_Komivesian Economics

TED talk by Ridley: "Ideas Have Sex"

2012-01-19T22:01:00.039-07:00

No, I do not believe “technology solves everything.”
Rather, I marvel at how intangible and tangible knowledge accumulate with each solution, and how I need not be best practitioner with any part of that knowledge to be among people who respectfully value what I do.
I marvel at truth found in the pencil and in David Ricardo.

Please Watch and Listen to

Matt Ridley as he explains how "Ideas Have Sex"

http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex.html

Then, if you have a few more minutes,

click on the topic, knowledge, in the right column.

No, I do not believ

Komivesian Economics Reinforced: November 11, 2011

2011-11-12T14:03:00.012-07:00

In Paul Krugman's excellent New York Times piece titled "Legends of the Fail" (November 11, 2011) I find reinforcement for two fundamental ideas in Komivesian Economics', Plum Local IV.

(1) We do, indeed, handicap poor countries when we make them borrow in somebody else's currency.

Komivesian Economics: "Poor countries ... must repay their debt using one of the world's hard currencies ... Too often, some lucky citizens in the debtor nations manage to hoard hard currency that comes in through loans, while their governments hoard only the debt. Such problems hobble government and exacerbate the dichotomy between rich and poor in debtor nations, but damage is not restricted to debtors. The world suffers waste." and much more.

Krugman:

"What has happened, it turns out, is that by going on the euro, Spain and Italy in effect reduced themselves to the status of third-world countries that have to borrow in someone else’s currency, with all the loss of flexibility that implies."

(2) Money is a magic invention that makes it easier for a country to invest well in itself and its citizens.

Komivesian Economics: This idea appears throughout Plum Local IV, but it starts with "A Better Money Legend" and a mythical country saving itself through the near-miracle of money.

Krugman:

"... since euro-area countries can’t print money even in an emergency, they’re subject to funding disruptions in a way that nations that kept their own currencies aren’t — and the result is what you see right now. America, which borrows in dollars, doesn’t have that problem."

Occupy: links to some old words by me, and brilliant words from others.

2011-11-07T11:00:00.005-07:00

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As more arrive each day to Occupy Wall Street and other places symbolic of the error and immorality of our economic ways, my first supportive step is to find words. I looked through my old poetry to find some that the occupiers have refreshed for me.

I found many, and I added some pleas ( ¡ please ! ).
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If I were to think Occupy Wall Street were disorganized, I only need check its unofficial web site to prove myself wrong.
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Then, three articulate people help me confront the image
of "a movement without objectives."
Read
Gary Younge of The Guardian: "it's just great to be moving."
Listen
to Michael Moore talk of the birth of a movement
Read and Listen
to Bill Moyers' broad perspective in his keynote address to Public Citizen

Robert Reich: Washington is About to Make the Jobs Crisis Worse

2011-07-26T13:21:00.005-06:00

Robert Reich

--alas, sadly--

says it well.. .

"Vicious Cycles: Why Washington is About to Make the Jobs Crisis Worse"

in Nation of Change, July 26, 2011

Read it and prepare to weep.
Or, see it.

"The Truth About The Economy In 2 Minutes"

Balance Our Federal Budget in One-easy Step

2011-06-10T08:11:00.030-06:00

Balance Our Federal Budget
in One-easy Step
. .

But Please Do Not Try This

By Bob Komives

The Tea Party and the Obama party can force a balanced federal budget with one step. (Well, it would take two quick votes and one signature.) They must simply decree that the federal government of U.S. America will abandon the dollar and do all its business with the Euro. Or, if that zone won't have us, with the Yen then--or, the Pound Sterling, or the Norwegian Krone. If we abandon our sovereign currency we have no choice but balance our national budget! Ask Greece; ask Ireland; ask Spain; ask California.

Yes, California, one of the biggest economies in the world, it must come begging for help to the dollar-zone (the states united in America) when it suffers a devastating earthquake or wild fire. Why?
Simply because the minting and printing of the CaliforYen is prohibited by the state's membership in the dollar-zone federation. California cannot do as Spain, Greece, and Ireland used to do: finance its own recovery with its own currency and let the world markets decide if that sovereign currency should then rise or fall in value. Don't feel sorry for California; feel sorry for booming North Dakota. If it weren't subservient to the dollar, if it had launched NordBucks a decade or so ago, the state's NordBuck would likely be leaving the dollar in its monetary dust.

Am I serious. Well, I do dislike the idea. I don't want to abandon the dollar as long as there is hope for us as a nation. But, yes, I am serious in this sense: if you have in mind that the federal government should balance its budget the way you and I balance our checkbooks, or the way our towns, cities, states, and factories balance their budgets, then we must abandon the sovereign dollar. All other options, the ones on the table, are at best fiction, at worst pontificating.

Money is one of the most fascinating and magical inventions of humankind. If you are looking for a parallel to sovereign currency budgeting in your home and family budget, don't look at your check book and bank balance. Your check book and bank balance better parallel the accounting of California, Omaha, General Electric, and budget-by-Euro Ireland. Look instead at the way you and your family use your time, focus your effort, hone your skills, manage your other non-money resources. You do budget these. You literally "spend" your time. You recognize that the way you spend your time and other non-monetary resources has much to say about your family's welfare and its future. We can call this your family's internal budget. Your family does not have to earn nor buy these resources from the large, outside, market economy. True, some of them you once earned or purchased in the outside, but long since they are yours.

Every family has an internal, non-dollar budget; some families handle these budgets better than others. Also, some families are just luckier than others--an oil well gushes on this farm while a chronic disease strikes in that house. Yet, we intuitively recognize that our internal budgets can amplify the benefits of our good fortune and dampen effects of our misfortune.

There are limits to what a family can do with its non-dollar assets--there is only so much time in a day, there are only so many projects that fit into one garage. However, while "balanced" is not a terrible term to describe good internal budgeting; "wise" is far better. It is wisdom that we must muster to figure out how best to allocate our non-money resources. For our allocation is far less a matter of "what we can afford" than a question of "what is a wise." Is it wise this evening to spend an hour to help your child with her homework? This is not an hour of revenue; it is not an hour that you earned nor bought from the outside world. It is your free hour to invest as you wish. You won't fall into some known, calculable deficit, whatever your decision. You must judge whether it is wise for you and your daughter to invest this time together this evening. Here, then, is the true parallel between federal budgeting and personal finance. The miracle of money (forgive my hyperbole) is that it provides an efficient, crafty way for a nation to invest internally as a family budgets internally. The size and character of both budgets is bounded by wisdom, not revenue.

Wisdom, of course, is hard to come by. Some well-intentioned and well-planned investments prove unwise. However, sovereign currency has a built in way to handle this problem. Everybody who has one dollar to spend will feel a bit of a pinch as its purchasing power goes down. Those with two dollars will feel the pinch doubly. That's about as equitable an outcome as we can hope for--more equitable and far simpler than the daunting choices faced by California and Spain. No matter how these governments decide to spread the pain of their imbalances among their citizens, some will feel too much, some too little.

The built-in capacity of sovereign currency to disperse pain and benefit from its nation's investments is also the best built-in, knock-on-forehead call for wisdom that we can hope for.

You may have trouble seeing the parallel between federal budgeting and a family's internal budgeting because we have a national fiscal apparatus that seems to have all the right parts for non-internal, money accounting: income, debt, expenditures. These seem to be the same parts that mesh tightly and enable you to balance your checkbook and enable California, Ireland, and Omaha to put hard and fast figures around what they can afford to do next year. These federal fiscal parts do indeed mimic the parts that enable a family to decide what it can do on the outside, the money-side, next year. Yet, for a caretaker of a sovereign currency, these parts dance with and around each other. I like to say they merely dance, you might prefer to say they are just meshing around. Whatever, history shows that the results can be beautiful.

I know nobody who tries to put hard and fast figures around how much effort a family can expend in academic study, repairing leaky faucets, reducing weeds in the yard. This too is a dance that will make hard and fast budget figures look silly. Let's call the silliness, bean counting. Despite the silliness, my small-sample list of possible items in a family's internal budget includes investments quite worthy of consideration. It is equally silly to put hard and fast figures around how many dollars U.S. America can bring into existence and then spend on repairing our bridges, upgrading the skills of our flight controllers, fighting an epidemic, treating the sick, and supporting scientific research--important investments for our nation to consider.

Most of us, perhaps all of us, have our favorite examples of when the United States "broke the bank" in order to invest far beyond its apparent means in something that either made the great nation greater or saved it from disaster. Ponder your examples long enough to see that they demonstrate what a wise nation does with its sovereign currency.

What about good and evil? It seems nobody can debate the federal budget without plenty of good-and-evil talk. Take me for example. I consider it deeply immoral for politicians to reduce taxes on the rich so they have an argument to reduce benefits for the poor. I feel embarrassed that such selfishness and hypocrisy thrive in my country. Yet, my moral outrage and the umbrage of those I accuse obscure the problem. The more dust we kick at each other the more we close our eyes to anything but bean counting. Bean counting gives us numbers with which we can better insult. I'm not going to give up my view that there are a lot of immoral hypocrites involved in this debate. However, here I want to open eyes rather than kick dust into them. It is past time for a majority of us to see we need to revert our attention toward wise national investment--toward efforts that are even better than historical investments that have defied bean-counting deficits and enabled our nation to provide most of its citizens with security, comfort, and welfare.

In sum. To any and all who believe themselves to be serious advocates of lowering the balance-boom on the federal budget, I say get truly serious; advocate that we abandon the dollar. But, that's silly. I'd far rather we all advocate wisdom.
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Deficit Fowl are Uncaring Hens Cold-roosting on State and Local Government

2011-05-23T19:34:00.022-06:00

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Deficit Fowl are Uncaring Hens

Cold-roosting on State and Local Government

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Sadly,

It has been foretold and written by the wise among us.
It was lived in 1937.
Our Few Recovery Chicks Can Still Die in the Nest, Abandoned by Uncaring Hens.

Hens infected with the cut-government-at-all-costs plague do not listen, do not care, do not remember.
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While state and local governments have struggled well in our behalf, they have needed federal help because state and local revenue will recover last from our economic woe.

Now,
Help ending, Income stream a trickle, Our state and local governments must lay off 3/4 of a million workers in 2011 and 2012, and they can no longer afford to repair deteriorated infrastructure by offering jobs to private contractors.

Please read this Reuters news piece: the sad story as told in a report by UBS Investment Research

Finance is not Econcomics: Fundamental Differences

2011-05-14T16:36:00.017-06:00

it pays to know much about both

if you remember this:

...

Finance is not Econcomics

Fundamental Differences

Economics has always existed in human society.

It encompasses the dynamics in which wealth is created, maintained and lost by human endeavor; and also includes the theory and practice built on understanding these dynamics.

Economics is kin to ecology which encompasses the broader dynamics of wealth and diversity in the biosphere.

Thus:

While its laws and theories apply where there are money and other instruments of finance, economics is not dependent upon them.

It exists even if we are ignorant of its existence--in the same sense that physics existed before humankind recognized it and gave it a name.

Failure to act in accordance with the laws of economics is unfortunate, even tragic, but rarely immoral.

Finance is a conscious creation of humankind.

It emerged in societies where money or money-like tokens came to be exchanged as if they were real wealth. These tokens have little or no intrinsic value. A euro, a corporate stock certificate, an I.O.U are virtually worthless pieces of paper unless their possessor knows they can be exchanged for a chunk of society’s wealth. Even to stamp them from a precious metal is a curious waste of time and energy unless they can be exchanged for something more valuable.

Finance encompasses the dynamics, institutions, customs and rules that describe and control such exchanges.

While finance cannot escape the laws of economics in the long run, it can violate them in the short run because it is an imperfect human construct.

Thus:

Like our legal systems, finance exists only if we are aware of its existence and if we have a pact with others to behave according to a set of its rules.

Finance will fail society where its rules and instruments are poorly constructed and managed; where there is immoral, criminal, pact-defying bad faith; and when its dynamics violate underlying laws of economics.

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If this leaves you in a quandary, I refer you to a poem:
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It's About Investment, Dammit!

2011-03-21T10:08:00.023-06:00

It's About Investment, Dammit!

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Reason Four

Why Today's Balanced Budget Discussions Are Ridiculous

By Bob Komives

but first

let me give you Reason 4a. 

Or, I should say, let Paul Krugman give you Reason 4a. He points to facts that march boldly but unrecognized through the daily news. They show why austerity-now does not work, and worse, causes countries to fail. In other words, my words, why today's balanced budget discussions with their emphasis on not-spending rather than investment are at best ridiculous and and at worst devastatingly harmful.

Here's Krugman (March 24, 2011) and (April 1, 2011). 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
now my somewhat poetic approach

Partners in Economic Development

Where is the evidence
that scarcity models work?
Where is the evidence

that doing the right thing costs too much

that doing the wrong thing is affordable

that nations who follow these models become rich?

Wealth is our preoccupation

--not our invention.

We do not create economic development

--we are its partner.

Economic development is an organized invasion

--life invades the universe.

Let us strive to be knowledgeable partner

--practice stewardship and equity

--learn

--share what we learn

--organize ourselves to foster the biosphere.

Yes,
we must know that wealth can disappear

--species, ecosystems, languages and cultures become extinct.
We must guard against the disappearance of life itself

--for only in life does this sphere know to be wealthy.
Prevent the destruction of our species

--for we can learn as we survive our poor judgment.
Stop exploiting one another

--together we partake of more wealth more quickly.
Guard against the natural and man-brought disaster

--that destroys knowledge

--leaving machines that no one can use

--books no one can read

--science no one can remember.

Yes,
we must know that within abundance there is scarcity,
yet within simplistic, dogmatic models of scarcity lie falsehoods.
Within these falsehoods lie too many lessons in fiscal irresponsibility:

Do not provide for the welfare of the many

--because resources for the few are scarce.

Do not clean and protect scarce resources

--because, well, our resources are scarce.

Yes,
we must know that between the cataclysms

(brought by meteor, plate, and super volcano)

life prospers

abundance patiently overwhelms scarcities

abundant biosphere enables civilization.
Within biosphere and civilization lie truths.
Within these truths lie our lessons in fiscal responsibility:

          Well-being requires investment.
          Good investment nourishes and improves life.
          Poor investment risks disaster.

There is no evidence

that doing the right thing costs too much,

that doing the wrong thing is affordable?

Evident, indeed, is knowledge of abundance
embedded by life into biosphere and civilization.

As better we know this
as better we become

partners in economic development.

co-posted on Komivesian Poetics

... the word "tax" is not always bad. ...

2011-03-12T22:18:00.003-07:00

... the word "tax" is not always bad.

I suggest you read this opionion piece in the Fort Collins Coloradoan of March 9, 2011
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Moderates need place at table to resolve impasse

They are the words of John Knezovich who calls himself a moderate Republican.
I'm not sure if John would agree, but I would call this well-written essay a plea for sanity and responsibility. Nearing the end of his plea Knezovich says simply this:

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Most urgently, Republicans need to grasp that the word "tax" is not always bad. There are many governmental programs and services which benefit all of society. Where would we be without public safety, roads, schools, libraries, hospitals and social services?

