporate social responsibility (another contradiction in terms) is a ‘bad’ thing which bucks (no pun intended) econometric models because it could undermine the sole reason for corporations existing which is, of course, profit making while the world goes to hell.

What this means is that if you ask a corporation or a capitalist to factor in human decency and fairness into a ‘law’ of neo-classical economics or its profit taking model, you are talking ‘externality’, man.

But my friends, what is this so-called Law of DS or equilibrium? Let’s go against what our schools and many tertiary institutions teach you not to do, let’s actually think a little and try a bit of common sense (no certificates awarded for this). Apparently there are these kind of push and pull factors which seem to be observed when wants for commodities are met with a flow producing them that intersect at the right price. What are these forces that create such wants and flows and intersections and push and pull like the tide of the sea?

What is optimum growth and equilibrium? Are these points of description of the most suitable or desired or needed form of growth in given circumstances as decided by curves, governments, societies or people’s feedback? Or are they what economists claim they should be? What is this idea of balance, and rising and falling of forces that produce new forms of things and energies? You have nothing but economic and social theories and models to explain this.

If you ask what gravity is, well it’s this force that’s composed of gravitons. How did this come to be? Well these are natural forces, just like DS or equilibrium or optimum growth that are codified by professors in academic ‘disciplines’ and don’t need anything else to explain them. If you ask what is behind gravity or equilibrium you are told that is not necessary to ask because the current theories are borne out by empirical observations and that sufficiently explain things.

So is there a giant squid at the centre of the earth whose suction causes gravity? Sure, possibly, but why do you need that when you have a law of gravity? The latter is a sufficient explanation so the squid can be left to Captain Nemo and his like. Is economic ‘equilibrium’ a sign of the IH, yes, in so far as it describes ‘economic forces’ and any notion of some other elements behind the IH is mysticism and irrelevant (‘economic forces’ being sufficient to let us sleep soundly each night). It is not scientific or modern nor a reflection of ‘enlightened’ reasoning to go beyond a ‘satisfying’ set of theoretical explanations.

But all these explanations are circular at worst or question begging at best for each time you ask what causes these phenomena like equilibrium, they are ‘economic’ forces and what are these forces….these are theoretical constructs to explain this that and the other…what is the basis of these constructs…observations backed by hypotheses or vice versa as tested against the world….that show that these forces are indeed at work…ah ha…back to square one with stunning clarity.

When pressed as to why they do not go beyond such silliness in their theoretical reasoning -- it’s to avoid mysticism. So what we are offered in effect is this: there are mysterious forces at work, just at Klein describes the IH and other things in Smith in a manner that would make Agatha Christie proud, but we have some ‘explanations’ that should do the trick. Aren’t you impressed by our intellectual sleight-of-hand; see how clever we are; we are the smartest of the species coming up with all kinds of reasons to explain and make more things convoluted and complicated so that we can progress onwards in a civilized manner devoid of mysticism.

The illusional, delusional, tricks-of-academia and intellectual-do-it-with-mirrors is just that – magic. In place of the genuinely mysterious, the mystical, and the miraculous we have Magicism. Magicists, like many economists and scientists, believe that things just happen to be. These are natural forces which coincidentally are what they, well, are! There is no reason why the whole universe, solar system with its bodies moving around without crashing into one another, and sudden life that evolves with spectacular biodiversity cannot be explained away by theories and constructs as one massive coincidence. In other words, magic. It all happens to be there, presto! Just like that.

This Magicism has no bearing on what we use to describe an extraordinarily beautiful sunset or a special moment with a loved one: that kind of magic is an analogue of the miraculous and has an alignment with a moral centre and Divine Order.

Magicists also denigrate religious or spiritual experiences as purely personal ones peculiar to an individual or if shared then part of mass delusion. There are countless theories to explain this…why all this supposedly occurs and why life, the world and humanity is the way it is…meaning, it is what it is: abracadabra. You just explain away anything that’s greater than the human ego and its obsession with itself and excessive sensual indulgence by theories and magic.

So the IH and market forces happen as a result of magic. If you want a spiritual explanation to things then you have to rely on mysticism. Smith as a FM proponent and glorifier of Capitalism cannot simply be subscribing to that, now, can he? Notice the circularity as to how Smith has been appropriated? If you want only reason and scientism to show you the way forward solely through ‘hard’ facts and math etc, then you have Magicism.

Not that you cannot have theories balanced by the spiritual and a moral centre to the world and the universe (e.g., Newton, perhaps Einstein, Kant, Smith and Rawls – though the latter would prefer not to bring in the spiritual overtly). But to do that is to slide into mysticism. Why do that when you can be inaugurated as high priest in Magicism and be a Magicisit cum laude at an accredited Institution of Learning, or be called an Expert and win International Prizes?

Then you have philosophers who are Magicists. They will talk about a metaphysical basis to things and when pressed beyond that will tell you either what they say is sufficient, or that they cannot or don’t see why they have to say what exactly it is behind the Metaphysics. This is a metaphysical smoke screen to hide their ill concealed Magicism.

Those that have a metaphysics and believe there is Absolute Mind behind it like Hegel or the World as Will and Idea as Schopenhauer, are partial Magicists. There is an Absolute but it is devoid of love, compassion and the miraculous. Such ideas sadly get misappropriated by ignorant and rascally elements who then turn them into an excuse for totalitarian ideas or mind bogglingly self defeating pessimism. So partial Magicism has its dangers too.

