EOnation: Re: [MFDiscuss] Toward a General Theory of Socioeconomic Democracy (SeD)

[WesBurt@aol.com]

To:  The Treaty of Noordwijk aan Zee at URL  
       www.treatyofnoordwijkaanzee.com 
    
To:  Citizen's Income (CI) Discussion site at URL
      http://citiinco01.uuhost.uk.uu.net/discussion/index.shtml, 

To:   Friends on several mail lists.

To: James N. Rose
      Ceptual Institute
      http://www.ceptualinstitute.com

Dear James,

Your note of 11/24/2000 to Craig Hubley and myself, Re: [MFDiscuss] 
Toward a General Theory of Socioeconomic Democracy (SeD), was 
most welcome.  

I am sorry that Craig was a bit testy in his response to your inquiry about 
support for your Ceptual Institute. That testiness is probably my fault.  
Craig did not reply to my 06/29/2000 comments on what was missing 
from his model, so he was not too pleased to see the topic raised again, 
five months later.  Dealing with simple topics can be stressful.  

I still remember how stressful it was when I presented the specifications 
for the Automatic Dispatching System to the new product committee at 
GE in 1953, a senior member of the electric utility department boldly 
announced: "If that proposal is ever presented to a GE costumer, 
it will be over my dead body."  Following sound corporate personnel 
policy, with the new product specifications well established, I was 
removed from the new product committee, and the senior member 
went on to sell the new product while I left GE in 1955 to learn how 
the other half lives, while nursing at the public teat by working for five 
defense contractors.  So much for the stress of simple topics.

 Appended below, to this note, for the edification of the innocents on 
several mail lists and web sites, is the full text of Graig's 11/24/2000 
reply to my 06/29/2000 comments on a simple topic.

Now, as to your other question, James, you wrote: 

>> Wes, I just rcvd your [MFDiscuss] post and read it with great interest.
Also followed several of the URL links.

Several things:

I'd like to post your historical analyses and concepts at my Ceptual
Institute website <http://www.ceptualinstitute.com> but would need any and
all Biblical references removed.   Religious tenets may have setup certain
societal relations that ended up playing out as economic performances, but
we're in an era of fine tuning or encouraging the transformation~evolution
of economic/ecologic behaviors and sometimes just the mention of religion -
in any guise - short circuits that process. <<

James, there is nothing I would like better than to pick up some additional 
Atheist votes by removing all Biblical references from my historical analyses 
and concepts.  I am about as religious as Thomas Paine was, and my 
writing calls attention to the "systemic defect of omission" particularly in 
the 
teaching of the Protestant denominations, which is all "wishful thinking and 
pious exhortation" according to a late prominent Protestant Theologian.  The 
Catholics have given this subject lip service since Pope Leo XIII issued 
RERUM NOVARUM in 1891 to ask employers to pay a "family wage."  The 
late Chief Rabbi of The British Empire, Dr. J. H. Hertz, C.H. in his 1936 
book, THE PENTATEUCH and HAFTORAHS, rather confused the order 
and significance of the three Mosaic tithes, but he did tie the first tithe 
to 
the universal education and universal support of Biblical Israel's children.  

One of the most valuable features of Robley George's two books on SeD 
is his extensive inquiry into the role of Zakat in the Muslim teaching.  This 
world contains many Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims, who 
regard the Bible as their favorite history book, and only a relatively few 
Atheists like Bruce Buchanan and Steve Kurtz, whom I met several years 
ago on the Internet.  So I will be ahead of the game if I leave my writing 
as it is.

But having said all that, all of my graphics and text are public knowledge.  
All of it came originally from "on-the job-experience" in the private sector 
of the US economy, so you are perfectly free to help yourself, revise it 
as you think best, and wrap your own words around the primary macro 
model Figure 4, 5, or 6; and around the primary micro model Figure 8b, 
"The US Systemic Defect of Omission."  

I notice that Figure 6 has vanished from the FREE SPEECH site at URL 
http://www.freespeech.org/darves/bert.html, so I will be pleased to send 
you an attached GIF file of Figures 4, 5, or 6 if you can use them by 
deleting the references to tithes, which is just another name for a 10% 
flat personal income tax.  I also notice that the index ot the Citizens 
Income discussion site has been deleted from 06-19-2000 to date.  Even 
so, URL http://citiinco01.uuhost.uk.uu.net/discussion/index.shtml 
is still a convenient source of my notes and links to the ten graphics pages.

I would be pleased to answer any questions, or supply additional material, 
according to your requests, to the best of my ability.

