6 comments

• Steven Kim says:

  May 31, 2016 at 1:32 am

  On the upside, this paper argues for the need for a fair system of distribution for the population at large in divvying up the fruits of economic activity. In particular, the author subscribes to a broad interpretation of the geonomic doctrine by which humans own whatever they create whereas the things found in nature, such as land, belong to all mankind.

  On a negative note, however, it’s often hard to follow the argument. As an example, the author declares at the outset that “Geonomic thought is introduced as a long-term strategy for global dynamic efficiency…. legal remedy is to primarily tax economic rent and to converting it into public revenue”. Unfortunately, the paper is short on details on any system of taxes which will accomplish this task. In that case, it seems to me that the geonomic approach in this case is more of a guiding principle for crafting a strategy of some kind rather than a viable scheme for actually attaining the objective.

  From a different slant, the paper does have a great deal to say about the problems that can arise in formulating a tax code which would be practical as well as compatible with the envisaged approach. As a counterpoint, many a company such as Apple or Google keeps billions of dollars of profits stashed offshore in order to avoid U.S. taxes. Sadly, though, the possibility of devising a uniform system of taxation applicable to all manner of individuals and companies based in every country on Earth is scanty to nonexistent – for the foreseeable future, at least.

  It is also far from certain that the hearty results pictured by the author would in fact ensue from taking the tack outlined. For instance, the author states that “A geonomic system of production and distribution will most probably, in gradual calculative stages, lead to a participatory economy, decentral market socialism and legitimate private wealth”. This sort of thinking lay behind the colossal experiments in communism and socialism during the 20th century. Despite the grand ideals of the proponents, though, the actual outcome was a deluge of poverty and misery for the mass of the population in the stricken countries.

  From a larger stance, the topics under discussion are hugely complex. So there is plenty of opportunity for the author to expand on his ideas in future work – especially by way of concrete methods which could turn out to be workable and effective as well as palatable to the bulk of private citizens and public officials.

  • Stephen I. Ternyik says:

    May 31, 2016 at 1:13 pm

    Steven, you are right in the point that big government (and in return big business) can never be financed by a geonomic tax reform which will make things ‘smaller’. Your mentioning of communism/socialism in relation to the geonomic approach is not qualified; in addition, free scientific research work is not about missions/visions to a ‘bulk’ of people (then we should choose entertainment). The geonomic approach has produced enough ‘concrete methods’, e.g. just take a look on the works of Ted Gwartney. In your lines, I am reading the ‘old cold war’ arguments against people who side for distributive justice; to say it frankly: I have heard these types of arguments now for about 6 decades !!! As a learned optimist, I do understand the deep critique of your reflections, but the business of life calls for warnings of dangers in the road ahead. In any case, many thanks to call for more precise geonomic formulae, to which I fully agree; you are invited. Best: stephen

• John Vandenberg says:

  June 5, 2016 at 10:02 pm

  Steven T., thanks for your paper, but I find your mathematical formulations insufficiently explained and hard to follow. In my algebraic understanding, P=W+R+I is just a different way of saying P-W= R+I. Your comments about waves and spirals are obscure, and the underlying mathematics of simple harmonic motion, I suspect, have little to do with the chaotic behaviours of the human economic system. Nevertheless, I am sympathetic to the geonomic approach, but feel it needs a firmer theoretical grounding. I am reminded of the work of Odum, a biologist who proposed a monetary system based on units of energy.
  To see where I am coming from on this, please see my comments on Aitken’s paper. My starting point is that the ultimate source of human income is solar energy combined with primordial geological materials. These produce the natural capital that humans have learned how to expropriate in order to sustain and expand the occurrence of our own DNA, often at the expense of the DNA of other species.
  In my view free solar energy and natural capital and the creation of intractable wastes (pollution) are factors to be included in economic reckoning.