Or, there will be thinkers, writers or philosophers, eminently talented too, who opine that there is some ‘centre of life’ which, well, is a centre of like, all that is, etc…doesn’t necessarily mean Divinity, but there’s something out there…Magicism bordering on the occult or vice versa. At best one can ascribe partial Magicism to them.

In fact, if you take the trouble to look closely at the ideas of full blown Magicists, you will find that they are inadvertently (or otherwise) occultists. They will tell you that the truth (if it can be known and to what extent it can be know, etc, etc) comes via their full blown or partial Magicism, the ‘clarity’ of academic jargon, econometric models, theories that are constantly outdated/replaced, and formulas of politically correct commonality by the self serving media or politicized hype to show you why you ought to remain disempowered and beholden to their incantations and…Occultism.

Where does life come from, what happens at death, why do people believe in Divine Order/God/Supreme Being…well, here are the theories, degrees, and career paths to sort that out, and a whole lot of magic and occultism to boot. Why? Because, the spiritual like all else that matters in life like justice, fairness, and compassion are externalities.

When you bring in externalities into academia, science, the workplace or the corporation you ruffle feathers because it gets in the way of ego, material grasping, profits and whatnot. Magicists and occultists do indulge in a quick mention that there ought to be a balance between being reasonable and ‘getting the job done’ (because apparently being unreasonable is the way to really professionally effectively get things done). But here again, where does the notion of balance come from…magic.

We have reached that point when all that defines existence and human decency and social and planetary responsibility are externalities that are the adjunct of mysticism, while all else like profit margins, banksters (gangster bankers), big bonus freaks and greed and perpetual war are at least theoretically explained as part of the reality of life…a.k.a magic: because it just happens, that’s the way it is. Things being the way they are without much to explain for them (beyond egocentric opinions and selfishness or endless theories) are just an unsubtle code for: yes, you guessed it, Magicism.

But we are now at long last on the path to seeing the end of the reign of the Magicists and Occultists. People are finally, after being led to near global bankruptcy using useless paper fiat currency backed by printing presses and endless war, starting to wake up and say enough is enough. That there is a moral centre to life, to the world and to the universe and that we are not going to take this violence and ignorance and nonsense anymore.

The Fair Market

There are indeed natural forces at work in the Universe that govern all life on earth as well. This must be the truism of the millennium. All life is part of a natural force. As Dylan Thomas wrote “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age”, and “Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea”.

The only externalities are the Magicists promoting their Magicism. But like all else in nature that has had its time, the Magicist structures and mechanisms are starting to decay, fall apart, and will eventually be reabsorbed into the world as part of the cycle of things guided by forces more powerful than egomania, celebrity cultism, media manipulation et al.

Contrary to the dying exhortations of FM fantasists and hard core Capitalists, freedom doesn’t guarantee fairness. The well worn adage that your freedom to swing your arm ends where the other person’s nose begins still rings true. There is simply no unbridled freedom to do as you please because we live in society and have a responsibility; and if we want things to go well for ourselves, to also see that things go well for others. There are limits to freedom. Try jumping off a skyscraper to show that you can do anything you want with impunity and you will discover the parameters imposed by what we call gravity.

As part of all natural forces in the universe and our planet, everything is subject to parameters. That’s why there’s life in the first place. Given the conjunction of conditions at the right time and place the synchronous and miraculous happens. There are indeed natural laws that affect us all as there are moral laws that affect us all which help us to maintain sanity and balance in our lives thereby allowing us to create the society we dream of living in, if we so choose.

What is this moral centre? Just look into the human heart: there is a sense of right and good there. The mystery is how it came to be there and why virtually everyone resonates with it. But there is no befuddled mystery, as Smith would say, if we recognize the Divine Architect behind things. What we need to do is concentrate on doing what is right for ourselves and thereby others which is fulfilling that part of the plan on Earth.

But the human ego gets in the way. It gets in the way to cut off that Light and enhance the Darkness, and from that shadow world comes fear, doubt, scarcity, greed, envy, anger, hatred and resentment. From that sense of Darkness comes fear that unless you can be free to do whatever you want irrespective of the consequences you -- your ego -- will be harmed. Speak to anyone who claims to believe you can be free to do anything you want and to hell with everything else and/or who are hardcore Capitalists and they will show you the obverse side of Fear.

Bring out cooperation, collaboration, justice, fairness, compassion and decency and those who live in Fear will tell you why something might happen that leaves them at the mercy of others whom they despise and want to lord over because they judge that everyone else is like them. Naturally, in that case, the only option is to fight tooth and nail to support ego based desires, wants, fantasies and Fear.

Fairness, however, does allow for freedom. As Rawls points out, in order to be fair you would have to have these basic principles of liberty of allowing as much freedom to others as you allow yourself, fair and equal opportunities for all, and look after the interests of the least advantaged and certainly those of the disadvantaged. A mature democratic society would also be based on overlapping consensus and through ground up working of self interest creating the principles by which your society should be governed. There is a moral centre for Rawls because people intuitively have a sense of what is good and fair.

