Re: MONETARY: Politics and Economics

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

----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Wilde" <kwilde@ca.inter.net>
To: <monetaryreform@cog.kent.edu>
Sent: Friday, October 25, 2002 10:02 AM
Subject: Re: MONETARY: Politics and Economics


> So my principal conjecture is wrong; Dan is not primarily interested in
> building a political faction for monetary reform generally. (I had formed
> this inference from what I judged to be an effort to minimize
disagreements
> and get on with a campaign platform that is sufficiently loose that it
> embraces a large number of particular interests or objectives.)
>
> I get the impression from the words above that you have in mind a
primarily
> physical model, based possibly on energy sources and flows, but building
in
> some mechanisms to illustrate the conversion of physical relationships and
> magnitudes into monetary signals. With this model of "reality" you would
> then be able to plug in various policy alternatives and generate their
> implications.

> Am I getting warmer?

Keith, I am always open-minded about possible ways to proceed,
but my background, from planning and opening a retail store, to
designing web sites, puts me more in the hands-on area than
academia or political maneuvering I think (although all of these
skills would of course be necessary for a successful team).

However, after being repeatedly asked to run in the federal
election, I did so, because Paul Hellyer had a strong monetary reform
plank with his CAP party.  However, I didn't knock on one door,
because I didn't feel that people should be bothered at home about politics.

So an utter failure in this regards (although I did tally the highest votes
for
the five candidates running in the province) --  I had a fire-burning
official
agent, who got me on Canada A.M., pushed me to rise and and make a
statement from the audience when I got un-invited to an all-candidates
meeting -- after my monetary reform stance was illustrated at a previous
meeting -- (and which resulted in enough of an uproar from the audience
that Anne McLellan waved me up to the candidates table to take my
turn).  She was quite nice to me, although I don't know if she heard
where I called her Annie "gets your gun" McLellan (inside joke for Keith-
in that Ms McLellan was justice minister, in charge of the federal
gun registration project).  So I never say never.

But, my primary interest would be in constructing models, and strictly
speaking, it would be the population generating the implications in
a prototype.  Something along the lines of Jacksonville Quality
Indicators for Progress, where researchers hit the coffee shops
and so on, to ask people what they wanted to measure as wealth;
only more work on the other side, of how to generate the results
the population wanted. So the monetary signals would be tied
to the signals from what the people had expressed a desire for.
Some of this would be through a guaranteed income where there
dollars would vote -- but how to manage the 'commons' would
require something more of course.

> Your next comment, involving big failures like Long Term Capital and
> Blumenthal's complaint about the inability of economists to explain
reality
> even after the fact, suggests a reinforcement of the conjecture that you
> believe it possible to build a better model of complex reality, one that
> incorporates more kinds of information than are built into conventional
> economic models or theories of economic behavior.
>
> Then comes a surprise, for rather than incorporating the instinctive
> behaviors of dominance and submission which had prompted my initial
> interest in reacting to your earlier post, you would treat it somewhere
else.
>
> QUOTE>I do think that discussing the psychological implications regarding
> >the current money system would be more usefully carried on in
> >a forum separate from one concentrating on technical matters;UNQUOTE
>
> This suggests to me that your concept of an economy is primarily a
physical
> one, leaving human motivations essentially on the side.

This list is mainly on technical matters, and I would be interested in
discussing the other in a separate forum, if I have time. The human
motivations are integral in such things as Genuine Progress Indicators,
Quality Indicators for Progress, Local Indicators For Excellence and
so on; but I think there is a lot more regarding, why won't the powers
that be let some of this work proceed. Some time ago I made a proposal
along these lines, and through the course of a side conversation on quantum
physics got an offer to study this issue (without having any formal training
yet),
but not even an answer on studying alternative economics.  At that point,
I focused on publicizing money reform.

> If I have interpreted your question about gut feeling correctly, then I
> wonder why or how you link it to the spiritual? I associate gut feel with
> emotion.

Some say it is the heart, some eastern religion, I forget, says it is
the gut; but I think emotion and spirituality can be tied together in
many cases.  For the relationship to truth, it is in my belief that there
is a tendency for all to see the different angles of the same truth.
(and have enough in common to broach many seriously negative
differences), given a societal structure that encourages this, or even
allows it -- as ours does not because of the mathematically driven
shortage of purchasing power.

> >I think we have to also bring the spiritual into this (as per my gut
feeling
> >question above).
>
> I look forward to further corrective and clarification.

I'll probably have more clarification myself, once I've had a chance
to assimilate more binary economics concepts.

Regards
Dan Parker
>
>
> Keith Wilde
> Executive Secretary
> Symposium on Biodiversity and Health
>
> An Initiative of Tropical Conservancy (Charitable Scientific Organization)
> Ottawa, Canada
> URL: http://www.tc-biodiversity.org
>
> To reach me personally:
> kwilde@ca.inter.net
> (613) 990-8125 (office)
> (613) 993-2120 (FAX)
>
>
>
>
>