• Stephen I. Ternyik says:

  June 6, 2016 at 5:11 am

  Many thanks for your interesting reader response, John V.; I have been learning about the approach from R.Aitken (and also about your comments) and they belong surely to the geonomic approach; Prof. Graeme Snooks in Australia is working on the direction of research that you mentioned. My point is the natural science of human societies, i.e. human economic activity, ceativity/ingenuity and physical laws (e.g. thermodynamics vs. evolution). You are right in pointing to the chaotic behavior of the economic system; if this trend continues, our ‘thermodynamic gap’ will definitely close, but we can also opt to minimize entropy (according to Odum’s approach) and to apply ‘rent control`, i.e. to convert the rent for the use of natural resources into public revenue and I can assure you that the rentiers will still enjoy a nice life. A growing quantity of rents curbs economic productivity and the fiat monetary system is used to transfer liquidity into assets (and vice versa); this is a triple monopoly (1.land, 2.money, 3.taxation) and can be brought into a better working balance by geo-economic dynamic efficiency, i.e. a more rational allocation of our natural resources.

• Raymond Aitken says:

  July 12, 2016 at 3:01 am

  1. THIS PAPER AS AN INTERESTING LEARNING EXERCISE

  Readers, particularly lay readers, might find the style of writing used by the author difficult to understand at first, as it is conceptually very concentrated, and the author uses specialised terms drawn from a wide range of disciplines. For myself, reading this paper was an interesting learning exercise, which expanded and deepened my intellectual repertoire. There were many terms and concepts that I either didn’t know at all, or that my understanding about them was insufficiently precise; including the term “geonomics”! As part of my reading-learning effort, I started to create a glossary (see below, after the NOTES), which is referenced in this response, by using capital letters in square brackets ([A], [B], [C] etc).

  2. DIAGNOSIS AND REMEDY FROM A METAPHYSICAL PERSPECTIVE

  I found this a very interesting paper, in that it attempts diagnosis and remedy from the metaphysical perspective, as an “antidote” to the prevailing materialistic macro perspective, which confines human consciousness to a mechanistic level of thinking, masquerading as “modern” economics (eg: “homo-economicus”[1] etc).

  Psychotically healthy human beings continually demonstrate that they have innate life purpose beyond the selfish maximisation (optimisation) of their materialistic consumption and accumulation needs. If human beings are forced to live exclusively at the lower levels of Maslow’s pyramid of human motivational needs[2], within an alternating dichotomy of consumerist booms and austerity busts, they will either revolt in order to re-establish stable conditions for realising their higher needs for self-actualisation, in accordance with imperative of their intrinsic metaphysical (spiritual) nature; or, they will become conditioned into a devolutionary self-destructive state of “learned helplessness”[F].

  As the French writer, Jean Giono[3] warned in 1938: “… man needs spiritual comfort. Beauty is the backbone of his soul. Without it – tomorrow – he will commit suicide in the palaces of his automatic life.”[4]

  I concur with the author’s geonomic[A] perspective, and that “the progressive quantity of rent[B] in a [financial]-capital[C] based economy,” has led humanity into the current impasse “of a Sisyphean[D] economy”.

  3. PIVOTAL STOCK MARKET CRASHES NOT CLEARLY IDENTIFIED

  There is one important instance where the author was not specific enough about historical events he was referring to, eg. in the key question he posed: “So, what went wrong with global capitalism, especially after the events of 1989, and can we identify the key mechanisms of malfunction or systemic error?”. It would have been better if the author had put a footnote explaining what he meant by “after the events of 1989”.

  After some research, I have assumed that the author is referring to the recession of the early 1990s[5], that followed the 1987 Black Monday stock market crash[6], and involved the 1989–91 Savings & Loan crisis in the United States[7].

  This period of global recession in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was consequent to the October 1987 Black Monday stock market collapse, which was of an unprecedented size, in that the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 22.6%. This collapse was larger than the stock market crash of 1929. The stock market quickly recovered, but further research might reveal that this was at the expense of a bail-in through plundering the wealth of millions of American small savers, in what is known as the savings and loan crisis[x]. It is herein posited that savings and loan associations (S&Ls) in the USA were made technically insolvent, as a result of interest rate manipulations by the de facto world central bank, the Federal Reserve System. This suspected contrived technical insolvency, was coupled with the bait of “lax regulatory oversight, which in turn allowed some S&Ls to invest in highly speculative investment strategies” (i.e. transfer payments to bail-out the stock market). As a result, 1,043 out of the 3,234 savings and loan associations in the United States failed and were closed down between 1986 to 1995. In 1996, the U.S General Accounting Office estimated that the total cost of the S&L crisis to be in the order of $160 billion, including $132.1 billion taken from taxpayers.

