1. Faint Road

1. A Faint Road

Bob Komives
:: updated 2021 ::

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. 

I also see hope in the emergent work of others more learned than I.

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 fancy to explore. I did most of my own exploration in the 20th Century. Since 1980, for myself and few others, I have set forth my fancy on paper and electron clouds. In the 21st century I have returned a few times to my  words to find poetry and alternate formats within my conjectures on the Economics of Abundance.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 1980-2021 ::
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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Finance is not Econcomics: Fundamental Differences

Economics have, Economics has always existed in human society.

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

• 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.

Finance 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.

• 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:

.

.

It's About Investment, Dammit!

It's About Investment, Dammit!

. .

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.

-----------------------(c) 2011 Bob Komives-----------------------------

co-posted on Komivesian Poetics

Capture Broadly

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
-------------------------------------------
co-posted on Komivesian Poetics

3. Plum Local

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

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5. Economics Should Be Life Science

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

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9. Ignorance and Economic Development

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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19. We are Cursed And Blessed.

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

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35. To Suggest a Framework

To Suggest a Framework
Bob Komives
::

What I have worked
is just forgotten.
What I have wrought
is but forgot.

Ought To The Participle

I end Part I suggesting that we might re-subdivide the science of economics. In the first Plum Local, I saw a need for a new name to cover an expanded economics -perhaps, "biosphere economics" or "world economics." Change in name, however, is less important than change in substance. The substantial changes I describe rely on distinctions between abundance and scarcity, between centers and edges. Here, I propose a framework to accommodate these distinctions. I propose to unite similar areas of study within economics and to help economics connect itself with the rest of science through a redefined macroeconomics.

Macroeconomics covers the broad scope of economics, its important connections with the rest of science, and the interrelationships among the centers and edges of microeconomics. It describes the work by nature and humankind that creates wealth. It describes the general rules of abundance and economic development. Some traditional macro and microeconomics belongs here, as does economic history. For the most part it is a new economic umbrella synthesized from other parts of science.

Microeconomics describes the work of wealth distribution and maintenance. It describes the special rules of scarcity. Microeconomics can be divided into two parts:

• Central Economics covers socialism, law, tradition, treaty, peaceful cooperation, money, stock issues, internal borrowing, corruption, and like subjects. Most of traditional macroeconomics belongs here, together with studies that have not traditionally fallen under economics.

• Edge Economics covers marketplace, trade, war, peaceful isolation, external borrowing, thievery, and like subjects. Most of traditional microeconomics belongs here, together with work from other social sciences.

War and marketplace are moral near-opposites. However, both belong under edge economics because they try to bring wealth across the friction of the edge between groups. A treaty does the same, however a treaty usually belongs under central economics because it can form the core of a new group. It is the center of a higher level communal system.

Corruption and thievery are moral kin. But corruption is central while thievery is edge. In corruption, a small group at the center of a larger group finds its communal way to subvert the larger communal wealth ethic. In thievery, an individual or group imports wealth snatched from others.

Socialism and marketplace fall in different divisions of microeconomics, not because they are rivals, but because they solve different problems in the way hub and rim of a bicycle wheel solve different problems.

I prefer this framework, but I believe that names and frameworks can be both problem and solution. I seek a framework that works better, but we should avoid excess concentration on the classification of fields of study. After all, subdivisions are artificial; there is only one science. We need only make sure that economics be an integral part.

I trim my beard;
you notice my hair.
You cut your hair;
I ask, "since when the beard?"
On sight of a dirty bath,
together we throw out the baby.
My,
what able eyes for change
and lame brains for attribution
have you and I, sir,
and Little Red Ridinghood.

You and I, Sir

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 35. To Suggest a Framework ::
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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42. One Dimension We Do Not Like

One Dimension We Do Not Like
Bob Komives
::

The more that science comes to know,
the more that we come to share it,
delegate it,
distribute it,
organize it,
teach it,
learn it,
build it,
keep it,
the better and the deeper
we develop our community.

||

Since we extract from nature the wood, food, fiber, space and energy to support our culture, we may see irreconcilable conflicts between our wish to increase wealth and the biosphere's need to flourish. Greater extraction by us means less biosphere for itself. That conclusion seems reasonable, but it is wrong. Increase in human wealth does not necessarily, or even usually, require that we rob the biosphere.

