OWNERSHIP: Summation

["mark reiners" <markreiners@hotmail.com>]

        Though frankly loathe even to dignify it WITH a response, in answering 
the 
Norm Kurland/Deb Olson invitation to the key Binary proponents to submit 
comments in response to the Keith Wilde "Summation" report, the challenge is 
more daunting than one might initially imagine.  This has nothing to do with 
the merit of Mr. Wilde's report. In fact, quite the contrary.  Frankly, in 
the estimation of this former COG participant, by itself, Mr. Wilde's 
"Summation" does not even approach, let alone surpass, any minimal threshold 
of sufficient substance to be worthy of a serious response. Indeed, one 
tends to be stymied between, on the one hand, hardly knowing where to begin, 
and on the other, feeling that it is barely necessary to begin since the 
"Summation" is very nearly entirely expended in discussion of things utterly 
irrelevant to the general subject at hand: economics.

In fact, it provides so little substance of relevance to which to respond 
that one is torn between wanting to vent outrage against the 
misrepresentations and irrelevancies, or to simply walk away from it as not 
worth the bother.  (I would therefore certainly add my voice to the other 
Binary proponents calling for COG/Kent State to demand not merely a 
repudiation of the initial report, but to include both the original and any 
sanitized revision on the website so all may judge the reason for the outcry 
against the original.  I therefore naturally also support other Binary 
proponents in arguing that the responsible action for COG to take with 
respect to Mr. Wilde, is his immediate removal from any role as moderator.)  
To the extent, however, that Mr. Wilde's moderator status (mystifying as it 
may seem in light of such a piece of . . . work) entails that his 
"Summation" will - however unworthy - garner the attention and consideration 
of others whom serious Binary proponents cannot help but have an interest in 
seeing more properly informed, some remedial response is virtually 
compelled.  Further, one must accord Deb Olson, and the oversight personnel 
at COG generally, much due appreciation for the opportunity to do so.
Momentarily setting aside my own spleen at having been subject to a 
reference in Mr. Wilde's essay that blatantly misrepresented a position I 
had expressed in the COG forum last summer, I can honestly say, generally, 
that I can barely imagine any more misguided white-washing of the substance 
of the key Binary positions argued in this forum than what is offered in Mr. 
Wilde's essay.  I can also scarcely imagine anything that would more 
thoroughly serve to provide a sense of justification for my own previous 
decision to walk away from these critics by discontinuing my COG 
participation.
The distinct impression that I was left with from this so called "Summation" 
was that this entire piece could well have been written by Mr. Wilde without 
this forum ever having even existed.  Throughout it he was invoking the same 
utterly irrelevant and lame pre-judgement asserting some wholesale 
Binary-proponent religious and cult allegiance that I heard him variously 
and insistently repeating, like a virtual incantation, from my first 
acquaintance with this forum.  I found it almost comically diversionary 
then, more so now, and would find it insulting if I could take it seriously 
enough to do so.  And this is to say nothing of finding it transparently 
revealing of the extent to which he apparently came into these discussions 
with his mind largely made up and simply determined that this was the 
pronouncement that he was GOING to ultimately issue.

The Binary proponents might well use the very tendency of such a dismissive 
predisposition, as so evident in Mr. Wilde's essay, as the far more accurate 
explanation for why conventional economists have ignored Binary theory.  If 
the genuine paradigmatic and institutional distinctions of Binary economics 
were not perceived as such a threat to the political, economic and academic 
status quo, I can scarcely imagine that it would matter a hoot in Hades 
whether the motivations of Binary proponents for arguing the soundness of 
its principles and prescriptions was related to an interest in justice and 
greater economic efficiency, a sense of aesthetic satisfaction found in the 
Occam's razor beauty of the theories' wonderful simplicity and power, or any 
of a number of other perfectly plausible and more relevant possible 
motivations - as long as the propositions at its core were logically sound - 
as sound as the Binary proponents clearly regard and have argued them to be. 
  We have certainly NOT spent our COG time chanting to Krishna or organizing 
a mass suicide in preparation for an extraterrestrial voyage of escape to 
some mythic planet.  To read Mr. Wilde's reprehensibly irresponsible 
"Summation", one might expect such activity to have been our primary 
occupation and objective.