  If what the author is refers to as the “events of 1989”, are indeed related to the above described scenario of stock market crash and recovery, then examining these events through a phenomenological lens, can help us to “identify the key mechanisms of malfunction or systemic error”, which not only plagued the world then, but which have now reached a catastrophic systemic tipping point.

  4. DISTINCTION BETWEEN ECONOMICS AND BUBBLENOMICS

  We have to make a very clear distinction between economics of the real economy, and “bubblenomics”[8][9] practiced in the unreal economy of financial markets. In my opinion, “bubblenomics” is the “key mechanism of malfunction and systemic error” that we are looking to eliminate. The so called “business cycle” of boom and bust within the real economy, is a symptomatic effect of the predatory-parasitic activity of “bubblenomic” practice within the unreal economy of financial markets.

  The only reason that the real economy suffers from such parasitical of bubblenomic behavior, is because the mechanism of finance for real economic production, exchange and regenerative distribution, has been captured to serve the purpose of bubblenomic predators. As Michael Hudson points out, the parasite has convinced its host that the parasite and host are one organism[10]. The mother of all bubblenomic (financial) markets is the government bond market, where so called “market makers” buy the future real economy production of the people for “pennies in the pound”, securitized as State enforced debt, and and paying for such “financial assets” that represent the “wealth of nations”, with monetised purchasing rights conjured “out of thin air”, by fraudulently recording them in a double-entry social accounting system, as assets of the banking system owners, instead of as the purchasing rights of real economy producers, which rights arise from the production obligations that these producers have undertaken, on behalf of the needs/demand of society.

  5. DIRECT FINANCING OF THE REAL ECONOMY WITH A SEPARATE PAYMENT SYSTEM

  Financing as the allocation of existing (past produced) commodities and resources, to enable a present production of new/replacement commodities, within a certain future time frame, does not need to pass through the rentier-arbitrage system of financial markets. It can be done directly between bona fide producers in the real economy, and competent-transparent financing institutions, without the intermediary of non-producers (such as the State and central banks), and performed on a not-for-profit basis, as a civil society regulated public service. The same goes for the payment system, which should be organisationally walled off from the financing system, so that Glass-Steagall[11] is institutionally architectured into the monetary system itself, and therefore not subject to the corruption of bought/compromised politicians.

  The institution of direct financing of the real economy, without the need of financial markets, and an institutionally separate but articulated payment system will make obsolete what the author describes as “the current global rent-seeking monopoly for privileges, [which] is not only unjust; [but] not efficient and not effective” from a real economy perspective. As the author correctly points out: “the rentier mechanism of an economy [i.e. bubblenomics] (…) extracting progressively value (actually energy) for no-thing, (…) with the growing boulder [snowball] of economic rent, curbing [real economy] productivity.”. There is evidence[12] that things have become so bad that we have now entered a vicious downward cycle of debt-deflation[13], which is “swallowing the entire World … [because] Central Banks have pumped trillions [as QE] into the [unreal] economy of financial markets”[14], in order to maintain the despotic bubblenomic empire.

  6. PROBLEM OF TRADITIONAL TAXATION FOR FUNDING PUBLIC GOODS AND SERVICES

  For the above reasons, I do not agree when the author proposes that “the legal remedy is to primarily tax economic rent and to convert it into public revenue.”. As the last paragraph in the above quoted work[4] of Jean Giono reads: “To heal from the plague means not to go back to it, but to go back to health. It is to depart from the bad. Intelligence is to withdraw from the bad.”