Smith goes beyond Rawls in believing there is a Divine force behind the moral centre. And in doing so, and has been discussed, believes not in a so-called FM or Capitalist way of doing things but in a Fair Market. All the ideas of Smith and those that resonate with him (and in his own way this would include Marx) are proponents of a Fair Market. A system where when most things are carried out in a fair and reasonable manner and aligned to a moral centre, will ensure balance and harmony not just for the individual but everyone.

Market corrections are the realigning of things as if by an IH, to be in resonance with a moral centre (which we intuitively are aware of when we are open to Divinity and the fact that God does exist). This is about balance and harmony.

What are termed ‘market corrections’ today is within the heartless framework that treats compassion as an externality thereby promoting the notion of punishment to set things right. The market or FM of today is a blind godless unforgiving system of punishment for what ‘delivers’ and what doesn’t because it is based on Fear. In new ways of doing business and having a natural flow of a community based nature of running society (as discussed in more detail in The Awakened Eco-nomy) we move away from Fear and all its concomitant horrors.

There is freedom for all human beings as we have been given the gift of free will and choice. But this is choice with an understanding of the reality that there are always parameters to everything: free will means the ability to choose between aligning oneself to the moral centre of Divinity or choosing not to align to it. The consequences are obvious and all around us as we can see the choices made which have resulted in a collective consciousness in the world which largely chose Magicism and the Fear, destruction and suffering it brings.

Fortunately, more of us are slowly coming to realize that we can choose the Fair Market, which allows for all of us being able to fulfill our positive potential to the highest.

In his own way Smith is in good ancient company, he is in effect promulgating a Tao of Economics: Yin-Yang balance that is the expression of the Creator in a Universe and world whose physicality we seem to experience most of the time without always being conscious of that beyond the immediate perception of our limited senses.

But when you open your heart, your mind will follow it to the moral centre within and align everything to the Source where all life comes from. When Fear drops away and the veil is lifted, a re-visioning of the world takes place and you can actually see that the Invisible Hand has been visible all along.

Or, The End of Communistic Corporationist-Capitalism (CCC)

U2’s latest album No Line on the Horizon has a catchphrase that appears through most of the songs – “Let me in the Sound”. But the phrase that may appear in this post regularly is: “When will people finally wake up?” Not as graceful as U2s one liner, but no doubt either Bono or a George Harrison could turn up a good song to go with it.

But to the task at hand. A little effort and thinking will show that what is termed as Capitalism, “free enterprise”, “free market”, and “competition” under the guise of Democracy is only an insidious subtle subterfuge that has bamboozled billions of people for a longer period of time than the so-called Communists of yesteryear.

For detailed background information behind the ideas in this post please check out:

Interdimensional Economics (Part 1)

Interdimensional Economics (Part 2)

As is the case with all things that are part of the natural order of this organic universe, world and life forms it contains anything that is imposed, false, mechanistic and full of skull-and-bones-duggery finally gets shown up for what it is. So the current economic unraveling and Great Financial Reckoning we are in the midst of is a sign of better things to come as we rid the planet of not only toxic assets by banks, but the toxicity of the greed and duplicity of Capitalism.

The irony is that now that Communism is to all intents and purposes dead, we can see just how much Corporationist-Capitalism is just the reverse side of the coin of Totalitarianism and Communism. Far fetched, you think?

Take a close look at the key characteristics of the erstwhile Soviet Union’s Communism and our Communistic Corporationist-Capitalism (CCC) today. The USSR was known (in the Cyrillic alphabet) as the CCCP, so our CCCs are just a 'P' short since they do not declare themselves a political party. The CCCs prefer to manipulate political parties and systems armed with the ideology of Capitalism

In the case of the USSR, its Constitution (the 1977 version) reads like the most democratic document of all time. It guarantees all kinds of rights from freedom of speech, to assembly and to the most democratic of activities. It claims to take its strengths from the proletariat citizens that make up the State. Yet we know how diametrically opposed the USSR actually was to any genuine democratic concerns.

The USSR had a system of Communist Party officials who were elected (there were hardly any other candidates offering a real choice) through the Party Congress, to the Supreme Soviet (highest legislative body) through to the Central Committee and its Secretariat from which the Politburo emerged. The Politburo was the inner sanctum of power and it had a Chairman/General Secretary heading it. Through a system of internal elections and bloodcurdling power struggles it decided who ran what and who had their fingers on the nuclear buttons of the military arsenal. The USSR called this a democratic system.

Look at our very own CCC. They have a group of shareholders (Central Committee) who apparently choose a Board of Directors (Politburo) who also have a Chairman. Sometimes it is an executive Chairman and you also have the CEO (either of whom can pass for the General Secretary) who is supposed to be the chief executive of the Corporate Apparatus. The Board can also co-opt other Apparatchiks from elsewhere if they can contribute to the money making ventures of the Board.

There is nothing democratic about this. Democracy is an operative term that denotes people power. The USSR had no people power but Apparatchik power that controlled the people in the most undemocratic manner possible all in the name of being ‘Democratic’. This is also known as a reductio ad absurdum.

The Communists claim to be a 'dictatorship of the proletariat', exactly the kind that would have made Marx wish he had been cremated as Engels was (so that there would not be anything left to roll around).

[Point of Clarification: The idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat was first mentioned by Marx and Engels. But their idea of it was as a transition phase from capitalism masquerading as democracy into Communism where there was a 'withering away of the state' and proper democratic freedoms settled for all without any state coercion.

