Symbiotic Economics
19/September/2007 13:00 Filed in: Weekly Column
19 September 2007; Volume 9, Issue 31
PDF copy
Our world is bankrupt! Let me say that again, OUR world is bankrupt! You can take that to the bank, and they will laugh at you, if they really are going to be that nice.
“We have money to lend,” they will say. “Let us sit down and I will run a credit check, and we will see what kind of a loan you will qualify for. And then when you show me how you really don’t need any money, we will be happy to loan you all the money you need, up to the limit to which you really need it. When you reach that limit, we will cut off your credit, because then your loan becomes risky. Risky means when you can demonstrate that you really need some money!
The financial institutions are right, they do have money, but by statements like the above, which really is today’s bankers truth, they are showing they are bankrupt of a true understanding of how the world has really worked for all of human history. Life is risky and to truly obtain wealth, you have to take some risks. That does include monetary wealth, but from the wealthy people I have known in my life, the money is the easiest form a wealth to come by.
In the larger sense, this world also really bankrupt, morally, philosophically, religiously, environmentally, pretty much everything other than mammon and the stuff that mammon will buy. The world is even bankrupt evolutionarily, because society, especially western society, took that road long before any of us were born and we have reached the end of the line. We now are confronted with chaos on all sides, even obliterating the path by which we got here.
To make matters even worse, all the so called ideas by those who claim to know something about where we are and where we are headed are more out of touch with real reality, than the homeless person living on the street. If you think that is not true, just look at the United States federal government. The European Union is not all that different, they can’t even agree upon a constitution by which they can disagree about how unique and diverse each of their countries really are. Then there is Canada, a mixture of socialism and wild west greedy speculation. Lest we forget Mexico, where their most industrious workers need to sneak into the United States, to make enough money to support their families back home. Could it be that NAFTA manufacturing jobs don’t really provide economic opportunity? We could go on through all the countries of the world.
Awash in financial liquidity, the world is bankrupt, because all that money is stuck in oceans of stagnant ooze, just waiting for a spark of lightning and life to emerge. Then we only need to wait a few billion years and everything will be back to where we are now.
Last year I wrote a couple of articles on economics. Chaos Economics back on June 14th and Phylogenesis Economics on November 8, 2006. Time is now right to enlarge upon those themes and see if we can develop some concepts that bring people back into a symbiotic relationship with not only their livelihood, but also their community, and the deeper needs of humanity that sets it apart from the rest of the natural kingdom. Those four aspects of the human personality are: Why am I here? Where did I come from? Where will I go when I die? What is the source of my security?
One of my projects here in the wilderness of NE Washington State has been to read the history of the area. That includes the area known as the West Kootenay in neighboring Canadian British Columbia. From my location here on the river, that Canadian history, at least in distance and economics is closer or more related than anything that has happened state side.
That early history is basically all centered in the extraction of earth’s resources. Mineralization of the area begins here in the states, but is more prominent as you head northward. Those minerals began to be extracted on a commercial basis in the late 19th century, and were pretty much determined to be no longer economically feasible, except for a few mines, after the end of World War II.
Part of that stemed from the fact that the extractable materials had been extracted, others needed to fight the war were no longer needed in the war time quantities, part of it was due to the fact that other minerals such as gold required significant investment both in capital and people to begin again operations after the war, and those resources were just not available. America had moved on economically.
What remains locally however, is still an economy, not solely, but predominately extractive in nature. That being timber, agriculture, non mineral materials, and the fruits thereof. Because of the quantities involved, this now is being done pretty much with local economic resources, except perhaps in timber.
Western culture and capital is really no longer interested in extractive enterprise. We extract natural resources abroad through environmental imperialism, at least until we run out of energy, then that may change. We have evolved into a consumer society, consumers of stuff. However, you really can not become a first class 21st century consumer without access to 21st century credit. God may not know, but financial institutions surely do, that other than getting credit to buy a new pickup truck, you surely are not going to be a true consumer, doing any type of work that requires physical labor and getting dirty every day.
But the question we will look at more in depth as this series continues, is consumerism really a viable economic system that will continue to provide increasing quantities of stuff to global consumers, while really not making them any happier than they were when this whole escapade began?
