26. Capital and Social Isms

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

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28. Center and Edge

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

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

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

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

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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33. Ignorance and Confession

 
Ignorance and Confession
Bob Komives
::

A society that emphasizes marketplace will tend not to see the socialism that makes marketplace possible. A socialist society will tend not to see the adaptive potential of marketplace. I believe what I see: we can have neither a socialist nor a capitalist world.

We cannot survive without socialism; it evolved with our species. It is at the center of everything living. Theoretically, we could have a world without marketplace; it is a relatively new product of evolution.

There are alternatives to marketplace in edge economics. To organize the exchange of wealth at their edges, groups can compete through war, thievery, conquest, or isolation; they can cooperate through peace, contracts, treaties, compatible but independent traditions, or through intergroup (international) law. Contracts, treaties, traditions, and intergroup law can control interchange. Thievery can also bring in wealth (such as when an immigrant smuggled the secrets of England's looms to the American continent, or when a Native American stole from another group the first horses for his own group). Conquest can bring in all the wealth of another group. Isolation can put up real or de facto walls that prohibit interchange. However, humankind's accelerating introduction of new forms of wealth makes marketplaces almost inevitable, even if illegal in an avowed communal state. We can foster the marketplace, as we do in avowed capitalist nations, but let us remember that fostering is a communal activity.

We can neither totally delegate to individuals nor totally socialize to a group the means to produce and maintain humankind's wealth. If the Soviet Union had believed that the state should own the means of production, it should not have gone into the international marketplace to buy computers and wheat. It should have bought Nebraska and IBM -people included. If U.S. America believes that people should individually own the means of production, it should eliminate the state of Nebraska and the IBM corporation because these are strictly communal structures.

I make these absurd proposals only to point out the absurdity of labeling political and economic rivalries as a dichotomy of capitalism versus socialism. The wealth production potential of the USA suffers when it ignores the fundamental dependence of marketplace on communal control over the policies of wealth distribution. Because in the last twenty years of the twentieth century marketplace was in political ascendance, so was our ignorance of our communal center. Socialism was descendent. During these twenty years, socialist leaders tended to confess that their nations suffer when they ignore the vitality, flexibility, and healthy complexity that marketplace can bring to an economy. As times change so will the loci of ignorance and confession.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 33. Ignorance and Confession ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent 

 

 

 

 

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781733884150

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34. Sell Fish on a Cherry Table.

Sell Fish on a Cherry Table.
Bob Komives
::

Robert Reich argued that, in order to arrive at a consensus for progress, we must acknowledge that the social and economic components of our national well-being are linked powerfully together. We must search for the right mixture of socialism and marketplace. This search is basic to resolving problems of food production and distribution. Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins of the Institute for Food and Development Policy have done an excellent job of pointing this out. While small, individually owned and operated farms tend to be the most productive, nations increasingly look to large, corporate farms (or in the case of some communist countries, communal farms). In poor countries with little industry, governments promote agricultural exports in exchange for foreign goods and services. In the process, self-sufficient farmers become undernourished wards of the state. In U.S. America the family farm seems endangered as more farmers go bankrupt and corporate farming expands. These are complex issues from which I will draw only a couple of points.

The socialized ethic that says everyone should have enough to eat comes in a heritage older than our own species. In our enthusiasm for marketplace, we should never forget that only more recently in the biosphere's evolution did we socialize the market into our culture. It is no more inconsistent for a nation that values the dynamics of its marketplaces to make sure that every citizen has enough to eat, than it is for a family to feed all of its members -even if some produce nothing for the marketplace.

Similarly, a nation should never forget that if it fosters either corporation or commune it fosters delegated socialism. There is nothing especially natural or inevitable about either. They exist through communal law and policy.

Where individual families produce enough food
..... (for themselves and nation)
..... and have not wrought havoc with the landscape, why substitute larger,
..... less efficient,
..... private corporations and state communes?
Since corporations are socialized creations of government,
..... there would be nothing un-American
..... in keeping them out of farming in the USA.
Since families are communes,
..... there was nothing uncommunistic
..... in reverting to family farms
..... in countries leaving the Soviet.
Of course,
..... the complement too is true.
..... Corporate,
..... communal,
..... and cooperative farms may be useful
..... where family farms cannot achieve
..... marketplace, social, and environmental goals.
There is irony in U.S. America
..... (and nations that follow its example)
..... where, in the name of free enterprise,
..... the most free of enterprises
..... (the productive family)
..... gets displaced by less efficient groups
..... that socialize risk and profit.
Communist countries displayed similar irony
..... imposing communal structure
..... that more mimics impersonal corporation
..... than traditional communism of family.

||

We can see human culture as an arena of continuously overlapping organizations, ranging from small families up to associations among nations. Each organization is itself an organ of others. Each has a communal core where it determines how to distribute its wealth internally. Our arena can also be seen as an intricate web of edges through which organizations exchange wealth. At these edges, a marketplace can facilitate interchange. Core socialism and edge marketplace complement one another. The world and its nations need not choose between them. The world and its nations cannot choose between them. Rather, they can organize themselves so that both socialism and marketplace help to capture wealth nondestructively, distribute it fairly, and recirculate it repeatedly.

I sell fish.
You sell fish.
He sell fish.

We sell fish.
She sell fish.
They sell fish.

Upon a Cherry Table

Upon a Cherry Table

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 34. Sell Fish on a Cherry Table. ::
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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38. There Are New People In Upper Forest.

There Are New People In Upper Forest.
Bob Komives
::

I return to a diagram I used earlier to portray wealth development in the biosphere. Our biosphere is the largest organization of life, sitting astride part of the inanimate universe, isolated from any other biospheres that might exist. Energy flows into the biosphere; or, better, the biosphere invades the inanimate universe and captures energy. Organisms within the biosphere distribute and recirculate the energy among themselves, thus sustaining and expanding the biosphere. Energy eventually flows or is cast back into the energy streams of the inanimate universe as biospheric waste products.