        On a very much more serious note, I have on occasion suffered some 
retrospective conscience about having allowed my frustration with, to be at 
least somewhat gracious, the evident paradigmatic blindness of the Binary 
critics in this forum, to lead me to deviate from, shall we say, perfect 
gentlemanly academic debating etiquette.  Under the present circumstances - 
including Mr. Wilde's use of my name, reference to, and misrepresentation OF 
points I had made some time ago, and which issue I will return to shortly - 
I feel NO compunction whatever in conceding that retrospective conscience is 
completely superceded with blatant contempt.  I sincerely believe that 
anyone who could write such an irresponsible piece of irrelevant, 
white-washing fluff does not deserve the respect accorded to a genuine 
scholar.  Conversely, any genuine scholar would rightly shudder at the mere 
prospect of being associated with passing off such egregious irrelevancies 
as scholarship.

Moving on to more substantive issues . . . let me simply state outright that 
he grossly misrepresented as an alleged "backing away" from assertions of 
paradigmatic and revolutionary import regarding Binary economics my comments 
intended to clarify that these are NOT, contrary to Mr. Wilde's implicit 
claim, mutually exclusive of also being consistent with correcting flaws 
and/or completing what remains incomplete in existing economic theory.  In 
other words, asserting that Binary economics simply seeks to correct 
fundamental flaws of, and complete what has remained omitted from 
conventional economics, does NOT preclude Binary theory from also being 
paradigmatically distinct and of revolutionary importance.

It is actually a rather accurate measure of the poverty of this "Summation" 
that Mr. Wilde would need to revert to resurrecting the historically 
unsustainable and simple-minded COG-forum effort attempting to cast these as 
if they somehow ARE mutually exclusive.  And this in spite of my 
subsequently pointing out in follow-up response to such nonsense when 
originally submitted, by way of providing one historic precedent among 
numerous others that might well be cited, relativistic and/or quantum 
physics as perfectly germane examples of legitimately revolutionary and 
paradigmatically distinct developments that required no wholesale 
abandonment of previously extant (Newtonian physical) theory.  Pointing out 
that they constituted rather, analogous to the asserted Binary theoretic 
relation to conventional economic theory, modifications of and additions to 
extant theory.  One cannot help but speculate as to whether it is REALLY the 
case that the direct relevance of such precedents, highlighting the vacuity 
of his critique implicitly asserting otherwise, are lost on Mr. Wilde, or 
whether this is simply another example of the often manifest inclination of 
the Binary critics in this forum of managing to simply assure that what they 
don't wish to concede does not ever actually even mentally register with 
them?

A rather compelling list of other examples might also well be cited.  These 
would include the anemic and rather vague resurrection of the 
"falsifiabilty" criteria issue and false claims of categorical absence of 
predictive potential with respect to Binary theory.  The former being 
resurrected even though repeated submissions were offered by me to point out 
the reality of the highly circumscribed relevance of this criteria outside 
the simple realm of mechanistic, Newtonian science - which the social 
sciences, including economics, distinctly are not.  And additionally in 
spite of referencing work of the economist Robert Solo (who not 
insignificantly studied under Professor Popper himself and therefore might 
be presumed to know whereof he speaks regarding falsifiability in economics 
just a tad more convincingly than does Mr. Wilde) indicating the extent to 
which conventional economics ITSELF variously fails the very same criteria.  
I would add that theoretical cases (conveniently ignored or overlooked) 
where even the claim itself specifically fails would be, as but one example, 
the fact that the core Binary proposition of productiveness is perfectly 
subject to empirical falsifiability by an execution of the simple production 
scenarios provided in the Binary literature as explications of the 
principle, and which are available to virtually anyone for testing on an 
infinitely repeatable basis.  On the latter point of predictiveness, 
Professor Ashford importantly points out (in personal correspondence) the 
critical and glaring predictive anomaly of conventional theory: namely, 
productive over-capacity.  If conventional theory were sound it should not 
exist, or certainly not so chronically.  Binary theory predicts quite 
straightforwardly that, in a properly implemented Binary system, it would 
either be vastly diminished or not exist at all.  There are others.

