Your last statement reminds me of a brilliant book called "the world our hearts know is possible" by Charles Eisenstein. If you don't know it, I can only recommend it, as well as any other work by him.
Hear, hear. I think most would agree that a work/life balance is desirable and when I first started work in 1979 (in a bank) I was told that that was the company's philosophy. Somewhere along the way, it became 'work longer hours and you'll get promoted'.
CH Douglas articulated exactly the kind of vision for a sustainable economic framework that you challenge us to imagine and he did it over 100 years ago. Alas, he was memory-holed by TPTB.
Wikipedia summarizes his thinking as follows: According to Douglas, the true purpose of production is consumption, and production must serve the genuine, freely expressed interests of Consumers. Each
citizen is to have a beneficial, not direct, inheritance in the communal capital conferred by complete and dynamic access to the fruits of industry assured by the National Dividend and Compensated Price. Consumers, fully provided with adequate purchasing power, will establish the policy of production through exercise of their monetary vote. In this view, the term Social Credit does not mean worker control of industry. Removing the policy of production from banking institutions, government, and industry, Social Credit envisages an "aristocracy of Producers, serving and accredited by a democracy of Consumers." Assuming the only safe place for power is in many hands, Social Credit is a distributive philosophy, and its policy is to disperse power to individuals. Social Credit philosophy is best summed by Douglas when he said, “Systems were made for men, and not men for systems, and the interest of man which is self-development, is above all systems, whether theological, political or economic.”
That is the kind of system I would like to live under. I have looked closely at his proposals and have concluded that they are sound. The immediate benefits to all of us are a compensated price (CP) and national dividend (ND).
Think of the ND as a guaranteed income that is financed not by debt but by the productivity increase of the nation. It serves to eliminate welfare, poverty, and the nanny state.
Think of CP as sales credit instead of sales tax for every purchase made by consumers. This is not applicable to businesses - only end consumers. It too is funded by the productivity increase of the nation. If a nation produces no wealth, there will be no ND or CP.
All of this will serve to radically downsize our bloated government bureaucracy, wrestle control of our money from the banksters and implement the only kind of democracy that really matters - economic democracy. After all, of what use is political democracy (the vote) to a starving man living under a bridge or in a cardboard box?
In then end we all discover that this short life on Earth is horrible, even for the very rich, or sometimes even more so for them. The great philosophers of Asia and Greece, foremost Pythagoras, always taught that the only thing worth living for is the period AFTER this life. All the wise man of before BC deemed a sober and thoughtful life more worthwile than being busy looking after our own well being, always trying to secure something that isn't secure at all. The wise didn't even show an interest in a 'fortunate' life as every fortune in the end will change in its opposite. If you have done well, you will reap well. The wise and ascetic Apollonius of Tyana once declined large amounts of gold his host, an Asian king, offered but accepted rare gems, as they would heal the soul. Everything on Earth is polarized, everything knows its opposite. Every very loving and charming person can be hateful at some point. All rich people will someday be poor, and the poor rich, when not in this life then perhaps in the next, as there are higher powers in the unseen that lead us nilly willy to experiences by which we will grow. The universe does not know stagnancy, everything moves, flows, vibrates uninterruptedly in short it is full of LIFE.
They, the really ensouled beings, our classical heroes of all nominations knew that after death the REAL life would begin, which roughly would be 100 times the years we would live on Earth, depending on our character, acts and all various inclinations, as was rehearsed every year at the Eleusinian Mysteries (in Greece), where those that were found ready, were taught what would happen after we die. Those who got succesfully intiated KNEW what the dangers in life were. Yes, the most important thing in this fragile life is to save the soul, the higher, the selfless thinking part of man, to not get entangled in the thorns of the world, not to be pulled down by the luring lower attractions of the glamours of the so-called false prophets. Living on Earth is dangerous as hell and you Alex play an important great part in all this by writing articles like you do.
I apologize for the typos and errors as English is not my language and I seldom write anything in English, and offer my apologies for the brutal length of this epistle, but I deemed it worthwile when taking this very special sacred period of the year into account. I wish you well in continuing opening the hearts of men by offering ever greater vistas, and thank you for that too.
What I'd like to see is a new gdp/wealth measure called 75% wealth. That is the wealth of the bottom 75% of the population ideally charted over the past 100 years. That would tell voters the truth about what governments have done to the majority of voters.
75% wealth seems to have been flat or negative for the last 35 years even as GDP doubled.
And frankly the top 25% were doing pretty well 35 years ago, so it seems quite safe to ignore them now.
Your last statement reminds me of a brilliant book called "the world our hearts know is possible" by Charles Eisenstein. If you don't know it, I can only recommend it, as well as any other work by him.
Thanks for the interesting read.
Regards!
