A city trader once told me that they perform an essential service to the economy. It is via the rapid arbitrage of prices, and the speculating on news and views about stock that the market achieves such rapid efficiency.
That is by solely trying to buy things that are perceived as cheap (either because they have an existing customer who will pay a higher price i.e. arbitrage) or by speculating that such a customer will exist, or by deciding that dividends for a stock compensate for risk in owning; through any of these means buy and selling quickly means that prices reflect a "true" value.
However it occurs to me that this is rather self seeking. Why do we need an efficient market? It is so that prices reflect their underlying value. And why do we need that? It is so that we pay the correct amount for things. And why that? It is so that we do not end up paying too much for things. But is also means that we won't ever find a good deal either because all the good deals have been exploited by the city. Indeed the whole point of a free market is that everyone is looking for a good deal. If the city has already taken all the good deals and left us with an efficient market in fact we have lost.
A true economy does not leave all the trading to a specialist group of traders sitting in ivory towers, but rather includes everyone. An efficient market is one where we are all involved in the process of setting prices. Not as we have today the "real economy" of people going about their lives, and then a highly specialised "trading economy" living in the slack that is not exploited by the "real economy".
It is unstoppable that a niche like the City won't be exploited, but the argument that it is an essential part of the economy doesn't make sense. The City exists simply because it can, simply because ordinary people buying and selling as part of their lives and economy don't have the time to exploit every last opportunity. But it doesn't serve any "service" at all. In fact it is quite possibly a detriment to society as the city is very expensive if one looks at the amount of wealth that it extracts in bringing to economy towards efficiency.
What we could have equally is a very smart A.I. computer that works for the state. In bringing prices to efficiency it puts the money it creams off into the state treasury where it belongs, because at the end of the day all it has done is automate the process of people looking for a bargain.
Thursday, 28 February 2019
Monday, 25 February 2019
New Economics: Initial Sims
Abstract
Simple market exchange simulations were modelled.
Aim
Which method of interaction between market participants (Traders) arrives at the "best" satisfaction.
Method
A game was modelled in c#
If you meet someone who has something you want, and you have something they want then swap. Barter is a solid system. Everyone improves, although some not as much as others.
Relative Barter
Exactly the same as Barter. Relative makes decision relative to existing portfolio. In barter portfolio size doesn't change (1 in 1 out) so relative makes almost no difference.
Sacrifice
It appears then that we should introduce some measure of "neediness." Not everyone needs the same amount. Some are happy with a bicycle some unhappy even with a Ferrari. Wants is actually relative in reality. If you already have a lot, then you need more to make that difference.
Simple market exchange simulations were modelled.
- Initial simulations show that Relative Sacrifice is the most efficient way for a market to benefit its participants. However Barter is also an extremely efficient method.
- Key features of markets are the minimum wealth. We do not want individuals to be sacrificed by the system. But also the maximum wealth and median.
Aim
Which method of interaction between market participants (Traders) arrives at the "best" satisfaction.
Method
A game was modelled in c#
- Traders own things. Initial model gives everyone same portfolio size.
- These things have a fixed number of types.
- Each trader has a "Desire Profile". This is a number for each type of thing. The higher the number the more they want that thing. This could be measured in reality by asking people to give a number between 0-100 indicating how much they like something.
- Satisfaction is the total desire achieved.
Since we wish to arrive at a result quickly every entity was compared to every entity. The owners of the entities were then asked to decide what they wanted to do.
Interaction Types
Barter : If both participants will benefit from the exchange then the ownership was exchanged.
Relative Barter: Same as barter but the cost of the exchange is relative to what you have.
Sacrifice: If the other participant benefited then the ownership was given.
Relative Sacrifice: Same as sacrifice but the cost of the giving is relative to what you have.
Giving to Poor: Same as Sacrifice, but giving only where result didn't make other more satisfied than myself.
Max Exchange: Same as Barter, but comparing traders (instead of entities) and executing the most beneficial trade. Purpose to see if a more optimal solution was possible.
Initial simulation parameters:
- Number traders = 20
- Portfolio size = 20 (400 entities in market)
- Number of entity Types = 10
- Number passes = 3. All strategies actually achieve optimum in 1 pass.
- Monty Carly replications = 10
Results & Discussion
Barter
If you meet someone who has something you want, and you have something they want then swap. Barter is a solid system. Everyone improves, although some not as much as others.
Relative Barter
Exactly the same as Barter. Relative makes decision relative to existing portfolio. In barter portfolio size doesn't change (1 in 1 out) so relative makes almost no difference.
Sacrifice
If you meet someone who wants something you have got more than you the give it to them. This system produces the richest and poorest individuals of all systems. That is the individuals with the greatest wants exploit those with lesser wants. This strategy differs from barter in that portfolio size changes, resulting in some individuals having almost nothing. This is more realistic as this is very much the problem in economics.
It appears then that we should introduce some measure of "neediness." Not everyone needs the same amount. Some are happy with a bicycle some unhappy even with a Ferrari. Wants is actually relative in reality. If you already have a lot, then you need more to make that difference.
Giving To Poor
Same as Sacrifice, but we only give if the result of the transaction doesn't make me poorer than the recipient. This strategy is the most egalitarian resulting in everyone having the same. However everyone is also significantly poorer than the poorest in the Barter system.
Relative Sacrifice
Same as Sacrifice but cost of giving is weighted by current wealth. See Mark 12:42 Jesus says "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more than all the others into the treasury" referring to a poor widow who gave only two small coins.
This system results in both the second wealthiest and the most wealthy poor of any system here.
Maximum Exchange
Tries a different approach to comparison. Instead of each entity being compared with each entity, traders were introduced and they compared their entire portfolios and selected the exchange vector with the biggest magnitude. This made only a trivial improvement on Barter.
Following Studies
- Need to look at portfolio size. The more successful strategies have flexible portfolios.
- Need to look at neediness. How do we look at individuals with high desire profiles? Are the easier to please and things mean more to them, or are they parasitic as they win in exchanges because they want so much?
- Rent. Introduce rental mechanism. Entity can be owned by one person, but possessed by another. Reference here to posts on John Locke and how ownership and possession must be different for rent and capitalism to work. The owner gets an income from the possessor, but the possessor gets the satisfaction of actually possessing.
This underpins capitalism as employees effectively rent the company from the owners to do their days work. The salary corresponds to the satisfaction, and the profit corresponds to the rent. - Consumables. Production and Consumption. In reality entities are made, and consumed. So have "Machine" entities that reproduce something. Effectively if I own a "printing press" entity I can make "book" entities. If a press needs a worker, then the owner of 2 presses can only make 1 book as they are only 1 worker. In Capitalism I may own 2 presses, but I rent possession of one to a worker.
- The system has inefficiency as exchanges may be very unequal so potential value is being lost from the system (check this). We split the exchange process into selling and buying for money. Exchanges can then be into and out of money.
- Development of 5. I have an exchange class that takes bids and executes as many as it can. There was a problem in traders deciding which bids to make. Do I put a bid on everything I can in hope of good deal, or bid for the most desirable. And should I allow debt in case I create too many bids and they all execute. How to limit debt? Perhaps copy real world and lend proportionally to assets.
- Desire is money. In the initial incomplete monetary simulation the desire profile became identical with the price. However in view of what has emerged here, perhaps desire must be relative to existing portfolio. If we own very little, then small things now become much more important. The question remains is this a good thing or a bad thing. If small things mean more, then the poor achieve the same as the rich with less. Regarding the environment, the economy as a whole becomes less demanding.
Project files: Github repository
Not threaded nor optimised.
Not threaded nor optimised.
Saturday, 23 February 2019
New Economy: Love and Non-Love
What is the use of economy if it doesn't help us get what we want. Am currently in middle completing simple models to see which economy does this best. But in meantime the central problem of life is getting what we want.