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Yes, taxes are integral to civilization, and I dare say: "civility."
Thanks, John. I want to spread your word; then we can fight well over the details!

Capture Broadly

2011-02-25T10:52:00.004-07:00

Capture Broadly

Bob Komives

Headnote: Solidarity is but

conscious expression

of inter-dependence

for inter-prosperity.

Capture broadly--
   as leaf captures sun,
      mill captures wind,
         and gatherer gathers grain.
Distribute deeply--
   as leaf sends oxygen,
      mill delivers flour,
         and parent feeds child
            that teacher educates.
Recirculate densely--
   as we bake for our miller,
      who rewards our harvester,
         who buries our excess
               to reward the roots
                  who will feed new leaves.
                     to nourish grains of life.

Footnote: Community is but

subconscious expression

of inter-dependence

for inter-prosperity.

Bob Komives :: Fort Collins © 2007 :: Capture Broadly ::0703
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co-posted on Komivesian Poetics

To Meet a Union Teacher

2011-02-24T07:27:00.009-07:00

To Meet a Union Teacher

To meet thousands of hard-nosed people of business,

meet Wisconsin's farmers

and its small-town entrepreneurs.

To meet a union teacher,

let farmer or entrepreneur

introduce you to spouse or child.

Law of Anklets and Chain

2011-02-23T08:41:00.019-07:00

Law of Anklets and Chain

Everywhere on earth
(Wisconsin included)
Government is unsainted.
Unions are unsainted.

    business,
    industry,
    marketplace and mall,
    friends and neighbors,
    poets, pagans, priests and preachers,
    farmers, foresters and fishers,
    up-staters,
    down-staters,
    high rollers and good waiters,
    Peter, Paula, Grace and Paul:

Unsainted.

With anklets aplenty but only one chain,
to hell with one
is to hell with us all.

co-posted on Komivesian Poetics

Simile Blindness and Metaphor Mindlessness

2011-02-18T21:30:00.007-07:00

Simile Blindness
and
Metaphor Mindlessness

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Reason Three

Why Today's Balanced Budget Discussions Are Ridiculous

By Bob Komives

Joseph Campbell liked to point out how fundamentalists of many stripes mistakenly take metaphors as literal, thereby losing the meaning and value of the metaphor. We know enough about the universe to know that neither god nor man could literally ascend to heaven; there is no literal place out there, up there, to which to ascend. Yet, that literal image remains popular. Campbell said to Bill Moyers:

"If you think that the metaphor is itself the reference, it would be like going to a restaurant, asking for the menu, seeing beefsteak written there, and starting to eat the menu."

Today's balanced-budget fundamentalists have that problem. They seem to like the folksiness of metaphor and simile:

"Managing a state budget is like running a business. I managed a business, elect me, trust me."

"Balancing the federal budget is like balancing a state budget; I balanced a state budget, elect me, trust me."

"Running an unbalanced federal budget is bankruptcy incarnate. I haven't gone bankrupt; elect me; trust me."

I invented these quotes, but I believe neither you nor I would be surprised to hear them. They fit with today's politi-conomy speech.

The problem? The statements are void of meaning and value both literally and metaphorically.

No matter how good and bad have been past governors of our states united and presidents of our United States, they have been remarkably consistent in keeping their governments out of bankruptcy. We do have crises; we've been there before; these gentlemen and ladies will avoid bankruptcy again. Businesses, however, go bankrupt by the bushel-basketful. Let us hope that the government-is-like-a-business simile continues to be false. I believe Abraham Lincoln would agree. After going bankrupt in a tiny private enterprise he managed to get an important public job and finance, reluctantly, an enormous war.
As to the comparison between state and federal budgets, even if you don't agree with my two dozen explanations elsewhere on this blog of the underlying futility of federal budget balancing, I hope you can agree that the state-federal comparison is lame. If that is not obvious to you, please, humor me and try to answer these oddball questions:

What if we turned the US Treasury over to California, and made the Federal Reserve Bank become the California Central Bank?

or,

What would happen if we and our governments chose coupons for iTunes to be our currency and our valuator of debt? How about financing with IOUs for Slinky the toy?

These are not perfect questions, but they can be instructive thought exercises--exercises that make it obvious that we must not equate federal budgeting with that of state and local governments.

If everybody were to budget in the US America with cal-bucks, everybody would include our president and congress. Our national government would feel the roll, pitch and yaw of the old California Pinchmanship? The state of California, however, would find itself alone sailing a radically different financial ship, the Money Maker? (Pardon the ship metaphor; please don't take it literally.)

As to the coupons, either Apple inc or Poof Products inc. would find itself alone at the helm of Money Maker.

Do you see that he-she-it who creates and cartakes our currency does not and cannot budget as the rest of us budget? Making money would mean one thing to the millions of us who do our business in Slinky coupons, but something entirely different to Poof which has exclusive right and capacity produce Slinky and its coupons.

I admit that the potentials for stupidity and corruption exist among those who caretake a currency no less than among those who simply use currency. Both national and sub-national governments have proven they can take their citizens downward rather than upward. If that dismal outcome were the goal, then spreading folksy-but-false metaphor and simile is a good step one.

Step two, take them literally.

Planet Money and the Invention of Money

2011-01-20T16:58:00.016-07:00

Thursday, January 20, 2011 

Yesterday I sent a second of two emails to Planet Money giving my thoughts and applause to their presentation on the Invention of Money on NPR's This American Life: Sunday, January 7.  I highly recommend you listen to it and contemplate how it changes or adds to your view of money. I admire how articulate and concise they are in describing money's strangely magical qualities. They dwell on the truth that money is trust, a powerful and apt description. Alas, I regret that this may be the first time that the word trust appears in this blog. Thanks, Planet Money. Otherwise, I find support in their words--and much food for further thought. Listen, then read my response:

=====================================================

To the Inhabitants of Planet Money

This email is a follow-up to one I wrote on January 11^th after listening to your piece on the invention of money on This American Life. As the week went on I continued to attempt to connect dots in your insightful presentation. I share below where that attempt leads me.

Your presentation on the invention of money is explicit regarding the essential trust in-money, but from your presentation I also infer that there is a second side to the coins of trust—trust in self. When I lose confidence in my ability to invest or buy well, I hoard my money. When a bank loses confidence in its ability to invest my money well, it hoards money. When our national government loses confidence in its ability to invest, it concentrates on balancing a shrinking budget rather than on guiding investment of our resources toward a brighter future. This is not only recipe for depression, but also for a deflationary spiral. I search vainly for a perfect super-hero analogy. When the Fed sheds its cloak of meekness and swaggers forth she is our self-trust of last resort—trying to restore trust not only in our currency but also in ourselves. Unfortunately, since we are villain as well as victim, many of us condemn our rescuer rather than welcome her as our hero.
I connect your description of the banking system’s magical creation of money with your description of the brash, unprecedented behavior of today’s Fed. Even if the arithmetic of the once-meek Fed’s new boldness is unprecedented, we should not be startled unless the dollars resulting from the Fed’s boldness more than equal the banking system’s precedented retreat from creating money.
Not in your presentation, but an interesting step from your answers to the question, “what is money?”: What then are taxes of money? (I fold the Fed into “government” here) Since to trust our money requires that we extend trust to the governmental structure that caretakes our money, what does it mean to extend some of the trust a second time and call it tax revenue in the caretaker’s budget? I have trouble believing it means much of value.
Stuck in a day-to-day world where we seem to have to balance our personal budgets, our trust in the loans and certificates issued by our local bank and also our trust in the currency of our national government give us ways to gamble on the promise of growth in the larger economy. It seems we do want to believe in magic (or is it voodoo economics?). Perhaps, another good metaphor: Money is simply the older and better lottery ticket.

Those are my thoughts,

Thanks for listening,

Bob Komives

p.s.

to simplify my archive, I copy here my earlier comment on the “Invention of Money.”

Today, I downloaded and listened to the mp3 of the "Invention of Money" piece that I missed on Sunday. I appreciated the approach, the sense of wonder, and the clarity of explanation of this confusing, wonderful invention, Money.
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I am interested in the creative approach in Brazil to defeat Hyper-inflation and am trying to compare it with Jeffrey Sach's also successful approach in Bolivia (The End of Poverty, page 92 ...). The cure was almost instant when Bolivia eliminated a flaw built into the market for oil and gasoline--less a subtle trick to the public mind than a sledge hammer to the bowls. Yet, I assume there are experts who can articulate the common thread (or lack thereof) underlying the two solutions. I mention this in hopes that you might venture that way again.
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When I had problems with what I had been told about why we have money, I composed a Better Money Legend (link if interested), which I find satisfying even if I do not attempt to defend it with historical fact. Your presentation on "Invention ..." makes me feel even better about my legend. My legend holds that, similar to your brilliant Brazilian drinking buddies, a selfish-but-wise ruler tricked her people into success by substituting trust for half the gold that should be in her coins.
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Thanks, for an insightful, entertaining, thought-provoking show.

Constitution as Implied versus Constitution as Written

2010-12-24T16:24:00.012-07:00

Constitution as Implied versus Constitution as Written

. .

Reason Two

Why Today's Balanced Budget Discussions Are Ridiculous

A response to a Cal Thomas holiday column in which I found no holiday spirit.

By Bob Komives, December 24, 2010

The holiday season, for many, is a time when we treat our neighbors of different political persuasion as, well, neighbors. It is nice to foster peace for a few days so that in the new year we can come out fighting without killing each other. Here it is December 24, 2010; as hard as I try, in my today's newspaper I can't ignore a column by Cal Thomas . He writes not a single phrase in the holiday spirit. Rather, he lambastes his version of "liberal Democrats" and his version of "'moderate' GOP senators" who would compromise with the liberals. In the classic of first definitions, it appears he does not like that these two groups managed a rare occasion to have intercourse. In my ample spirit of holiday charity I smiled and momentarily ignored Thomas’s lack of same. After all, his opinion was already a few days old by the time my newspaper chose to publish it. I could imagine that by the time I read this, he was indeed feeling more charitable toward those who refuse to listen to him. Unfortunately, I read on. He quotes Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma as saying,

"We are water-boarding the next generation with debt."

Gruesome image, but perhaps Coburn too spoke before getting into the holiday spirit. Perhaps he had already asked for and received holiday forgiveness from his open-hearted constituents.

Then I came to the reason why I write. Further on, Cal Thomas chooses to imply that his hatred of federal debt is in sacred agreement with the Constitution:

"Early next month, 108 new members of Congress will take the oath of office and swear to uphold the Constitution. The question is: which Constitution? Will it be the one written by the Founders, which has sustained us for two centuries? Or, will it be the one that is being ripped to shreds by activist courts and out-of-control legislators who have concluded that grand document means only what they and the judges decide it means? In families that overspend and are weighed down with debt, there often comes a ‘we can’t go on like this’ epiphany followed by a decision to reduce spending and be content with less. Not so with our government."

Notice, while he implies that debt and unbalanced budgets defy the Constitution, he does not directly say so. Perhaps he assumes that the ignorant reader will extract that meaning without his having to lie. In a later posting, I will take up the absurdity of comparing national budgets with family budgets, but for now I only wish to point out why Cal Thomas knows he had to use patriotic innuendo in order to avoid a lie. He knows that the Constitution repeatedly supports and even mandates federal debt.

This should be obvious by the mere fact that over the years die-hard bean counters have called for a constitutional amendment to require federal budget balancing. We need not amend the constitution unless it does not now say what we want it to say.

What does it say?

Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have the Power To lay and collect Taxes ..., to pay the Debts ...To borrow Money on the credit of the United States."

OK, Founders of our nation made it clear that Congress can pay debt, because, presumably there was and would continue to be debt. They also tell us there will be a need to borrow and a need for money.

Article VI: "All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation."

Founders realized that the Confederation had gotten into problems by not having enough fiscal power. To decline to pay this debt would essentially be a declaration of national bankruptcy. Our Founders were not debt shy. Not long after getting the nation going with its new constitution, as if to underline the point for us, Hamilton and Jefferson agreed to assume the debt of the several states as well.

Less anybody doubt our need for national debt and a willingness to eventually pay it, Congress found it necessary to make clear that it would stand behind the huge debt left from fighting the Civil War--at least the debt accrued by the winners.

Amendment XIV: "The validity of public debt of the United States authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection of rebellion, shall not be questioned."

Oops, word to us from those who governed us in the late 19th century would seem to be: do not question our obligations to cover Social Security and indebtedness to veterans. Do not talk of bankruptcy; bankruptcy is not an option.

Thus, let us find holiday charity toward Cal Thomas when he says he would not have us perpetuate "the cycle of debt and spending that contributed to America’s current economic difficulties." Fair enough, Cal, I’m all for learning from and avoiding mistakes. However, please do listen to the Founders, as well as to the daughters, sons and grandchildren who took their place. Do perpetuate that cycle of debt and spending that contributes to our great nation--the extensive debt and wise spending anticipated in the Constitution. Which Constitution? The one written by the Founders, which has sustained us for two centuries?

Sovereignty versus the Zealots for Ignore-ance . .

2010-12-18T17:14:00.030-07:00

Sovereignty versus the Zealots for Ignore-ance
. .
Reason One

Why Today's Balanced Budget Discussions Are Ridiculous
..
The core value of money
the reason why this clever invention has survived the ages:

money enables wise national governments to operate
on budgets that look unbalanced when scrutinized by bean counters.

By Bob Komives

. .

The only way to force bean counting to a balanced federal budget in the United States of America is to give up the dollar and fund our national government with euros, yen, pesos, diamonds, Honda motorcycles, !beans!, or some other item the federal government does not produce.

. .

Even good economies need to be bailed out when they don't mint and print their own money. If this were not true, there would be no need for federal disaster assistance. The reason why the federal government passes large sums of money to states in crisis is that it can. That’s what governments with sovereign currency can do and states and countries without sovereign currencies cannot do. That’s what the Euro Zone can do as an entity, but which its members cannot do as proud-now-humbled countries.

. .
To strap our nation to a bean-counter version of balanced budget it will be necessary to rob the nation of its sovereign currency—and thereby, much of its sovereignty. Sadly, for those who wish it otherwise, this is the only honest way to do it. The debate over how to balance federal dollars-out with federal dollars-in makes as little sense as a debate over how to navigate our flat earth. To participate, one must be a faithful zealot for ignore-ance. For the core value of money, and the reason why this clever invention has survived the ages, is that money enables wise national governments to operate on budgets that look unbalanced when scrutinized by bean counters.

. .