When you look at world economics you must look at the year 1776. Perhaps because of the American Declaration of Independence and the beginning of our Revolutionary War, but more to the publishing of Adam Smith’s ”Wealth of Nations.” Poor old Adam, he gets all the praise or the criticism for what has happened economically in the world since that time.
Look at the title carefully for a moment. It is really a simple concept. Wealth and Nations, so what! Ponder for a moment, what today might look like, in the whole world, if the title would have been, “Wealth of People.”
When Adam wrote his wonderful book, most of the capital that moved the world was in the hands of wealthy individuals and partnerships. The corporation, especially as it exists in our modern world had not evolved out of the ooze of human greed, corruption, and power. Perhaps the greatest milestone, or millstone on the evolutionary process came in 1886, when the United States Supreme Court, gave corporations person-hood.
Corporations however, are not persons in anyone’s mind or imagination, only in a legal sense, that makes abortion rights look quite benign, then again maybe not. Corporations, as opposed to individuals and partnerships can amass huge sums of capital, pretty much for the stated and legal goal of amassing even more sums of capital for the corporations share holders. The founders of these corporations were and are the rich people that only wanted and want to risk limited amounts of their own wealth, with the hope of amassing even more.
Contrary to what they tell you in little investor Wall Street advertising, this capital rich society of individuals and other corporations, while only 5% of the “people,” control 95 percent of the capital. That isn’t all bad of itself, however it does do a couple of things that don’t bare well for the common people who only have enough access to capital to buy a pickup truck.
First of all is the corporate inbreeding. If you are a person and you don’t want your gene pool affected by peasants, serfs, and other forms of human debris, you only invest, or breed with others of your social status. God knows you don’t want your expensive lap dog, breeding with just a street mutt, or even a working dog, like a German Shepherd, or a Malamute.
More sinister however, is the fact that you can create more capital, ex nihilo, out of nothing. The term is IPO, or Initial Public Offering. I suppose an argument could be made, as I did last week discussing human saving faith, that this capital is really created by ordering the chaos of randomness, into useful products and services. However, in saving faith, this creative process is a gift of the sovereignty of God, not the cleverness of human ingenuity. It definitely is however, a gift to the elite, or the elect, with the ability to determine who prospers and who does not. The Bible declares that God will not share His glory, with anything created, that includes global corporations, who’s demise is prophesied in Revelation 18.
While we are on the subject, the Bible is a book about, people, tribes, and nations, all representations of real people. Corporate status, is not a Biblical distinction, along with race.
In the short term however, what we see with this ability to create capital, is the capability to usurp national sovereignty. Furthermore this capital, really does not become part of the national money supply, until it is actually converted into market stock. It can be swapped or invested just like real money, without most of the governmental oversight. This is similar, to what can be done with gold “in process” before it is smelted into refined or dory ingots. Hence, major corporations don’t pay taxes, they get tax incentives, all in the name of being big and powerful and providing contributions to politicians for a favorable ear.
During the Clinton administration, we heard that the “era of big government is dead.” While with that went the ability to marginally check the growth of corporate greed, we also should welcome the demise of government inefficiency.
That is the line of the socially conservative. As I had said in earlier articles, I consider myself a conservative conservationist. However, this county (Ferry) in NE Washington is so destitute, the financially poorest county in all Washington State, that government offices only operate four days a week. I recently heard that they tried to give the county away, half to Okanagon, the rest to Stevens, so that the local residence would and could expect some reasonable county services. Neither of those counties were at all interested in the deal.
Why is that? As we said in the opening, we live in a world of excess capital, of excess goods, chasing people to buy stuff on credit, because they can’t afford it any other way. What is wrong with this picture, not only in Ferry County, but Seattle, and the utter most regions of the earth? The answer seems obvious, the misallocation of capital.
In the era of big government, and still some of those of more liberal persuasions, the answer was for government to tax wealth and provide for those without the access to capital, and are unable to provide for themselves. What that does however, is to substitute another (government) elite for a corporate elite. Tax capital is still part of that vast ocean of liquidity where only limited amounts of useful work can be done, even with the best of intentions and programs.