There are things we want like a meal. But in particular the issue is what we light call "love". Despite the Greeks having 7 works for love (viz. Eros, Philia, Storge, Agape, Ludus, Pragma, Philautia) none quite fit what I mean here. The Indians have 5 (viz. Kama, Shringara, Maitri, Bhakti, Atma-Prema). I think I mean closest to प्रेम or prema of which the highest form is Atma-Prema.
Prema as I mean here (probably not its correct sanskrit usage) is a deep connection with the object. It is when we have an experience and that feels to say something to use very deeply. We feel grounded, and peaceful and wanting for nothing more. We feel more profoundly that we have found what we are searching for, but we feel that we too have been found. We are finally still inside and no longer craving. If this experience is with someone then we can attribute the sense of being found to their "gaze" and point-of-view but if we find it in nature then it is less easy to explain "who" has found us. Never-the-less the experience is the same.
In Indian thought the "being found" is double sides. Finding what we want "in the world" is the same as "finding our self" because "self is world" or "Tat tvam asi." But we need to love more deeply than the usual confused "hunter" form where we believe that "we are seeking something." It is seeking us too! The deer may find this hard to explain, but when the hunter finds the deer the deer also finds the hunter. They are intimately connected. This goes back to the San people in the first post on economics. The world always obeys Newtons 2nd Law. It is made of nothing more or less than equal interactions. In contemporary economics consumers (inspired by Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand") believe that they need only hunt, and the producers only need to provide. This is in a way true. But consumers and producers have a more profound place in the world: they can both see that they form an inseparable bond. The waitress is not just the deer being hunted by the customer. While the waitress may do her job well, and the customer may pay and tip correctly this is not the whole transaction. These are people, and part of world. There is a whole universe not accounted for in contemporary economics. Whether this unaccounted for universe has a bearing on transactions is what I intend to find out.
But returning to Prema does not last long. Tho it can last many years or decades, and full enlightenment goes above the ocean of the impermanent world all together. But for lesser prema we can become obsessed about the experience because we want to hold onto this peace. The world outside this experience or person now seems unwelcoming and of no interest to us, because here is where we belong and here is where we can be peaceful.
A few things more. Prema is extremely important. I have this problem with women. You may experience prema with a woman, but she does not have the same level. She may be involved in non-prema relationships that are not so profound. In fact I now believe you should pursue prema because it is important, and if it means obstructing non-prema relationships then so be it.
Another example might be the natural world, and this captures probably the biggest conflict been contemporary economics and conservation. As Joni Mitchell sings "paved paradise and put up a parking lot" though I've always heard "pay paradise and put up a parking lot" because payment cannot replace what is lost. A parking lot we might say is expedient, it enables people to drive into town and park nearby so they can easily go out socialising and shopping. But no-one has any love for a parking lot itself. Meanwhile an area of woods and open fields can be prema to many people. For this reason just like the lover feeling that they are being insulted by their partners causal behaviour, so people who experience areas of nature with prema feel they are being insulted by market forces.
This is not a simple matter of economics, and this ends up being mediated in the political, legal and spiritual realms. The question is whether a more inclusive economics exists that can mediate more deeply between people. I note here how inappropriate it is when politicians base their decisions on economics, when so many people look to politics to overcome the injustices of economics! Any politicians quoting economics is ignoring their responsibility and a mediator of power in themselves.
But we can't blame economics or the world. The experience of Prema while important is up to us ultimately. In Buddhism the experience that the world is like a badly fitting suit is called Dhukka. Prema as I'm using it here are those fleeting experiences where suddenly the world seems to fit.
What Buddha warns us is that experience is always dhukka at some level. No suit can ever fit right all the time because both it and us are always changing. It may have fitted perfectly when the tailor made the last adjustments. But there after every time we go to the wardrobe we have gained or lost weight and nothing fits quite right again. What fits now, won't fit for long. The only way for it to fit all the time is to change with it. But that is easier said than done. At its root economics is not that important to life, and much of the macro-economics like growth and micro-economics like rational agents is built on extremely weak foundations.
So I conclude here just to note the importance of what I will call Prema. This is not casual getting what you want like a new pair of shoes, or a meal. It is when you have that deep connection with something or someone that stops you and gives you a moments peace. It is the support of these experiences that a good economics will promote, and discourage the robotic satisfaction of wishes that is characterised by fast food, bingeing and window shopping. I'll call this for now Aprema.
If Capitalism has one deep criticism it is that it promotes aprema over prema.
There are things we want like a meal. But in particular the issue is what we light call "love". Despite the Greeks having 7 works for love (viz. Eros, Philia, Storge, Agape, Ludus, Pragma, Philautia) none quite fit what I mean here. The Indians have 5 (viz. Kama, Shringara, Maitri, Bhakti, Atma-Prema). I think I mean closest to प्रेम or prema of which the highest form is Atma-Prema.
Prema as I mean here (probably not its correct sanskrit usage) is a deep connection with the object. It is when we have an experience and that feels to say something to use very deeply. We feel grounded, and peaceful and wanting for nothing more. We feel more profoundly that we have found what we are searching for, but we feel that we too have been found. We are finally still inside and no longer craving. If this experience is with someone then we can attribute the sense of being found to their "gaze" and point-of-view but if we find it in nature then it is less easy to explain "who" has found us. Never-the-less the experience is the same.
In Indian thought the "being found" is double sides. Finding what we want "in the world" is the same as "finding our self" because "self is world" or "Tat tvam asi." But we need to love more deeply than the usual confused "hunter" form where we believe that "we are seeking something." It is seeking us too! The deer may find this hard to explain, but when the hunter finds the deer the deer also finds the hunter. They are intimately connected. This goes back to the San people in the first post on economics. The world always obeys Newtons 2nd Law. It is made of nothing more or less than equal interactions. In contemporary economics consumers (inspired by Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand") believe that they need only hunt, and the producers only need to provide. This is in a way true. But consumers and producers have a more profound place in the world: they can both see that they form an inseparable bond. The waitress is not just the deer being hunted by the customer. While the waitress may do her job well, and the customer may pay and tip correctly this is not the whole transaction. These are people, and part of world. There is a whole universe not accounted for in contemporary economics. Whether this unaccounted for universe has a bearing on transactions is what I intend to find out.
But returning to Prema does not last long. Tho it can last many years or decades, and full enlightenment goes above the ocean of the impermanent world all together. But for lesser prema we can become obsessed about the experience because we want to hold onto this peace. The world outside this experience or person now seems unwelcoming and of no interest to us, because here is where we belong and here is where we can be peaceful.
A few things more. Prema is extremely important. I have this problem with women. You may experience prema with a woman, but she does not have the same level. She may be involved in non-prema relationships that are not so profound. In fact I now believe you should pursue prema because it is important, and if it means obstructing non-prema relationships then so be it.
Another example might be the natural world, and this captures probably the biggest conflict been contemporary economics and conservation. As Joni Mitchell sings "paved paradise and put up a parking lot" though I've always heard "pay paradise and put up a parking lot" because payment cannot replace what is lost. A parking lot we might say is expedient, it enables people to drive into town and park nearby so they can easily go out socialising and shopping. But no-one has any love for a parking lot itself. Meanwhile an area of woods and open fields can be prema to many people. For this reason just like the lover feeling that they are being insulted by their partners causal behaviour, so people who experience areas of nature with prema feel they are being insulted by market forces.
This is not a simple matter of economics, and this ends up being mediated in the political, legal and spiritual realms. The question is whether a more inclusive economics exists that can mediate more deeply between people. I note here how inappropriate it is when politicians base their decisions on economics, when so many people look to politics to overcome the injustices of economics! Any politicians quoting economics is ignoring their responsibility and a mediator of power in themselves.
But we can't blame economics or the world. The experience of Prema while important is up to us ultimately. In Buddhism the experience that the world is like a badly fitting suit is called Dhukka. Prema as I'm using it here are those fleeting experiences where suddenly the world seems to fit.