Wikipedia says California has the 8th largest economy in the world. The "G7" powerful economies, it would seem, should let California in and call itself the "G8." Yet, California is a wimp when it comes to dealing with natural disasters of the scale that most wealthy countries could absorb without calling for significant outside help. California has asked for and received thirteen declarations of Major Disaster by the federal government in this young century alone. These declarations brought national budget money into the state to deal with the aftermath of the events. If you and I did not notice, it's because we weren't victims, we didn't pay attention, and perhaps because none of the disasters were of a scale that would legitimately shock the world into action.
. .
They were disasters such as wildfires, mudslides, flooding from a broken levee, and, yes, a couple of earthquakes. These were disastrous events to many people and to some of the natural and man-made resources of California. However, why did California need a targeted bail-out by the federal government to deal with the aftermath? Certainly there are countries who don't have one of the top eight economies in the world that could have suffered some of these events, struggled temporarily through to recovery, and gone on to an economic resurgence with little or no outside help. What's the difference?
. .
The difference is money—specifically, home-grown, sovereign currency. California, like the Euro-zone countries, must budget using somebody else's currency. Paul Krugman, in a piece well-titled "Spanish Prisoner," explains the difference by comparing the situation in Spain to that of the United States. There are more similarities than differences in how the two economies entered this depression but they face huge differences in their means to foster recovery.

92. Let It Comfort Humankind.

2010-04-21T12:34:00.002-06:00

Plum Local IV

==========================

======================

Let It Comfort Humankind.
Bob Komives
::

We know.
We know we know the answers.
What to do.
How.
And why.
We know we know.
The false.
The true.
The tried.
Few
are the questions,
and fewer
the answers we cannot grasp.
And at these few
we know to wonder.
Indeed, this is life gifted full:
to know what we know,
yet know how to wonder,
Yet, fuller still in our discovery:
they know,
and they wonder too.

We
and they.
Know
and wonder.
Path to peace!
To human perfection?
No.
This path remains our dream.
And we must know that we know why.
And we must permit ourselves to wonder
how future binds to history.

Today, again:
at which we wonder, they know;
at which we know, they wonder.
At Which We Know, They Wonder.

My version of economics will not make everything right. No version, no matter how good, will be permanent. We are cursed and blessed by an imperfect evolution. Yet, I believe that if we build a science of economics on principles of abundance we will participate more productively in our evolution. From a viewpoint prejudiced by my species, I say that human evolution has been more good than bad. I say this comfortably, but not too comfortably.

We learn from failure, successes.
We also unlearn.

Dinosaurs:
    millions of years,
    billions of successes,
    a grand experiment,
    high-class guest,
    then biosphere forgot how to make them.
Humankind:
    new guest,
    still learning,
    biosphere has just begun our experiment.

Among those
species,
cultures,
families,
individuals
who survived yesterday,
many,
but not all,
are fit.
Among those that did not survive,
many,
but not all,
are unfit.
Who will survive until tomorrow?

Countless blunders in the biosphere today.
Some who blundered,
some who innocently stood by,
caught by biospheric justice
—executed before tomorrow.

Let it scare humankind;
again our capacity to blunder rose today.
Let it comfort humankind;
again rose our capacity to understand,
    anticipate,
    record,
    improve
what survives today until tomorrow.
Experiment Just Begun

Into this comforting rise of capacity I publish this work.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2007 :: Plum Local IV :: 92. Let It Comfort Humankind ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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1. A Faint Road

2010-04-20T23:59:00.007-06:00

Plum Local IV ::: Part I
Economics of Abundance

==========================

======================

A Faint Road
Bob Komives
::

I found a faint road through a vast field
where genius, fool, and charlatan must ply.
As hard as the road is to follow,
harder still is to know who am I.

On The Art Of Synthesis

I am a wealthy pattern in my young, abundant biosphere. I am a thread in the net of life that threatens to encircle the universe. I seek a science to incorporate both the elusive abundance that builds what I have and the apparent scarcity that every day shows me what I have not. Through a vast field I follow a faint road along which I see landscapes that are impenetrable to traditional machinery of national and international finance. I see a distant village of mainstream economics barred from these exciting landscapes by its own walls and by the militant forces of pseudo-economics that interpose quaint, mirage-landscapes for mainstream society to fancy. In the same light that bathes the backs of those who once argued for a flat earth, I see proud, hoping, and helpless faces of those who argue for this week's popular economics —balance-the-national-budget-or-die. I see victim and perpetrator of quaint fancy.

Perhaps one fancy can replace another. Perhaps I can point through patches of scarcity in a field of abundance to a faint road that you will fancy to explore. I last set forth my fancy in Plum Local III, draft 4: For Love of Wealth and Biosphere; an Essay on the Economics of Abundance. What you read here is Plum Local IV. It has just enough editing and format changes to deserve a new title. For better or worse, content has changed little.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 1. A Faint Road ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

2. Everybody Knows

2010-04-20T23:58:00.001-06:00

Everybody Knows
Bob Komives

In 1990 and 1991, when the United States of America lead other countries in a war to evict the forces of Iraq from Kuwait, many advocates of balanced national budgets knew it was time to abandon that principle in order to wage war. I heard nobody ask, "If debt for war is good, can debt for peace and public welfare be bad?"

A war rages in the Middle East
—costly by measures more important than money.
We so readily
suspend our fantasy of a balanced budget
so that we may fight a harsh war,
only to again impose our fantasy,
with harsh futility,
during brief interludes of peace.

Oh, the insidious fantasy!
Never apologize for expenditures
if they do not exceed taxes.
That is, if government recalls from us
at least as much money as it spends,
it can boast:
" We ruined the country
and much of the rest of the biosphere,
but we never ran an unbalanced budget."
Let us remember
that war is the age-old medicine
to counter peacetime fantasies.
For failing to make good investments in peace
we are as likely as ever
to
fall
into
internal and external
conflict
that will lead us again to war.

from: A War Rages

Things are not as they should be. The cold-war dichotomy between communism and capitalism has blurred. It should now be easier to study the complementary relationships between socialism and marketplace, and between peace and investment. Yet, in the years since the war in Kuwait such discussions seem less frequent, or, at least, less noticed.

Also in 1991, leaders in the United States of America were in a panic over their failing banks. Those who had long advocated smaller, decentralized government were sure it was time for larger, more centralized banks. They now have them. I see irony in this past and problems in this future.

One panic replaces another. In 1996 everybody knew that the big problem in the USA was budget balancing --provided we increase military expenditures and decrease both our taxes on the wealthy and our assistance to the poor. In early 1998 the problem seemed to be what to do with a projected budget surplus if we do not wage war with Iraq. Yesterday and today everybody knows that, when convenient, national taxes must balance expenses.

Once upon a time, everybody knew
the earth is flat.
Common sense confirmed it.
Common politicians ratified it.
The best scientists of the day spoke doubts.
Since everybody knew,
nobody listened.

from: Everybody Knew

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 2. Everybody Knows ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

3. Plum Local

2010-04-20T23:56:00.002-06:00

Plum Local
Bob Komives
::

I had my first course in economics in college. I forgot most of it, except for the fascinating way that banks create money as they lend out most of the money that we deposit with them, then receive most of it back again in new deposits, and then lend most of this magically expanding cash out again, and on, and on. We see that bad banks fail, and we know that even good banks make bad loans.

Why only blame
—if our banks create money—
why only blame our government for inflation?

I turned my studies to art and architecture. Along the way I discovered a maverick named R. Buckminster Fuller. He stood among other heroes such as Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright in describing the unity of design and nature.

Can projects designed
following principles of our biosphere
ever be too ugly,
ever be too expensive?

I got married, and we went to the Peace Corps near the Pacific Coast in Guatemala. I saw discrepancy between strategies for national economic development and realities of community development.

I had to ask
" Does it make sense
—for our poverty, our sickness, our exploitation—
that our cure
cannot come
with our economic development,
but only after?"

We moved to Little Rock Arkansas where I tried my hand at city planning in the Model Cities program. This was 1969, a time of large investment in troubled cities. Our successes were real but modest.

Is it not strange?
Even during prosperous times
since our era of generosity,
they say,
we cannot afford to budget for success.

Since Our Era Of Generosity

I went back to school to get my professional planning degree. There I discovered economics, learning its many applications to local public policy. It was elegant; it was beautiful. The curves conveyed information to me in ways that no other medium ever had.

One weekend, I took a rest from my studies and read a book by R. Buckminster Fuller. I believe it was Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. There, I encountered for the first time his elegant formulation of the fundamental law of economics:

Wealth is a function of energy and knowledge.

Absent was any mention of scarcity, supply, demand. This was the economics of abundance. Fuller's economics made every bit as much sense to me as the crisp logic of market economics.

Humankind developed
laws,
traditions,
and institutions
to deal with scarcity.
At any point
in time and space,
scarcity is specific.
It is real.

We live scarcity,
but we come to live
and to thrive
through abundance.

Please do not misunderstand me.
I believe in scarcity.
I have lived it and seen
both its pains
and its benefits.

Yet, abundance is as real as is scarcity
and is even more fundamental.

Without scarcity,
the economist cannot draw
supply curves
and demand curves.
But these curves cannot anticipate
mathematics,
art,
democracy,
communities,
back rubs,
interplanetary exploration,
civil rights,
the popsicle,
or the yo-yo.
Nor could they have anticipated
the brown trout,
the monarch butterfly,
or the horned toad.
Each is part of our biosphere.
Each is our wealth.
And wealth must be the stuff of economics.

Today,
if we choose to love our wealth and our biosphere
we seem unable to seek the best for one
without harming the other.
Today, also,
sages preach to us of the evils in our economy.
They tell us to be more moral,
to separate pretension from wealth.
Let us heed such sermons.

Yet, the moral sage does not free us
from the choice between two loves.
Neither sage nor economist can free us
unless we know
how wealth and biosphere are one—
how we live scarcity,
but come to live
and to thrive
through abundance.

We Come to Live and Thrive

I lay sandwiched between a straightforward explanation of supply-demand-utility and Fuller's statement that wealth is a function of knowledge and energy. I found myself in that muddled layer of confusion and witchcraft called macroeconomics —including gold flow, balance of payments, balance of trade, inflation, and the like. The economy uses the biosphere's model of abundance, while conventional economics uses a model of scarcity. Beneath scarcity lies a supportive abundance —a macro-abundance. Beneath microeconomics, which specializes in scarcity, should lie a supportive macroeconomics specializing in abundance.

Microeconomics covers those situations in which flow of wealth mimics a traditional marketplace. People buy; they sell; they trade. The demand for a product in relation to its supply sets the price. Economists do not. Buyers and sellers do so, acting upon their needs and desires. One day, two chickens are worth two yards of cloth. The next day, they may be worth three yards in the morning but only one after lunch. Marketplace economics explains well the dynamics in this true marketplace and in myriad public and private markets in which goods and services are bought and sold. It can explain how the price for cloth changes as well as how the weaver decides how much to produce. It cannot, however, go on to explain how cloth came into existence nor how chickens were domesticated.

From graduate school I launched my planning career. I went to the island of Martha's Vineyard where I worked for five years to protect its resources and foster sensitive development. I moved as a consultant to Colorado, worked for a while in the analysis of socioeconomic impact from energy development. I went on to typical land-use planning. The gulf between my professional work and my struggle with the theories of economics seemed unnecessary, but enormous.

The economics of abundance remained a closet hobby until 1980 when I pulled together some of my notes in a hand-printed, ten-page document called Plum Local. It began with my apology: "Pardon my boldness ." I wrote, "The valid world economics will show the tie between genetic and economic evolution," and "Taxes, Bah!! Let's phase them out Let's balance our budget by investing communally (politically) in the growth of knowledge for mankind." I sent one copy to R. Buckminster Fuller. When I received his encouraging one-sentence response I felt some comfort.

The four-page 2nd Plum Local of 1981 took my ideas further: "Taxation is role playing. Monetary return as we have in the national income tax system has no role to play. If there is a utopia it will be found in a humanistic management of instability."

Now, as then, I find it hard to put forth theories of economics that disagree with the teachings and preachings of intelligent people who are economists by profession. However, I would find it harder not to share ideas that help me find some sense and science among a potpourri of confusing theories and popular maxims.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 3. Plum Local ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

4. A Crazy Cycle

2010-04-20T23:54:00.000-06:00

A Crazy Cycle
Bob Komives
::

In 1984 I had a chance to return with my family to Central America to teach land-use planning and work in watershed management. There, the importance hit me of bridging the gap between my land-use-planning work and my hobby of cogitating economics.

It made no sense to me.
The International Monetary Fund said
Central American governments should
reduce investment in
social
health
and environmental programs
(that were slowly raising quality of life for their citizens)
in order to borrow money
to pay for projects
that would produce exports,
in order to bring in outside money
to spawn development
to trickle down some resources,
in order to bring back
social
health
and environmental programs
to slowly raise the quality of life for their citizens.

A Crazy Cycle

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 4. A Crazy Cycle ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

5. Economics Should Be Life Science

2010-04-20T23:52:00.000-06:00

Economics Should Be Life Science.
Bob Komives
::

In life there is everywhere synergism. Two or more organs, two or more organisms, act together to achieve what neither could achieve alone. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. R. Buckminster Fuller called it "synergy."

Scarcities are microeconomic parts
within macroeconomic abundance.
True to synergy,
we cannot divine the behavior of our abundance
if we study only our scarcities.

Economists have failed to build a unified theory of abundance out of their keen understanding of scarcity. Why? It cannot be done. Many scientists work to overcome this problem under the general umbrella of the study of complexity. The Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico is one focal point for their work. Such terms as artificial life, self-organizing economies, and increasing returns cover specific topics that draw away from the traditional static models of economics toward the dynamics that we see in nature --that we see in the economy but cannot explain using standard models. I feel confident that their work will deal with both abundance and scarcity and will eventually revolutionize economics --beyond even their expectations.

Economics must be a science
--a human science,
a life science.
Wealth is basic.
It cannot be the invention of humankind.
It must be traced to the bases of life.
It cannot reside mainly in banks and buildings,
moneys and stock.
Primitive people had wealth
but none of these.

Science is a whole. It tries to encompass all that exists as well as all that may have existed and all that may come to exist. It attempts to describe the rules that govern the universe at all scales and make useful predictions based on these rules. The bodies of theory and information that we call the sciences are artificial, but convenient subdivisions of the whole, science. Physics cannot be separated from chemistry nor from sociology. At their frontiers, and even at their centers, there is overlap and synergy.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 5. Economics Should Be a Life Science ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

6. Some Good Hands

2010-04-20T23:50:00.000-06:00

Some Good Hands
Bob Komives
::

Economics may be the academic field that has paid least heed to the unity underlying the several sciences. It offers few if any connections to the vast underpinnings of science. We do call economics a science but see little clue where to fit its complex maxims, axioms and curves. It tries to describe reality but often does so in arcane ways that more separate it than ally it to the rest of science. This will change.