Lenin's idea of such a 'dictatorship' and end of state coercion followed similar lines and he was short on details as to what a Communist system would ultimately be. Lenin argued eloquently for his vision of the transitional 'dictatorship of the proletariat' in his seminal What is to Be Done and State and Revolution.

As Lars T. Lih brilliantly points out in Lenin Rediscovered: What is to Be Done in Context, Lenin was in all probability genuine in having a system free from all coercion and one that was just and fair for all, which involved a dictatorship of the proletariat being set up as an interim to his ideal political system (which he thought coincided with Marx's vision).

But the problem is that Marx did not live long enough to outline his ideal Communist system, and Lenin allowed things to slip out of his control. So while Lenin deserves credit (with Trotsky) for offering dynamic and visionary leadership, the sad fact remains that they also have to answer for what went wrong in the USSR and for having blood stained hands in allowing for the execution of political opponents, 'reactionaries' and the convenient massacre of the Tsar and his family. They were thereby responsible for the monstrosity that followed in the wake of Stalin.

But as I have been trying to show in the earlier posts called Interdimensional Economics and as I hope to explore in subsequent posts: the ideas of those like Marx, Engels, and Lenin can be realised in their highest form of good if taken to a different paradigm. This would involve taking a metaphysical basis to things as well as looking at what a real democracy looks like without resorting to dictatorships of any kind. But these would be ideas that Marx and Lenin would have objected to because for the former it involved 'metaphysics', and for the latter it involved 'democracy' which was a distasteful ideology for Lenin (who in turn ironically resorted to ideology to put forward his views).

The point being made here is that the Communist verision of the 'dictatorship of the proleteriat' as was known to the world was one of the worst forms of totalitarianism in human history]

The lovable CCC creates a dictatorship of selfishness, greed and egomania (We will come to the profit motive soon). Now here comes the revealed sleight of hand of the CCC after the demise of the Soviet bloc. Once the latter had collapsed economically and politically, and the West no longer had the opportunity to contrast their product of so-called western democracy against the so-called non-MBA trained Communist bloc, the CCCs could sell and effectively market its own agenda of world domination of markets and human beings under the guise of “free enterprise”, “freedom” and “democracy”.

With the major Communist competitor out of the way, the western democracies formed an Oligopoly. It was now a matter of seeing who won the game between themselves in creating a Monopoly.

(China poses special problems here because it is anything but a Communist state these days).

So all the so-called free enterprise CCCs came out of the woodwork and before long embarked on merciless and blatant mergers and acquisitions that made anti-trust laws seem heaven sent. While heralding wealth and prosperity for all (meaning the CCC Nomenklatura), the drive for aggression and domination created a whole system that is skewered against any form of financial or economic stability. The CCC lust for power and money fosters not market equilibrium but disequilibrium for that is the only way to be a monopoly.

The USSR had their power elites who cornered the ‘market’ of privilege and showed us the truth of Orwell’s prescient “Four legs good, two legs better” dictum. These happy folk were known as the Nomenklatura.

The CCCs have their own elites with all their privileges and private jets and indecent bonuses at the expense of all honest working men and women who are usually honest taxpayers too. The CCC nomenklatura seek to unduly influence decision makers, legislators, the media (which they largely own) to keep their ruling class in sovereignty over everyone else preferably as unjustly and unfairly as possible.

Some years ago when Microsoft was starting to really earn its reputation as a bully in the market, Bill Gates actually admitted that he was interested in biographies and, at that time, was deeply immersed in one on Stalin. He was not reading about Stalin to learn about better business practices, but probably on monopolizing control of things. So Comrade Stalin would have been a good fellow to study.

Just as the USSR sought to spread its ideology and control over the globe, that is exactly what CCCs have done in infiltrating and destabilizing the world and national economies all in pursuit of its own blinkered ideology: the profit motive. And they quote misguided neo-classical economists and their practitioners today to come up with the right kind of mumbo-jumbo to support corporate takeovers wherever and whenever possible with ruthless removal of all competition. Apparently that is what competition means – liquidating the other guy whenever feasible (pun fully intended).

Think about it. In a so-called democracy today, how is it that the entire economy, politics and lives of people are subject to the dictates of CCCs, what they do, whom they hire and who are part of their Politburo and Central Committee of shareholders? Not to mention allowing the world’s economic fate to be affected by what their nomenklatura desires.

So much of what we see that has happened in the entire economic cycle of inevitable booms, busts, currency devaluations, mass unemployment, poverty, human abuse, wars and conflicts have been caused by unelected apparatchiks who’s goal is the profit motive. There is nothing democratic, free or fair in business apparatchiks claiming to serve “democracy” when all they do is serve their greed and interests of their shareholder central committee members.

CCC elements buy and corrupt politicians to ensure that legislation is produced to serve the interests of their structure and apparatus. We are talking their politicians at home and abroad.
All this to serve the ideological God of the Profit Motive (the new name for Mammon of old, you remember him, surely).

As most of humanity is plugged into a system where their material needs are dependent on selling their labour power (since that is virtually all anyone has to sell) to make a living, nobody really questions this worship of Mammon-Profit Motive. In fact, this is usually not just out of ignorance but out of fear from the perception of what the CCC apparatus might do to them in terms of leaving them out in the cold to starve.