What Buddha warns us is that experience is always dhukka at some level. No suit can ever fit right all the time because both it and us are always changing. It may have fitted perfectly when the tailor made the last adjustments. But there after every time we go to the wardrobe we have gained or lost weight and nothing fits quite right again. What fits now, won't fit for long. The only way for it to fit all the time is to change with it. But that is easier said than done. At its root economics is not that important to life, and much of the macro-economics like growth and micro-economics like rational agents is built on extremely weak foundations.
So I conclude here just to note the importance of what I will call Prema. This is not casual getting what you want like a new pair of shoes, or a meal. It is when you have that deep connection with something or someone that stops you and gives you a moments peace. It is the support of these experiences that a good economics will promote, and discourage the robotic satisfaction of wishes that is characterised by fast food, bingeing and window shopping. I'll call this for now Aprema.
If Capitalism has one deep criticism it is that it promotes aprema over prema.
Thursday, 21 February 2019
New Economics: Is a Good Economy a Good thing?
This is just a corollary to the previous posts.
The best economy is the freest economy. In other words if we allows the drug trade, sex trade, slavery and basically removed all restrictions then the economy then it would boom.
Obviously then a booming economy is not always a good economy. Like nuclear power, technology like economics, does not tell you how to use it. You can use it for good as well as bad.
I am reminded of the British Navy's first foray into A.I. A program was developed to work out the optimum battle strategy. The results were impressive. It out played all the Navy's top strategists.
When they analysed the battle strategies though it was not so impressive. The rules of the game had dictated that a flotilla of ships travels at the speed of the slowest ship. This meant that when a ship was damaged the whole flotilla was slowed. The winning innovation of the A.I. was to turn its guns on the weakest ship to keep the flotilla at maximum speed, thus out manoeuvring its "human" assailants.
Economies similarly are unintelligent, and we do not know what emergent patterns may occur. Adam Smith, like the entire Enlightenment, was unaware of non-linear dynamics. For them small things had small effects, and big things gave big effects. The idea that systems could suddenly show big effects from small over looked dynamics is a very new observation. It means we can never be sure what a system will do. It means that economics is potentially very dangerous, and politicians blindly looking at macro economic metrics like GDP can easily miss what is really going on just as Naval strategists did in the early says of A.I.
The best economy is the freest economy. In other words if we allows the drug trade, sex trade, slavery and basically removed all restrictions then the economy then it would boom.
Obviously then a booming economy is not always a good economy. Like nuclear power, technology like economics, does not tell you how to use it. You can use it for good as well as bad.
I am reminded of the British Navy's first foray into A.I. A program was developed to work out the optimum battle strategy. The results were impressive. It out played all the Navy's top strategists.
When they analysed the battle strategies though it was not so impressive. The rules of the game had dictated that a flotilla of ships travels at the speed of the slowest ship. This meant that when a ship was damaged the whole flotilla was slowed. The winning innovation of the A.I. was to turn its guns on the weakest ship to keep the flotilla at maximum speed, thus out manoeuvring its "human" assailants.
Economies similarly are unintelligent, and we do not know what emergent patterns may occur. Adam Smith, like the entire Enlightenment, was unaware of non-linear dynamics. For them small things had small effects, and big things gave big effects. The idea that systems could suddenly show big effects from small over looked dynamics is a very new observation. It means we can never be sure what a system will do. It means that economics is potentially very dangerous, and politicians blindly looking at macro economic metrics like GDP can easily miss what is really going on just as Naval strategists did in the early says of A.I.
Wednesday, 20 February 2019
New Economics: some more basic things
Having done a fairly comprehensive analysis of the way things are, taking apart clunky metaphysics, there is still no obvious way forward. I'm in no hurry to change the world. If there is one problem with "activism" its the desire to tinker with things without knowing what the impact will be. Dramatic changes to economics and the status quo are going to be dangerous. So time for some real basics first.
The commonest view of life is that we need to do things in order to live. This becomes the idea of "making a living." We look at birds foraging, or making nests, and mice creating store houses for the winter and we see the kind of activity that people are involved in.
All would be good in an infinite world like the US. After the colonists killed off the Indians there was enough land for all (the colonists and more). The system used there was similar to the Mediaeval system where about 120 acres (1 hide) was given to each family. That was considered enough to sustainably feed a family on.
The ability of people to gain access to a means of living is the logical requirement of an economy, although societies (as analysed already) aren't really based on this. But if we were to design an economy from the bottom up and from scratch this is where we would begin. It is a completely hypothetical postulate though. In reality people gain income from lots of means, and pay off people in lots of way too. For example as discussed you can have kelptoparatisism where people subsist by stealing from others, opportunistically as criminals, or systematically through protection rackets, rents and taxes. But then this cannot necessarily be classified as theft as it may be willingly done, in the case of a tenant farmer feeling safer after paying off his knight, and it depends upon how you classify ownership. Capitalists claiming dividends is a theft from the workers, who despite generating the income, do not own any of the company and so are not due any of the profits. It is a complex and fluid soup of connections, and the idea that someone has the direct ability to "make a living" is a myth. If nothing else the plough that they use has been stolen without compensation from the genius who first invented it and put it into the public domain. If an eternal patent had been set up on the plough most of the human race would have starved, and one family would own everything.
But more or less sustenance must make its way from producers to consumers. Free market is a good system from ensuring this happens.
Problems with this is that it does presuppose ownership of produce by producers. And in Capitalism producers for the most part don't own anything, but capitalists do, and give a salary in compensation. Profits are protected for the rich, while the employed subsist on market force based salaries. But this then entails that consumers must produce themselves so as to have something to exchange in the market place. Market activity is thus actually limited by supply and demand. There may be a very high demand for something and even ample raw materials, but without funds to pay for production, the industry will stagnate. Capitalism then greases the wheels of industry frozen by exchange with the wealth of the rich but at a cost. So the cost first introduced by exchange is alleviated by exchange providing income for the wealth at every step. The system of giving does not suffer from this. Much frowned upon but Command economies have the upper hand here.
This also means that producers are always needing to make and push produce in order to raise funds to buy things. As industries become more efficient, markets must grow. This is perhaps the biggest cause of the drift away from the San people. The need for exchange, where someone may make stickers for cars in order to get money to feed their child, leads to economies where really unnecessary activity gets exchanged for essential activity. In San society your relationship with nature the producer is optimal. You just take what you need. [todo: I need to find video clip of amazonian indian talking about his relationship with the jungle. Is is quite different from workers in industrialised countries having to make money to pay for everything.]
Producing is not the only way to make money. There is theft as mentioned. Criminal but also legal in the form of taxes, rents and dividends. I posted recently the enormous cost of just the dividends and interest payments in the UK. The rich here are more demanding for free hand outs than all the poor combined! The take home message is that long ago the connection between production and consumption has been broken in the West. 40% of GDP is the system of free handouts to various people (both public and private mechanisms). The idea you need make a living is most definitely a romantic myth.
One key feature of modern economies is machines. A quick energy calculation showed that 99.98% of all the energy in the British economy goes to powering machines. Humans, perhaps because they are more efficient, only use 0.02% of the economic energy. Imagine the vast productivity of this system compared with pre-industrial systems where animals provided the labour for heavy work, but humans were the main machines. The productivity of post-industrial systems is inconceivable, and yet there is not surplus. If the insect apocalypse is one wake up call that economics is not working, the other is that we are not swamped in surplus. Or to be precise most of us are not swamped in surplus. There is a very small group of ultra-elite who are swamped in unimaginable surplus. But for the majority of the planet life remains hard and precarious. Why is this when there is already food to feed the planet?
I considered the case where land was infinite. But like many commodities it is limited. Once it is all owned then society is split into owners and non-owners. This is the origins of the class system, and property. That is well handled in previous posts. The result is parasitism by the owners on the non-owners. This is Capitalism's genesis, and the origin of inequality. Free markets don't work when there are limited resources, because like in the game Monopoly the markets becomes controlled and non-free. And that means that Adam Smith's economics doesn't apply.