Serious and capable scientists, serious and capable economists, work to rectify this problem. I mention a few. Paul Krugman argues well that good-old-fashioned Keynesian economics is much better than the fads that have dominated public policy discussion in recent decades, but he also works at a cutting-edge economics --evolution. I heard him say that economics and evolution are almost the same subject. Paul Romer has brought technology and growth back into the mainstream of economic discussion. He notes that economists tell us nothing about why economic growth occurs (Economist, Feb. 5, 1996). At the Santa Fe Institute, Brian Arthur and others representing several fields of science have applied their growing understanding of complexity from the "hard" sciences to economic phenomena. They collaborate with colleagues from around the world (including Krugman and Romer), and they build from the insights of earlier scientists whose work was bypassed by the mainstream of economic thought. Edward O. Wilson calls for Consilience, a "jumping together", among the natural and social sciences and the humanities. He argues well why economics must incoporate the natural sciences.

I believe the impact of such work and thought will be more revolutionary than even its enthusiastic supporters now project. I think they will eventually come to conclusions similar to mine, though I doubt any of them could now agree. My arguments will not change their minds; their own research must do so. I do believe that most scientists who work at the cutting edges of economics could agree that mainstream economics has long suffered from poor connections to the vast underpinnings of science.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 6. Some Good Hands ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

7. Science and Pseudoscience

2010-04-20T23:48:00.000-06:00

Science and Pseudoscience
Bob Komives
::

While we can compare theory and experiments in microeconomics with findings by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, game theorists, and psychologists; microeconomics provides few connections to the rest of science. It has a fair excuse; it makes no pretensions. Microeconomics limits itself to a narrow subject, the marketplace and interactions that resemble the marketplace.

It is macroeconomics that should connect all of economics to the rest of science. After all, it should take a macro-view, look at the whole. It should overlap in many places with the other sciences. Narrow-viewed microeconomics should nestle comfortably inside. I see the reverse to be more true. Microeconomics forms the underpinnings of today's Macroeconomics. An unfathomable web of rules and rationalizations has spun out of marketplace theories of supply and demand to bind together the larger world of macroeconomics.

For macroeconomics we have something more akin to pseudoscience. It seems to patch together theories that rationalize all of yesterday, fail to predict tomorrow, and that do not lend themselves to testing . The young science of complexity shows that we cannot always expect to predict tomorrow; so prediction cannot be the only test of science. Simple parts can synergize a future whole that has recognizable but unpredictable patterns. There is a better test of science: falsifiability.

Science and pseudoscience are incompatible: astronomy and astrology, evolution and creationism. The separation of macroeconomics from science comes from mutual repulsion between two inherently incompatible bodies of thought. I wish to paraphrase and thank a scholar who commented on the difference between creationism and evolution. I did not hear his name when a radio network interviewed him in 1987 during one resurgence of controversy over those competing explanations of the origin of our species. The difference? Evolution could conceivably be disproved by evidence whereas creationism could not. Thanks to Murray Gell-Mann and his book, The Quark and the Jaguar, I now know to give some credit to philosopher Karl Popper who promoted this falsifiability test for science.

Scientists modify the theories of evolution as they gather new evidence. Creationists are bound by their belief to support their story of creation no matter the changes in the evidence. Today's descriptions of evolution may not be perfectly correct, but they are science. Creationism is a complex pseudoscience that mounts evidence to defend a belief.

Good macroeconomists do practice science. They subscribe to the principle that their theories could be falsified by evidence. But macroeconomics has become so abstruse --and at times defensive-- that it resembles a belief system to be manipulated by politicians rather than nurtured by scientists. Depending on your political viewpoint and the latest fad, macroeconomics is a particular dogma. In 1998 "everybody knows" the federal budget must balance. For a politician in the United States of America to voice doubt in balanced federal budgets might be as harmful to her political career as expressing doubt in the bible. This seems to be the political reality, though even mainstream economics taught every day in our universities gives little importance to budget balancing.

Part of the problem here is that much of the economics that sets public policy has been wrested from the hands of economists. The media seem every day to find someone who calls himself "an economist for the Wall-Street firm of Stock, Broke, and Bond" to say that the market went up, or down, or failed to do either, "because president and congress failed to reach an agreement today to balance the budget (or distribute the surplus)." Of course, even if one statement happens that day to be true, fluctuations in today's market do not prove that balanced budgets are necessary any more than buying an umbrella proves that umbrellas cause rain. The public, however, is left to conclude that what it already knows to be true is true: a federal balanced budget is necessary.

Once upon a time, everybody knew
the earth is the center of the universe.
This was confirmed by religion
and ratified by politicians.
The best scientists of the day spoke doubts.

from: Everybody Knew

The public of 1633 in Europe must also have concluded that what it knew to be true was, in fact, true. Its media reported correctly that Galileo had just recanted his published conclusion that Copernicus was correct. Standing before judges of the Inquisition, Galileo said, no, he no longer believed what he and Copernicus had written. No, the sun is not the center of a solar system of planets. Yes, the planets do revolve around the earth, the center of the universe.

You think Galileo was a great one,
but he wrote heresy in 1632.
He wrote, " Copernicus is right,
our earth circles the sun,
not the other way around. "
You think Galileo was a great one,
but in 1633 he did recant so he would not burn.

Now you too believe
that to the sun belong the planets,
that we live on one example of them,
our sun-centered revolution,
a scientific revelation,
from a genius then among them
a religious revolution,
insult to god above them.

One way or another,
believers go early, but truth stays late.
Yes, die for your country to get a plaque.
Yes, die for your religion to get guaranteed heaven.
But why die for your science to get guaranteed hell?
Why should you burn for your solar system?

Is the martyr more hero than the genius?
We well know how to make you a martyr,
but we lack the weapon to make you a genius.

How can you resist?
How can you insist:
that Earth is a sphere,
if it is healthier to talk "flat"?
that we came from evolution,
if the inquisition favors special creation?
that all peoples are equal,
if we preach one-ethnic perfection?

Recant today so you will not burn.
Choose humbly to not-believe what you believe.
Humility is a sign of greatness.
For everybody knows and the bible humbly shows
our Earth to be center to the universe.

You think Galileo was a great one
for finding the motion of the pendulum,
the equal rates of falling objects,
and, of course, our telescope.
But then he wrote that Copernicus is right.
You think Galileo was a great one
--but then he did recant
--but then he did not burn.

You Think Galileo Was A Great One

What-everybody-knows is often not true. What everybody knows about the economy is often wrong, but serious economists, when they are asked, seem unable to help the public know better. For example, while they can tolerate unbalanced budgets, we hear serious, academic economists stand before a media inquisition and say about national debt:
"We know at some point too much is too much."
"We do not know how much is too much too much."
Such statements are as unclear as they are unfalsifiable. By comparison, those articulate, Wall-Street economists sound clear and confident. They give short answers that sound precise --even if, when spliced together, their daily pronouncements make neither sense nor science.

In search of sense,
in search of a science
I took my thoughts on a trip from economics
haphazardly
to the origins of life
and, still in search,
back again.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 7. Science or Pseudoscience ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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8. Market and Vision Must Change

2010-04-20T23:46:00.000-06:00

Market and Vision Must Change
Bob Komives
::

I suffer
when I see North American cities sprawl
inefficiently, sloppily across the landscape.
My heart hurts for the poor campesino
struggling to produce
a poor crop
on poor land
cut and burned
from Earth's diminishing forest.
Harsh reality,
or bad vision?

When such problems occur in a market economy, the harsh marketplace seems to fail the biosphere and its human population. In socialist economies, it seems to be the planners and administrators who fail in pursuit of their vision of economic development. I say both market and vision must change.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 8. Market and Vision Must Change ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

9. Ignorance and Economic Development

2010-04-20T23:44:00.002-06:00

Ignorance and Economic Development
Bob Komives
::

Despite our ignorance,
we are fair instruments of economic development,
while often not fair to the biosphere which gave us life.
Remove more of our ignorance
and we may become consistent economic developers.

I see economists shackled to a model of the world based on scarcity —making it difficult for them to approach the plentiful world of economic development. The last time I checked in detail, this was quite evident in text books. For example, Paul A. Samuelson and William D. Nordhaus, in the twelfth edition of Economics, devoted section seven (of seven) to economic growth and international trade, chapter 36 (of 40) to the theory and evidence of economic growth, and only 3.5 pages out of about 900 to "The Sources of Economic Growth." In these pages, they described growth accounting as an attempt to measure the ingredients that contributed to past growth trends —for example, capital, labor, land, education, and technological advancement. They stated frankly that no theory seems to fit reality very well. As for growth accounting, they wrote that it is far from perfect, but it is about as good a guide as any in this imperfect world. I felt that to be a discouraging conclusion to find on page 799 of an introduction to economics.

More encouraging were theories relegated to the appendix. There I found Joseph Schumpeter's model emphasizing innovation, Harrod & Domar's emphasizing productivity, and Von Neumann's emphasizing a logical tie between the growth rate and the interest rate. These models apparently got relegated to the appendix because there is no unifying theory. Samuelson and Nordhaus expressed hope for a future synthesis that will integrate the neoclassical analysis of economic growth with some 300 pages of macroeconomic problems found earlier in their book.

Can economics be a mature science if its theories of economic growth do not mesh with what economists call macroeconomics? Other authors of other texts may organize things differently; I doubt that they improve much on the clarity and honesty of Samuelson and Nordhaus. The problem lies in economics, not Economics.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 9. Ignorance and Economic Development ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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10. Buckminster Fuller's Elegant Law

2010-04-20T23:42:00.001-06:00

Buckminster Fuller's Elegant Law
Bob Komives
::

Growth studies are integral to physiology. Construction is integral to architecture. Economic development should be integral to economics. Yet, economic developers and economists share little common ground. At least one economist, Paul Romer, works to change that by convincing other economists that knowledge and technology are part of economic growth. This seems obvious to a person on the street but revolutionary to most macroeconomists.

Depending on where I run into it, economic development still seems to be more in the kit bag of real estate developers, promoters, and financiers, as well as thought provoking generalists. Confusion among economists makes me no more comfortable with the developers and promoters who play on a simpler stage:

" I create jobs.
You want jobs.
Jobs make community rich.
Give me break.
I will make money.
Then, I will make you
a nice, rich community."

Pending some coherent understanding of economic development such a monologue plays well to many audiences.

I find more comfort with the generalist synthesizers who try to comprehend the complex world and take us along for the trial. They look beyond their narrow window on the universe to an ever-expansive view. This is not frivolous pursuit leading to nowhere. Some, such as da Vinci and Einstein left obvious legacies. Others do no less than help us think, create, and pursue our own synthesis. They are skilled people who are generalists and designers.

Generalists:
see pattern
where others see spots,
see hypothesis
where others struggle to see the experiment.
Designers:
see opportunities
where others see problems.

One generalist designer got me onto this economic tangent. R. Buckminster Fuller formulated the fundamental law of macroeconomics. Wealth is a function of the knowledge and the energy in the universe.

wealth = function of (knowledge & energy)

The amount of energy in the universe is constant. The amount of that energy that we can call wealth, however, is not constant. It varies as the biosphere grows and changes. According to Fuller's Law, then, knowledge is the only component of wealth that can cause wealth to grow or shrink. This makes sense if we adopt a broad concept of knowledge.

We know something about
food, clothing, shelter,
art, and human rights.
They know some things about us.
Each and all is wealth.
Food is energy
made palatable.
Clothing and shelter are energy
reformed into protection and image.
Art controls and molds energy
to please our senses.
Human rights let us control our own energy
(including our own bodies).
Lacking such energy,
and the knowledge to use it,
we are poor.

Buckminster Fuller's formulation for wealth lead him to make a simple prescription for economic development: Increase knowledge! Since the quantity of energy in the universe is fixed, we create wealth only by increasing knowledge. More important, when we increase our knowledge we cannot fail to increase our wealth.

My own formulation is incidentally different, but it leads to the same conclusions:

wealth = knowledge

On this alone I would like to rest my case. What else I have to say is not so clean and simple. I too need more designer synthesis. However, I believe I can argue well that economic development is inseparable from economics. I can lay down some of the bases for a conscious economic development strategy that equates with a sane use of the biosphere and discards the popular conception of a balanced national budget. The knowledge we need is within us, around us, and ahead of us.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 10. Buckminster Fuller's Elegant Law ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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11. Classes of Knowledge, Uses of Wealth

2010-04-20T23:40:00.016-06:00

Classes of Knowledge, Uses of Wealth
Bob Komives
::

Knowledge is just an abstract concept
until we tie it to the energy that it harnesses.

The wealth potential of the biosphere
is to have useful knowledge
of all the energy in the universe.

We have reached but the tiniest fraction of that potential,
but take note:

for billions of years the total was zero.

Once The Total Was Zero

This is an excellent place to watch and listen to

a July 2010 "TED" talk by Matt Ridley:

"Ideas Have Sex"

http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex.html

Knowledge makes wealth. Wealth is energy --that energy that is of value because we know how to use it to our benefit. Even when ignorant in our brains of value, something in our body, our society, or our environment knows how to harness the energy of wealth to our benefit. One can benefit from electricity knowing little of its physics and mechanics. Nor is it necessary to know how our immune systems work to benefit from their protection.

As our knowledge increases, our species' wealth increases. As long as our knowledge increases faster than our population, wealth per person increases. Buckminster Fuller saw that if we understand the principles of knowledge formation we understand the principles of economic development. With such understanding we might avoid extinction and continue to partake in evolution's gift of growing prosperity.

Fuller saw energy as physical, yet saw knowledge as metaphysical. Since knowledge is the only variable in his conception of wealth, if it is metaphysical it does not lend itself to measurement. (At least I do not know any metaphysical measurements to apply.) Convinced that Fuller's Law held much more promise than the collection of theories that were passing for macroeconomics, I looked for a way to reformulate the law so that we might test it alongside other physical laws that we reveal through science. There should be notation that can express Fuller's Law in physical terms. Knowledge could then be discussed as a quantity even if measurement were still impractical.

After an enjoyable, but long, struggle with this measurement problem I saw that it simplifies if we think of one instant in time and ignore any complications from the relativity of time across the vastness of the universe. At one instant as seen from one point in the universe, knowledge is not metaphysical. It acts upon discrete units of energy. At that instant all of the energy of the universe can be divided into three classes.

Class-w energy is the knowledge (wealth) of a particular species, ecosystem, community, or other subordinate part of the biosphere. Human wealth is class-whuman.

Class-W energy is biospheric knowledge. It includes all class-w energy.

Class-U energy is all the energy in the universe, including class-W.

Since knowledge and energy are inseparable at this instant, we can measure knowledge by measuring the energy to which it has attached. Our human wealth equation becomes a summation of this attached energy:

∑wealth = ∑knowledge = ∑class-whuman energy

When life appeared the amount of the energy in the universe devoted to life went from zero to a tiny amount. As life multiplies that amount stays tiny relative to the universe but steadily increases. Life's invasion of the inanimate universe has begun. Earth has become a biosphere. Life captures inanimate energy and organizes it into its systems. Some newly captured universal energy gets bound into living creatures. A larger amount --still inanimate-- serves as storehouse of energy for life support. Life exploits this storehouse as food and as supportive environment in which to survive and prosper. This captured, organized energy is life's wealth. It includes the growing amount of energy that actually knows how to live and the expanding reservoir of inanimate energy that life knows how to exploit. So it is for our species. Our class-whuman energy is the energy that knows how to be we, plus other biospheric energy that we know how to use to our benefit.