But these very activities of the CCC are now what is causing all the economic instability in the world, not to mention coming to terms to the incalculable damage done to the environment and our beloved planet.

When will people finally wake up…?

All attempts by CCCs to pay lip service to protecting human dignity, or the environment, is done so as to continue serving Mammon-Profit Motive. Let’s not be fooled here. Every tax incentive that is sought, every CCC loophole that is gained via manipulation of the media and politicians and connivance of banks is done at the expense of human beings and national interests. What is so ‘free and fair’ or democratic about a system that allows tax loopholes and privileges to be wrangled out by CCCs at the expense of the average tax payer (that is, the mass majority of respectable citizens). Somebody has to pay for all nomenklatura privileges of the CCC, and for some reason it seems it has to be you and me.

So tax payers continue to pay taxes, take on heavy loans and work themselves to near death while the CCCs and their top honchos continue to evade taxes so as to gain even greater bonuses for themselves. In other words, you get to support the CCC worship of Mammon-Profit Motive and also get to call your society a ‘democracy’: now that sounds like a two-in-one offer that’s hard to resist.

Bear in mind that the entire advertising, marketing, and media industry (with few exceptions) are honed to titillate the senses, negativity, fear, anxiety or the ego in service of Mammon-Profit Motive. Virtually all such industries in the media are under CCC control in one form or another, so they DO NOT serve the interests of the people but that of the CCC Politburo and Central Committee and careerists within the industry who hope to rise as Apparatchik.

Then we have the high priests of Mammon-Profit Motive, the Banking industry. The major banks are in absolute cahoots with Big Business and play a part in creating the distinctive self centered nature of the CCC beast. Essentially, all profits made from paying working people lower than they deserve in the productive process of commodities, is stashed away/invested in banks by CCC elements. The stash is then loaned out to all of us which we then have to repay plus interest.

So we are loaned the money we helped make and for which we now pay back with interest. Is there any wonder why the whole world is in debt? This is the gift of the CCC structure – a debt based economy. And when the loans are called in due to ‘toxicity’ of banking assets or otherwise, we all have to pay the price. Those who are in lower income groups or at subsistence level living bear the brunt of the economic crashes created by the CCC apparatus.

Take a break and watch these clips:

Capitalism 101

Capitalism Primer

Full Version

Capitalism Hits the Fan

Next comes a term that is well used within the USSR system, that of the interlocking directorate. Heed these words by Charles Timberlake:

"THE PARTY CONTROLLED THE GOVERNMENT. In fact, it functioned as THE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT. The “government” (described by the Constitution of 1936) functioned not as a legislative body the Constitution alleged, but merely as the EXECUTIVE AGENCY that implemented decisions made by some 12 to 13 people who composed the Political Bureau (Politburo) of the party. But, the people who held the most important government positions were also members of the party organ that made the decision. Having made a decision, party and government officials passed commands downward through parallel party and government hierarchies. At every administrative level, the party committee (which always included the head of government for the administrative region) met to discuss the command, and then passed the commands downward, through the same parallel party and government structures, to the party and government officials at the next administrative level below them. Thus, the Party Politburo adopted legislation. It then implemented those decisions through two parallel, hierarchical bureaucracies that had---at every administrative level—interlocking directorates. We may accurately refer to this relationship as 'the Bolshevik Party and its government.' ” (italics and highlights mine)

What this means is that CPSU members (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) who were in the Politburo, Central Committee and other organs of the party or state, had a wonderfully incestuous relationship via sitting in one another’s committees. So you would have members of the military who would be members of the CPSU, Central Committee, and Politburo, etc. This was a way to exert ideological thinking, control, as well as self-aggrandizement throughout the system. To say that this led to cronyism is to put it lightly.

Guess what? The CCC boasts of having an interlocking directorate system in which board members sit on other boards, which include politicians and people of influence. This is apparently in the interests of ‘democracy’, the ‘free market’ and ‘free enterprise’. While the rationale for such a notion was sold as being a way of maximizing synergy, it is really a way of cronyism, self aggrandizement and ideological control more than anything else. The CCC barons of today more than the dead Stalinists of yesterday, are the exemplars of Lenin’s dictum: “Who? Whom?”

This was an elegant expression for ‘who exercises power over whom’ in that the old school Communists, and the CCC exponents throughout history, are proponents of the master-slave set-up. Guess who fills in which roles? (When will people finally wake up…?)

The USSR had a system of summary executions (liquidation) of dissenters especially in its Stalinist heydays. The CCCs in the spirit of ‘free enterprise’ and ‘democracy’ summarily fire staff with only a day, or less, notice.

Many of us are aware, even as we read these lines, of layoffs by private firms that see to it that those relieved of work are sent down and out with their shoe box of personal items summarily in hand, and made to walk right through the front door without a chance to even say good bye to a single colleague (except the one who was laid off with you). The reason is that there is the fear that you may sabotage office equipment or cause dissatisfaction among staff etc if you are treated humanely and given a proper notice that you have been terminated. Worse, you may ‘steal’ stuff that can be used by a competitor!

And we do not even need to look into the arena of CCC politicking and backstabbing which may make some communist parties look anemic.

Mammon-Profit Motive serves self interest and involves the indubitable exploitation and theft of others’ effort and lifeblood to sustain untrammeled greed at the expense of all life forms and our planet itself. It promotes cynicism, doubt, and a nihilistic worldview.