If we were a one-dimensional species that could increase wealth only by adding to our breadth, economic development and extraction would be bound tightly. We could capture one more unit of economic growth only if we add one more extracting unit to the perimeter of our broad field of extractors --facing into the biosphere and grabbing what we can. But this image does not fit reality. To be truly one-dimensional we could only increase wealth by increasing population. New families in the population would have to be just like all others, and independent of them. They would work at our perimeter just as older families do at our middle.

If we were but broad, one-dimension extractors,
we could have no specialized crafts,
no division of labor,
(for they require organization in depth)
no government,
no clan, nation, or fraternity.
This is not economic development as we see it.

||

We would not enjoy one-dimensional economic development. We would never feel better off. Our species might become wealthier as it gains survival insurance --a chance flood or disease would be less likely to destroy us all. However

We would be no more wealthy than our grandparents,
no less wealthy than our grandchildren.
A lifetime of hard work would bring
neither greater reward to ourselves
nor greater security for our children.
This is not economic development as we like it.

||

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 42. One Dimension We Do Not Like ::
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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86. Derive Economics from Life Science.

Plum Local IV ::: Part VI

To Do

== chapters 86 - 92 ==

=== look to right column for direct links to chapters ===

86. Derive Economics from Life Science.
Bob Komives
::

...

The rules of wealth are written in the biosphere, by the biosphere. We are privileged to discover those rules slowly and to use them consciously. We can look beyond the apparent scarcity of the moment to the ubiquitous abundance that has nurtured evolution of our biosphere. Until the next cosmic disaster sets life back or extinguishes it, evolution builds ever more plentiful life from a once inanimate universe. Economics must better connect itself to life science to understand abundance.

Oil is dirty water
to anyone who has no knowledge of how to use it.
Water is death
to many who do not know how to swim or fish.
Fish may be angels or devils
to people who know no use for them.
Knowing that many fish are edible and tasty
has little value to a hungry quadriplegic
whose arms no longer know how to grasp a fish.
Knowing how to grasp a fish
has little value if it destroys all the fish—
eliminating the knowledge they carry within them.

Knowledge Of Dirty Water

Our wealth is complex. It includes art, safety and clean air, as well as more tangible goods and services. A resource is a resource because life has knowledge to leverage it. Knowledge is wealth and has no inherent limitations except the limits of the universe. We must measure knowledge, track it, and understand how life organizes it if we are to understand abundance. The biosphere is rich in knowledge bound into energy forms that know how to organize themselves to convert more and more of the inanimate universe into life. Humankind's wealth is its share of that knowledge. Today, other life sciences know more about this wealth than does economics.

Economics usually deals only with humankind —as do some other sciences such as sociology. That limitation is legitimate since all sciences are really arbitrary sub-sciences of one whole, science. If intellectual boundaries are understood to be convenient rather than absolute, we let one science flow naturally into another. Economic analysis should work at species level, national level, regional level, group or family level, or at the level of any life system we choose. Why? Because wealth develops at all levels. Choosing any one level for analysis, we must look inward to sub-systems, but also outward to the systems of which the chosen level is a working part.

A community fosters its economic development when it  captures wealth, distributes it, and recirculates it through  community organs —neighborhoods, schools, families, businesses, associations. In the process of economic development new subgroups may form, and old ones may reorganize. As in nature, the successful process is at once complex and elegant.

This same community should look outward to try to understand the larger governments, cultures, ecosystems, and ultimately the biosphere and universe of which it is an organ. Economics, the life science, will tell us how, while capturing wealth from these higher-level organisms, we should foster their wealth —recognizing that they too develop and change. Economics, the life science, will explain to us why, if we organize ourselves to foul or stagnate our planet, we organize for failure.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 86.  Derive Economics from Life Science  ::
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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91. For Peace, Use Abundance.

For Peace, Use Abundance.
Bob Komives
::

War is age-old medicine
for peacetime economic myth.
It can spur us to do the unconventional.
If willing to abandon dreams of community,
we can again abandon fiscal conservatism
in order to wage war,
but the pay-offs and risks have changed.
High-tech, “conventional” war is deadly,
but, after all,
just conventional.
Whole-wax, nuclear war is more deadly,
but, after all,
just unthinkable.
If we will refuse to use war
to cure ills in the economics of scarcity,
we must learn to use abundance
to cure ills in the economics of peace.

||

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 91. For Peace, Use Abundance. ::
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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92. Let It Comfort Humankind.

Plum Local IV


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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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