That part of Class-W biospheric energy that we cannot count in our class-whuman wealth is quite important. It measures our ignorance.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 11. Classes of Knowledge, Uses of Wealth ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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12. Our Challenge: Grow Into The Biosphere

2010-04-20T23:38:00.002-06:00

Our Challenge: Grow Into The Biosphere

Bob Komives

When we admit that parts of the biosphere
lie beyond our wealth estate
we receive no license to destroy,
but, rather, a challenge
--rather our challenge to integrate.

Exploration can lead down unexpected and unsought paths. I found it helpful to divide wealth into classes. However when I distinguished class-W (biospheric wealth) from class-whuman (human wealth), I worried that I was about to conclude that we could do without much of the biosphere --that we can afford to destroy any of the biosphere that is not classified as human wealth. I sketched a series of diagrams that helped me to another conclusion.

When we have the power to eliminate a form of life from the biosphere, a form that we do not know as wealth, we must face a truth; we have the power to eliminate a source of future wealth.

Humankind has no sympathy for smallpox, but smallpox is some of what the biosphere knows. We must ask, "What does smallpox know that we do not know?" From the point of view of the smallpox virus, its sphere of wealth (class-wsmallpox) shrank from a large portion of the biosphere, where it devastated human populations, to its imprisonment in a few isolation units. Our concern has shifted. Once we feared for our survival. Now we must fear loss of biospheric knowledge into which we might one day grow.

Humankind is of the biosphere.
Biosphere is of the universe.

Life's challenge to the biosphere:
. become one with your universe.
Life's challenge to humankind:
. become one with your biosphere.
Meeting --or failing-- our challenge
we will change:
. change in form
. change in method
. change in abundance.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 12. Our Challenge: Grow Into The Biosphere ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

13. Life's Imperfect Invasion of the Universe

2010-04-20T23:36:00.000-06:00

Life's Imperfect Invasion of the Universe
Bob Komives
::

Demon of today,
tormenting tester,
inhibitor of brave and bold,
a once hero
changed by subtle imperception,
you are that mistake we may make
or have just now made over
into more guilt and gossip.
. (The same mistake
. that we will someday remake
. into light hearted fame and folklore.)
Today,
you are the pains that we feel will last
that now make us cringe
and make us fear our self
as much too dangerously human.
In lonely race to uncommon disgrace,
we cannot face today's new imperfection.

Hero from our past,
delightful jester,
entertainer with tales of old,
a once demon
changed by time and new perception,
you are that mistake that time takes
and so slowly makes over
into more lore and legend.
. (The same mistake
. that we will each day remake
. with feelings of shame and sorrow.)
Today,
you are the aches from decades gone past
that now let us laugh
and let us accept our self
among strangely similar humans.
Together within our common old sins,
now we can grin at older imperfection.

About Our Acceptance Of Older Imperfection

In a lifeless universe, energy flowed into, around and out of many forms of matter. These multiple forms interacted with themselves, creating more complex forms. Amidst the trillions of trillions of interactions, energy combined in a pattern that could purposefully reproduce itself. This pattern could capture and organize more energy to sustain itself and repeat the same pattern. This was life. It may have started many times. Successful life needs a way to remember how to maintain and reproduce itself. In the form that we know, it is the genes in our cellular DNA that remember. All of life needs some type of genetic organization that tells one generation of interactions how to repeat the essential interactions of previous generations.

If a perfect form of perfect life ever lived
(before or since this life we know)
it fell to the perils of its own perfection.

Perfect life reproduces itself infallibly. One generation is guaranteed to be exactly like the previous. Maybe this living perfection had no generations at all. One creature just continued. It grew; it ebbed and flowed; or it stayed exactly as it was. This perfect form of life had to dwell in an inconsistent world. Extreme changes happened in the dynamic universe and in each niche of the young and dynamic planet Earth. Unable to adapt, this perfect life form died and became inanimate residue of a perfectly beautiful but inflexible creature.

Long-lasting life must be imperfect. It works well most of the time, but its memory must fail often enough for some members of new generations to differ from their parents. Ongoing imperfection allows life to undergo adaptive evolution, so that, when the inanimate environment changes, some forms of life survive. Many die, but the chain continues. Life's imperfect invasion of universe continues.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 13. Life's Imperfect Invasion of the Universe ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

14. Biosphere: A First-Class Wealth Organization

2010-04-20T23:34:00.001-06:00

Biosphere: A First-Class Wealth Organization
Bob Komives
::

In setting forth his Critical Path for humankind R. Buckminster Fuller made a distinction between class-one and class-two evolution. Class-two evolution assumes humankind runs the universe. It includes the events that seem to us to come from human initiative and control. We like class-two evolution.

I planted a seed

here somewhere, where
today there should be
(by my rights)
a seedling-

here on time, when
the packet guaranteed
(to my sight)
a sprouting-

if not now, then
it had better be
(as I hope)
by morning-

here somewhere, where
it might have been seen
tomorrow
(by evening).

Seeds And Rights

Class-one evolution transcends our vision, and (as one finds out waiting for seeds to grow) it often voids our class-two-right to have things happen as we told ourselves they should. Class-one evolution came first and will leave last. It put humankind on Earth. It is typified by "ephemeralization," by which we do more and more with less and less, and by "acceleration," by which the time between changes gets less and less.

The biosphere and humankind continually organize and reorganize. Life grew in complexity and robustness by organizing itself. Simple forms of life organized themselves into cells. Some cells organized their reproduction so that instead of creating totally new and independent creatures they created specialized organs within a multiple cell creature. The invention of organs exemplifies ephemeralization, because cells working in a multi-cell and multi-organ individual can often do more with available resources than can the same number of single-celled creatures.

Since we need old fashioned cell-into-cell reproduction to make and sustain our organs, we multi-celled creatures need some enhancement to reproduce our entire organized selves. Class-one evolution gave some of us sex. Sex became an unwitting accelerator of evolution as we mix and re-mix the gene pool (inclined as we are to attract strange mates). New species and communities of species could now evolve faster. Evolution is subject to its own class-one evolution. It accelerates as the gene pool diversifies.

I wish to emphasize the obvious; the word, organization, comes from the root-word, organ. We say that people get organized (into committees and such) while their bodies have organs (heart, lung, foot, skin). It sounds fine to say that the human body is organized, and it sounds only a little strange to say that the police department is an organ of the city government. At the edges of evolution, then, organs and organizations form. Through class-one organization the biosphere develops, reproduces, modifies, and discards patterned interactions.

Class-one organization,
first-class organization,
is biospheric economic development.
Unwittingly,
we participate.
Wittingly,
but ignorantly,
our second class efforts
often retard or threaten our wealth,
our biosphere's wealth.
Our species is organ to the biosphere.
We are organs to our species.
Looking inward,
we see our organs
as their cells and genes organize them.
Looking outward,
we see ourselves
as parts in several organizations:
. family,
. neighborhood,
. team,
. school,
. country,
. ecosystem,
. bioregion,
. species,
. biosphere.
Organs work neither perfectly nor forever.
(Such is the trial-and-error of evolution.)
Organized, imperfect, timed interaction
among species,
between species and their environment;
call it ecosystem.
Around the planet
call it biosphere.
Across space,
someday call it bio-universe.

Biosphere sustains life and culture,
changes as inanimate environment changes,
changes as life alters itself.
Energy captured by biosphere,
organized into life,
organized to support life,
reorganized by life,
this energy is biospheric knowledge.
Biosphere knows
to preserve,
create,
re-create,
to continue a habit of change.
Without such knowing,
life
into lifeless ignorance,

will end.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 14. Biosphere: A First Class Wealth Organization ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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15. Capture, Distribute, And Recirculate Wealth

2010-04-20T23:32:00.001-06:00

Capture, Distribute, and Recirculate Wealth
Bob Komives
::

I divide wealth development into three processes that interconnect in an evolving spiral. The three processes are: capture, distribution, and recirculation. The following diagrams help me see how wealth of biosphere and its parts can grow. Among the casualties of simplicity, I ignore backward steps such as death and disorganization.

I will describe these diagrams as starting at the origin of the biosphere, but, with simple changes in vocabulary, they could start today and look at one person, a tidal pond, a human community, an ant hill, a business, or a watershed. As the diagrams progress, more energy of the universe serves life, and life becomes more complex.

The number of creatures increased tenfold between diagrams 8 and 12. The amount of energy in the biosphere increased more than tenfold because energy captured from the universe gets distributed and recirculated before leaving the biosphere at a rate somewhat slower than it enters.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 14. Capture, Distribute And Recirculate Wealth ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

16. Biology, Brain, Artifact: Our Wealth Stores

2010-04-20T23:30:00.002-06:00

Biology, Brain, Artifact: Our Wealth Stores
Bob Komives
::

Where do we store our wealth of knowledge?
Evolution gave us a nervous system,
a brain, wherein we learn our environment
and attempt to respond to change.
Our brain holds memory
wherein we store our learning for later use.
We learned to create artifacts,
utilitarian and coded,
that, once made,
hold our knowledge.
Nests and tools,
paintings and hearths,
books and buildings
may survive our death
to be inherited by following generations
that may use and build upon this heritage.
Our life-time learning,
our artifacts,
and our biological heritage
combine to organize our culture.

We can classify human knowledge by where we store it. Carl Sagan wrote of genetic and extragenetic locations.

Genetic knowledge is written in the nucleotides in the chromosomal DNA molecules. As life evolved its forms became ever more complex. Genetic code had to contain more information. Humankind has more genetic information than most other mammals, which have more than amphibians, which have more than protozoa. Depending on mutations and natural selection, this genetic form of knowledge grows slowly and is limited by its container, the chromosome.

Extragenetic knowledge resides outside of our chromosomes. Much is written during our lifetime in the memory of our brain. Because we can learn and be taught, our species can adapt quickly to problems and opportunities presented by our environment. But brain knowledge dies with each individual unless she has somehow passed it on to someone else. It is still sharply limited by the capacity of a brain to learn and apply information during one lifetime.

Some extragenetic knowledge, however, is also extrasomatic; it is stored in artifacts outside our bodies. Utilitarian objects and coded messages augment our ability to capture and use energy. Humankind does not have exclusive access to such knowledge, but we are the experts. Libraries are obvious examples, but tools, houses, and other useful objects contain knowledge. These inanimate objects may have a usefulness that is independent of the life span of the people who create them. The objects tend to accumulate, offering each successive generation an opportunity to be more knowledgeable (wealthier) than the previous one. Nor is it necessary for the user to know as much as the creator.

To use our hammer of steel and wood
we must know to grow and manage arm and hand.
We must learn how and why to wield our hammer.
Yet, we need not know how
to make or shape steel,
to select wood
nor make a handle.
Someone put this into our hammer,
so we can use without knowing.

Someone Put This Into Our Hammer

I classify knowledge by location as: biological knowledge, brain knowledge, and artifactual knowledge.

Biological Knowledge. It includes the genetic codes, most of the living tissue of each living creature, and any energy immediately at the disposal of this knowledge. For an earthworm it includes himself, the soil that surrounds him, that is about to be consumed, and that that is being consumed. For the biosphere, it includes the biomass plus most of the inanimate materials and gases just above and below the Earth's surface, and beneficial energy arriving at Earth from the sun and elsewhere.

Brain Knowledge. It includes information and skills learned by individuals from their environment during their lifetime as well as any energy immediately at the disposal of this knowledge. For the human who has learned to swim and dive for clams, it includes the water supporting her and the clam she is about to grasp. For the biosphere, it includes any increase in biomass or captured energy that is due to brain knowledge -for example, the fish stocked and propagating in a natural lake that had no fish until knowledgeable humans intervened.

Artifactual Knowledge. It includes knowledge outside our bodies, and any energy immediately at the disposal of this knowledge. For a cold human it includes his stove that incorporates brain knowledge of metallurgy and the science of burning. It includes the firewood in and immediately nearby his stove, as well as the food he is about to cook, and his cookbook. For the biosphere, it includes a man-made fish pond, the solar panels on a space vehicle, and the energy that each captures.

Knowledge organizes and reorganizes the world. Biological knowledge sustains basic processes and carries the fundamental codes of life. Brain knowledge augments the amount of energy that an individual, a group, an ecosystem, a species, or biosphere can put to beneficial use. Artifactual knowledge can harness and release vast quantities of energy that the body and mind cannot manage directly.

Brain knowledge increases rapidly for each new individual. An ignorant baby becomes a knowledgeable adult. We organize ourselves so that we can pass much wealth from individual to individual and from generation to generation through example, oral tradition, ceremony, song, dance, and vocabulary. Much brain knowledge also comes from direct personal experience. This wealth accumulates much faster than does genetic change, but it is inefficient. It usually passes to only a small group before the teacher dies. It may be forgotten or misunderstood. Much brain wealth dies with each individual.

Artifactual knowledge increased slowly in the early millennia of mankind. One generation left simple hand tools in wood, stone or bronze for the next generation. Supplemented by a transfer of brain knowledge through teaching and demonstration, these artifacts often retained their usefulness over generations. Each new generation could not only make new tools but use those accumulated by earlier generations. When nomadic groups converted to stationary communities they could keep more of the tools made by past generations. We still use simple hand tools. They often help us build complex machinery and electronic equipment that in turn we can use to manufacture better, less-costly simple hand tools. Our artifactual culture builds upon itself.

Written language is itself an artifact (in code) that helps us store instructions for using and building other artifacts. Instructions might otherwise be forgotten or severely limited in distribution. Using this coded artifact, our brain knowledge can quickly and temporarily grow to suit the need at hand. We only need to know how to read the language.

I illustrate the interworking of the forms of knowledge with a simplified view of the ancient Egyptians and their culture that flourished along the Nile River. They relied without thinking about it upon their biological knowledge to keep their bodies functioning long enough to reproduce themselves and to accumulate and transfer brain knowledge. With their brain knowledge they could understand the seasons, the floods, the principles of agriculture and mechanics. Combining biological and brain knowledge, specialized engineers could build dikes and irrigation systems. These artifacts enabled many who knew nothing of engineering to increase their food and fiber production. In the process, Egyptians developed new strains of plants by selecting seeds from those plants that took best advantage of this man-altered growing system. These plants, though having their own genetic wealth, were living artifacts storing extrasomatic knowledge for the ancient Egyptians and we who follow. A complex system of biological, brain, and artifactual knowledge built an increasingly productive culture that gathered ever more energy unto itself.

In a purist sense, the three forms of knowledge are downwardly dependent. Biological knowledge came first; it can exist without the more advanced forms of knowledge. Brain knowledge evolved with increasingly sophisticated nervous systems. It obviously depends upon the genetic code of the body that hosts it. Artifactual knowledge exists outside the body. However, without brain knowledge and biological knowledge there would be no one to take advantage of it. It would cease to be wealth.

