Re: MONETARY: Usury is a problem, a binary response

["Dan Parker" <danparker@socialcredit.com>]

To begin I'd like to say that I don't feel comfortable cc'ing so many
e-mails, especially when there is a listserv involved.  I don't know who
is interested or following these discussions, but the best way to go about
it would be to join the monetary reform group at COG.  Any future
posts, I'll confine to just this listserv.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Keith Wilde" <kwilde@ca.inter.net>

> Yes, the issue of dominance and of power via wealth is a critical one.
> Furthermore, it seems to have been consistently ignored or put aside by
> Kelso and Adler, and by current authors of binary economics treatises. (I
> have treated the subject at some length in a two-part paper recently
> "shelved" in the COG Library. The title is "Utopian Philosopher of the
> Twentieth Century: Mortimer J. Adler and the Perfecting of Liberal
> Democracy".)

I don't know enough about binary economics to make a 
good judgement, but while you raise some valid points Keith,
I think you may have overstated your case regarding the
'religousity' of binary economics adherents.  That Rodney
Shakespeare's and Norm Kurland's models differ in at 
least one significant matter, and they still work together well,
belies a charge of excessive rigidity, in my opinion.

The psychological approach I did some blueskying on
would seem to be something best presented outside of 
the 'mechanics' of binary economics I think.   Even to
the extent of coming from a different organization that 
might or might not leverage resources with the more 
technical side of the change efforts.    

> Do you mean to imply that Social Credit avoids the problem?

Social credit is designed to decentralize control, and by the 
National Dividend, would greatly diminish the opportunity
for coercion.  The proponents of course are susceptible
to a greater or lesser degree to the human condition via
the selfish gene; and that is exacerbated by our currenct 
economic system.  There were many power struggles, within
and without the Douglasite faction.

Anyways, much food for thought on what might be promising 
avenues to proceed down.

I do have an interesting quote that is in line with your focus
on Utopia, and how social credit, and binary economics,
would tend away from a road to hell paved with good 
intentions.  Here it is

excerpt

When we accuse the world's great financiers of being
merely conscienceless buccaneers, there is a sense
in which we do them less than justice, and at the 
same time fail to recognize the deadly danger which
they embody.  The great financier is in most cases
a great idealist, and sooner or later constructs a
Utopia which it is his constant endeavour to impose
upon the world....society is never in more deadly
danger than when it is committed to the mercies
of the idealist, and particularly the Utopianist.  The
fact is that there is no single Utopia which would
give satisfaction to more than a small percentage of
us, and that what we really demand of existence
is not that we shall be put into somebody else's
Utopia, but that we shall be put into a position to
construct a Utopia of our own.....As the human
personality develops, it becomes more individualized,
and specialized in its outlook, and less and less
amenable to centralized direction.

C.H. Douglas, Social Credit founder.

Regards
Dan Parker

> 
> Keith Wilde
> Canada Pension Plan
> Ottawa
> kwilde@ca.inter.net
> 613 990-8125 
> 
> 
>