So next up is a more detailed analysis of Capitalism and how it has led to growing inequality, starvation across history and is leading to the destruction of life on the planet.
The official data says that the world is growing wealthier. But this I suspect is inspite of capitalism rather than because of it. It remains to be analysed.
todo: supply/demand. benefits land tax vs others + dividends. giving (uncoupling supply/demand). Also offshore havens hiding the true vast inequality of Capitalism.
The commonest view of life is that we need to do things in order to live. This becomes the idea of "making a living." We look at birds foraging, or making nests, and mice creating store houses for the winter and we see the kind of activity that people are involved in.
All would be good in an infinite world like the US. After the colonists killed off the Indians there was enough land for all (the colonists and more). The system used there was similar to the Mediaeval system where about 120 acres (1 hide) was given to each family. That was considered enough to sustainably feed a family on.
The ability of people to gain access to a means of living is the logical requirement of an economy, although societies (as analysed already) aren't really based on this. But if we were to design an economy from the bottom up and from scratch this is where we would begin. It is a completely hypothetical postulate though. In reality people gain income from lots of means, and pay off people in lots of way too. For example as discussed you can have kelptoparatisism where people subsist by stealing from others, opportunistically as criminals, or systematically through protection rackets, rents and taxes. But then this cannot necessarily be classified as theft as it may be willingly done, in the case of a tenant farmer feeling safer after paying off his knight, and it depends upon how you classify ownership. Capitalists claiming dividends is a theft from the workers, who despite generating the income, do not own any of the company and so are not due any of the profits. It is a complex and fluid soup of connections, and the idea that someone has the direct ability to "make a living" is a myth. If nothing else the plough that they use has been stolen without compensation from the genius who first invented it and put it into the public domain. If an eternal patent had been set up on the plough most of the human race would have starved, and one family would own everything.
But more or less sustenance must make its way from producers to consumers. Free market is a good system from ensuring this happens.
Problems with this is that it does presuppose ownership of produce by producers. And in Capitalism producers for the most part don't own anything, but capitalists do, and give a salary in compensation. Profits are protected for the rich, while the employed subsist on market force based salaries. But this then entails that consumers must produce themselves so as to have something to exchange in the market place. Market activity is thus actually limited by supply and demand. There may be a very high demand for something and even ample raw materials, but without funds to pay for production, the industry will stagnate. Capitalism then greases the wheels of industry frozen by exchange with the wealth of the rich but at a cost. So the cost first introduced by exchange is alleviated by exchange providing income for the wealth at every step. The system of giving does not suffer from this. Much frowned upon but Command economies have the upper hand here.
This also means that producers are always needing to make and push produce in order to raise funds to buy things. As industries become more efficient, markets must grow. This is perhaps the biggest cause of the drift away from the San people. The need for exchange, where someone may make stickers for cars in order to get money to feed their child, leads to economies where really unnecessary activity gets exchanged for essential activity. In San society your relationship with nature the producer is optimal. You just take what you need. [todo: I need to find video clip of amazonian indian talking about his relationship with the jungle. Is is quite different from workers in industrialised countries having to make money to pay for everything.]
Producing is not the only way to make money. There is theft as mentioned. Criminal but also legal in the form of taxes, rents and dividends. I posted recently the enormous cost of just the dividends and interest payments in the UK. The rich here are more demanding for free hand outs than all the poor combined! The take home message is that long ago the connection between production and consumption has been broken in the West. 40% of GDP is the system of free handouts to various people (both public and private mechanisms). The idea you need make a living is most definitely a romantic myth.
One key feature of modern economies is machines. A quick energy calculation showed that 99.98% of all the energy in the British economy goes to powering machines. Humans, perhaps because they are more efficient, only use 0.02% of the economic energy. Imagine the vast productivity of this system compared with pre-industrial systems where animals provided the labour for heavy work, but humans were the main machines. The productivity of post-industrial systems is inconceivable, and yet there is not surplus. If the insect apocalypse is one wake up call that economics is not working, the other is that we are not swamped in surplus. Or to be precise most of us are not swamped in surplus. There is a very small group of ultra-elite who are swamped in unimaginable surplus. But for the majority of the planet life remains hard and precarious. Why is this when there is already food to feed the planet?
I considered the case where land was infinite. But like many commodities it is limited. Once it is all owned then society is split into owners and non-owners. This is the origins of the class system, and property. That is well handled in previous posts. The result is parasitism by the owners on the non-owners. This is Capitalism's genesis, and the origin of inequality. Free markets don't work when there are limited resources, because like in the game Monopoly the markets becomes controlled and non-free. And that means that Adam Smith's economics doesn't apply.
So next up is a more detailed analysis of Capitalism and how it has led to growing inequality, starvation across history and is leading to the destruction of life on the planet.
The official data says that the world is growing wealthier. But this I suspect is inspite of capitalism rather than because of it. It remains to be analysed.
todo: supply/demand. benefits land tax vs others + dividends. giving (uncoupling supply/demand). Also offshore havens hiding the true vast inequality of Capitalism.
Tuesday, 19 February 2019
New Economics: Law, Freedom, Democracy & Emptiness
If there was a Truth then there would be a Law. All societies would be the same, and we would learn just one set of rules on how to live.
But this hasn't happened.
All societies have a Law but they differ. Laws are intricately bound in with Gods who are the Law makers and enforcers of Law. Yet there are many Laws and many Gods.
Even in the Middle East despite there being one God there are many Laws. And people have done battle over this God and his many versions of the Law throughout history. Christians for example say that He is a God of Love, and a forgiving God. While the Jews say that he is a Jealous and Angry God.
A key feature of Law is suffering. If you disobey the Law you will suffer. This has two levels. There is the punishment that comes from God and there is the punishment that comes from Man.
In Buddhism the Law is the law of cause and effect. Essentially what we find in modern science, that where there is a phenomenon then there must be a cause and correct conditions for it to have manifested. So when you experience suffering it has been caused in the right conditions to manifest. The Law then in Buddhism, and science, is that certain actions will lead to suffering and certain actions will lead to happiness. The Law is prescribed not by a God but in the workings of the universe. Buddhists like to remind the Hindus that even the Gods are not beyond this Law of Karma.
It would appear then that in Buddhism there is a definite way in which the world works. You go one way you suffer, you go the other you are happy. And these laws are quite absolute. Buddha gives his 8 fold noble path as a guide to the correct life. There are 5 precepts, and 8 precepts and hundreds if you ordain which are little rules that you agree to obey. All designed and developed over the millennia to encourage harmony in the Buddhist community and progress people toward enlightenment. It is thought as you become wise these laws become apparent and you don't need to be reminded of them in written laws.
But Buddha also says that if you try my way and it doesn't work then go else where and try something else. Central to Buddhism is emptiness. The non fixed caused and conditional nature of reality.
One famous solution to the balance between Universal Law and Conditional Law is Democracy. Things of Universal value are enshrined in National Law and then "choice" is given to individuals to decide their own personal rules in life. This is the meaning of "choice": the recognition that at least some part of Truth is conditional. Choice in the West has become bloated with metaphysics about the individual but that is unnecessary. It is sufficient just to recognise that truth may be dependent upon your local conditions and so cannot be judged more generally.
So when a state says you are "free", it means that it recognises your personal circumstances. No one is absolutely free, that is nonsense: free from what? So it falls to Law makers to decide only what applies to all people, and what is locally dependent.
Property is a part of Law, so what has been said of Property applies to Law. Who is the Law for? It can be seen as a way for ruling classes to control the country in their favour, or it can be seen as a social contract where we all agree to accept the restrictions because it benefits us all.