This hierarchy of dependence is valid, but difficult to apply. Much biological wealth depends on brain knowledge or artifactual knowledge. Pigeons can exist without humankind, but their population would be much lower without the artifacts of man, city buildings. Holstein cattle owe their unique characteristics to careful breeding by humans. They are living artifacts for humankind, but biological wealth for themselves. Astronomy is mostly brain knowledge, but much of it depends upon artifacts such as telescopes. In our complex patterned biosphere the forms of knowledge interact and interdepend.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 61. Biology, Brain, Artifact: Our Wealth Stores ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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17. Culture: Patterned to Cooperate and Compete

2010-04-20T23:28:00.003-06:00

Culture: Patterned to Cooperate and Compete
Bob Komives
::

Energy begat matter.
Matter begat life.
Life begat knowledge.
Knowledge begat culture.
Then culture begat.

Begat

Life is a nearly inevitable pattern that emerges from changing interactions among inanimate forms of energy. Adaptive evolution is a nearly inevitable pattern that emerges from life interacting with itself and a changing inanimate environment under an imperfect system of reproduction. Culture is a nearly inevitable layer of patterns that emerges from adaptive evolution interacting with itself. Complex patterns of life emerge and get tested by adversity and diversity. The more durable patterns survive and retain knowledge as to how groups of species and groups of individuals can organize to exploit the inanimate and animate forms of energy in the environment. This group knowledge is still stored inside individual chromosomal genes, but it may be used in patterns across the genes of several individuals and even multiple species. It may be used in patterns alive in places that range from virus to atmosphere.

Richard Dawkins calls the patterned and mutually beneficial relationship among individuals of one or more species, the "Extended Phenotype" I think of it as the larger body. Congress is a lawmaking body. The actions of its members are hard enough to explain when we know the role of Congress. Certainly, we would have no idea what single acts of individual congressmen mean if we did not see the larger body.

Dawkins argues that the selfish genes that drive evolution do not just affect the creatures in which they reside. Behavior will tend to maximize survival of genes that foster the behavior, whether the genes are in the animal behaving or in some other creature that affects its behavior. Whenever cooperation or competition increases the survivability of genes (in separate species, separate individuals in the same species, or separate organs within the individual) such behavior is reinforced.

Evolution creates not only diverse species that fit diverse habitats, but also creates diverse extended phenotypes, relationships and cultures that fit diverse circumstances. Humankind competes with the cold virus, yet Dawkins asks whether it is we or the virus who has manipulated the evolution of our sneeze in response to a cold. The sneeze provides us some relief, but clearly the virus is given a free ride toward other victims. We and the cold virus have a special relationship.

Thus, the distinction between cooperation and competition becomes fuzzy. While individuals act out serious competition to improve their well-being, they may play compatible roles in a cooperative effort, a cultural effort, to survive. Economics should be one of the sciences that try to understand culture --to understand how we use patterns of cooperation and competition to improve well-being for individuals and increase likelihood of survival for our species.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 17. Culture: Patterned to Cooperate and Compete ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

18. Exploitation's Deceitful Attraction

2010-04-20T23:26:00.001-06:00

Exploitation's Deceitful Attraction
Bob Komives
::

We know from experience that, despite all the good it does for us, at times Adam Smith's "invisible
hand" needs to be slapped. We rise again and again in fits of moral outrage to knock down those
who sacrifice common good to disparity —promote our loss for their gain. Do we do so often
enough? We discuss that question frequently. Here is another question that we should discuss: do
such struggles and knock downs pit morality against economics? To this second question I answer,
no. Morality need not fight economics unless you equate economics with pursuit of personal gain.
You should not. I do see these struggles as contests between good and bad; but between (good)
morality and bad economics, between common good and bad science. Great disparity is a great clot
in the arteries of development.

Great disparity between us,
great impediment among us.
Moral justice asserts
that our wealthy must distribute wealth
onward to our poor.
Economic development just begs
that wealthy just act
knowing their dependence upon the poor
—and upon more.
More wealth distributed
brings back more wealth recirculated;
today distributed,
tomorrow shared.
In abstract we speak
of wealthy and poor.
In concrete we speak
of butcher, baker, banker,
slave, master,
pitcher, raker, candlestick maker.
We distribute,
recirculate,
compete,
cooperate,
evolve,
to survive
to prosper
together.

Consider the economics of exploitation. Take an extreme example; consider the economics of
slavery. As species, as group, our wealth grows biologically with each birth; it decreases with each
death —usually. Simply having more people may decrease our group wealth. Our increased
population may overwhelm brain knowledge and artifactual knowledge that we use to harness
resources. While this negative outcome may not be as likely as doomsayers often say, more people
do not by their presence alone make the individuals in their group more wealthy. Yet, mistaken
actions by fellow humans seem to stem from a belief that greater population brings wealth —if it is
more of the right kind of population. When powerful individuals and groups enslave other people
they increase the population that works at their service. A slaveholder feels wealthier holding more
slaves.

We can exploit others in ways more subtle than slavery, but in all ways exploiters believe (if they
are honest with themselves) that they become wealthier if they subjugate more people. Usually they
do not try to increase overall population, just their controlled population. Unfortunately, history
shows that from their narrow and short-sighted viewpoints they are usually right. Since we see our
world having static resources, we find it selfishly attractive to exploit the minds and bodies of our
brothers and sisters. These harnessed minds and bodies know how to gather wealth for us.
From the broad viewpoint of humankind exploitation is not attractive. It reduces opportunities for
the exploited. That reduction inhibits the growth of brain knowledge and artifactual knowledge for
our species, reducing species wealth and average per-person wealth. To the exploited it is painfully
obvious that they suffer the burden of their exploiters. Unfortunately, exploiters are painfully
ignorant that they suffer under the burden of their exploitation. This becomes tragically obvious
when a lethal microbe flourishes in the impoverished ecology of the exploited and surges forth to
kill exploited and exploiter alike. Yet the lesson is not learned. Here, economics has, first, much to
learn and, second, much to teach.

Exploiter dreads that exploited would self-organize.
Old culture that slave might keep,
and new culture that slave might create,
destroyed, discouraged, undone.
Exploiter simplifies—
in
simple
organization
finds
control.
Biosphere complicates—
for in our complexity, it finds resilience;
for in its resilience, we find wealth.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 18. Exploitation's Deceitful Attraction ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

19. We are Cursed And Blessed.

2010-04-20T23:24:00.000-06:00

We are Cursed and Blessed.
Bob Komives
::

Life reproduces itself, but imperfectly. This imperfection creates an intricate, diverse biosphere.

Humankind has two traits that distinguish us from other species. I believe these traits contribute to our unique role in the biosphere.

We have a brain that has somewhat independent hemispheres in which we process information in at least two different ways at the same time. We have social systems that tend toward stability, but in which we often and inevitably undergo instability.

We seem cursed by the anguish of war between the conscious and subconscious and between the logical and intuitive factions in our brain. We seem cursed by bloody and bloodless wars between factions in our society.

Other species evolved with greater social order. Compared to our own, their brain parts seem to work in harmony. Our unstable society may well be a curse brought on by our unstable brain. Yet, our creative ability to explore the workings of the universe through art, science, engineering and fantasy is a blessing that we also owe to that curse. If there is to be a utopia, we must find it in how we manage our continuing instability.

All species can perceive scarcity in resources, and they see an apparent need to manage scarcity by preventing any change that instability will bring. We, alone, have the blind management power, at this tick in the evolutionary clock, to destroy life and its biosphere of change.

It is also only we who can hope to notice, midst war and destruction, the wealth that instability and change have wrought within our biosphere. Only we can hope to see that beneath the apparent rules of scarcity and competition lie more general rules for us to follow-
rules for abundance, and rules for cooperation.

Blessed Curses

Humankind seems cursed by its heritage of imperfection in ways that other species are not. Yet, we are blessed with a preeminent role in the biosphere. Richard Restak described well how our semi-independent brain hemispheres process two ways of thinking that are generally coordinated but often conflicting. This duality is mirrored in our culture. We experiment with: democracy, dictatorship, republic; polygamy, polyandry, monogamy; matriarchy, patriarchy; monarchy, anarchy. Only the human species has a restless urge to understand and perfect.

Competition seeks instability.
One individual,
one group
tries to gain advantage over another.
When too successful,
competition fails.
It can produce a stable dictatorship,
monopoly,
slavery.
Cooperation seeks stability.
It too can fail
if it is perfectly successful.
Stable wealth stops evolving.
Rebels appear.
Feeling stifled,
they promote instability.
We play hopscotch
through patterns of opposites:
cooperation or competition,
with
stability or instability.
War -unstable competition.
The marketplace -stable competition.
Tradition and rules -stable cooperation.
Invention and information,
though often spawned by cooperation,
bring change -instability.
Each pattern brings the other.
The market creates incentive for invention:
a better mouse trap,
a five-cent cigar.
Invention produces new traditions:
stay home
to watch a ball game at the park,
go to the park
to get away from my computer-cottage office.
A stifling tradition brings revolution and war.
We are special
because we can notice these patterns,
seek to understand them,
and decide to participate.

What Makes Us Special

If an objective visitor from outer space had arrived on Earth a few hundred thousand years ago she would have had to stay around to notice that we naked apes were in any way special. Today, she would quickly pick us out of the crowd. We have made ourselves quite noticeable. Electric hair dryers, tennis shoes, oil spills, and political conventions make us stand out clearly in the crowd of earthly creatures.

We see correctly that we are special, but we have tended to think incorrectly that we are special because we are better. "Better" is a subjective evaluation, but if we equate it with "more perfect" we are wrong. We are special because we are less perfect. We are cursed with imperfections that bless us with flourishing culture. Individually and in groups we play dynamic roles that never allow our species to settle into a comfortable niche.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 19. We are Cursed and Blessed ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

20. Family is Our Minimum.

2010-04-20T23:22:00.003-06:00

Family is Our Minimum.

Bob Komives
::

There are no true rugged individuals.
Either they died
for lack of nurturers after birth,
or they were never born
for lack of lovers before conception.

Ruggedless

The science of ecology tells us how we share biospheric wealth with other species, often to our mutual benefit. We must share. No element of life is self-sufficient. We must tax other individuals and species; they must tax us. Humankind has no self-sufficient individuals. From Lewis Thomas in Lives Of A Cell, I learned that the mitochondria in our cells are but one of several kinds of creatures with their own genetic structures that live symbiotically with us, within us. We tax them for their knowledge in order that we might survive; human genes alone do not know enough to keep us alive.

Even if I were to refuse to recognize mitochondria as anything other than "me," I could not ignore the two people who had to undergo bisexual reproduction for me to arrive in this world. Then I cannot ignore that once I got here, during infancy and well beyond, I continued to depend upon adult nurturers for my survival and well-being.

To support bisexual reproduction and to solve the challenge of infant dependency we organize ourselves into families. Family is the minimum biological unit of organization for species survival. Many of us do more than survive. We depend upon our families and their particular patterns of role playing to do more than reproduce and nurture hunks of genes and protoplasm. Adults carry brain knowledge and have artifacts that they wish to distribute to their children and others. Family is the convenient minimum to carry out this complex wealth distribution. Through family we receive and pass along culture and experience. Thus, our adopted children--who carry none of our genes but carry knowledge that we acquired during life--may inherit and pass along more of what we are than do our biological children.

Family is the minimum--the macroeconomic minimum-- the smallest organ that our species knows can capture, distribute, and recirculate knowledge we need to survive and prosper. Since reproduction requires two people and produces a dependent, over time there must be at least three individuals in a family. The minimum number of roles to play, however, is four: father, mother, dependent, and nurturer. There are no maxima.

Beyond the biological minimum necessary for survival, our species has unique flexibility in choosing the family form through which one generation can pass biological, brain and artifactual knowledge on to the next. Adjectives such as matrilineal, patrilineal, extended, monogamous, and polygamous each describe a family pattern that has proved useful. Nouns such as nucleus, band, clan, tribe, chiefdom, city, federation, and even nation, describe scales at which family-type roles can operate.

Microeconomics is important because it helps us understand the dynamics of individuals (or even families acting as individual entities) who buy and sell goods and services in a marketplace. Some of these individuals may be close to rugged, but, here at least, we do not give a damn. What does it profit a man to control a market but suffer a dearth of things to trade? We cannot look to microeconomics to understand the dynamics that produced the market goods and services in the first place -nor the greater wealth that never goes to market. To gain that understanding we should be able to turn to macroeconomics and its minimum economic unit, the family, in all its forms. There we can hope to find out how our species reproduces, expands and nurtures its wealth.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV ::20. Family is Our Minimum ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

21. From Family to Government

2010-04-20T23:20:00.001-06:00

From Family to Government
Bob Komives
::

Parents in our nuclear family, our elders in our clan, our council in our city, our nation's government--each makes decisions for the benefit of one of our groups. National government differs in scale and organizational complexity from a family council, but not in function. Each represents an organized effort to promote role playing by group members. Members, citizens, hope that roles are played well enough to improve group and individual well-being. We are members of several groups; several decision-making bodies represent us. As we invent and join new groups many old ones persist. We happen to call a class of broad-reaching groups, or their representatives, government.

We have such propensity to form government in our groups that among our deeply embedded cultural patterns there must be one that causes us to produce and reproduce government. Provided we remember that all genetic action must occur within our true cellular genes, we can think of cultural genes for government.

These genes are persistent yet imperfect. Some stable societies evolved with stable forms for government. Yet, as our species flourished and spread its influence around the globe, new circumstances tested old forms of organization. Changes had higher likelihood of survival if they enabled the group to better invest group knowledge. Government gains respect among constituents and also among rival groups if it enables the group to organize itself to produce and protect more knowledge than it invests. Such successful government is likely to be imitated--just as successful biological parents are imitated.

Pick any important company in a marketplace country such as the USA. Do a thought problem. Consider the impacts on the nation if we eliminate that company.

Pick any whole sector of a market economy and do the same thought problem. Choose the farming sector, for example. Eliminate it--a disastrous thought.

Now do the same thought problem, but eliminate only government. If that is too difficult to imagine, eliminate only governmental protection of property, and governmental guarantees of public rights-of-way.

Government is family,
the industry we cannot do without.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 21. .From Family to Government ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

22. Communal Commitment, Private Flourish

2010-04-20T23:18:00.001-06:00

Communal Commitment, Private Flourish
Bob Komives
::

Government organizes group knowledge in ways that individuals cannot or wish not.

Government can create a system of defense that is more effective and occupies fewer people than if everyone were to try to defend himself. Without this system the group might be vulnerable to attack. Productivity could suffer because too much time is spent on defense and fear.

Government can guarantee food and shelter to someone who wishes to experiment with a new system for food production--a system that could benefit the whole group. Government induces a temporary flow of wealth away from the rest of the group to the experimenter. If the experiment succeeds, that wealth that had flowed away from most of the individuals in the group will return to them with dividends.