Thank you - I read Eisenstein's "Sacred Economics" a while back.
Hear, hear. I think most would agree that a work/life balance is desirable and when I first started work in 1979 (in a bank) I was told that that was the company's philosophy. Somewhere along the way, it became 'work longer hours and you'll get promoted'.
Well said. Thanks Alex!
CH Douglas articulated exactly the kind of vision for a sustainable economic framework that you challenge us to imagine and he did it over 100 years ago. Alas, he was memory-holed by TPTB.
Wikipedia summarizes his thinking as follows: According to Douglas, the true purpose of production is consumption, and production must serve the genuine, freely expressed interests of Consumers. Each
citizen is to have a beneficial, not direct, inheritance in the communal capital conferred by complete and dynamic access to the fruits of industry assured by the National Dividend and Compensated Price. Consumers, fully provided with adequate purchasing power, will establish the policy of production through exercise of their monetary vote. In this view, the term Social Credit does not mean worker control of industry. Removing the policy of production from banking institutions, government, and industry, Social Credit envisages an "aristocracy of Producers, serving and accredited by a democracy of Consumers." Assuming the only safe place for power is in many hands, Social Credit is a distributive philosophy, and its policy is to disperse power to individuals. Social Credit philosophy is best summed by Douglas when he said, “Systems were made for men, and not men for systems, and the interest of man which is self-development, is above all systems, whether theological, political or economic.”
That is the kind of system I would like to live under. I have looked closely at his proposals and have concluded that they are sound. The immediate benefits to all of us are a compensated price (CP) and national dividend (ND).
Think of the ND as a guaranteed income that is financed not by debt but by the productivity increase of the nation. It serves to eliminate welfare, poverty, and the nanny state.
Think of CP as sales credit instead of sales tax for every purchase made by consumers. This is not applicable to businesses - only end consumers. It too is funded by the productivity increase of the nation. If a nation produces no wealth, there will be no ND or CP.
All of this will serve to radically downsize our bloated government bureaucracy, wrestle control of our money from the banksters and implement the only kind of democracy that really matters - economic democracy. After all, of what use is political democracy (the vote) to a starving man living under a bridge or in a cardboard box?
Thank you for that, Dean - valid and extremely interesting feedback!
Thank you for the writing, Mr krainer.
In then end we all discover that this short life on Earth is horrible, even for the very rich, or sometimes even more so for them. The great philosophers of Asia and Greece, foremost Pythagoras, always taught that the only thing worth living for is the period AFTER this life. All the wise man of before BC deemed a sober and thoughtful life more worthwile than being busy looking after our own well being, always trying to secure something that isn't secure at all. The wise didn't even show an interest in a 'fortunate' life as every fortune in the end will change in its opposite. If you have done well, you will reap well. The wise and ascetic Apollonius of Tyana once declined large amounts of gold his host, an Asian king, offered but accepted rare gems, as they would heal the soul. Everything on Earth is polarized, everything knows its opposite. Every very loving and charming person can be hateful at some point. All rich people will someday be poor, and the poor rich, when not in this life then perhaps in the next, as there are higher powers in the unseen that lead us nilly willy to experiences by which we will grow. The universe does not know stagnancy, everything moves, flows, vibrates uninterruptedly in short it is full of LIFE.
They, the really ensouled beings, our classical heroes of all nominations knew that after death the REAL life would begin, which roughly would be 100 times the years we would live on Earth, depending on our character, acts and all various inclinations, as was rehearsed every year at the Eleusinian Mysteries (in Greece), where those that were found ready, were taught what would happen after we die. Those who got succesfully intiated KNEW what the dangers in life were. Yes, the most important thing in this fragile life is to save the soul, the higher, the selfless thinking part of man, to not get entangled in the thorns of the world, not to be pulled down by the luring lower attractions of the glamours of the so-called false prophets. Living on Earth is dangerous as hell and you Alex play an important great part in all this by writing articles like you do.
I apologize for the typos and errors as English is not my language and I seldom write anything in English, and offer my apologies for the brutal length of this epistle, but I deemed it worthwile when taking this very special sacred period of the year into account. I wish you well in continuing opening the hearts of men by offering ever greater vistas, and thank you for that too.
In our new world we should start with natural law, only two genders.
great historian too....Alex....love your work.
Very good.
What I'd like to see is a new gdp/wealth measure called 75% wealth. That is the wealth of the bottom 75% of the population ideally charted over the past 100 years. That would tell voters the truth about what governments have done to the majority of voters.
75% wealth seems to have been flat or negative for the last 35 years even as GDP doubled.
And frankly the top 25% were doing pretty well 35 years ago, so it seems quite safe to ignore them now.
Amen!
Careful - I think it's considered wrongthink nowadays! ;-)