  It is true that we need “public revenue” to fund the regenerative function of the non-commercial circuit of the economy, in terms of ecosystem regeneration, resource conservation, human capital formation, commonwealth infrastructures, goods and services, as well as maximising opportunities for everyone to realise their full human potential and life purpose. These public funds comprise monetised purchasing power that are claims on the economic surplus, which is produced within the commercial circuit of the economy, and which is inherently abundant when the economy is healthy (i.e. rentier-free).

  It is also true that since ancient times, State administered taxation has been the traditional means of transferring purchasing power, as a claim on the economic surplus, from the commercial to the non-commercial economic circuit. As I say in my working paper[15]: “The evidence of experience, both past and present, shows that the traditional mechanism of taxation has been thoroughly circumvented and discredited by powerful commercial and financial sector agents, to the detriment of the institutional integrity of the State, including the systemic corruption of the process of democracy.”.

  7. ARCHITECTURING MONEY TO RESTORE THE GIFT, AS A DIRECT DEMOCRACY TRANSFER OF THE ECONOMIC SURPLUS TO FUND THE PUBLIC GOOD

  Fortunately, another way has been proposed by the French economist Michel Laloux[16], which restores the gift as a means for actualising the responsibility of human sovereignty, as well as being an exercise in direct economic democracy. Laloux proposes that the vital transfer of purchasing power from the commercial circuit to the non-commercial circuit, should be embedded within the architecture of a threefold monetary social accounting system, comprising institutionally separate organisations for:
  (1) financing new production in the commercial circuit of the economy
  (2) provision of a payment system, and
  (3) provision contribution fund institutions, to collect, allocate and oversee the application of contribution funds (equivalent to tax revenues), for the regeneration and extension of commonwealth goods, services and resources, in the non-commercial economic circuit. This transfer would be implemented through the application of a demurrage based liquidity tax, to recycle stagnant accumulations of purchasing power in the payment system, from users current purchasing accounts, to their deferred purchasing accounts. At the end of each accounting year, any balance above a calculated limit would be transferred from user’s deferred purchasing accounts, to their contribution account held in separate contribution fund institutions. Individuals would have the direct democracy opportunity to channel their commonwealth contributions towards a choice-range of budget items and non-commercial provider/suppliers.

  In conclusion, not only would taxation of economic rent and its conversion it into public revenue be untenable relative to the regulatory capture of the State, but even more problematic, it maintains the apex predator status of parasitical financial markets, to overrule the economic rights and obligations of humanity, despite the fact that the global system of rentier-finance is in a state of imminent catastrophic collapse. What we need now is “WEXIT” from all financial markets, and the institution of special economic zones to pilot, demonstrate and replicate: (1) the direct financing of the real economy, with (2) a separate payment system and, (3) an alternative to State administered taxation, as a means of transferring in a transparent, equitable and democratic way, the economic surplus from the commercial to the non-commercial circuit of the economy.

  8. WEXIT: AN EXODUS FROM THE BUBBLENOMIC INDUCED CRASH OF FINANCIAL MARKETS

  As Chris Martenson of Peak Prosperity surmises[17], financial markets have “become gigantic, globally interconnected, leveraged speculating casinos. Nothing but a massive set of bubbles in search of a pin. It looks like they may have just found one…” in BREXIT. Peter Schiff also opinions that Brexit is not the reason; but only a potential catalyst for a systemic collapse of financial markets globally[18].

  Under the incumbent paradigm of money as a commodity, there are no safe havens for the 99%, see:

  – Fortunes Will Be Made & Lost When Capital Flees To Safety – As safe havens are tiny markets, by Adam Taggart [19]

  – Jim Sinclair-Biggest Bubble in the History of Finance [20]

  The only safe haven[21] is an exodus from financial markets[22].

  This means an exodus by the 99% from a despotic system of financing, payment and taxation (distribution of the real economic surplus), which is architectured to transfer economic rights and political power from the 99%, to a psychotically deranged 0.1%. The “promised land” of “safe havens from the imminent collapse of financial markets is the establishment by civil society of special economic zones[23], whereby money is re-instituted as civil society regulated public service, for the interest-free social accounting[24] of economic rights and obligations, and regulated in accordance with the rule of higher law[25].