In both cases when the Law breaks down then chaos ensues. This chaos can be explained as people no longer being controlled, that is the Hobbesian view which has little value I think. Or, it can be seen as a break down in trust: if you are going to steal from me then I'm going to steal from you. This latter one I have seen in the UK youth and blogged about some years ago. The problem the children of the UK see is that because they are too young to be put in prison it means that there is nothing to stop other children attacking them. I asked some who were plotting a battle why not go to the police, and they say because the police can't do anything. So children in the UK are forced to defend themselves and so there is a breakdown of order. I asked a child once after they stole my bike, what it felt like to be stolen from. He said it felt bad, and he knew because kids are always stealing. As a result he just stole himself. But I said remember that it feels bad, and don't do it and then gave him the bike. It seems to me (and I hope to eventually bring out of this analysis) that people and principle are more important than property. But for order to be maintained we must be willing to take "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" for the sake of everyone. The problem with the current culture (from USA) is that everyone is always looking for compensation and this is endless and only deteriorating. Western society has declined to the "eye for an eye" logic of the Iron age!
Now some believe that there is no need for law. Law only works if there is power behind the law, and if we give up power to the law then that power will be used against us. An African idiom: if you mend a man's testicles he will use them on your wife. In America fighting for freedom is everything, and giving power to central authority is as good as building your own prison. I imagine this mentality is born of the battle to escape the authority of the British Monarch. Of course as with all conflict the hatred been US citizens and the British Monarch was fuelled by people who themselves wished to seize power in the US. This is why warfare is such folly. If one power beats another then you have just been subjugated by an even more powerful power. You ask a devil to help rid you of a devil and you end up still plagued by a devil, but now a stronger one. Never fight for anyone but yourself would be an important universal Law! Or better just don't fight.
But this idea that central power is our foe ignore social contract. Like the Magna Carta we can all agree on a central power which has its wings heavily clipped, so that while we now live under enforced rules so does everyone. This is the central idea in the evolution of Western Law. Centuries later such solutions to conflict would be studied further by John Nash. We can arrive at a stable agreement that is never-the-less not the best for any of us.
So if we combine emptiness with social contract we have a very good idea how Law works, and how it should work.
To ensure that Law does not become draconian power should be devolved. Local law makers should be able to make judgements for their local regions. And then escalate issues higher as they become more significant. This way the law remains sensitive to individual circumstances.
Now the problem with this is precedence. The Law by one definition needs to be the same in all times and places to ensure justice for all. It is no good giving a murderer 10 years in prison in one county court and 5 years prison in another for exactly the same crime. However no two crimes are the same. How to balance the needs of the specific with the practical requirements of the general. Perhaps with modern databases and AI more tailor made law may be possible in the future.
But this leads again on to the great issue of Law and emptiness. It seems that before Plato there was a general view from Socrates backwards that the Truth was extremely particular. As Heraclitus said: you cannot dip your toe in the same river twice. The world is ever changing, and time infiltrates everything continuously. The idea of fixed forms independent of time is a myth. This is why Socrates never recorded anything. Truth was discovered between people in dialectic and never otherwise.
Plato respected the dialectic by recording Socrates and others in discussion to discover Truth, but he completely binned the idea that truth could not be recorded. He then went further to argue that the particular things of this world have similarity by virtue of sharing qualities with what he imagined were Perfect Entities in some heavenly realm accessible only by the Mind. One imagines that the Perfect Forms are themselves a Perfect Form somewhere up there, and so Imperfect Forms must have a Perfect Form somewhere also. It stems from his analysis of recognition in the Theaetetus and others. He imagines that we have a wax tablet into which an impression is made when we learn something, and when we meet it again and it fits the impression and we have recognition. This same idea survives even till today 2400 years later except now it is Neural Networks and not wax tablets that record the impressions (how slow the world works!) From this he imagines that all cups are cups because there is a master cup impression that roughly fits all cups. Truth for Plato is these ultimate impressions that we can discover by dialectics and thought.
This sculpture by Rodin is Platonic. Its even in Classical style despite its subject. You will not arrive at universal truths by solitary contemplation in Socrates and before but through conditioned interaction with other people and the world. It is thought to be Dante considering his choices, and indeed he was alone so I am slightly unfair, but the image has taken on a life of its own as the archetype, the Platonic Form so to speak, the Meme even, of enquiry.
What emerges in history as probably the right way is the middle. There are 2 extremes. The Chaotic where there are no truths that last more than a moment, through to the Platonic where there are truths that are eternal. In reality truths are conditional, but they have staying power as long as those conditions last. This why revolutions happen and the old certainties change. How if there is one truth did mankind not just discover it long ago and be settled?
The point that emerges from history is that truth is something that gains its validity by being current. Our lives are a mix of truths some still ancient and some very new and personal. I love this girl would be a truth which is very compelling but only of value within the limits of my life. Killing is wrong is a truth which has been generally accepted by almost all people. There are huge caveats to the latter: some say it is correct to kill in battle, some say it is correct to kill for food, some say it is correct to kill the unborn child if the parents do not want it, some say it is correct to kill the suffering if they want it. Something so absolute still have many variations depending upon conditions.
So the New Economics faces a problem. I may discuss the value of property, but I cannot make an absolute pronouncement about whether it is correct or not. I am in a dialectic with my times and this enquiry here to be successful needs to work with the conditions. I began the enquiry with this sentiment but have given it more flesh here. The future of Property and Capitalism depends very much on conditions that prevail.
Communism did very well in its day because the world was turning against the Feudalism that gave such obvious benefits to a small minority that could no longer justify their superiority. Christianity did a lot to make all people equal. Judeism makes Jews superior but Jesus battled with that and realised that he was teaching a law greater than just for the Jews. That equality between people has been growing since then and has spread to topple systems of injustice around the world. It is a new truth, not obvious to people in the Past. Just as Jews think they are superior, so the Nazis thought they were superior, and so the White Americans thought they were superior to Black Slaves. Even to this day this truth of equality has been growing. It is not a universal truth, we still have to see whether animals can gain some equality in the future. I believe they should along with all being. This is where the primitive San people killing their Kudu are actual superior to ourselves. In fact perhaps via property and race we have travelled from a wisdom that we are now returning to.
It would be very nice if the New Economics was a return to ancient truths, a return to a Home that we once knew and have travelled from. I will bear that in mind, but I suspect the river is also long a while it bends it has a direction to travel and the New will be in many ways New.
But this hasn't happened.
All societies have a Law but they differ. Laws are intricately bound in with Gods who are the Law makers and enforcers of Law. Yet there are many Laws and many Gods.
Even in the Middle East despite there being one God there are many Laws. And people have done battle over this God and his many versions of the Law throughout history. Christians for example say that He is a God of Love, and a forgiving God. While the Jews say that he is a Jealous and Angry God.
A key feature of Law is suffering. If you disobey the Law you will suffer. This has two levels. There is the punishment that comes from God and there is the punishment that comes from Man.
In Buddhism the Law is the law of cause and effect. Essentially what we find in modern science, that where there is a phenomenon then there must be a cause and correct conditions for it to have manifested. So when you experience suffering it has been caused in the right conditions to manifest. The Law then in Buddhism, and science, is that certain actions will lead to suffering and certain actions will lead to happiness. The Law is prescribed not by a God but in the workings of the universe. Buddhists like to remind the Hindus that even the Gods are not beyond this Law of Karma.
It would appear then that in Buddhism there is a definite way in which the world works. You go one way you suffer, you go the other you are happy. And these laws are quite absolute. Buddha gives his 8 fold noble path as a guide to the correct life. There are 5 precepts, and 8 precepts and hundreds if you ordain which are little rules that you agree to obey. All designed and developed over the millennia to encourage harmony in the Buddhist community and progress people toward enlightenment. It is thought as you become wise these laws become apparent and you don't need to be reminded of them in written laws.
But Buddha also says that if you try my way and it doesn't work then go else where and try something else. Central to Buddhism is emptiness. The non fixed caused and conditional nature of reality.
