Re: MONETARY: Working and Consuming in Utopia: Comments by Wally Klinck

["Wallace M. Klinck" <wmklinck@shaw.ca>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Parker" <danparker@socialcredit.com>
To: <monetaryreform@cog.kent.edu>
Sent: Saturday, October 26, 2002 12:27 AM
Subject: Re: MONETARY: Working and Consuming in Utopia


> Try thinking of job and work as two opposite concepts,
> just for an exercise.
>
> dp

> [Wally Klinck]
Social Credit distinguishes between Work and Leisure activity in the modern
world as the difference between activity engaged in for a monetary income
under someone else's direction ("wage slavery" under present conditions
which operate according to the moral dictum that consumption is only
justified, ultimately, by "work") and activity that is self-chosen--free
from coercion or compulsion from external direction and increasingly free
from the necessity of economic survival.  This involves the theological
dichotomy between the Christian doctrine of Salvation through Unearned Grace
and the opposite doctrine of Salvation through Works.


> .Original Message -----
> From: "Keith Wilde" <kwilde@ca.inter.net>
> To: <monetaryreform@cog.kent.edu>
> Sent: Friday, October 25, 2002 7:29 PM
> Subject: MONETARY: Working and Consuming in Utopia
>
>
> >
> > My comments are prompted by the following exchange between Medaille and
> Ryan:
> >
> > John:   Everything is free?
> >
> > Bill:  At the theoretical limit, yes, in terms of cost to the end user.
> > It's related to the engineering concept of efficiency. We'll never get
> > there, but we can get closer to it than we're at now.

[Wally]
Yes, of course--the theoretical end point of sane and rational economics.
The purpose of production is consumption--not to create work or "jobs"--or
for some ulterior policy of controlling people.   Douglas stated,
essentially, that economics is simply a functional activity of men and women
in the world and the more quickly and efficiently it can be dispensed with
so that mankind can get on with higher spiritual and cultural activities
(leisured), the better.  Is it wrong that about three percent of the U.S.
workforce is now required for agriculture whereas it was about seventy-five
percent during the 1800's?

> >
> > John: Sounds a bit utopian.
> >
> > Bill:  Probably.

[Wally]
Anything but.  Douglas considered the Utopian Idealist as the greatest
menace to society.  (Utopia defined as a preconceived concept or plan for an
imposed "ideal" society.)  Douglas said that we don't know the final purpose
or end of society but that we would most likely reach it's highest form most
easily by the freeing of the individual to exercise his or her choice and
creative initiative .  The group exists for the individual, not the
individual for the group.  We must build up from the individual--not down
from the State.  The Social Credit financial measures are designed to
maximize this freedom increasingly by enhanced economic security.  These
measures include realistic assessment of the nation's real credit
(productive capacity) or ability to deliver goods and services, as, where
and when required and the equation of financial credit (ability to deliver
"money" as, where and when required) with this real credit.  On the
consumption side, the National (or Consumer) Dividend and Compensated Price
would be issued without debt to accomplish this equation.  They are not
unbacked "fiat" money--they are issued as a claim on real consumer goods
waiting to be purchased but for which inadequate purchasing-power exists.
Moreover, they do not accumulate:  they are required to liquidate production
costs and are cancelled as purchasing-power when business repays its bank
loans (or replaces them to capital reserve).  Note also that if the
consumption/production ratio increases, the Social Credit Dividend will
diminish accordingly as will the Compensated Price adjustment to retail
prices--this is bound to physical reality.  And there is nothing Utopian
about seeking increased efficiency of process based upon available
resources, psychological and physical.  This is just realism.
> >
Keith:
> > This seems to confirm my impression that the principal similarity
between
> > social credit and the Kelso-Adler perspective is the vanishing need for
> > "labor" as engineering improves and becomes embodied in tools and other
> > infrastructure.