And here, indeed, is another unrecognized characteristic of the Binary 
critics: failing to realize the frequency and extent to which extant 
conventional economics would fail the very criteria that they are so 
determined to insist that Binary theory must leap through the hoops of - 
such as essentially implicitly arguing for an imperative of a one-to-one 
congruence between prices and various indices (Binary productiveness or 
conventional productivity) that does not now, never has and does not even 
need to obtain, generally, and certainly not for the relevant Binary 
positions to be valid.  One cannot help but be reminded of the child's 
tactic of talking loudly enough, while covering their ears, so that they 
just don't hear what they would find unpleasant or inconvenient to hear.  It 
is all rather characteristic of the critics consistently manifest 
inclination to blithely dance right on past compelling Binary arguments or 
rebuttals, as if ignoring them somehow magically defuses them and leaves the 
pre-disposed illogic of their own favored conclusions intact, and/or 
indicative of appearing to be convinced that having the last word on 
something inherently entails having somehow actually logically prevailed.

Additionally, a passing reference was made in Mr. Wilde's "Summation" to 
there being other schemes proposed for expanding equity ownership for which 
there is no need of Binary theory (as if it could simply be taken as 
understood that this would be an advantage).  Well, yes, just as human 
locomotion is possible via any number of alternate uses of our limbs.  We 
could all get around by walking on our hands, our hands and knees, hopping 
about on one leg, rolling head over heels from place to place, etc.  The 
question is not, and never has been, whether such alternatives exist.  The 
question is one of maximal systemic efficacy; the question is whether there 
are legitimate flaws and inadequacies in existing, fundamental theory which 
would have the effect of rendering any implementation of such alternate 
schemes which ignore these flaws and inadequacies vastly diminished in 
ability to achieve and sustain maximal systemic efficacy.  Mr. Wilde and the 
critics appear to believe that theory is superfluous generally; as if extant 
economics is just some entirely willy-nilly, incidental hodge podge of 
policies, institutions and procedures with no theoretical substrate beneath 
them.  I suspect that it requires little belaboring of the point to suggest 
that this is transparently ridiculous on its face.  As such, the issue of 
whether this extant theoretical substrate is flawed or incomplete is hardly 
a trivial one.  It is for this reason that the Binary proponents have been 
as vigorous as they have been in persisting to argue their Binary theoretic 
perspectives.

Finally, if we canvassed the Binary proponents of these exchanges to select 
the handful of COG submissions that they would regard as their most 
economically relevant, and/or logically substantive and important, I doubt 
that ANY genuinely impartial academic worthy of the moniker would find 
anything in them that would lend any justification to Mr. Wilde's, 
diversionary, transparently pre-disposed and repeated allusion to cult 
mentality nonsense.  I alluded to what would be several of my own selections 
in my final regular COG submission of this past March.  Indeed, one 
consolation that the Binary proponents can take away from the frustration 
over Mr. Wilde's "Summation", is precisely recognition that any GENUINELY 
impartial reviewer of these exchanges would come away from them realizing 
that the repeated and utterly irrelevant invocation of these gratuitous and 
misplaced psycho-babble speculations of religious and/or cult motivation by 
Mr. Wilde speaks far more to the inordinate and incongruous pre-dispositions 
of the person issuing them than it remotely serves to accurately 
characterize the substance of the Binary positions that it purports to 
critique and aims to dismiss.

As some evidence for how egregiously unfounded these characterizations are, 
I am including below my critical rebuttal of the conventional Marginal Rate 
of Substitution and Isoquant rationale with which one Binary critic sought 
to de-legitimize as "hogwash" the foundational Binary productiveness 
propositions.  I am also taking this opportunity to attach a copy of my 
essay, THE BINARY ALTERNATIVE AND THE FUTURE OF CAPITALISM, which was 
submitted to the Milken Institute for their annual contest, (also available 
on the www.cesj.org website).  In addition to the inclusion of this response 
to Mr. Wilde's "Summation", I would greatly appreciate having each of these 
included in any final report to The Ford Foundation.  Further, I would 
challenge any Kent State and/or Ford Foundation oversight personnel to find 
in either of them any indication of blind adherence to religious and/or cult 
orientations.  It is my hope that these submissions will effectively 
supplement this far-from-comprehensive response to Mr. Wilde's "Summation", 
and serve to highlight that there is something highly amiss in such 
characterizations, and that any promulgation of them by Mr. Wilde or the 
other Binary critics does no honor to the important objectives that the COG 
forum was initiated to further and would provide no service to the Ford 
Foundation in seeking to clarify whether a major opportunity for historic 
advance is being wrongly inhibited by the continued undue marginalization or 
blatant dismissal of Binary Economics.
Sincerely,
MARK DOUGLAS REINERS

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