One famous solution to the balance between Universal Law and Conditional Law is Democracy. Things of Universal value are enshrined in National Law and then "choice" is given to individuals to decide their own personal rules in life. This is the meaning of "choice": the recognition that at least some part of Truth is conditional. Choice in the West has become bloated with metaphysics about the individual but that is unnecessary. It is sufficient just to recognise that truth may be dependent upon your local conditions and so cannot be judged more generally.
So when a state says you are "free", it means that it recognises your personal circumstances. No one is absolutely free, that is nonsense: free from what? So it falls to Law makers to decide only what applies to all people, and what is locally dependent.
Property is a part of Law, so what has been said of Property applies to Law. Who is the Law for? It can be seen as a way for ruling classes to control the country in their favour, or it can be seen as a social contract where we all agree to accept the restrictions because it benefits us all.
In both cases when the Law breaks down then chaos ensues. This chaos can be explained as people no longer being controlled, that is the Hobbesian view which has little value I think. Or, it can be seen as a break down in trust: if you are going to steal from me then I'm going to steal from you. This latter one I have seen in the UK youth and blogged about some years ago. The problem the children of the UK see is that because they are too young to be put in prison it means that there is nothing to stop other children attacking them. I asked some who were plotting a battle why not go to the police, and they say because the police can't do anything. So children in the UK are forced to defend themselves and so there is a breakdown of order. I asked a child once after they stole my bike, what it felt like to be stolen from. He said it felt bad, and he knew because kids are always stealing. As a result he just stole himself. But I said remember that it feels bad, and don't do it and then gave him the bike. It seems to me (and I hope to eventually bring out of this analysis) that people and principle are more important than property. But for order to be maintained we must be willing to take "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" for the sake of everyone. The problem with the current culture (from USA) is that everyone is always looking for compensation and this is endless and only deteriorating. Western society has declined to the "eye for an eye" logic of the Iron age!
Now some believe that there is no need for law. Law only works if there is power behind the law, and if we give up power to the law then that power will be used against us. An African idiom: if you mend a man's testicles he will use them on your wife. In America fighting for freedom is everything, and giving power to central authority is as good as building your own prison. I imagine this mentality is born of the battle to escape the authority of the British Monarch. Of course as with all conflict the hatred been US citizens and the British Monarch was fuelled by people who themselves wished to seize power in the US. This is why warfare is such folly. If one power beats another then you have just been subjugated by an even more powerful power. You ask a devil to help rid you of a devil and you end up still plagued by a devil, but now a stronger one. Never fight for anyone but yourself would be an important universal Law! Or better just don't fight.
But this idea that central power is our foe ignore social contract. Like the Magna Carta we can all agree on a central power which has its wings heavily clipped, so that while we now live under enforced rules so does everyone. This is the central idea in the evolution of Western Law. Centuries later such solutions to conflict would be studied further by John Nash. We can arrive at a stable agreement that is never-the-less not the best for any of us.
So if we combine emptiness with social contract we have a very good idea how Law works, and how it should work.
To ensure that Law does not become draconian power should be devolved. Local law makers should be able to make judgements for their local regions. And then escalate issues higher as they become more significant. This way the law remains sensitive to individual circumstances.
Now the problem with this is precedence. The Law by one definition needs to be the same in all times and places to ensure justice for all. It is no good giving a murderer 10 years in prison in one county court and 5 years prison in another for exactly the same crime. However no two crimes are the same. How to balance the needs of the specific with the practical requirements of the general. Perhaps with modern databases and AI more tailor made law may be possible in the future.
But this leads again on to the great issue of Law and emptiness. It seems that before Plato there was a general view from Socrates backwards that the Truth was extremely particular. As Heraclitus said: you cannot dip your toe in the same river twice. The world is ever changing, and time infiltrates everything continuously. The idea of fixed forms independent of time is a myth. This is why Socrates never recorded anything. Truth was discovered between people in dialectic and never otherwise.
Plato respected the dialectic by recording Socrates and others in discussion to discover Truth, but he completely binned the idea that truth could not be recorded. He then went further to argue that the particular things of this world have similarity by virtue of sharing qualities with what he imagined were Perfect Entities in some heavenly realm accessible only by the Mind. One imagines that the Perfect Forms are themselves a Perfect Form somewhere up there, and so Imperfect Forms must have a Perfect Form somewhere also. It stems from his analysis of recognition in the Theaetetus and others. He imagines that we have a wax tablet into which an impression is made when we learn something, and when we meet it again and it fits the impression and we have recognition. This same idea survives even till today 2400 years later except now it is Neural Networks and not wax tablets that record the impressions (how slow the world works!) From this he imagines that all cups are cups because there is a master cup impression that roughly fits all cups. Truth for Plato is these ultimate impressions that we can discover by dialectics and thought.
This sculpture by Rodin is Platonic. Its even in Classical style despite its subject. You will not arrive at universal truths by solitary contemplation in Socrates and before but through conditioned interaction with other people and the world. It is thought to be Dante considering his choices, and indeed he was alone so I am slightly unfair, but the image has taken on a life of its own as the archetype, the Platonic Form so to speak, the Meme even, of enquiry.
What emerges in history as probably the right way is the middle. There are 2 extremes. The Chaotic where there are no truths that last more than a moment, through to the Platonic where there are truths that are eternal. In reality truths are conditional, but they have staying power as long as those conditions last. This why revolutions happen and the old certainties change. How if there is one truth did mankind not just discover it long ago and be settled?
The point that emerges from history is that truth is something that gains its validity by being current. Our lives are a mix of truths some still ancient and some very new and personal. I love this girl would be a truth which is very compelling but only of value within the limits of my life. Killing is wrong is a truth which has been generally accepted by almost all people. There are huge caveats to the latter: some say it is correct to kill in battle, some say it is correct to kill for food, some say it is correct to kill the unborn child if the parents do not want it, some say it is correct to kill the suffering if they want it. Something so absolute still have many variations depending upon conditions.
So the New Economics faces a problem. I may discuss the value of property, but I cannot make an absolute pronouncement about whether it is correct or not. I am in a dialectic with my times and this enquiry here to be successful needs to work with the conditions. I began the enquiry with this sentiment but have given it more flesh here. The future of Property and Capitalism depends very much on conditions that prevail.
Communism did very well in its day because the world was turning against the Feudalism that gave such obvious benefits to a small minority that could no longer justify their superiority. Christianity did a lot to make all people equal. Judeism makes Jews superior but Jesus battled with that and realised that he was teaching a law greater than just for the Jews. That equality between people has been growing since then and has spread to topple systems of injustice around the world. It is a new truth, not obvious to people in the Past. Just as Jews think they are superior, so the Nazis thought they were superior, and so the White Americans thought they were superior to Black Slaves. Even to this day this truth of equality has been growing. It is not a universal truth, we still have to see whether animals can gain some equality in the future. I believe they should along with all being. This is where the primitive San people killing their Kudu are actual superior to ourselves. In fact perhaps via property and race we have travelled from a wisdom that we are now returning to.
It would be very nice if the New Economics was a return to ancient truths, a return to a Home that we once knew and have travelled from. I will bear that in mind, but I suspect the river is also long a while it bends it has a direction to travel and the New will be in many ways New.
Monday, 18 February 2019
The New Economics: Good Works - religious labour
I suggested two posts ago that I should look at the religious ideas of work that run concurrent with the political ones expressed.
Work has a bad start in the West. It is a punishment for the sin of Adam and Eve. Man once at leisure in the garden of Eden is banished to work the rest of his days in the fields. To me this is a myth that captures the unpleasant change in life that the farming revolution brought about. As Jesus says look how God feeds the birds. Looking at nature mankind would not have seen many animals working. Perhaps the bees and the birds making nests, but for the most part animals forage from a table laid by God. This is who paleolithic man would have lived, foraging from the bounty of nature. Since then man began the back breaking job of farming. This lifestyle afforded him more calories than his hunter-gatherer lifestyle and populations grew, but the diet was much less varied and more unhealthy. And the worst part was defending the farms. It was in this period where the ideas of property began. What has been possession for the paleolithic, like the San people in my first blog of this New Economics series, became property.