What does big government and big business have in common? Big liquidity. It seems logical to me that the best way for either system to work is to begin to invest some of that mammon in people directly. Well that is not quite what I meant to say, to invest directly in human scale enterprise, as equity rather than through loans. Enterprise that one day may contribute to corporate profit coffers, and government programs, but right now will only provide investment capital, to provide the lumber worker, to buy a logging truck instead of a pickup, or for him to provide goods and services in a completely different niche, that he has wanted to do all his life. How about this concept? Invest in a human legacy, rather than provide a job.
What that does is really use the natural hydrologic cycle as the model for financial liquidity. Something so simple that with a little training bankers, corporate executives, and politicians should be able to comprehend. Liquidity evaporates (for a season) from banks and corporate coffers, and rains down on the mountains of NE Washington, or SE Seattle, or any neighborhood or region of this big blue planet. The earth also, is awash with oceans of water, and too little fit to drink. To be suitable for human consumption, ocean water must evaporate and then fall as fresh rainwater, before it can be utilized not only for drinking, but all sorts of human enterprise.
Adam Smith wrote the “Wealth of Nations” because he understood and recognized in his era, that nations were just a large community of people working in some sort of symbiotic union with one another using financial liquidity. In our post modern world, we have lost the concept that people are truly unique, and have value above and beyond being production or consumptive units. This is really first and foremost a religious and philosophical issue.
Our economic system is in trouble because it has no energetic value above and beyond the laws of ocean thermodynamics. Created in the image of God, only human beings have that potential to create and develop complex stuff, like computers, software, airplanes, and rocket ships. Whales, dolphins, gorillas and other primates do not.
Human giftedness creates corporations, even made them people, and raises the standard of most human beings around the world beyond mere subsistence. Big government creates infrastructure and provides a varying degree of guaranteed security, depending upon the locality. All that took place essentially by capital enabling people to do something they were created by God to do. What we are now missing is the human factor as the enabling paradigm and also as a limit to abuses.
The Bible speaks about the parable of the talents and wise investment. Putting financial capital out to draw interest, is looked upon as only slightly above burying it in the ground. Something to contemplate until next week when we touch base again.
PDF copy
Our world is bankrupt! Let me say that again, OUR world is bankrupt! You can take that to the bank, and they will laugh at you, if they really are going to be that nice.
“We have money to lend,” they will say. “Let us sit down and I will run a credit check, and we will see what kind of a loan you will qualify for. And then when you show me how you really don’t need any money, we will be happy to loan you all the money you need, up to the limit to which you really need it. When you reach that limit, we will cut off your credit, because then your loan becomes risky. Risky means when you can demonstrate that you really need some money!
The financial institutions are right, they do have money, but by statements like the above, which really is today’s bankers truth, they are showing they are bankrupt of a true understanding of how the world has really worked for all of human history. Life is risky and to truly obtain wealth, you have to take some risks. That does include monetary wealth, but from the wealthy people I have known in my life, the money is the easiest form a wealth to come by.
In the larger sense, this world also really bankrupt, morally, philosophically, religiously, environmentally, pretty much everything other than mammon and the stuff that mammon will buy. The world is even bankrupt evolutionarily, because society, especially western society, took that road long before any of us were born and we have reached the end of the line. We now are confronted with chaos on all sides, even obliterating the path by which we got here.
To make matters even worse, all the so called ideas by those who claim to know something about where we are and where we are headed are more out of touch with real reality, than the homeless person living on the street. If you think that is not true, just look at the United States federal government. The European Union is not all that different, they can’t even agree upon a constitution by which they can disagree about how unique and diverse each of their countries really are. Then there is Canada, a mixture of socialism and wild west greedy speculation. Lest we forget Mexico, where their most industrious workers need to sneak into the United States, to make enough money to support their families back home. Could it be that NAFTA manufacturing jobs don’t really provide economic opportunity? We could go on through all the countries of the world.
Awash in financial liquidity, the world is bankrupt, because all that money is stuck in oceans of stagnant ooze, just waiting for a spark of lightning and life to emerge. Then we only need to wait a few billion years and everything will be back to where we are now.
