Don,
Thanks for the compliment.
I did suggest to Tom that we finally had a few points of agreement, but he hasn't responded with any interest in my entry. I suspect it is due to the fact I try extracting these facets of finance directly from a basic physical premise, that information and energy represent a fundamental dichotomy and this reflects profoundly throughout our physiology and society. Since Tom and I have such divergent views on physics, such as whether spacetime is physically real, or a neat mathematical model relating measures of duration and distance, he likely isn't going to give me any positive feedback on the concept.
The process of education goes in cycles. We are a form of swarm intelligence, so this is just one more stage of trying out multiple systems, to find which work best. If you really sit back and look at how these processes function from a natural, rather than an anthropocentric perspective, a lot of our behaviors and their likely consequences are quite predicable.
Consider it in terms of the dichotomy of energy as inherently dynamic and thus constantly pushing outward, while information emerges from the interactions and thus is a stabilizing form of these energies, thus creating the effect of mass.
So then superimpose this relationship on various aspects of biological activity. Such as the relationship of youth to age; Youth is constantly pushing out and trying to expand, with often little regard for past lessons, while age, having been through much of this, is focused on all those structures and strictures we learn in life, due to all the conflicts created by everyone trying to create their own space and expanding out as best as possible.
We could then extend that to the dichotomy of liberal and conservative, with the natural youthful expectation of freedom, enlightenment and progress motivating the basic liberal mindset.
Meanwhile the conservative mind is much more focused on all those hard edges of reality which insist on making themselves felt.
Now there are multitudes of feedback loops of each reflecting off the other, such as political correctness, which is conservative attributes manifesting in formerly liberal assumptions. Or libertarianism, which is more expansionist tendencies manifesting from a conservative mindset.
Then consider the dichotomy my entry focused on, that of government as the social central nervous system and thus processing information, while the financial sector, as the economic circulatory system, is the mechanism by which economic energy/capital, is pushing out in all possible directions, looking for ways to increase its own leverage and power/energy.
How in a healthy relationship, the function of government is to channel these forces in ways which are productive, or at least not destructive, in the longer term. Much as the brain tries to channel the body's energies and impulses in positive and nondestructive manners.
Yet when there isn't apparent positive directions to go, these energies turn inward and start corroding the structural integrity of the system, whether it is corruption in the public sphere, or bad personal vices for the individual.
What we need to learn and educate society to, is the need to be able to channel those necessary elements in a far sighted fashion. Consider all the various systems devised by societies over the ages to channel their public energies. It's safe to say the pyramids arose because there was lots of surplus energy in ancient Egyptian society between the growing and harvest seasons. Most wars over the ages, either interstate, or civil, have been due to the pot boiling over in various communal interactions.
We have been extremely fortunate in the United States, primarily for those of European descent, to have about four hundred years of room to expand, first geographically, then technologically and then using these advantages globally.
Right now, we are about to get serious pushback.
One of the primary sources of our global influence and thus power, has been that the world has used our currency as the global exchange medium, which means we have been able to issue far more than we personally need and thus reap the trade benefits of essentially manufacturing this paper. The really big problem is that it has become a bit of a Ponzi scheme, in that it has to keep growing, or it will start to contract, if not collapse. Much of those middle eastern wars of the last decade have been a function of this necessity to keep the bubble of our monetary empire whole, but our military failures have exposed a serious weakness on the Eurasian continent, which various countries over there can make very effective use of, simply by joining in trade federations that don't use the dollar. Then a lot of those surplus dollars will start returning home and have to be absorbed by our economy.
So what is now happening in the Ukraine has deep financial consequences and neither side can really afford to back down easily. Short of war though, the US will have to. Europe is fundamentally more dependent on Russian gas, than it is on US dollars and banking, even if the banks think and act otherwise.
China is dependent on our markets, but they will have to adjust their economic model, since we largely pay them with raw materials and printed forms of currency, both of which they are starting to have in excess.
So we are at a tipping point and it is the monetary, specifically dollar bubble which is most vulnerable to reality, since it amounts to nothing more than a bunch of contractual agreements that cannot be paid in full and the resulting ill will will break down the basis of trust on which they are based anyway.
So this is why I think the issue of the nature of money, as a contract, not a commodity, is so important in our immediate future and the lack of interest, or knowledge, among the otherwise quite intelligent members of this contest is so depressing to me and evidence of the extent to which people are profoundly deceived by those actually running things.
How can they be educated?
Regards,
John