Surpluses were created and stored, tools were amassed, land was distributed. It was the age of accounting, the advent of mathematics and the start of real trade. And it was the age when war began. Before farming there was no point in war. What you wanted was give by God (most probably something like Mother Nature) why fight your neighbour? After farming began and people started to work to create produce, then the easiest way to get produce started to become theft and war. Laziness starts to enter the picture. Why work a field yourself when you can capture a slave to do it for you? This simple idea comes all the way up to the modern age where if we can afford it we use employment to get people to work for us rather than do it our self. Although it is also true that there is a mutuality here because people who do not have land, may willingly work as a means of getting food. As populations grew and land became scare ownership became the means by which society was ordered, with those with land allowing those without land to work for them. But if such people were not forth coming warfare and slavery was the other option. We can imagine that the neolithic farming world transitioned extremely quickly from the original economics to the "old" economics we have today.
One part of this I like to speculate was the creation of public/private realms of society. In Japanese this is well codified as Uchi and Soto. With ownership came the private world. The family retreated into the domestic realm at the heart of the property. Outside the private property was the public realm of everything that was not owned. This was split into those things owned by others and then the natural world. It was this division more than anything some 6000 years ago that set the mindset for global destruction. The respect for the Mother than the San people had, lost now to a sense that Nature was just what hadn't get been tamed and brought under ownership. The New Economics needs to find way to resolve the conflict between public/private and natural. Just as it needs to resolve the conflict between those that own and those that do not own.
Some idea from the Paleolithic remain but seem oddly out of place in the modern world. One such idea is that everything was created by God and so belongs to God. This is present both in the Bible and in Hindu thinking and presumably throughout the world. When the San people are saying thank you for the gift of a Kudu they are aware that they are taking it from the world that was made by hands other than their own. It is a miraculous gift from who knows where, that they must be sure they are taking rightfully and which has been given before they take it. How can we reconcile such an ancient view with the Neolithic view that with my hands I have worked and created this harvest.
And so comes about the idea of "work" that is given as a sacrifice for God. Yes I have made this harvest, but with your willing and with these hands that were given to me by nature. I therefore offer this harvest back to God before I myself take from it. Even today many around the world still say a grace before they eat in common with the nomadic tribes people like the San in order to remember the gift the world has granted them in having food to eat.
I have not researched in much depth and there is a huge amount more to say here. A key feature of what we do is whether it is "good". This has many meanings. A good musician is a different use of the word compared with a good Samaritan. However at root it is the same word: one might call it skillful. In Hebrew the opposite is Sin meaning of an archer that they missed the mark. Likewise in Buddhism the word is Kusala meaning unskillful. Good works possibly derives from a view of work as a craft. This predates the neolithic obviously as craft was needed as much then as after. A good maker of arrows or bows would be well sort after. The cost of bad works was debt. The balance of good and bad works became the measure of how our life was and what after life we could expect. Clearly this idea arose around the neolithic as property developed. Throughout Asia ones good and bad deeds became accounted in a ledger in heaven. Even in Buddhism with its empty metaphysics the idea of karma is central to the cause and effect. The impact of what we do creates our future. And where our life is bad we look to past bad actions. I suppose this well precedes the neolithic. If the San people suddenly found themselves in a drought they would consider that their rituals of thanks had not been properly performed. It is not fanciful. The world is potentially facing the biggest drought in its history because mankind has not been performing his rituals properly. This sense is very much the cause of this outpouring of hurried blog posts.
Through its relationship with sacrifice and offering to God "work" has a religious meaning. In the Protestant Era after the renaissance in Europe Good Works became important as a means of repentance and correcting ones relationship with God. By offering hard labour we might purify our souls. Obviously this idea existed before as labour for penance, pilgrimages and various other labours and mortifications have always been done to purify the soul. The Good Christian could improve his relationship with God through sacrificial labour.
Now Nietzschean sceptics will say that this is perfect slave consciousness. The ruling classes enjoying the fruits of slave labour would welcome a way of thinking in the slaves that glorified such subservient labour. Such a view would also say that Individual Ego is the true state of Man and the idea that our labour belongs to God is just part of slave mentality. You own what you make for Nietzsche, or better if you have the power steal someone elses.
I won't pursue this any further today. But how work and production have changed meaning over time from a curse, to a means of being closer to God. The New Economics will have to unravel this!
Work has a bad start in the West. It is a punishment for the sin of Adam and Eve. Man once at leisure in the garden of Eden is banished to work the rest of his days in the fields. To me this is a myth that captures the unpleasant change in life that the farming revolution brought about. As Jesus says look how God feeds the birds. Looking at nature mankind would not have seen many animals working. Perhaps the bees and the birds making nests, but for the most part animals forage from a table laid by God. This is who paleolithic man would have lived, foraging from the bounty of nature. Since then man began the back breaking job of farming. This lifestyle afforded him more calories than his hunter-gatherer lifestyle and populations grew, but the diet was much less varied and more unhealthy. And the worst part was defending the farms. It was in this period where the ideas of property began. What has been possession for the paleolithic, like the San people in my first blog of this New Economics series, became property.
Surpluses were created and stored, tools were amassed, land was distributed. It was the age of accounting, the advent of mathematics and the start of real trade. And it was the age when war began. Before farming there was no point in war. What you wanted was give by God (most probably something like Mother Nature) why fight your neighbour? After farming began and people started to work to create produce, then the easiest way to get produce started to become theft and war. Laziness starts to enter the picture. Why work a field yourself when you can capture a slave to do it for you? This simple idea comes all the way up to the modern age where if we can afford it we use employment to get people to work for us rather than do it our self. Although it is also true that there is a mutuality here because people who do not have land, may willingly work as a means of getting food. As populations grew and land became scare ownership became the means by which society was ordered, with those with land allowing those without land to work for them. But if such people were not forth coming warfare and slavery was the other option. We can imagine that the neolithic farming world transitioned extremely quickly from the original economics to the "old" economics we have today.
One part of this I like to speculate was the creation of public/private realms of society. In Japanese this is well codified as Uchi and Soto. With ownership came the private world. The family retreated into the domestic realm at the heart of the property. Outside the private property was the public realm of everything that was not owned. This was split into those things owned by others and then the natural world. It was this division more than anything some 6000 years ago that set the mindset for global destruction. The respect for the Mother than the San people had, lost now to a sense that Nature was just what hadn't get been tamed and brought under ownership. The New Economics needs to find way to resolve the conflict between public/private and natural. Just as it needs to resolve the conflict between those that own and those that do not own.
Some idea from the Paleolithic remain but seem oddly out of place in the modern world. One such idea is that everything was created by God and so belongs to God. This is present both in the Bible and in Hindu thinking and presumably throughout the world. When the San people are saying thank you for the gift of a Kudu they are aware that they are taking it from the world that was made by hands other than their own. It is a miraculous gift from who knows where, that they must be sure they are taking rightfully and which has been given before they take it. How can we reconcile such an ancient view with the Neolithic view that with my hands I have worked and created this harvest.
And so comes about the idea of "work" that is given as a sacrifice for God. Yes I have made this harvest, but with your willing and with these hands that were given to me by nature. I therefore offer this harvest back to God before I myself take from it. Even today many around the world still say a grace before they eat in common with the nomadic tribes people like the San in order to remember the gift the world has granted them in having food to eat.