  This paradigm makes obsolete the anachronistic incumbent State enforced paradigm, whereby money is illegitimately privatised as a commodity (through fraudulent accounting), so that money can be produced and traded for speculative gain within a system of financial markets.

  The paradigm of money as a virtuous social accounting system is not new. The last time such a system for the social accounting of economic rights and obligations, whereby purchasing rights (sd monetised credit) was “backed” by production obligations, which rights and obligations (debits) were simultaneously recorded in the double entry accounting system, was during the birth of the USA. See: American Credit System 1650-1796 [26]

  Perhaps the time has come for the American people to take up their forgotten torch of liberty, and cooperate with the peoples of Europe and the rest of the world, in establishing a commonwealth movement and network for universal and sustainable global prosperity.

  NOTES:
  ======

  [1] In economics, homo economicus, or economic man, is the concept in many economic theories portraying humans as consistently rational and narrowly self-interested agents who usually pursue their subjectively-defined ends optimally. Generally, homo economicus attempts to maximize utility as a consumer and profit as a producer.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus

  [2] Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is often portrayed in the shape of a pyramid with the largest, most fundamental levels of needs at the bottom and the need for self-actualization at the top.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

  [3] Jean Giono bio by Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giono

  [4] Here is the full quote: “It is not true that all we have need of is sturdy steel, automobiles, tractors, refrigerators, electric lighting, scientific comfort. I know that all these robots make life easier, I use them myself as extensively as anyone. But man needs spiritual comfort. Beauty is the backbone of his soul. Without it – tomorrow – he will commit suicide in the palace of his automatic life.” – Jean Giono (1938), “Lettre aux paysans sur la pauvreté et la paix”.
  http://data.over-blog-kiwi.com/1/56/96/02/20160418/ob_40d44e_lettre-aux-paysans-sur-la-pauvrete-et.pdf

  [5] The recession of the early 1990s describes the period of economic downturn affecting much of the world in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The global recession came swiftly after the Black Monday of October 1987, resulting from a stock collapse of unprecedented size which saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average fall by 22.6%. This collapse, larger than the stock market crash of 1929, was handled effectively by the global economy, and the stock market began to quickly recover. However, in North America, the lumbering savings and loans industry was facing decline which eventually led to a savings and loan crisis which compromised the wellbeing of millions of Americans. The following recession thus impacted the many countries closely linked to the United States.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1990s_recession

  [6] In finance, Black Monday refers to Monday, October 19, 1987, when stock markets around the world crashed, shedding a huge value in a very short time. The crash began in Hong Kong and spread west to Europe, hitting the United States after other markets had already declined by a significant margin. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell exactly 508 points to 1,738.74 (22.61%). In Australia and New Zealand, the 1987 crash is also referred to as “Black Tuesday” because of the time zone difference.
  By the end of October, stock markets in Hong Kong, Australia, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada had fallen 45.5%, 41.8%, 31%, 26.45%, 22.68% and 22.5% respectively. New Zealand’s market was hit especially hard, falling about 60% from its 1987 peak, and taking several years to recover. However the rapid rebound of the stock market largely depended on the S&L business, which was already under scrutiny before its mid-1989 collapse, sending the economy to a “hard landing” phase late that summer.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1987)

  [7] The 1989–91 United States Savings & Loan crisis “was the failure of 1,043 out of the 3,234 savings and loan associations in the United States from 1986 to 1995: the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) closed or otherwise resolved 296 institutions from 1986 to 1989 and the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) closed or otherwise resolved 747 institutions from 1989 to 1995.”.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis

  [8] “Bubblenomics” refers to the asset inflation-deflation manipulations which are practiced in the unreal economy of financial markets, so that rent-seeking speculators and parasitic investors, can counterfeit/extract financial claims on the real value produced by real economy producers, as well as to privatise (buy) the commonwealth factors of production (including land), and also to buy the social power apparatus of government and the media.
  SEE:
  (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_bubble
  (2) http://www.clarity.net/~jake/bubble.htm
  (3) Kent Palmer (2008), An Introduction to Bubble-nomics – https://www.academia.edu/2711384/An_Introduction_to_Bubble-nomics
  (4) Bubblenomics And The Future Of Real Estate – http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-22/bubblenomics-and-future-real-estate