Last year I wrote a couple of articles on economics. Chaos Economics back on June 14th and Phylogenesis Economics on November 8, 2006. Time is now right to enlarge upon those themes and see if we can develop some concepts that bring people back into a symbiotic relationship with not only their livelihood, but also their community, and the deeper needs of humanity that sets it apart from the rest of the natural kingdom. Those four aspects of the human personality are: Why am I here? Where did I come from? Where will I go when I die? What is the source of my security?
One of my projects here in the wilderness of NE Washington State has been to read the history of the area. That includes the area known as the West Kootenay in neighboring Canadian British Columbia. From my location here on the river, that Canadian history, at least in distance and economics is closer or more related than anything that has happened state side.
That early history is basically all centered in the extraction of earth’s resources. Mineralization of the area begins here in the states, but is more prominent as you head northward. Those minerals began to be extracted on a commercial basis in the late 19th century, and were pretty much determined to be no longer economically feasible, except for a few mines, after the end of World War II.
Part of that stemed from the fact that the extractable materials had been extracted, others needed to fight the war were no longer needed in the war time quantities, part of it was due to the fact that other minerals such as gold required significant investment both in capital and people to begin again operations after the war, and those resources were just not available. America had moved on economically.
What remains locally however, is still an economy, not solely, but predominately extractive in nature. That being timber, agriculture, non mineral materials, and the fruits thereof. Because of the quantities involved, this now is being done pretty much with local economic resources, except perhaps in timber.
Western culture and capital is really no longer interested in extractive enterprise. We extract natural resources abroad through environmental imperialism, at least until we run out of energy, then that may change. We have evolved into a consumer society, consumers of stuff. However, you really can not become a first class 21st century consumer without access to 21st century credit. God may not know, but financial institutions surely do, that other than getting credit to buy a new pickup truck, you surely are not going to be a true consumer, doing any type of work that requires physical labor and getting dirty every day.
But the question we will look at more in depth as this series continues, is consumerism really a viable economic system that will continue to provide increasing quantities of stuff to global consumers, while really not making them any happier than they were when this whole escapade began?
When you look at world economics you must look at the year 1776. Perhaps because of the American Declaration of Independence and the beginning of our Revolutionary War, but more to the publishing of Adam Smith’s ”Wealth of Nations.” Poor old Adam, he gets all the praise or the criticism for what has happened economically in the world since that time.
Look at the title carefully for a moment. It is really a simple concept. Wealth and Nations, so what! Ponder for a moment, what today might look like, in the whole world, if the title would have been, “Wealth of People.”
When Adam wrote his wonderful book, most of the capital that moved the world was in the hands of wealthy individuals and partnerships. The corporation, especially as it exists in our modern world had not evolved out of the ooze of human greed, corruption, and power. Perhaps the greatest milestone, or millstone on the evolutionary process came in 1886, when the United States Supreme Court, gave corporations person-hood.
Corporations however, are not persons in anyone’s mind or imagination, only in a legal sense, that makes abortion rights look quite benign, then again maybe not. Corporations, as opposed to individuals and partnerships can amass huge sums of capital, pretty much for the stated and legal goal of amassing even more sums of capital for the corporations share holders. The founders of these corporations were and are the rich people that only wanted and want to risk limited amounts of their own wealth, with the hope of amassing even more.
Contrary to what they tell you in little investor Wall Street advertising, this capital rich society of individuals and other corporations, while only 5% of the “people,” control 95 percent of the capital. That isn’t all bad of itself, however it does do a couple of things that don’t bare well for the common people who only have enough access to capital to buy a pickup truck.
First of all is the corporate inbreeding. If you are a person and you don’t want your gene pool affected by peasants, serfs, and other forms of human debris, you only invest, or breed with others of your social status. God knows you don’t want your expensive lap dog, breeding with just a street mutt, or even a working dog, like a German Shepherd, or a Malamute.
More sinister however, is the fact that you can create more capital, ex nihilo, out of nothing. The term is IPO, or Initial Public Offering. I suppose an argument could be made, as I did last week discussing human saving faith, that this capital is really created by ordering the chaos of randomness, into useful products and services. However, in saving faith, this creative process is a gift of the sovereignty of God, not the cleverness of human ingenuity. It definitely is however, a gift to the elite, or the elect, with the ability to determine who prospers and who does not. The Bible declares that God will not share His glory, with anything created, that includes global corporations, who’s demise is prophesied in Revelation 18.
