HOMESTEAD: All marf (mouth) and nah (no) trousers

["Rodney Shakespeare" <Rodney.Shakespeare1@btopenworld.com>]

Keith,

    Thankyou for replying.

 

  1.  I am getting the strongest impression that Carey (in contrast to Novak, as John admirably points out) understandably wants democratic capitalism within the organisation of a corporation but that is virtually the limit of his thinking.  Put shortly, he has a view of good management practice and little else (except for wanting capital controls to help prevent things like the 1998 East Asian crisis).  Everybody on this elist favours good management practice but most of us go a great deal further than that in our proposals.

 

    Your replies taken with my questions indicate that Carey probably:-

a)     has no policy for genuine wide capital ownership

b)     has no policy for capital ownership for those who do not work in the conventional way

c)     has no understanding of the uses of interest-free money for forms of productive capital investment

 

  2.      I asked you a number of questions one of which concerned the relation of what Carey had to say to COMER policy. 

 

     I asked the question for several reasons one of which is an endeavour to find out what is the basic policy of Comer because you now write frequently for its magazine. 

 

    As far as I know,  COMER has never provided a short, clear summary of what its basic policy is.    If it is basic Bromsgrove (debt-free issuance) policy, it should say so.  If  favours interest-free issuance for public capital projects (as an excellent COMER video said two or three years ago) it should say so but, of course,  Bromsgrove is rigidly opposed to such issuance.   If COMER agrees with interest-issuance for wide ownership, it should say so and similarly say if it disagrees (in the past it has indicated disagreement but without saying what COMER is For)

 

    As far as I can ascertain, COMER policy, as far as it exists,  is a ripe muddle and, despite the undoubted erudition and incisiveness of much of William Krehm's critiques, it is all critique.  There is a London cockney phrase -- COMER is all marf (mouth) and nah (no) trousers.

 

    Needless to say, I am copying this to Comer in the faint hope that -- at last -- we may get a coherent account of basic COMER policy.

 

Rodney Shakespeare.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Keith Wilde

To: homestead@cog.kent.edu

Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 2:43 PM

Subject: Re: HOMESTEAD: Ray Carey's Democratic Capitalism

Rodney, I don't have the time and especially the energy to address all of your questions in detail. Maybe Deb can persuade Mr. Carey to come on line and take some direct questions himself.

 

I can make some general comments which will give you a hint as to probable answers to your questions.

 

1)  This is the perspective of a hands-on manager, a graduate of Harvard Business School who regrets that neither business schools nor academics (political economists and other abstracted intellectuals) have gotten it right.

 

2)  My review really covers only the first half of the book (well, two thirds).  Carey's attack on ultra-capitalism comprises the last third or more.  It is in that part that you will find the most pertinent commentary on the questions that interest you most.

 

3)  It is not a book about monetary policy.  It is only a few comments about money being stable, non-volatile, in ample supply, etc, which reminded me of money reform literature of the 1930's I have been reading over the past couple of years, that prompted me to mention a possible link that Carey may not be aware of.  There was a "Stable Money Association" in the United States in the 1930's that included among its number virtually all of the biggest names in industry plus a lot of domestic bankers.  I have not seen a very complete exposition on its charter or policy preferences, but the names are included in the famous "Senate Document 23" of 1939 by Robert L. Owen that included the inference of "Lincoln's Monetary Policy" by G.G. McGeer.

 

4)  In my review I have emphasized the links that I expected to catch the interest of COG participants and the advocates of Social Credit.

 

5)  Most of your questions are addressed in the last third of the book, the part that I did not cover adequately in the review (space limitations for the printed publication).  But Carey has prepared a 6000-word summary of his principal arguments in a letter he sent to the Cato Institute in advance preparation for an invited presentation to them this past winter.  The publisher of COMER has affirmed that it addresses his own primary concerns.

 

6) Maybe Deb can persuade Mr. Carey to share his "Cato letter" with Homestead participants?

 

Keith

----- Original Message -----

From: Rodney Shakespeare

To: homestead@cog.kent.edu

Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 7:06 AM

Subject: Re: HOMESTEAD: Ray Carey's Democratic Capitalism

Dear Keith,

 

I spent about half an hour dipping into the internet version of the book but had some difficulty in discovering the answer to certain questions, of which the following are but some.

 

Can you answer them for me?

 

1.    Does Carey have any proposal for those who are not employed in the usual sense?

 

2.    What is meant by "money should be a neutral medium of exchange"?

 

3.   a)    Am I right in thinking that Carey views the money supply (which must be "ample, low-cost, non-volatile and patient") as directed solely at capital investment and in no way directed at consumption?

 

    b)    In Carey-land, who issues the money supply?

 

    c)     To whom?

 

    d)  For what purpose?

 

    e)    Is interest attached?

 

    f)     Apart from optimistic exhortation, exactly how does Carey propose to make the money supply ample, low-cost, non-volatile and patient?

 

4.    In what way is Carey saying anything more than that employees should be involved in their corporation,  and should share in the profits, and should have an ESOP  and stock purchase (out of the employee's earnings) etc?

 

5.    Does Carey have anything to say about a corporation sacking its employees (when, for example, it is no longer at the leading edge of technology)?

 

6.    a)    Is there any relation between what Carey is saying and Social Credit?  If so, what is it?

 

        b)     Specifically, what (proposed) financial reforms of the 1930s are being referred to?

 

7.    Is there any relation between what Carey is saying and the position of COMER?  If so, what is it?

 

8.   Is Carey saying anything new?  If so, what?

 

9 How does what Carey is saying differ substantially from, say, cesj's Justice-based management?

 

10.   You state Carey "comes back at the end to essentially the same conclusion as Douglas: the vision will be constrained until the parasitical financial adversary is defeated, and that will take an informed as well as an outraged (or more likely desperate) citizenry."

 

    I am fascinated by this statement because it seems to hint at something which I did not come across in my (admittedly brief) dipping into the internet text.  What are the precise arrangements Carey proposes for defeating the "parasitical financial adversary"?

 

I look forward to your response.

 

Rodney Shakespeare.

 

 

PS    I hope this is not a duplicated email -- I have tried to send it three times because of a computer problem.