  [9] The source of financial bubbles: extracts from: Ismael Hossein-zadeh (2016), “Marx on Financial Bubbles: Much Keener Insights Than Contemporary Economists”.
  “… the main source of financial bubbles and bursts” is “… the profit from fictitious capital …” “… and its accumulation into more fictitious/parasitic capital” “… that is, profit that is made on paper or computer keyboards in the financial sector through trading or speculation in financial assets. While blaming policies or strategies of deregulation, securitization, and other financial innovations as factors that facilitated the financial bubble is not false, it masks the fact that these factors are essentially instruments or vehicles of the accumulation of fictitious finance capital. No matter how subtle or complex, they are essentially clever tools or strategies of transferring surplus value generated elsewhere by labor, or of creating fictitious capital out of thin air. Marx characterized this subtle transfer of (real/labor) value from productive to unproductive fictitious capital as “an extreme form of the fetishism of commodities” in which the real, but submerged, source of surplus-value is concealed. Marx makes a clear distinction between real profit and profit from financial bubbles. While real profit is rooted in, and therefore directly limited, by production of surplus value, profit from inflation of fictitious capital (or asset price inflation) is not—at least, not directly, immediately, or in the short-term. Marx distinguishes between a variety of profits and/or incomes—all dependent, ultimately, on the amount of surplus value created by human labor in the process of production. After thus pointing out that the limits or boundaries of the speculative finance capital are much wider than those of the industrial capital, he then cautions that this does not mean that speculative capital can expand indefinitely: “However, an obstacle is indeed immanent in its laws of expansion, i.e., in the limits in which capital can realize itself as capital”. In other words, a giant bubble of fictitious values on a narrow base of real values can expand only to a certain extent; it is bound to burst beyond that extent. In brief, Marx’s discussion of the systemic and systematic outflow of finance capital from the sphere of production to the sphere of speculation in pursuit of higher returns shows that, contrary to widespread perceptions among contemporary economists, Marx did, indeed, envision scenarios of the emergence of financial inflations and deflations, or bubbles and bursts. The discussion further signifies the superiority of his analysis of the relationship between industrial capital and (parasitic) finance capital over those of neoclassical economists, according to whom any outflow of finance capital from the sphere of production would be temporary and non-problematic, as it would soon be reverted back to the real sector of the economy (either by the invisible hand of the market mechanism a la neoliberalism, or by the state’s visible hand a la Keynesianism) to be invested productively. Therein lies the tragedy of mainstream/neoclassical economists: in their paranoid fear of Marx, they have essentially censored his economic views, thereby depriving themselves of the richest analysis of capitalism. In so doing, they have also succeeded in reducing economics as an academic discipline to what Professor Michael Hudson aptly calls “junk economics,” the official labelling of the discipline as a “science” notwithstanding.
  http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/01/marx-on-financial-bubbles-much-keener-insights-than-contemporary-economists/

  [10] Extract from an interview of Michael Hudson: “A parasite cannot take anything from the host unless it takes over the brain. The brain in modern economies is the government, the educational system, and the way that governments and societies make their economic policy models of how to behave. In nature, the parasite makes the host think that the free rider, the parasite, is its baby, part of its body, to convince the host actually to protect the parasite over itself. That’s how the financial sector has taken over the economy. Its lobbyists and academic advocates have persuaded governments and voters that they need to protect banks, and even need to bail them out when they become overly predatory and face collapse. Governments and politicians are persuaded to save banks instead of saving the economy …”.
  http://michael-hudson.com/2015/10/rewriting-economic-thought/

  [11] The Glass–Steagall Act describes four provisions of the U.S. Banking Act of 1933 that limited securities, activities, and affiliations within commercial banks and securities firms. In the 1999 Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA), repealed the two provisions restricting affiliations between banks and securities firms. Many commentators have stated that the GLBA’s repeal of the affiliation restrictions of the Glass–Steagall Act was an important cause of the financial crisis of 2007–08.[9][10][11] Some critics of that repeal argue it permitted Wall Street investment banking firms to gamble with their depositors’ money that was held in affiliated commercial banks.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Legislation