Thanks again, James, for the invitation to contribute to your excellent web 
site at URL http://www.ceptualinstitute.com

Kind regards,

Wesley S. Burt

>>> Begin Graig's 11/24/2000 reply to my 06/29/2000 comments <<<

To answer to Wes' point:
 
> wesburt@aol.com wrote:
> 
> > To: Robley E. George, Director
> >       Center for the Study of Democratic Societies
> >       <A HREF="http://www.centersds.com/";>http://www.centersds.com/</A>
> >...
> > What is missing from your model, Craig, is a conceptual framework,
> > shared by a majority of serious reformers, which is capable of
> > defining the "present condition" of a society and robustly showing
> > how and why the society evolved to its "present condition," rather
> > than to one of the other 200 conditions suffered, or enjoyed, by
> > the 200 nation states documented in the World Bank's 1996
> > ATLAS.  By "present condition" I mean a continuously evolving
> > state of human well-being which may range between an upper
> > limit imposed by the carrying capacity of the ground occupied
> > by the society, and a lower limit imposed by a Thirteenth Tribe
> > (the law givers) that regards the people as a commons to be
> > exploited.

I think the conceptual frameworks that I believe in are the ones of
Marx's late work (after he realized, post Paris Commune, that there
was no way that the existing state infrastructure could be taken over
by the people and used for their purposes) and Thomas Berry's work in
The Great Work.  I do not believe that nation states are comparable in
the way you suggest, Wes.  Each has their own history and geography and
culture.  Urban industrialized states may be comparable in many ways,
and urban regions are almost absolutely identical in terms of their shared
risk profiles.  But that is not to say that they can accrete any ethical
knowledge - Bernard Williams and Amartya Sen are specific in this regard.

It is the body of people, not the body of laws, that I am optimizing.

To "robustly show" how society evolved to its present condition one need
only contemplate standardized spelling and polysemy of imperial English,
plus the Church-Turing thesis' implication of arbitrary symbolic truths.

The fact is, you could give me a Harry Potter novel and I could turn it
into a provable analog for the evolutionary history of the United States.

The kind of comparisons you want to do are pointless.  The terms do not
mean the same thing in each country.  The UN system of National Accounts
is corrupt and applied in order to create maximum niches for bureaucrats:
http://hubley.com/cite/waring-steinem-1999.htm

Frankly, Wes, your economic understanding really needs to be improved.

> > As you said on June 22, Craig: "The goal is to change the values
> > of the existing world financial order." I would add, in such a way
> > that the first world nations will be able to moderate their
> > competitive intensity and the third world nations will be able to
> > increase the well-being of their citizens.  Such a reform must

I think that the mechanism by which values will change will be *fear*,
not any kind of ambition or hope of reward.  Accordingly, there will
be no "moderation" but rather a competition to prove to those who are
generating the fear that the given corporation/nation should not be
the very next target of the rolling boycott/hacktivist/psycho-warfare
effort which will be conducted by consumer, political, and military
arms of the green movement respectively.  If necessary I think there
are individuals within the movement who will raise the ante up to 
the point of assassination, certainly most military intelligence
agencies believe that "eco-terrorists" and "animal rights activists"
constitute the most cogent threat to existing nation state security.

They are right.  One should think of the Greens rather like Sinn Fein
or the PLO at this point, the electoral wing of a military movement...
the most reasonable and rational people to deal with in the enterprise.
Not able to fully control the people within, unable to issue orders to
the equivalent of the IRA or Hamas, but able to cut casualties and find
negotiated solutions.

> > begin with the United States because we are, for a few more
> > decades at least, the largest and most productive economy on
> > the globe.  

By some measures.  By other measures Denmark is more productive,
China is larger.  You are still stuck within the GNP framework... 
a very dangerous measure.

> > Your model, Craig, amounts to a great leap forward, with no regard to
> > how we arrived at our present condition, and no regard to how
> > we might move to a better condition using the same earth, the
> > same people, and the same money system that got us to our
> > "present condition."

I think not.  Read http://hubley.com/green/money.htm 
- it requires merely a fusion of insurance and economic
measures.  Since George Soros views certainty as the
problem, Alan Greenspan views certainty as the solution,
and Greens view humans as the source of certainty, there
is a lot of room for play on the ideological side, but none
on the political or economic.

Wes, you are simply wrong.  You do not understand insurance risk
or economics, nor the concept of uncertainty (uninsurable risk)
in the economic sense.  You may have found the best model that
can be discussed with current neo-classical political economists.
But it is not good enough to work.  Mine is.  I have Soros, Dembo,
Greenspan, Waring, Hayek, Hanson, Acquisti, Church, Turing, von
Neumann, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Adorno to refer to when I say 
that abstractions only exist for purposes of generating *fear*.

Relationships, on the other hand, exist for purposes of action
and demonstration and positive progress.

Form one to one relationships with people who take like action in
like circumstances.  That is the entire purpose of the Green Party.
That is the only solution.  Ape, ethic, and empathy.

> > the capital plant at 90 degrees on Figure 6 and again to

If by "capital plant" you mean the physical (natural, infrastructural)
then how is it that a uniform replenishment algorithm can apply to the
very very different processes of renewing nature and rebuilding human
designed plants?  The whole concept is ignorant of natural capital as
a factor.  Review http://www.natcap.org and tell me if you can use
the same reinvestment algorithms on both.  I think not.

> > replenish the human capital at 270 degrees on Figure 6.  As

If by "human capital" you mean the individual and instructional
(instincts, training) that I differentiated and outlined in 1999
(http://hubley.com/quote/craig-hubley/on/six-styles-of-capital.htm)
then I think you must consider that instructional and imitative
processes work entirely different, again, than creative individual
ones.

