Original Post-August 2016, Updated for Election 2017.
Neo-Liberalism, Billy No Mates? , or, just misunderstood and kind to small children and animals
Discussion with Founder member of The people’s party/Ecology Party and Now The Greens Clive Lord.
In the recent hustings for the Green Party leadership for the Green Party of England and Wales, I have had a few interesting dialogues with Clive Lord and sought out some of his writing to see what made and still makes him Tick. I have also had a similar exchange of tweets and comments with Dereck Wall another former speaker candidate for the Green Party of England and Wales.
Clives Stich is citizens income or universal basic income. Its mine too so we have a common objective and our reasoning to get to that place one would think would be similar. Well to answer that yes and no. Clive and I agree that exponential growth on a finite planet is impossible and that the strain on the Common resources of the planet is too great and decisions uninformed by externalities are less than sensible. We are in a completely different place on Political Economy though and our understanding of Money and Money creation.
Clive recently Blogged under the title.
SOCIALISTS AND NEOLIBERALS CAN AND MUST BE FRIENDS
4 responses to “Socialists and neoliberals can and must be friends”
https://archive.org/stream/PeterKropotkinEntryOnanarchismFromTheEncyclopdiaBritannica/Peter-Kropotkin-Anarchism-Encyclopdia-Britannica-Eleventh-Edition_djvu.txt
”Now Proudhon advocated a society without government and
used the word Anarchy to describe it. Proudhon repudiated,
as is known, all schemes of Communism, according to which
mankind would be driven into communistic monasteries or
barracks, as also all the schemes of state or state-aided Socialism
which were advocated by Louis Blanc and the Collectivists. When
he proclaimed in his first memoir on property that ” Property
is theft,” he meant only property in its present, Roman-law,
sense of ” right of use and abuse ” ; in property-rights, on the other
hand, understood in the limited sense of possession, he saw the
best protection against the encroachments of the state. At the
same time, he did not want violently to dispossess the present
owners of land, dwelling-houses, mines, factories and so on. He
preferred to attain the same end by rendering capital incapable
of earning interest; and this he proposed to obtain by means of
a national bank, based on the mutual confidence of all those who
are engaged in production, who would agree to exchange among
themselves their produces at cost-value, by means of labour
cheques representing the hours of labour required to produce
every given commodity. Under such a system, which Proudhon
described as ” Mutuellisme,” all the exchanges of services would be
strictly equivalent. Besides, such a bank would be enabled to
lend money without interest, levying only something like 1 %,
or even less, for covering the cost of administration. Everyone
being thus enabled to borrow the money that would be required
to buy a house, nobody would agree to pay any more a yearly
rent for the use of it. A general ” social liquidation ” would
thus be rendered easy, without violent expropriation. The same
applied to mines, railways, factories and so on. ”
´However, the nearly universal misunderstanding of money is a major obstacle. For too long we’ve allowed a small coterie of bankers and “court economists” to hold the secrets and “tutor” us. So, it’s time for total openness.
First, regarding the claim that the Swiss proposal would’ve been too costly, what’s entirely omitted from the discussion is that the proposal (and similar proposals elsewhere) appear to call for re-distribution of existing money—taking money from certain sectors through taxation and re-allocating it to the people-at-large.
The implication is that the money supply is basically static and that re-distributing limited funds would require tough budget decisions—sparking tax hikes and associated spending increases in several areas; hence the claim “costs too much.”
But a successful basic-income plan can and must be based on the creation of new money, or “distributism,” not on reshuffling existing money, which is “re-distributism.” That’s the “state secret” that no one wants to touch.
The issuance of new money needs to happen to overcome the huge “gap” between today’s paltry purchasing power and the massive mountain of debt and the towering totality of prices on all available goods and services. We have full stores and empty wallets. (Ideally and importantly, governments should reclaim their interest-free money-creation rights and forbid private central banks from creating money any longer).´´
http://leconomistamascherato.blogspot.se/2016/07/basic-income-lets-name-real-problems.html
I guess you are a’Positive Money’ supporter. I was persuaded otherwise by two formidable brains, Jonathan Dixon who is no longer active in the Green Party, andAlison Marshall, who does blog and correspond.Dixon convinced me that money is neutral. I twill favour faithfully and well whatever ethos is in control. Ergo, if people generally make growthist assumptions and ant to buy caravans and yachts and things, the banks telling them tey aren’t allowed to lend much will only infuriate people against whoever imposed such restrictions. On the other hand, if expectations are low, I claim I always expected interest rates to approach zero, as they have done. that to me supports Dixon’s thesis.
So we have to achieve the culture shift which regards less stuff as the norm, not just a blip.
I envisage the Cits BI as normally being balanced by taxation in some shape or for, not necessarily just on personal incomes. Land Value Tax seems to me an obvious feature. I would, however, see money creation along the lines of ‘Helicopter Money’ whenever economic activity fell below what was ecologically sustainable.
The Swiss result was not widely reported here so far as I am aware, but one comment I did receive from an email group I belong to was that the ‘scare’ of floods of immigrants taking advantage was what made the result so one sided.
on Neo-Liberalism, this is a video interview I did with Roy Madron.
Kreutz has a book now published in English called the money syndrome
This is Steve Keen’s introduction lecture entitled The Alternative to Neo-Liberalism
amounts to 12 % because here the share of capital costs
is relatively low and the share of physical labour is particu-
larly high. This changes in the provision of drinking water,
where capital costs amount to 38 %, and even more so in
social housing, where they add up to 77 %. On an aver-
age we pay about 50% capital costs in the prices of our
goods and services.”
from http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~roehrigw/kennedy/english/chap1.htm
In this Video Margeret Kennedy and others talk about the influence of Helmuth Kreutz on their own work.