  [12] See: “Undeniable Evidence That The Real Economy Is Already In Recession” – http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-17/undeniable-evidence-real-economy-already-recession

  [13] An extract of an interview of Michael Hudson: “Most people think of the economy as producing goods and services and paying labor to buy what it produces. But a growing part of the economy in every country has been the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector, which comprises the rent and interest paid to the economy’s balance sheet of assets by debtors and rent payers. More and more money is being extracted from of the production and consumption economy to pay the FIRE sector. That’s what causes debt deflation and shrinks markets. If you pay the banks, you have less to spend on goods and services.”
  http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-slow-crash-the-shrinking-of-the-real-economy/5532131

  [14] See: “Deflation Threatens to Swallow the World” – http://www.globalresearch.ca/why-the-black-hole-of-deflation-is-swallowing-the-entire-world-even-after-central-banks-have-pumped-trillions-into-the-economy/5503494

  [15] Raymond Aitken (2016), Money: a social contract or an ” invisible hand ” of inverted totalitarianism – version 2 – 10May16 – https://www.academia.edu/25948427/Title_of_paper_Money_a_social_contract_or_an_invisible_hand_of_inverted_totalitarianism_-_version_2_-_10May16

  [16] Laloux, M. (2014) Dépolluer l’économie, Tome 1: Révolution dans la monnaie.
  Available at: http://www.democratieevolutive.fr/fr/Products-listing/product/l3.html (Accessed: 21 April 2016). This book has been translated into English by the convening author of this working paper (Raymond Aitken), and is in the process of being published. The title of the English edition is: Detoxify the economy, Volume 1, A revolution in thinking about money. Sample chapters available at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sSpFwUXMUnN9UERicsPXQ3wprY-1dZyGy0QBmh6DX4s/edit?usp=sharing

  [17] Chris Martenson (2016), Brexit Shocker! – Making sense of what just happened – http://www.peakprosperity.com/comment/196632#comment-196632

  [18] Peter Schiff (2016), Brexit Is Not The Reason; It’s The Catalyst, The Peter Schiff Show Podcast – Episode 176 – https://youtu.be/38qlUfslIYw

  [19] Adam Taggart (2016), Fortunes Will Be Made & Lost When Capital Flees To Safety – http://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/98985/fortunes-will-made-lost-when-capital-flees-safety

  [20] Jim Sinclair (2016), Biggest Bubble in the History of Finance – https://youtu.be/IYBvyn63T1w

  [21] A safe haven is an investment that is expected to retain its value or even increase its value in times of market turbulence. Safe havens are sought after by investors to limit their exposure to losses in the event of market downturns. However, what are considered safe havens alter over time as market conditions change, and what appears to be a safe investment in one down market could be a disastrous investment in another down market.
  http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/safe-haven.asp

  [22] A financial market is a market in which people trade financial securities, commodities, and other fungible items of value at low transaction costs and at prices that reflect supply and demand. Securities include stocks and bonds, and commodities include precious metals or agricultural products.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_market

  [23] The term Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is an area in which business and trade laws differ from the rest of the country. – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_economic_zone

  [24] Dirk J Bezemer (2008), Banks As Social Accountants And Social Controllers: Credit and Crisis in Historical Perspective – http://www.uclm.es/actividades/2009/workshopESHET-UCLM/Bezemer_-_Banks_as_social_accountants.pdf

  [25] The rule according to a higher law means that no law may be enforced by the government unless it conforms with certain universal principles (written or unwritten) of fairness, morality, and justice. Thus, the rule according to a higher law may serve as a practical legal criterion to qualify the instances of political or economical decision-making, when a government, even though acting in conformity with clearly defined and properly enacted legal rules, still produces results which many observers find unfair or unjust. – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_according_to_higher_law

  [26] Michael Anthony Kirsch (2013), American Credit System 1650-1796 – https://youtu.be/WSglqajuzXI

  GLOSSARY:
  =========

  [A] GEONOMIC DOCTRINE:
  “Humans own whatever they create, whereas the things found in nature, such as land, belong to all mankind.”
  – Steven Kim, in his response to the paper by Stephen Ternyik: “Global Dynamic Efficiency (Towards a Long-Term Strategy)”.