If the state of humanity and the world as seen through events of the 20th century is insufficient testament to the effects of nihilism, just read any of the major novels by Dostoevsky to get an idea of what it is all about.

Incidentally, the nihilistic worldview of extremists like Nechayev had gone quite some way to evolving the kind of ruthlessness and brutality that stalked behind the likes of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky.

So much for the Mammon-Profit Motive: if there ever was a system based on insecurity, fear, vindictiveness and sheer lack of integrity it is what we call capitalistic ‘private enterprise’ today.

Thought Experiment

Try this exercise. Imagine you have suddenly discovered, and see in the clear light of day, that you live in a world in which a group of people belonging to a set of ideological beliefs need to protect their interests above all else (try, perhaps it is difficult, but try).

It is a world in which technology has been used to control and influence your mind and that of others on the planet. Let’s say They can instill in you the desire for unbridled self indulgence, fear, anxiety, hatred, divisiveness, a sense of separateness from others, despair and anger so that you become a kind of automaton, a mechanized man, woman or youth subject to their manipulation.

This entire structure of control is created for the sole purpose of keeping the mass majority of people subservient to the dictates of a nomenklatura. And you either join the Controllers or you will be liquidated by them one way or another (or simply be worn out by ‘life’).

What would your reaction be? How long will you tolerate this subjugation of your loved ones, yourself, your friends or anyone for whom you had a shade of caring for?

Yet this is exactly the system of the CCC we have been connived into buying with the full and, in many cases, willing participation of the media. Communism ‘lost’ because something more subtle and soul destroying ‘won’. But like all mechanistic set-ups, it has run its course in an organic universe and world.

Nothing can beat the laws of Nature. The mechanized CCC clones are only finally realizing that the system they created is collapsing around their ears. There are NO laws in economics: it is one of the greatest frauds perpetuated on humanity.

There are only laws of Nature. There is not one theory of Mammon-Profit Motive that can beat the law of gravity. And the CCC tower of Babel is coming down, hard.

At the moment of this writing, the US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has said that unless insurance mega corporation AIG is bailed out via taxpayers $ a “global financial meltdown” may occur. Stop the press! Did he say “global financial meltdown”?

Now kind reader, please ask yourself how on earth did we get to a stage where some crummy firm holds the fate of the global economy? Is this kind of a situation a reflection of democracy and can it ever have been geared to protect the interests of the people? The CCC structure is so top heavy with the centre of gravity so stacked in an ungodly manner in favour of its nomenklatura that the toppling of this ungainly edifice causes the world economy to tumble as well.

If there are right thinking people left on the planet, they should be asking why does this situation exist at all.

A Social Kind of Economy

So where does that leave us? Actually, with good news all around if we choose to act on it. Where we need to go is towards a social kind of economy which is a community based one. This is not socialism or any other ‘-ism’. Do some research and you will find more than you imagined that is available out there on this. One such example of building sustainable communities is the Transition Town.

The key here is this – we move away from Mammon-Profit Motive to sustainability. So the basic rationalization of any commercial set up is one that is modeled like a social business in which its bottom line is sustainability, NOT profitability. It must be stated that the term "profit" when used in the context of a social business means "sustainability" not Mammon-Profit Motive.

But the difference between a social business and commercial venture of the Social Economy is that while a social business aims to cover costs and sustains itself and staff and can be perhaps seen as a welfare enterprise (e.g., eye clinics, providing basic food stuff, health and social insurance etc), a commercial enterprise in the Social Economy can aim for higher revenue as part of sustainability.

What this means is that it is not aiming for profit, but can aim for surplus sustainability. So such a firm would take whatever earnings it receives over and above its basic sustainability, that is, the bottom line of what would have qualified as a social business; and place that into a sustainability fund. This fund would be shared out equally or at a pre-arranged ratio (agreed to prior to setting up of the enterprise) among all those who work in the firm -- this means all workers/staff and managerial officers. The only owners in this firm are the workers, staff, executives and supervisors.

There is no need for bonuses or bizarrely high pay for anyone. Managers will earn as much as workers or perhaps more depending on the agreement by those who set up the firm. In the case of large firms the government, local governments and those who are part of the firm will be the shareholders. The entrepreneurial folk and banks are invited to join in and/or hired depending on how people want the set up to work.

There is voting at different levels of the community to ensure maximized democracy and a stake in the system and the commodities produced. This can be worked out according to each society to fit its needs and context so no gridlock of approval/voting need take place. What with the Internet, a lot of the choices made by people can be expressed via online procedures as well.

Please bear in mind that online voting procedures would refer to situations in developed democracies. In the case of poorer states, social businesses will take care of the needs of the underprivileged and those lacking in education etc.

All commodities and means of production will be aligned to what the country and its people determine as GPF solutions, that is, Green and People Friendly Solutions. The nature of the workweek, workday, relationship between colleagues and the relationship to what is produced for people within a country or for export, will be aligned towards respect for human dignity and the environment.

This is well within our reach if we put our hearts and minds into it.