If in our family
we lack communal decision and commitment,
private life does not flourish.
If in our government,
we lack communal decision and commitment
private enterprise does not flourish.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 22. Communal Commitment, Private Flourish ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

23. We Tax Ourselves When We Play Our Roles.

2010-04-19T23:58:00.001-06:00

We Tax Ourselves When We Play Our Roles
Bob Komives
::

We cooperate; we compete. In both modes we exhibit freedom. At least, that is a view we can choose. In another view, we just play our inherited roles. "Role playing," "role differentiation," these are terms frequently heard among social scientists. They are also better and more general terms for what we and our economists call "taxation."

Role playing (1) distributes wealth among individuals, and (2) creates wealth when the roles are mutually beneficial. Number one is well understood by both charitable and exploitive people, by our tax collectors, and by other species--the more I get from you, the better off I am. Attribute number two is at the frontier of our understanding of macroeconomics.

During the dawn of life separate organisms that were accidentally different accidentally contributed to each other's chances for survival. Some produced offspring that had a tendency to organize themselves to reënact the ritual. As they did, role playing became part of the biosphere; taxation became part of the biosphere.

Each particle of DNA, each species, each individual, each group depends upon and is depended upon by other elements of the biosphere. Each taxes others and is taxed in turn within an intricately organized web of roles. On occasion, the quantity of life traumatically decreased. Despite such setbacks, life incorporated an increasing portion of universal energy into itself and into its complex support systems. As life grew, so did the complexity of the roles played by the organs and organisms that sustained it. Had we been there, at some point the complexity would have become too much for our great brains to comprehend. We would have to develop concepts of freedom, intention, randomness, in our attempt to understand cause-and-effect in what we saw. We would find words for cooperation and competition. In some order (perhaps simultaneously) science, pseudoscience, religion, and philosophy would follow.

As life flourished, new roles emerged, old roles changed. Through its organized role playing the biosphere learned not only how to prevent a net loss of biological energy (absent great trauma), but also how to capture more energy. In terms of biosphere economics, wealth steadily increased. While some species lost all wealth and became extinct, humankind prospered. Human economic history, when read from a distance, records changing patterns of roles that were adequate to keep us around and increase our wealth.

Role playing works because it distributes resources among individuals to the benefit of the group. An infant needs nurture, so it taxes its family to supply energy and skills to survive. Given survival, the infant can go on to contribute to the welfare of the family and to help produce another generation. Our tendency to nurture others lets us help individuals become scholars, artists, scientists and administrators. It causes us to make an effort to preserve life and opportunities for less fortunate people even when we seem to loose wealth in the process. We harvest and create food, education and security. Then we tax ourselves. We cooperate and compete so that we distribute these products and services among us. History is too full of examples of exploitation and persecution. We live with the guilt that comes with our unfortunately large margin for error. Nevertheless, so far, we tend to tax ourselves well enough to survive and occasionally flourish.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 23. We Tax Ourselves When We Play Our Roles ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

24. Property is Acknowledgement.

2010-04-19T23:56:00.001-06:00

Property is Acknowledgement.
Bob Komives
::

I have a complaint and a confession. Complaint: when we talk about "private property rights," we show that we do not know what we talk about. Confession: I am guilty of having used this puffed up phrase. I hope I have cured myself. Let me try to cure you.

Why does the phrase, "private property rights" show ignorance? That term is twice redundant --long-winded. Property is not land, it is not a book. Property is a right to be private, to priváte, to deprive others of access and use. So, to speak of "private property," of "property rights," or of "private property rights" is to speak only of property. If we can argue without this redundancy perhaps we will be short-winded. Perhaps we will better understand property.

Ah, you may say, but what about "public property," the opposite of private property? It is no opposite, but rather an oxymoron. If you insist on using the term, its only meaning can be "non-property"--nobody has the right to restrict our access and use. A sunset is beautiful public property; better, it is a "public good" in the "public domain." Your county land fill is not public property; it is county property. The county has rights over access and use of the land fill as would an individual owner.

Are these rights absolute? Whether held by you or the county, property is within a higher domain, a pre-eminent domain, an eminent domain. "Eminent domain," as we use the term in U.S. America, includes the obligation by government to pay justly for property, but it is also a self-evident declaration that property is a guest within the higher domain of society. Complaint over!

We can discuss individual wealth because individuals can control and trade goods and services. However, this power to control and trade is always delegated by a larger group. Property is group acknowledgment that an individual can restrict access to something--a by-group-acknowledged right to be private, to priváte, to deprive others of access and use.

Acknowledgment may be given grudgingly to someone who has taken by force; property is not necessarily untainted. If the group refuses to acknowledge ownership, and the possessor must continually defend her possessions against others, she has booty--not property. She cannot freely share, trade, sell, give, or lend her booty. If the group were to choose to acknowledge her possessions as property she could take them to the marketplace or leave them at home and expect community assistance if someone tries to steal them.

The marketplace is a group sanctioned center of activity. We can say that people go there to trade property. In a marketplace, operating under rules established by the group, people trade group-acknowledged rights of restricted access. An individual restricts access to her possessions until someone else gives her the right to restrict access to items that she believes to be at least of equal value. When those rights are exchanged, property is exchanged. The exchange is complete when society acknowledges that property has changed hands.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 24. Property is Acknowledgement. ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

25. Back In 1978: A Myth

2010-04-19T23:54:00.000-06:00

Back In 1978: A Myth
Bob Komives
::

Exclusive Report on the Minnehaha Conclave

As the 1980 elections approach I can't believe that I am the first to break the seal of secrecy over the events of Halloween, 1978 -the last days before the last national election. I hope that by revealing what happened that night I can save others the tragic disillusionment from which I am now almost recovered.

There were so many conservative Republican candidates,conservative Democratic candidates,
and "don't-tread-on-me" independent candidates trying to get elected and dismantle the government that I decided to seize the opportunity.

I awoke in a sweat. I was trying to get over a nightmare about having a secure government job to turn to if all else failed. It was then I decided to put out a call to a secret conclave.

I jotted down some brief but detailed instructions, telegraphed them to the politically astute friends we have left in the wake of our peregrinations across the country, and took off to make preparations at the conclave site.

Taking a hint from the College of Cardinals, I ordered up a ton of Ritz crackers and a thousand bottles of mineral water. These would serve as our only sustenance until the conclave had done its thing.

Then it began. While kids across the country were home getting sick over candy they had been collecting all evening, while voters who had taken one night off from eagerly attending political rallies were relishing the tricks they had played on the little pests in their neighborhood, while all this was happening, the disguised candidates began arriving in procession to my conclave -each with one lighted candle in hand and an attaché case filled with extras.

Anti-government candidates are to-a-man and to-a-woman punctual. Thus it was, that by 11:33 p.m. central standard time, in the freezing cold confines of the narrow canyon formed by Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis, 315 conclavers were assembled. Like choir boys in down parkas and Lone-Ranger-type Halloween masks, they were ready to go to work.

I took 27 minutes for my opening remarks. In sum, I told them of the inevitable victory of their cause. It would soon be within the power of this esteemed group to create a utopian country that had neither government nor bureaucrats. The people of the country were speaking. These 315 men and women were the best listeners.

Only two necessary elements for the ultimate victory
were missing.

One missing element was their own combined conviction that the holy mission on which each had individually embarked could be accomplished if the conclavers were willing to march as one in a crusade. "Are you ready for the crusade?" I whispered emphatically. My question was answered by four minutes of delirious shouting, embracing, hand shaking, and the chant: Hit'em again, hit'em again, harder! harder!

After joyfully raising my arms to restore calm, I told them that the second element missing was a simple program for implementation. It could be a simple program, because all that is necessary is to ease the bureaucrats out of their offices and let private enterprise bid on the vacant facilities. A few other details in the program needed to be worked out, but it could all be planned by sunrise -in time for everyone to get back to the campaign.

After all, the program wasn't so terribly necessary in itself. We would just have to be ready with good information and public relations to head off the self-serving attacks that would be organized by the old guard and the socialists.

It was now midnight. The conclave set about its task.

Each of twelve sub-conclaves, whose members were chosen by lot, was to produce one paragraph for our program and one for our proclamation.

I passed out Ritz crackers and fielded general questions from the various sub-conclaves.
...

"Hey, our group decided to keep our armed forces and the police. Otherwise, anarchists and communists would run roughshod over us. Is that all right?"
"Sure, but figure out how to administer them without bureaucrats."

"We're not sure whether Greyhound, Brinks, or General Motors is capable of taking over the street and highway system. Does anyone have any ideas? ... O.K. We'll keep working on it."

"Some of us westerners were wondering if it would be possible to rewrite some of the history books our kids are forced to read in school. That bit about the government dividing up land, giving it to our grandfathers, and building water projects, and subsidizing our production doesn't sound too good for our cause."
"Don't worry. Group 7 is doing away with the schools. You'll be able to keep your kids at home and teach them what you want."

"We're a little worried about the possibilities of revolution if we eliminate all of the health, welfare and civil rights programs at once. Do you think it's all right to increase the army a little to keep everyone in check, or to phase programs out slowly so no demagogue can come along and incite riots?"
"Hmmm, well I'm afraid that if we did the latter, our own supporters would call us the Wishy Washy Conclave, rather than the Minnehaha Conclave."

"Hey, if anyone objects to having a cell in the basement of each home to handle convicted criminals on a rotating basis let us know. That's the way we are thinking."

The Ritz crackers were consumed by two o'clock. The questions ceased by 2:30. The rumble-rumble of their voices put me to sleep.

I awoke with the first rays of sunrise to find the whole conclave standing over me. They looked tired. They also looked a little discouraged. Yet, many seemed ready to burst into a smile. Then, one of my southern conclavers drawled,
"He'ah it is."

I was puzzled. The piece of paper he gave me in the dim light was clearly a page torn from a book. He and each of the other conclavers patted me on the back as they filed up and out of the little canyon. Each said something to me like:
"We did it," or, "That's just the first dozen lines, but you can fill in the rest."

I began to get the idea. When I glanced down at the page I was given my suspicions were confirmed. The light was now just bright enough for me to read the small printed words:
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice ..."

The next thing I remember is my wife reviving me in a pleasant cell at a Minneapolis police station.They had called her in from Colorado. This Halloween goblin, who appeared to be her husband, had been found skipping merrily through Minnehaha Park singing,
Kinky Commie Copouts!
Kinky Commie Copouts!
Kinky Commie Copouts! ...

Back In 1978

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 25. Back In 1978: A Myth ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

26. Capital and Social Isms

2010-04-19T23:52:00.000-06:00

Capital and Social Isms
Bob Komives
::

Civilizations have disappeared almost overnight when a governmental structure collapsed into the hands of people who could not or would not hold and propagate the communal knowledge nurtured by the government. The overthrow may have been justified by the abuses inflicted by those in power. Unfortunately, knowledge stored (possibly hoarded) by the abusers often got lost to future generations.

When a species or ecosystem disappears, an organ of the biosphere dies; wealth disappears. The biosphere no longer knows how to do some things that it had known. Wealth also disappears when a flourishing society dies.

Societies that we choose to call "primitive" survived with little change in technology or in their systems of government. Across the breadth of the species, however, somewhat unstable groups, "advanced" societies, experiment with ways to organize family, to invest group wealth, and to govern. Using our blessed curses, imperfect mind and imperfect reproduction, they extend evolution out of our bodies into society, to our family and government, to our social-isms and our capital-isms.

Ism-Capitál
Ism-Commún
Ism-Sociál

Planned Economy
Marketplace
Private Enterprise
Free Enterprise
Government Enterprise

How can I speak or write
these terms that have
economic meanings
political overtones
historic undercurrents
redundant redundancies
stark contrasts
subtle distinctions, and
apparent similarities?

I want two of them to stand for all,
to enter the ring, and then
to do battle.

At the edge of the ring paces Marketplace with
free enterprise in her soul
capitalism in her limbs, and
private enterprise in her brain.

In the center of the ring
revolves Socialism with
communism for his soul,
government enterprise
for his body, and
planned economy in his mind.

They spar but seem stuck in their zones.

They jab,
but their gloves barely clash
in the large space between.
(or do they exchange something
that I cannot see?)

She lunges to the center.
He feints and dances to the edge,
barely brushing
as they pass each other by.

Now, she occupies the center
while he patrols the edge.
But, somehow,
in making their moves
they have quick-changed costumes.

She now revolves
in the cloak of socialism
He, an equal transvestite,
paces in the dress of marketplace.
I don't need X-ray vision to see
that they have also interchanged their
bodies
minds
limbs, and
souls.

Apparently, some such parts
work well only at the edge
while others work well only at the center.

I had hoped to see a fight in the ring.

I moved ever higher and farther away in the arena
only to see it filled with rings of many sizes and shapes -the edge of each one sharing the ropes of several others.

Each had its chief of the center
and one or more others
holding forth along the ropes,
where activity ebbed and flowed,
sometimes frantically.

What folly,
to think I could put both transvestites
into the same clothing.
Tragic were the fates of many rings
that did remove marketplace
from their edges,
as peaceful sport erupted into
thievery or war,
or disrupted into
wall or crevasse.

Extinct are the rings
that poisoned their communal centers-
their centerless edges
(having lost all definition)
rewoven with indifference into
the
ropes
of
other
rings.

Equal Transvestites

I find it difficult to write about our "isms": capitalism and socialism. Political and religious groups of divergent persuasions have usurped and shaded the key vocabulary. A simple sentence gets translated by the reader into his own language, which may or may not coincide with my own. True to some degree of all communication, I think the reader-as-writer difficulty is a serious problem when exploring marketplace and socialism, or capitalism and communism. I believe that part of the reason why these words have become burdened with emotion-filled connotation is that the economic definitions are themselves inaccurate.

I choose to discuss marketplace and socialism. "Marketplace," as I use it, includes the general concepts of capitalism, free enterprise, private enterprise, and other near synonyms. Of the choices, "marketplace" says the most and carries the least emotional baggage. For the other half of the discussion I choose "socialism." I use socialism to include communism, planned economy, government enterprise, and several other terms that express communal activity. However, the choice is not easy, so I use a mixture. "Community" and "society" are equally good words. I prefer the "common" and "communal" from "communism" to the "social of socialism," but I prefer the economic meaning of "socialize" over "communize."

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 26. Capital and Social Isms ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

27. Confusion Over Capital and Ownership

2010-04-19T23:50:00.000-06:00

Confusion Over Capital and Ownership
Bob Komives
::

During the Cold War which pitted U. S. America and its capitalist allies against the Soviet Union and its communist allies, capitalists confused economic communism with totalitarianism, egalitarianism, and atheism. Communists confused economic capitalism with colonialism, elitism, and self-righteous exploitation. Each group confused itself with values such as freedom, hope, and progress. Both relied, in part, on the classic definition that makes socialism the opposite of capitalism.

According to this classic definition, under socialism society should own the means of production (that is capital); under capitalism, private individuals and companies should own the means of production. Means of production usually include resources such as fuel, minerals, and lumber, as well as key industries that process and transport these resources. The definitions seem simple and intuitive, but only if we ignore some obvious questions.

How about eyesight and the opposable thumb? Where would most human production be without them?