[Wally]
The diminishing labor/capital ratio is, indeed, the crucial factor in
Douglas's analysis of the existing price-system--but his analysis exposes
the increasingly non-self-liquidating nature of the financial price-system,
resulting from defective financial accountancy in the context of this
changing ratio.
This is in the context of a financial system where practically all money is
issued ultimately for production and as debt.  (consumer debt must be
recovered from future production in a cycle of production removed from the
current cycle)  Consumer debt in Canada has moved from about five percent in
1944 to well over one-hundred percent currently.  This is a fundamental
exponential trend--not an anomaly.

 Keith:
And it is Utopian in the most literal sense, for reduction
> > in the amount of time required to be spent in necessary work was one of
> the
> > primary planning objectives in the society described in Thomas More's
> > fanciful account. They did it, More said, by looking always for improved
> > technique, by maintaining records and assembling data for use in their
> > planning sessions, and by organizing production, distribution and other
> > activities so as to achieve the greatest possible efficiency in the
> > application of "labor" while at the same time aiming always to improve
> > effectiveness in terms of quality.
> >
> > A great deal has happened since the publication of Utopia, which
coincided
> > roughly with the invention of the printing press and the establishment
of
> > double-entry bookkeeping. So much so that both Douglas and Kelso-Adler
> > perceived that work in the traditional sense had become obsolescent was
> > verging on unnecessary. (That idea seems to me to be the main conceptual
> > hurdle that the authors of binary economics have in mind when they speak
> of
> > the necessity of a "paradigm shift".)

[Wally]
Undoubtedly, the resistance to the elimination of work, under external
direction, even in the face of phenomenal increases in production
efficiency, is due to a fear that the freedom of choice (Douglas referred to
it as "immanent sovereignty") that would accompany leisured time will
corrupt mankind (especially one's neighbor!).  Usually those who are
insecure seek to reassure themselves by seeking control over others.
Incidentally, the concept of "World Government" is to Social Credit the
ultimate horror--almost certainly to become the ultimate instrument of
tyranny (note this Dan).  Douglas pointed out that we already have a "world
goverment" in the policy of the existing financial institutions, growing
more powerful and oppressive every day.  I suggest reading Douglas's "The
International Idea" (The New Age: Jan., 1932) and "The Necessity for a
National rather than an International Financial System" (Address to the
Bournemouth Rotary Club:  June 20, 1932).  Faith rather than fear is the
Christian way:  love and charity allow the emancipation of your fellows--not
their control and suppression.

Keith:
  The notion of a workless world came
> > up several times in the Economics of Ownership forum (another window of
> the
> > COG Virtual Think Tank), and always as an outcome to be desired.
> >
> > If readers of this discussion flip over to the Mondragon window,
however,
> > they will find quite a different attitude toward work, imbued as it is
> with
> > sentiments about the dignity of work and its desirability as an
expression
> > of what it means to be human.

[Wally]
There is dignity in constructive self-chosen creative or expressive
activity.  There is not dignity in engaging in externally imposed useless or
destructive action. In the interests of "full-employment"  (an explicitly
Antichristian concept and the cornerstone policy both communism and
facism--totalitarianism, per se) we have no problem in mobilizing mankind in
pursuit of useless activity and in building and unleashing the forces of
destruction to annihilate nations.  It all disributes "incomes"--and most
importantly, helps to keep everone "moral".  Absolute madness!
> >
Keith:
> > The relationship of humans to their tools is an unfinished chapter in
> > binary economics, and it seems likely that an exploration of the issue
is
> > germane to social credit as well.

[Wally]
The beneficial relationship between "humans and their tools" lie in the
establishment of a benign financial accountancy system which allows the best
impulses of humanity to express themselves--to replace the present unsound
system which pits all the elements and institutions of society and nations
at enmity or unnatural competition with each other due to the impossible
Herculean task of liquidating escalating unrepayable debt.  Social Credit
does not seek to remake human nature--but allow the best elements of it to
come forward.  I understand that in the days of Merry England there were
something in the order of 150 holidays per year.  Is this (our current
so-called civilization) progress?

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