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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10. Buckminster Fuller's Elegant Law

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

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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13. Life's Imperfect Invasion of the Universe

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

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15. Capture, Distribute, And Recirculate Wealth

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

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16. Biology, Brain, Artifact: Our Wealth Stores

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

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

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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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