There is much I could say about money, but I am loth to spend all the time necessary on your copious links. But you have given me a new insight – he potential conflict of interest between store of value and means of exchange.
But there are, or were before we messed them up, ‘primitive’ tribes which either had no money or if the did, could nevertheless use it within a sustainable culture. I still have difficulty in thinking of money as other than neutral per se.
I have never had an answer I could make sense of from monetary reformers to two puzzles 1. Every time bad debt is written off, isn’t that the same as creating ‘debt free money’?
2 Velocity of circulation Faster, where confidence and expectations are rising, is the same as more money created isn’t it? similarly whenever expectations etc dip, the money Sully will contract willy-nilly, and trying to increase it by Helicoptering or whatever is trying to push apiece of string. It will only work if it, or some other factor raises expectations at the same time. Positivists I have tried talking to just say yes, and go on as though velocity remained constant
This is a long answer because you ask two key questions which deserve a full explanation. I make no apologies for the links and quotes.
The Bernard Lietaer video at 1 hr and 9 minutes repays´ watching.
”Feudalism and the Indian Caste system were responses to the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ where they had more time for manoeuvre than the Easter Islanders had”.
Stresses efficiency breaks easily and is not robust, Diversity and symbiosis is less efficient but more robust we need permaculture and diverse systems and not monocultures, a very basic ecological tenet which can be applied well to political economy and finance.
The conflict is not potential it is very real they are mutually exclusive functions.
Repaid or written off debt destroys money as The asset is realised or rather liability is extinguished. Its a basic accounting identity explained by Graeber here.
”Thus, clearly, money and goods are not the same thing but are, on the contrary,
exactly opposite things. Most confusion in economic thinking arises from a failure to
recognise this fact. Goods are wealth which you have, while money is a claim on wealth which you do not have. Thus goods are an asset; money is a debt. If goods are wealth; money is not wealth, or negative wealth, or even anti-wealth. They always behave in opposite ways, just as they usually move in opposite directions. If the value of one goes up, the value of the other goes down, and in the same proportion.”
In the course of time the central fact of the developing economic system, the
relationship between goods and money, became clear, at least to bankers. Thisrelationship, the price system, depended upon five things: the supply and the demand for goods, the supply and the demand for money, and the speed of exchange between money and goods. An increase in three of these (demand for goods, supply of money, speed of circulation) would move the prices of goods up and the value of
expressed in money, is called “prices,” while the value of money, expressed in goods, is
called “value.” p.49 (Commercial Capitalism) Quiqqley shows how Bankers make the distinction and real power lays in the Value of money and not the prices of goods.
Denies that in money there can be a place that Gertrude Stein called there, home once but no longer there , there in Oakland. A precursor to some subprime heritage.
A speaker of truth to power could follow Pauli ´Das ist Nicht nur nicht Richtig, es is nicht einmal falsh!
All counterfeit, yet to counterfeit the counterfeit? a crime.
What of the shepherd of this unruly nothing,
where will they pen and fence this pack of wolves?
Will they dress this pack of cards in sheep’s clothing.
Limit the herd a need for Golden standards.
Fix the price and patronise those who will honour the thievery. A mechanism to harmonise silent ballot boxes.
A gentleman from Belgium would complement his single currency. Unruled and unruly sets a course for austerity on a continent many times at war. A fight of 11 rounds.
Quiggly shewed the tragedy, little hope it seemed,
blind faith in capitalisms harlot. That Babylonian whore.
What smoke screened hall of mirrors.
How obese and gluttonous the leviathan of usury.
Austerity for the likes of you and I.
More banqueting and evacuated vomit spews from the sceptred top table. Corrupt in patronage and jealousy of power. Overstuffed with greed and thirsty for more.”
We show how, in the simplified model we present, no growth can take place without the creation of credit by banks. The net change in the level of debt (what we call ‘Net Credit Creation’ = Credit Creation less Debt Repayment) is the single most important variable affecting the dynamics of the economy.”
In the current national currency paradigm, one reason why so much attention is paid to central bank decisions is that increased interest rates necessitate more bankruptcies in the future. The economic pie must grow that much faster just to break even. The monetary system obliges us to incur debt and compete with others in order to perform exchanges and pay the resulting interest to the banks or lenders. No wonder “it is a tough world out there,” and that those who live within a competitive monetary system so readily accept Darwin’s supposed “survival of the fittest.”
(Published by Seva International; ISBN 0-9643025-0-0;
1. Four Basic Misconceptions About Money 15
…First Misconception: There Is Only One Type of Growth 18
…Second Misconception: We Pay Interest Only If We Borrow Money 24
…Third Misconception: In the Present Monetary System
We Are All Equally Affected by Interest 25
…Fourth Misconception: Inflation Is an Integral Part of Free Market Economies 29
All patriarchal societies in history have had the tendency to impose
a monopoly of a single currency, hierarchically issued, naturally scarce or artificially kept scarce, and with positive interest rates. This was, for instance, the case in Sumer and Babylon, in Greece and Rome, and from the Renaissance onwards in Western societies all the way to today. The form of these currencies has varied widely, ranging from standardized commodities, precious metals, paper or electronic bits. But what they all have in
common is that governments accepted only that specific currency for payment of taxes, that this currency could be stored and accumulated, and that borrowing such currencies implied payment of interest. They all have in common Yang characteristics as illustrated in Figure 1.”