The social and financial capital aspects are so inter-related as
to be not worth discussing in the context of this simplistic macro
model.  It was not me but Rebello that called for an end to such
models.

> > you might expect, the owners of the capital plant do it right at
> > 90 degrees, most of the time. But the human assets in the US
> > at 270 degrees have been regarded as a commons since the
> > 1890s and get the "Fallacy of the Commons" treatment
> > (withholding of investment in other people's children) in the
> > amount of about 5% of GDP.

Yes, I understand this completely.  You are right about this one thing.
It is a mistake that was corrected in Europe and is part of the welfare
state or "Mommy State" reforms of the 1920s through 1960s.  There is a
gender bias in viewing such reforms, as witness Gore vs. Bush in 2000...
10% skew to Gore for women, to Bush for men!

But Wes, treating labour as a commodity is a political issue that will
arise automatically out of failing to differentiate social, instructional
and individual capital.  The change you are looking for is psychological.

> > has several determined defenders of the status quo (DDotSQ)
> > lurking on the payroll who are as wealthy, as healthy, as
> > Intelligent, and as powerful as Craig Hubley.

Conspiracy theory?  Well perhaps one of these characters can pay me
something to defend a particular hunk of turf... but I doubt that
I'd be the cheapest.

> > That puts you, Craig, between a rock and a hard place.  If you
> > can refute the global model, then there will be no need to shoot
> > the messenger. 

Wes, I think you and Mr. Rose and Mr. Anatol Rapaport all have fine
models.  But I think you must read some of the work of Thierry Gaudin
(http://2100.org) to understand the role models play in development.

One does not "refute" models.  One ignores them.  If they cannot be
ignored, then they are irrefutable.  You may have noticed that I am
no longer involved in the Global Resource Bank, LETS advocacy, or a
half dozen other schemes.

The fact is, the schemes being proposed by yourself, by John Turmel,
Michael Linton, John Pozzi, and the default of Alan Greenspan, are in
all particulars derived from a humanist standpoint of what is "value".
This is the first error.  The other errors can only be addressed after
the main problem:  http://www.personhood.org

Corporate "personhood" must go, ape "personhood" must replace it.  At
that point we can realistically discuss what constitutes the "person"
and what level of social indoctrination and behaviorism is applicable
to human training.  In effect, like any good medical idea, our models
of economy must undergo primate testing.

> > If the model stands, all of the above mentioned
> > DDotSQs, and yourself, should adopt the model as your own,
> > because it subsumes the "next system," the WB's CDF, and it is
> > nice to be on the winning side.

The WB is moving in the right direction but the process is interminable,
rather like the US recounts.

One consequence of correct economic models is that they make money 
in the current economic system because they exploit differences that 
are not visible to that system.  Political processes determine the timing.
That's why it's important to refuse to share strategy knowledge outside
a political pressure group.  Doing so would extinct the advantages of
advocates, which is to know the next move away from private property...
or towards global long-term liability, e.g. toward product stewardship.

> > People can see the cause of the rat's experience because they
> > are outside the system. They cannot see the cause of their own,
> > until they find a conceptual framework, and make the intellectual
> > effort, that lets them view the whole system from a vantage point
> > outside of the system. This is what drawings, charts, and visual-
> > aids help people to do, that is, to stand outside the system under
> > discussion and look at the whole system in operation. Notice that
> > the system operates, regardless of whether or not we look at it,
> > understand it, neglect it, or change it to our heart's desire.

This is the "whole systems view", and I must completely reject it.
It is nonsense.  Action must proceed in the absense of understanding
and in the absense of decision, at points when the pressure rises to
the intolerable.  At those points, it is a few lonely individuals who
will be dramatizing, fighting, killing, being hauled away limp by the
police, etc.., who will be doing the work, not those in boardrooms.

You do not have the wisdom nor cognition to "look at the whole system
in operation" except in its very smallest aspects - its Lilliputian
dimensions.  Arguments beyond strictly local economies and disputes
are pointless.  If I have not heard of a model in Toronto it is 
because it does not work, for I have been all through Toronto's 
social justice networks and alternative economies for many years,
and there are people here from wherever.  I have built on what I 
have found, but I would not pretend to solve more than local urban
problems with it.  For the global problems, we must visit Mr. Dembo.

http://hubley.com/green/money.htm

Gentlemen, you have the formula.  May the best man win.

Craig Hubley

>>> End Graig's 11/24/2000 reply to my 06/29/2000 comments <<<

(WSB: I have yet to meet an intellectual, living or dead, Canadian or 
otherwise, who would not sooner pass a kidney-stone than support 
a correction of "The US Systemic Defect of Omission."  Such a 
correction would make the US economy more efficient, green, just, 
and powerful, on a per capita basis, than the economy of Denmark 
or Switzerland.  Making the universal education of children, but not 
the universal support of children, a public expense, is a 
mean spirited, conservative, and ineffective public policy 
for reducing the world population of poor people.  WSB)