  [B] ECONOMIC RENT:
  The concept of economic rent can be generalised as an unearned income and need not apply to physical land. The classical political economy of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Henry George belong to the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It focussed particularly on land in the physical sense due to the structure of the economy, about which they wrote. Nevertheless the concept of economic rent still holds true, as the economy continues to function on the basis of property and rights, the concept of land can be broadened to include such things as radio spectrums and so forth.
  http://www.henrygeorgefoundation.org/the-science-of-economics/economic-rent.html

  [C] CAPITAL:
  Capital was interestingly defined by the author in a previous paper as the “technical resources as product of accumulated labor-time”. Here is this definition in the context of its complete sentence: “Real human advancement resulted, empirically and historically, in social developments that introduced energy saving techniques into the human labor processes of converting natural resources (land) into capital (technical resources/as product of accumulated labor-time).”
  SOURCE: Stephen Ternyik (2015), Geonomics, Energetics and the K-Paradox
  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2673687

  [D] SISYPHEAN:
  Denoting a task that can never be completed. In Greek mythology Sisyphus was the king of Ephyra (now known as Corinth). He was punished for his self-aggrandizing craftiness and deceitfulness by being forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, repeating this action for eternity. Through the classical influence on modern culture, tasks that are both laborious and futile are therefore described as Sisyphean.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus

  [E] LEARNED OPTIMISM:
  Learned optimism is the idea in positive psychology that a talent for joy, like any other, can be cultivated. It is contrasted with learned helplessness. Learning optimism is done by consciously challenging any negative self talk.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_optimism
  VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me9TI9JhvZw
  As Oscar Wilde said: “The difference between an optimist and a pessimist is drole. The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole!”.

  [F] LEARNED HELPLESSNESS:
  Learned helplessness is behavior typical of an organism (human or animal) that has endured repeated painful or otherwise aversive stimuli which it was unable to escape or avoid. After such experience, the organism often fails to learn escape or avoidance in new situations where such behavior would be effective. In other words, the organism seems to have learned that it is helpless in aversive situations, that it has lost control, and so it gives up trying. Such an organism is said to have acquired learned helplessness. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses may result from such real or perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

  [G] RADICAL SCEPTICISM:
  Radical skepticism or radical scepticism is the philosophical position that knowledge is most likely impossible. Radical skeptics hold that doubt exists as to the veracity of every belief and that certainty is therefore never justified. To determine the extent to which it is possible to respond to radical skeptical challenges is the task of epistemology or “the theory of knowledge”. The Ancient Greek philosophers Plato, Cratylus and Pyrrho as well as Roman philosopher Sextus Empiricus are among those who expounded theories of radical skepticism.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_skepticism

• Stephen I. Ternyik says:

  July 12, 2016 at 1:51 pm

  Many thanks *******, dear Raymond Aitken, for your detailed response!!! We are in a transition period and we try to figure out, using the scientific method, what is happening now. 1989 is an important date, because people (not only in Europe !) voted for consumer options, but they took some basic provisions (health. work, housing, etc.) as guaranteed; these economic expecations are about preferences, e.g. maybe, at first, I like to have an affordable home, afterwards other consumptions may follow. I am not academic, but only a scientist, i.e I try to connect life to knowledge ( and vice versa). Natural resources, monetary tools and human knowledge go hand in hand, money is a transformative calculation of values and a social construct= money is a social construct that can destroy lives ! Your works on money show its double nature: accounting and manipulation. My conclusion is that we have to reduce money into a technical means of payment (like JM Keynes proposed), with some reserve qualities, but it should actually circulate like healthy blood.. What can I say more? I am deeply impressed by your reflections and effort; my impression is that you are are really seeking truth in human economic affairs and this is our common interest. Best/cordially:stephen