Some of the changes that would be required would be:

• Overhaul of national and international laws pertaining to the banking industry


• Overhaul of national and international laws pertaining to firms and enterprises. No firms will be given the protection, loopholes or incentives that are currently in place which are manifestly against the interests of human dignity, lack all compassion, and desecrate the environment


• A detailed study of what aspects of Islamic financial principles can be used effectively here (e.g., such principles can be applied in creating the sustainability fund mentioned, its contractual basis, as well as its operative procedures). The reason for looking into such principles is because the whole commercial enterprise in Islam is meant to have a system balanced with Divine Law, justice, fairness and compassion. It is also an effective way to make the Islamic world part of a revamped global economic enterprise. Islamic economics is taught at a number of universities worldwide and material on it is readily available everywhere


• Removal of all interlocking directorates. There may be a situation that warrants, if at all, a person sitting in two firms holding an official post in each but it cannot go beyond that. This is to minimize cronyism, group think and corruption (to say the least)


• Removal of stock exchanges and any semblance of gambling in the economic growth of nations or their currencies


• When in doubt bring in members of the community etc to discuss and settle an issue through a vote. People who sit in on these groups are voted in by their communities as part of regular local elections. This allows for full accountability and transparency. It is also surprisingly democratic. This is what is meant by People Power: not that which is disruptive, but that which is constructive and aligned to the positive energy of GPF solutions


• Communities are empowered to ban all forms of advertising, marketing and media. They can allow them in or create their own based on what suits their values. Creation of citizen journalists who report fairly, well researched and boundary pushing news with the welfare of the community and society at heart. No more answering to egos and CCC type dictates

The role of government is one of synergy and one that not only provides national leadership, but also complements and supplements the feasible and viable efforts of citizens in whatever projects and enterprises the citizens ask the government to come on board.

Also needed is a political system, at least in developed democracies based on the principles of Justice as Fairness as proposed by Rawls. John Rawls’s ideas of political constructivism allow for people to use their interaction and lessons learnt from an overlapping consensus created by state or society from which is derived the political principles that will govern their society or community.

Similarly, we can now have something called economic constructivism which allows for a similar process in which a society and communities allow for social economy type enterprises to flourish to sustain and support the citizens of a country as well as take part in synergistic regional and international trade devoid of practices meant to undermine the ‘competition’. The new type of competition promoted here is a just, fair, and compassionate one that allows each state, society, or community to build on strengths and advantages which allow the import and export of commodities which create a win-win situation for all concerned.

So rather that comparative or competitive advantage, we have sustainable advantage which allows nations to have a system of trade that allows for social economy firms and businesses to maximize their potential while allowing fair and beneficial exchange of commodities. Returning to the societal and community level, some aspects of the process of economic constructivism would lead to maximized creative endeavours which should lead to the creation of necessary and meaningful work that sustains an economy and society.

This would entail initiatives involving

1. local/complementary currencies (e.g., Time Banks)


2. barter exchanges


3. the really really free market type activities


4. volunteer based set ups and organizations that involve schools, youth and social economy businesses/firms, governmental organizations, and NGOs

There is no reason why the four aspects above cannot be applied to regional and international trade in an extended sense. All it takes is political will. But to do that it takes people electing the right type of leaders and holding them accountable in public office. Which means there is not much room for a slacker citizenry; People Power involves a fully participatory democracy of people who are mature, tolerant, and willing to accept responsibility for their decisions.

 And from that point on, any blame for things that don’t work must be leveled at the source for that which has allowed things to happen in each society: the image in the mirror when you look into it.

Eco-nomics

In order for any system to survive in a healthy, balanced and sustainable manner, it would do best to mimic or be one with the organic nature of the universe, world and life on it. This means ecological balance.

The social economy proposed here is one of creating an economic ecosystem or Eco-nomy that fits into the way the world actually works according to the law of nature, and not some bizarre mechanistic imposition serving the fallen angels of Mammon-Profit Motive.

A system of empowered people and a decentralized economic web of being will allow for communities to fit into the national organism of state, and allow the latter to grow and live in harmony and balance with its communities and citizens. This is the true nature of a synergistic, collaborative, synchronistic and symbiotic relationship which may be possible in a society. Recycle all those irrelevant management textbooks as they serve Mammon-Profit Motive and we do not need them anymore.

With an eco-nomic system, we no longer have the unnatural high centre of gravity of the CCC hierarchy which leads to silly statements that the world economy is in peril because some lousy firms show just how lousy they really are. An eco-nomic system has a well spread out centre of gravity that provides for stability all round.

Just watch the give and take of nature and how balance can be maintained for the benefit of all. But you do need gardeners, which is why we need leaders who are just that -- not those who compel others to do what is against their own interest, but gardeners who nurture, cultivate, strengthen and beautify the garden politic.

The leaders we need today for tomorrow and beyond will be the Good Gardeners who tend to the Garden of State and maintain its balance, harmony and well being. Community based leadership and economic growth is a reflection of the kind of eco-nomic system we need for a just, fair and compassionate way of doing things. That’s why the notion of political and economic constructivism fits in perfectly.

We should look to creating an organic system of self adjusting principles and ways of doing things that allows for social, economic and political osmosis of ideas and goodwill between all people in a society and between nations.

We need to be like water: flexible, all encompassing, have miscibility (able to mix freely with all things), and have that special ability miscalled an ‘anomaly’. Water’s so-called ‘anomaly’ is this: that it reaches its maximum density as it approaches 4 degrees Celsius. This characteristic allows for the surface of large bodies of waters like lakes etc to freeze, while keeping that below in liquid form circulating within its internal convection cycle of well within 4 degrees Celsius: this is why fish can live below frozen lakes.