How about the mind, the body, libraries, air, organization, and rights-of-way across space we do not own? We cannot produce without them.

We cannot produce without many forms of knowledge found in biology, brain, and artifact. Necessary resources get ignored in lists of means of production. Society cannot own mind or eyesight. Yet, to practice socialism under the classic definition, it must. For society to be truly capitalistic, private enterprise must own my body and our air.

Knowledge is our means of production.
Woven into nature, ourselves, and our creations,
knowledge converts energy of the universe
into nature's wealth,
our wealth.
Much knowledge cannot be grasped
or held by monopoly,
be it public,
be it private.
Yes, socialism and capitalism differ.
No, we cannot have one without the other.
Our "means of production" is nothing less
than the knowledge which helps us maintain our species —to survive.
Art and government belong in the lists of means.
What do we say in saying:
own them?
socialize them?
capitalize them?
We say only confusion.

We should not mistake capital in an ephemeral industry for fundamental means of wealth production in our biosphere, species, and society. The petroleum industry combines petroleum (the energy knowledge it contains) with some capital (knowledge of how to find and process the petroleum). In a socialist country, government should operate this industry; under capitalism, a private company should. However, neither government nor private company can hope to take total ownership of our knowledge of how to use petroleum, including cruising downtown on Saturday night, beauty treatments, ... , pyrotechnics. Without society's use-knowledge, the petroleum industry produces no wealth. Humankind had wealth before the petroleum industry came into existence, and it should have more wealth after the industry fades in importance. A change in human knowledge made petroleum part of wealth. Further changes in knowledge can reduce its importance long before we exhaust the supply.

In this dynamic world we often raise questions as to who has and who should have the knowledge and the tools for change. The answers vary and may often confuse. Yet, fixed commitments to the traditional dichotomy between socialism and capitalism are worse. They compound confusion by pretending it does not exist.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 27. Confusion Over Capital and Ownership ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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28. Center and Edge

2010-04-19T23:49:00.000-06:00

Center and Edge
Bob Komives
::

Socialism is the part of our economy in which our group distributes wealth according to values set communally. The process need not resemble consensus. The group may be active, passive, enthusiastic or bitter about delegating the distribution authority. Marketplace is the part of our economy in which we trade wealth according to values set by many people responding to supply and demand. Marketplace and socialism are distinct, but they help each other. Neither can replace the other. Neither can manage all of our capital. Socialism flourishes at our centers. Marketplace flourishes at our edges.

I hold these truths to be self-evident:
Lake without shore is no lake;
Lake-shore without lake is no shore.

In the zealots for socialism and the zealots for marketplace we have among us those whose views of economics are akin to saying: "My sacred lake shall have no shore;" and " my sacred shore shall have no lake."

Socialism and marketplace differ because of the societal space each occupies. We organize ourselves into overlapping groups. Each group has edges. At the edge it must interact with other groups and with its natural environment. Among other options at the edge, it may trade wealth according to rules of marketplace. Each group has a center. There it distributes wealth through a communal system that may include tradition and rules.

A typical family administers its resources communally. Children do not buy food from parents. Tradition says that children have a right to food, clothing and shelter. They have a right to be wealth consumers. Wealth producers in the family pool their resources to support the family. Authority figures establish and enforce codes of conduct. The family typically divides tasks among members according to tradition, authority and volunteerism. There may be great competition among family members, but ultimately the traditional communal authority structure decides who wins and who loses.

At its edges, a family competes and cooperates in a larger society with other families, individuals, and institutions. As a producer in modern marketplace economies, the family may compete against the rest of the community for jobs and sales. As consumer, the family probably enters the marketplace to bargain for the goods and services that it does not produce internally. The marketplace, not a communal system of decision and authority, decides the prices the family will pay and receive.

Family members find themselves at the center of other institutions -a club, a church, a government, a corporation, a school, a clan, a tribe. At these higher-level centers interactions are communal, because larger institutions also practice socialism. Many participate in marketplace at their edges as well.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 28. Center and Edge ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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29. From Amoeba to Market

2010-04-19T23:47:00.000-06:00

From Amoeba to Market
Bob Komives
::

We can, I suppose,

think of a chemical reaction
at the nucleus of a tiny amoeba
as but one reaction
in
.... a
........chain
..................that
..........................extends
from this amoebic nucleus
to the farthest reach of the biosphere.

We should rather, I propose,

notice this amoeba has a surface,
its working edge,
where universe divides in two;
where biosphere divides into
what-is-this-amoeba
---and-----------
what-this-amoeba-is-not.

Where Universe Divides In Two

Early creatures had centers and edges. Evolution gave them ways to move energy around the center, from edge to center and from center to edge. Communal biological wealth in the amoeba keeps its primitive power and control systems functioning. At its edges, the amoeba uses genetically coded knowledge to capture food. However, one amoeba has no control over the likelihood that food will be there to capture.

There is friction. One amoeba may find itself in competition for food with other amoeba, other creatures. Lacking the sophistication to sign treaties or to create a marketplace the amoeba relies on programmed gathering techniques to bring fuel into itself. At its edge the amoeba competes and cooperates with its surroundings to overcome friction, to transfer wealth from the larger biosphere into its one-cell body.

As life forms become more complex, so do the options for wealth transfer at edges, and for wealth distribution and recirculation at centers. Humankind has experimented with a variety of methods to organize its centers. At some scale we call these experiments family. At other scales we call them government. We have a propensity to form governments and never seem satisfied with our results.

As family met family, group met group, and nation met nation, we experimented with government-type solutions at our edges also. As alternative to war, raids, walls, and moats, the marketplace was such an experiment. Participants agreed upon marketplace rules in order to minimize risk to themselves and their goods. These rules and their enforcement were the government of the moment, the communal base for marketplace.

Fringe trading deals with new goods and services more readily than does communal tradition. We need only a willing buyer, a willing seller, a place to bargain, and security for the individuals, their goods and services. Traditional distribution may create successful investment, but that same tradition may be inadequate to guide the distribution of new types and quantities of wealth produced by the investment. With or without the sanction of traditional leaders, individuals might resort to edge-type trading to distribute these new goods and services.

Some governments came to approve of this internal trading, but also took control -setting and enforcing the rules. Thus, government became communal sponsor of free enterprise. Internal edge-economies became important. Marketplace society was born.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 29. From Amoeba to Market ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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30. Corporation: Delegated Socialism

2010-04-19T23:45:00.001-06:00

Corporation: Delegated Socialism
Bob Komives
::

I ask you to think back to when the Soviet Union had the archetypal large communist government and good-old Ford Motor Company was the archetypal large corporation. Though they symbolized competing ideologies, these large organizations were in many ways similar.

When it dealt with countries in a peaceful interchange of wealth, the Soviet Union competed and cooperated in many of the same ways that Ford Motor Company competed and cooperated with other businesses. At their edges they both competed with corporations, individuals, partnerships, and governments that sold similar goods and services, that wanted the same resources, and that recruited similar personnel. The marketplace determined the price they would pay or receive. At their edges, then, looking outward, capitalist corporation and communist country practice marketplace.

When Ford Motor Company looked inward to its own resources, it acted--and still acts--very much like the old Soviet Union. Executives allocated resources under policy set by a central committee or board of directors. Executives and board lead in the directions that they believe will most benefit their constituents--whether shareholder or proletariat. At their centers, looking inward, both capitalist corporation and communist country practice socialism.

The United States of America operates the same way. When we look inward, we set communal rules for wealth distribution, be they liberal or conservative. Our country allows more internal marketplaces than either the good-old Soviet Union or good-old Ford Motor Company. However, "allows" is the important word. Communally we create, enforce, and administer rules that foster and allow private marketplaces. Without communal enterprise private enterprise could not work.
Ford Motor Company would not allow the level of internal property and private enterprise allowed in U.S. America, or even the old Soviet Union. The very purpose for incorporation is to socialize risk among investors. Corporations require public charters. They seek such charters because a charter will protect their investors. Individual liability is allowed by charter to be socialized into corporate liability. Individuals can profit and recover their investment severalfold, but their liability for loss cannot exceed onefold -their investment.

Corporate employees experience socialism. Until hired, a job candidate at Ford Motor Company is an independent competitor-cooperator for the corporation to bargain with at its edge. Corporate resources and individual talents get weighed and bargained. Ford Motor Company can reject the applicant or make an offer. The applicant can accept, reject, or haggle over the offer. Once hired, however, she becomes an employee. Ford Motor Company tells her what to do and limits her discretion in making decisions. She is expected to work for the common good, which she hopes coincides with her own. Ford Motor Company pays her the same for Tuesday as for Wednesday, no matter her production on each day. Even if the company offers pay incentives or lavish bonuses based on her performance, higher officers of the corporation set the incentives. Ford Motor Company also supplies her work space and the tools of her trade. This would not be the case if somehow her employment were marketplace based rather than communally based. Her promotions would come from her own success at marketing her talents or products to several buyers. Her status today would not ensure tomorrow's employment.

In the corporation the employee is likely to strive to maintain her secure employment and climb the corporate ladder. Among those who wish to climb that ladder, competition is fierce, but promotions and salary increases come from corporate decision makers above. There are rules that govern job security and procedures which define the role of each worker. The corporate authority structure distributes corporate wealth among workers and share holders. Authority figures also decide whose ideas will carry the greatest weight. Corporations tend to prefer employees who accept this system rather than collective bargaining or individualism. This top-down decision and wealth distribution structure mimics family tradition, socialist tradition.

None of this is bad. We should expect a private corporation, like any organization, to be socialist at its core. What is bad and misleading is to champion corporations as the epitome of free enterprise. They are not. They epitomize delegated socialism -a societal attempt to organize centers of socialism where free enterprise or national enterprise might do poorly. If we have reason to look for the epitome of free enterprise, we do better to look among industrious individuals, sole proprietors and partnerships that owe less of their existence to delegated socialism.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 30. Corporation: Delegated Socialism ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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31. Marketplace or Socialism: a Dynamic Choice

2010-04-19T23:43:00.000-06:00

Marketplace or Socialism: a Dynamic Choice
Bob Komives
::

If a good or service is to be traded in a marketplace, its supply must be limited. The good or service must be identifiable. It must be unique or divisible so that buyer and seller believe they know exactly what they are transferring. We cannot trade most wealth in a marketplace because we cannot easily identify or divide it, or because it is too abundant. Neither the oxygen produced by the world's flora nor the bile working in our livers is apt wealth for trading under most circumstances.

Some wealth that we can identify and divide does not make it into our marketplaces simply because our communal tradition says it does not belong there. We do find wood-burning heating stoves and firewood in the marketplace. A well-designed stove is a storehouse of functional and aesthetic knowledge. We can buy it and its fuel. Yet, we tend to give away the heat they produce.

My stove knows how to burn its firewood,
how to respond
to me who knows so little of what it knows,
to me who does not know how to make a stove.
My stove knows how to send smoke up its chimney
and warmth into my room.
Its warmth can please,
or it can save a half-frozen life.
Such is its success and popularity
that I could sell tickets to my stove's proximity.
But, I do not.
I share its warm knowledge freely
according to communal tradition
among family, neighbors, and kindred strangers.
Those whom my stove knows to please,
those whom my stove knows to save
give back nothing in trade
-except,
to carry forward in common tradition
what we and a stove
must in-common know.

My Common Stove

No scientific standard tells us which identifiable goods and services should be owned and traded in the marketplace. During the Civil War in the United States of America many young men bought up their obligation to serve in the army. Government had made this military obligation a commodity, making such purchases perfectly legal. During later wars many people found legal ways to avoid military service and combat, but it became illegal and immoral to try to buy one's way out. Military service had become a duty; it was no longer a commodity.

Voting is a right in some countries, a duty in others. Individuals possess this right or duty. They could sell it, but law and tradition say we can neither sell nor buy a vote. Law and tradition try to keep votes out of the marketplace.

Law and tradition make businessmen criminals and criminals businessmen. Traders in alcohol went through these metamorphoses when U.S. America entered and later left Prohibition -when alcohol sales were made illegal and then again legal.

Necessity and changing styles can move goods and services into and out of the marketplace. A corporation chooses a new combination of socialism and marketplace when it discontinues the internal manufacturing of certain components in favor of buying them in the marketplace from independent suppliers. At one time, perhaps, there was a real advantage to socializing the production within the corporation. Back in the late-twentieth century, when automobile makers Chrysler, General Motors, and Ford recognized some of the hints that they had become uncompetitive because of their aging technology and stodgy managers, they transferred some design and production from their center economies to their edge economies. There they hope to take advantage of the technological and price competitiveness of independent suppliers in a dynamic marketplace.

A family faces similar dynamic choices. After rearing children under loving socialism many parents request economic support from adult children who work for outside income but stay at home. While this is not a pure marketplace transaction, food and shelter, once distributed to the child under central traditions, now get distributed under a family-socialized form of edge economics. The change recognizes new conditions which call for a new economic mix. The added income helps the parents care for the younger children or enjoy a little luxury. The working child learns the pride and responsibility of adulthood, gaining some independence from his parents. It is as if the edges of a new household (like a new cell) begin to form before it separates from the old. If the adult child becomes sick and unable to work, however, his family will reverse itself without hesitation. "Don't pay room and board now. We are your family; we want to help you recover." They return to pure socialism.

The marketplace always has and always will be adjusted by communal decisions, especially when the public finds a market to be distorted from what is just or sensible. If modified law and tradition do not correct such distortions, correction may come from war, or revolution, or massive government spending. During the depression of the 1930s the marketplace behaved as if there were little wealth to invest. Nevertheless, under the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt the Congress of the United States of America made massive communal investments to fight poverty, and then even greater expenditures to fight World War II.

While choices are dynamic, our leaders often choose to be dogmatic. From a great war and a great depression much of the world (winners and losers) emerged wealthier than before. Perhaps, if our politicians were less dogmatic and our economists more instructive about government's communal intervention in the marketplace, we could avoid great depression and great war.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 31. Marketplace or Socialism: a Dynamic Choice ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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32. The Difference: How Outcome Is Determined

2010-04-19T23:41:00.000-06:00

The Difference: How Outcome Is Determined
Bob Komives
::

Ideas, people, and products compete intensively-both within a corporation and within the markets where the corporation buys and sells. Competition is often mistakenly equated with marketplace and free enterprise. Socialism fosters and tolerates every bit as much competition as does marketplace. Where they differ is in how results of competition get determined. In a marketplace, price (or value-per-price) is the arbiter. In a socialist system, the group or its authority figures decide based on merit, not price. Merit is judged according to criteria socialized into the system.

We uncovered certain socialist acts
perpetrated to settle competitive dispute.

Our Central Committee named a general secretary in
..... the old Soviet Union.
Our board of directors promoted a manager
..... at good-old General Motors.
Our boss sent one among us
..... to the workshop in Hawaii.
Our parents chose one among us
..... to finish the three-layer cake.

We Uncovered Certain Socialist Acts

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 32. The Difference: How Outcome is Determined ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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