While we are on the subject, the Bible is a book about, people, tribes, and nations, all representations of real people. Corporate status, is not a Biblical distinction, along with race.
In the short term however, what we see with this ability to create capital, is the capability to usurp national sovereignty. Furthermore this capital, really does not become part of the national money supply, until it is actually converted into market stock. It can be swapped or invested just like real money, without most of the governmental oversight. This is similar, to what can be done with gold “in process” before it is smelted into refined or dory ingots. Hence, major corporations don’t pay taxes, they get tax incentives, all in the name of being big and powerful and providing contributions to politicians for a favorable ear.
During the Clinton administration, we heard that the “era of big government is dead.” While with that went the ability to marginally check the growth of corporate greed, we also should welcome the demise of government inefficiency.
That is the line of the socially conservative. As I had said in earlier articles, I consider myself a conservative conservationist. However, this county (Ferry) in NE Washington is so destitute, the financially poorest county in all Washington State, that government offices only operate four days a week. I recently heard that they tried to give the county away, half to Okanagon, the rest to Stevens, so that the local residence would and could expect some reasonable county services. Neither of those counties were at all interested in the deal.
Why is that? As we said in the opening, we live in a world of excess capital, of excess goods, chasing people to buy stuff on credit, because they can’t afford it any other way. What is wrong with this picture, not only in Ferry County, but Seattle, and the utter most regions of the earth? The answer seems obvious, the misallocation of capital.
In the era of big government, and still some of those of more liberal persuasions, the answer was for government to tax wealth and provide for those without the access to capital, and are unable to provide for themselves. What that does however, is to substitute another (government) elite for a corporate elite. Tax capital is still part of that vast ocean of liquidity where only limited amounts of useful work can be done, even with the best of intentions and programs.
What does big government and big business have in common? Big liquidity. It seems logical to me that the best way for either system to work is to begin to invest some of that mammon in people directly. Well that is not quite what I meant to say, to invest directly in human scale enterprise, as equity rather than through loans. Enterprise that one day may contribute to corporate profit coffers, and government programs, but right now will only provide investment capital, to provide the lumber worker, to buy a logging truck instead of a pickup, or for him to provide goods and services in a completely different niche, that he has wanted to do all his life. How about this concept? Invest in a human legacy, rather than provide a job.
What that does is really use the natural hydrologic cycle as the model for financial liquidity. Something so simple that with a little training bankers, corporate executives, and politicians should be able to comprehend. Liquidity evaporates (for a season) from banks and corporate coffers, and rains down on the mountains of NE Washington, or SE Seattle, or any neighborhood or region of this big blue planet. The earth also, is awash with oceans of water, and too little fit to drink. To be suitable for human consumption, ocean water must evaporate and then fall as fresh rainwater, before it can be utilized not only for drinking, but all sorts of human enterprise.
Adam Smith wrote the “Wealth of Nations” because he understood and recognized in his era, that nations were just a large community of people working in some sort of symbiotic union with one another using financial liquidity. In our post modern world, we have lost the concept that people are truly unique, and have value above and beyond being production or consumptive units. This is really first and foremost a religious and philosophical issue.
Our economic system is in trouble because it has no energetic value above and beyond the laws of ocean thermodynamics. Created in the image of God, only human beings have that potential to create and develop complex stuff, like computers, software, airplanes, and rocket ships. Whales, dolphins, gorillas and other primates do not.
Human giftedness creates corporations, even made them people, and raises the standard of most human beings around the world beyond mere subsistence. Big government creates infrastructure and provides a varying degree of guaranteed security, depending upon the locality. All that took place essentially by capital enabling people to do something they were created by God to do. What we are now missing is the human factor as the enabling paradigm and also as a limit to abuses.
The Bible speaks about the parable of the talents and wise investment. Putting financial capital out to draw interest, is looked upon as only slightly above burying it in the ground. Something to contemplate until next week when we touch base again.