The biosphere is an organism. It's components are sub-organisms. However unruly we seem, we components organize by rules known to the biosphere. We may participate actively or passively in our organization; we may participate in ignorance or with knowledge; but we participate. Fate is uncertain. Biosphere may expand its share of universal energy or it may collapse into poverty or death --so too, our species. The process is essentially imperfect, allowing disorganization, reorganization, flawed reproduction, new forms and levels of organization. Such is the biosphere and its economic development as portrayed in the diagram.



Now instead of seeing the diagram as the biosphere at work in an inanimate universe, I will change scales and describe it as a developing culture in a place called Upper Forest. A pioneer family enters a well developed forest ecosystem whose energy (- - -) flows from plant to animal and back, ever mixed with new inanimate energy from the sun. Used energy flows either into the inanimate atmosphere or into a neighboring ecosystem.

Upper Forest is a complex organism, containing millions of sub-organisms operating at hundreds of levels. Yet from the viewpoint of the pioneer family, Uppermost G, none of the wealth of the forest is human wealth until the family enters the forest to harvest its resources. The Uppermost G's remove trees, feed piglets, extract food and materials, build structures, and leave waste to rot or otherwise reënter the forest ecosystem.

The Uppermost G's are reasonably successful. Children are born. They increase consumption but eventually increase the family's capacity to capture and use the wealth of the forest. However, the G population expands even faster, because the Uppermost G's welcome another family of relatives, the Nextmost G's, who quickly take up the same lifestyle. An ever-more organized community forms as, over time, the Thirdmost, Fourthmost, and Bottommost G's move into farm the Upper Forest.

Some of the older children of these families see an opportunity to deepen this simple community and change from farming generalists to horse-and-buggy transportation specialists. Ever dependent on the farming output to pay them, they are proud to be the C'people who take goods and passengers to and from market and around the community. Eventually, others see the opportunity for leather working. The O'ers begin to craft useful goods from the hides of farm and wild animals harvested by the G's and C's and trade the products back to the G's and C's for food and transportation. Two O'ers and two C'people developed such a close working relationship that they formed the C-O Transport and Leather company.

The Upper Forest human community has expanded its farming activity five-fold from the time that the first G'family established itself in the forest. However, community wealth has expanded more than five-fold. Due to the specializations of the C'people, O'ers, and C-O Co, much of what had gone directly to outside markets or had rotted quickly back into the forest stays in the community to enrich the lives of everyone from the Uppermost G's to the Bottommost O's. The Upper Forest Community sees that it has achieved significant economic development. These people might say their success comes from hard work. If Upper Forest Ecosystem had a voice it would likely protest. It did most of the work while the human residents just played around. As the impartial critic, I would try to calm the argument with, "So far so good. Whatever you all have done here together seems, for now, to have worked." Then, with a little diagrammatic cut-and-paste, I would point out that they are not alone.

Lower in the forest lies another community much like Upper Forest. Lower Forest inhabitants depend on Upper Forest because their river starts up there. Directly and indirectly the human community and ecosystem of Lower Forest depend on resources provided by Upper Forest. Even much of their valley soil has come over millennia from gradual erosion in the hills above. Waste products of Upper Forest community become energy inflow, wanted or unwanted, to Lower Forest.



Upper Forest community may for a while see the clearing of trees for agriculture on steep hills as economic development. Lower Forest community sees dramatic changes in the flows of water and sediment into their valley. Floods become more frequent. Siltation makes their irrigation structures and their potable water system unusable.

Lower Forest community may retaliate: close roads, take political action, resort to violence, or end the intercommunity trading that has been profitable to Upper Forest community. Perhaps both communities will find the wisdom to see that they interdepend. They are parts of a larger watershed community, a higher level organism. Each part sees economic development at the local community level and inward but should also see it from the local community outward to the watershed community.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 38. There Are New People In Upper Forest. ::
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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40. Baby and Student, Investment and Balance

Baby and Student, Investment and Balance
Bob Komives
::

If we measure economic relationships among nations by subtracting imports of trade goods and services from their complementary exports, we produce a figure that says something about trade surplus or deficit. It is a humble figure that has a secure place in the basement of accounting houses. Unfortunately, we often invite this figure to stride out of its basement nook, mount a dark horse, and ride off self-importantly into media and politics. If we fix our attention on this figure as it parades by with its precedents and successors in impressive curves and columns, we miss most of what is important about exchange of wealth.

Much wealth flows across time and international boundaries in ways that do not fit trade figures. If we climb above the parade and broaden our view, we can see that nations form just one layer among complex layers of overlapping, wealth-exchanging communities. We can see that the trade routes connecting nations are but a few conduits in the biosphere's complex network of wealth exchange.

We will see imbalance when we focus on isolated conduits. For trade to happen, local, temporal, item-specific imbalances must exist. There must be vacancies in a housing market; there must be imbalance in trade; there must be imbalance for there to be investment.

Notice, as baby and student come by.
Baby imports wealth
far in excess of export.
Student does more of same.
Do you see an obscure trade deficit
or an obvious good investment?

||

Imports have always exceeded exports in our biosphere. Otherwise, biosphere could not have grown and prospered. Biosphere, our prototype for economic development, does export byproducts to the inanimate universe, but never as requisite to an import. A community with trade imbalance may be investing well in children, education, quality of life, and survival. A business can be responsible while borrowing to invest in its future. So too, a community invests responsibly in its future using trade imbalance to borrow necessary resources from neighboring communities which voluntarily foster their own profitable, responsible imbalance.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 40. Baby and Student, Investment and Balance ::
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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