How is this possible, indeed. This is natural and cosmic law, not mumbo-jumbo economic ones. These are natural ecological parameters that allow for the sustenance of life. So an eco-nomy is one that corresponds to cosmic law: as above, so below.

Similarly, we need to learn from the flexibility, suppleness and cleanliness of water in allowing for the type of parameters within our societies which foster balance, freedom, fairness and compassion. We need to move away from the narrow, imbalanced and destructive concerns of the ego and look to the whole, thereby looking after the interests of all within it. This calls for a self adjusting, self regulating natural system of government and an open hearted way of doing things.

But empowerment comes at a price. It comes with waking up, getting real and growing up.

Then we will have started to create an Awakened Eco-nomy.

Live Long and Prosper!

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

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:

1. Currency devaluation (inflation) and collapses due to excess fiat money being created.
2. Economic bubbles start and burst as in the Asian currency crisis in the mid 90s and the current housing collapse in the US.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.

Part of changing mindsets of people for the better is to change the way the economy works, and how we view and live in it.

We can do this when each of us does our part in spreading some form of good work.

There are new ways to measure and view economic growth beyond GDP. What's missing are things like GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) and even GNH (Gross National Happiness).

This is not to say that GDP does not have its uses. But it is a highly inaccurate and misleading way to capture growth and success in an economy.

A GDP valuation includes all money generated by a country including for eg, the cost of a war, car accidents, oil spillage etc.

This means that rather than reflect what is a 'plus' in the ledger, the GDP includes all 'minuses' as well (ie, money lost and spent on wasteful and harmful activites).

For eg, if you have your own firm and you factor in all the money you earn at the end of the month. Then you minus all the debits you have from it, like maintenance costs, cost of education and food for your children etc,

Whatever's then left from your earnings is your profit. That's common sense.

But a GDP, believe it or not, takes all your earnings and expenditure including your minuses and rolls that up to a grand figure and says thats what an economy has made. It's counterintuitive because you shouldn't add your losses as growth, but economies do that. Which is why most growth indicators are misleading.

Expenditure is not equal to growth. Growth is much more than dollars spent/generated.

That is why you can have GDP growth but unemployment/or marginal employment (because you can grow a GDP by expensive govt projects which is not the same as getting people decent jobs that allow them to lead a decent life).

Web searches on this and on "Green Economy" will help put many of these things in context. Many of these ideas can also be gleaned from Economia by Geoff Davies and The Economics of Happiness by Mark Anielski

Check out: http://www.anielski.com/

Countries like Bhutan use the GNH, and local and even the federal govt. in Canada now use GPIs.

The GPI captures the quality of life. That is what economies are really about.

How it is done is basically to have a plus and debit system for an economy and you do the right thing by subtracting the negative effects of losses to the economy and their negative impact: like building more cars, and creating larger roads to contain them, or demolishing green spaces and community areas for larger shopping malls and more $ banks, or a greater armament industry.

The GPI can be used together with the current GDP as a better and fair basis of capturing economic growth.

One of the measurements used in GPI, and not in GDP calculations, are activities that are not given monetary value but are nonetheless of great value.

For eg, a value is given to what a stay home parent contributes, to social and volunteer workers' contributions, to social and community contributions by companies, or activities by civil and civic society.

If a person takes time off work to look after an ailing parent or family member, or even a good friend, this may be added or captured by GPI.

This is part of the pluses added to the GPI calculation.

If a society becomes less gracious due to rapid urbanisation and harmful economic competition, this would be captured as a minus under GPI.

Studies have shown that since the end of WW2, while the GDP has grown greatly in the US (for instance) its GPI has eroded drastically.

Which explains why material wealth doesn't equate in many people's view to genuine wealth and what gives meaning to their lives.

And on the innovative use of cooperatives in this scheme of things check out Emilia-Romagna in Italy which also produces apart from fine food, wine, the automative industries of Ferrari, Ducati, Lamborghini, and Maserati (perhaps they might go Green...?).

Part of the need for a new economy is due to the failure, increasingly evident, of our current debt based monetary system that is now reeling from corporate malfeasance, priorities given to the banking industry and a near collapse of financial loan institutions: the fallout of which the US and many other countries are starting to face now.

Witness the recent desperate rate cuts by the US Fed and the buying of stakes by Singapore's sovereign wealth funds into international banking organisations -- all a result of a failing debt based economic system.

This impacts all of us: that's why mainly middle class people find that they all have to work harder, longer, get more depressed and stressed and still find that the genuinely rich get only richer, as everyone else slides into more debt, poverty and frustration.

Never mind the lower income groups who are desperately trying to find just breathing space.

The imbalance of things, and unacceptable level of inequity that the current debt based economic system generates is ruining our quality of life.

Part of this has to do with the monetary system we have: eg, a debt based system in which banks issue paper money based quite literally on nothing. They actually do create money out of thin air.

The monetary system of debts and interest rates only create the economic slavery that all hard working people (and increasingly unemployed people) find themselves in.

One of the things we need are interest free banks.

Check out: Anielski Report

Another way is to also start a split barter system where money is used but in a limited form. These ideas can be read up on and I believe Emilia-Romagna uses some form of this system.

Many thanks for your time.