I have not researched in much depth and there is a huge amount more to say here. A key feature of what we do is whether it is "good". This has many meanings. A good musician is a different use of the word compared with a good Samaritan. However at root it is the same word: one might call it skillful. In Hebrew the opposite is Sin meaning of an archer that they missed the mark. Likewise in Buddhism the word is Kusala meaning unskillful. Good works possibly derives from a view of work as a craft. This predates the neolithic obviously as craft was needed as much then as after. A good maker of arrows or bows would be well sort after. The cost of bad works was debt. The balance of good and bad works became the measure of how our life was and what after life we could expect. Clearly this idea arose around the neolithic as property developed. Throughout Asia ones good and bad deeds became accounted in a ledger in heaven. Even in Buddhism with its empty metaphysics the idea of karma is central to the cause and effect. The impact of what we do creates our future. And where our life is bad we look to past bad actions. I suppose this well precedes the neolithic. If the San people suddenly found themselves in a drought they would consider that their rituals of thanks had not been properly performed. It is not fanciful. The world is potentially facing the biggest drought in its history because mankind has not been performing his rituals properly. This sense is very much the cause of this outpouring of hurried blog posts.
Through its relationship with sacrifice and offering to God "work" has a religious meaning. In the Protestant Era after the renaissance in Europe Good Works became important as a means of repentance and correcting ones relationship with God. By offering hard labour we might purify our souls. Obviously this idea existed before as labour for penance, pilgrimages and various other labours and mortifications have always been done to purify the soul. The Good Christian could improve his relationship with God through sacrificial labour.
Now Nietzschean sceptics will say that this is perfect slave consciousness. The ruling classes enjoying the fruits of slave labour would welcome a way of thinking in the slaves that glorified such subservient labour. Such a view would also say that Individual Ego is the true state of Man and the idea that our labour belongs to God is just part of slave mentality. You own what you make for Nietzsche, or better if you have the power steal someone elses.
I won't pursue this any further today. But how work and production have changed meaning over time from a curse, to a means of being closer to God. The New Economics will have to unravel this!
The New Economics: Social Contract and More Balanced View of Property
The English Civil war was one of the bloodiest conquests in history claiming 1 in 6 people. On an aside I always quote this to remind people that many of the world's systems were achieved through huge bloodshed not just European Union via World War 1 &2 and Soviet Union via the 1917 Revolution and even China resulted from over a century and half of fighting. The result of all this bloodshed and uncertainty is that people grow sick of war and prefer anything to come and replace it. One might say that war does not achieve anything by forcefully taking and enslaving people, but rather it is so terrible that it forces people to accept slavery as a preferred alternative. And so it was with Thomas Hobbes in the Leviathan written during the civil war and published the year the Republic was proclaimed. His experience of the civil war left him and the nation utterly fearing a break down of order. It lead to one of the most famous passages in English social theory:
Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
[Leviathan: Chapter XIII]
The fear of social breakdown and the belief that the civilised world is built on base foundations is a very enduring idea. It is obviously flawed however. How can a strong building be built on weak foundations? Never-the-less it illustrates the fear that social breakdown and warfare causes.
Social Contract is the idea that rather than power just being top-down from conquering ruler, it also involves the mutual agreement of people. Using English history again. If the Norman Conquest was the model of Conquering Ruler the Magna Carta was and is the model of Social Contract. With the civil war still fresh in people's minds, after the death of Cronwell the nation feared a breakdown of social order again. So great was that fear that the ruling barons rather than begin fighting for control of the country again, decided to subjugate themselves to a new Monarch. This type of agreement would become known after John Nash who studied them post war. None of the Baron's achieved the optimum goal which would be ruling Britain, but by agreeing on a Monarch who they heavily limited the power of, they avoided the worse outcome of uncertain conflict.
Rulers who rule simply by power have very short reigns. A system constantly being forced into a shape will either die, or it will break out of its constraints. For a system to have longevity it must work at some deeper level. So we see that even while the Roman Empire was a brutal subjugation of states, it also provided a system for people within the subjugated states to broker power and wealth. Rome could never have controlled such a great empire without the cooperation at some level of the people it ruled.
In Dao De Ching Chapter 61 Lao Tze says this:
The great state should be like a river basin.
The mixing place of the world,
The feminine of the world.
The feminine always overcomes the masculine by softness
Because softness is lesser.
Therefore if a large state serves a small state
It will gain the small state.
If a small state serves a large state
It will gain the large state.
Therefore some serve in order to gain
And some gain despite their servitude.
The large state wants nothing more
Than to unite and feed its people.
The small state wants nothing more
Than to enter into the service of the right person.
Thus both get what they want.
Greatness lies in placing oneself below.
The relations been great and small in the world of power are complex and inter twinned. What appears to be a huge powerful empire is composed from smaller rulers who working with the empire achieve their own goals.
Unfortunately even Empires as great as the British Empire do not heed Lao Tze's advice. The British Empire was held together but a a continual game of deceit and broken promises. The Indians soon learned that the apparent good will that Empire pretended to have toward the local rulers was purely for show. In matters of power Britain always took the upper hand. Legendarily having promised both the Jews and the Arabs control of Palestine in reward for helping them fight the Turks, Britain gave Israel to the Jews and left a population of Arabs still embittered to this day. An empire built on such weak foundations was inevitably going to fail. In England we are taught to respect our Imperial leaders, but the truth is they made a terrible ignorant mess of things and the world suffers today.
So while property at its outset is the forceful conquest of land, if it was only a ruling elite extracting wealth from the peasants it would descend into rebellion fairly quickly. There is a balance between rulers and ruled. Even after the Norman Conquest where Saxons were treated as slaves, they had one benefit. Like the Barons after Magna Carta it was better the devil you know. With Normans in control of the country, the Saxons knew they would not need fight. The Normans would protect the new kingdom. The argument is that the rent paid on land by peasants to their knights is a protection racket. On one hand it is a theft that is violently punished if not paid. But on the other hand the payment ensures safety from unknown threats from overseas.
The importance of this idea of the ruling classes justifying their property, payments and leisure by providing protection from overseas threats remains very much at large today. In US more than Europe and as blogged already, the population are made to believe that the nation is under continual threat first from one enemy and then another. This type of social control goes all the way back to the origins of social contract. We are better together because while not perfect, the alternative is worse. Arguments for Europe even as I write this are essentially this ancient meme.
A quick look at nature illustrates some of this. Animals are rarely solitary. In some way or another they solve problems of living side by side their fellow creatures. There are continuing arguments in animal behaviour about how various patterns emerge but the balance of costs and benefits is central to current ideas. For example why do fish shoal? If you are swimming in a massive shoal you are less likely to find food because someone else is much more likely to get their before you. However if you run into a predator you are less likely to be the one eaten. Animals do live in a state of "business" in its Old English sense of bisignis that is anxiety. Stress hormones are high, as they are constantly on the look out for predators. In a shoal they presumably experience a relief of stress and don't feel so busy. Recently studies on the influence of Prozac leaking into water supplies shows that fish are much more relaxed now and less predator anxious! It must mean that normally they are experiencing a level of stress. But there is a another cost to shoaling because a shoal is much easier to find for predators than a single fish. So over all, the species experiences higher predation as a result of shoaling than if the fish all played hiding-seek individually, and they experience lower food intake too, but like serfs under their knight they experience some relief from the threat of invasion.
Analogous to shoaling this goes some way to explain why property has remained as a system. While the capitalist takes a cut of the worker's labour, and actually puts them into a state of "business" and stress through work this is perceived as a better state than not being employed. Being unemployed, like the solitary fish has its benefits, but the state of anxiety is greater due to a sense of "predation." Perhaps that sense in capitalism is just poverty, but I suspect it is more. We have seen how poverty is not a barrier to happiness. And we have seen how leisure is a status symbol and something to be desired. The anxiety caused by unemployment, that employment and ironically business actually reduces is something to be investigated. Certainly under capitalism if you do not own enough to be financially secure, and you do not have a job them you have no access to property and you are socially excluded. In many ways all the old structures are still here in Capitalism, despite a whitewash that pretends that they system is fair and open. Is this fear of social exclusion in capitalism that is caused by being without property the driving force behind the system?
Much to think through here.
Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
[Leviathan: Chapter XIII]
The fear of social breakdown and the belief that the civilised world is built on base foundations is a very enduring idea. It is obviously flawed however. How can a strong building be built on weak foundations? Never-the-less it illustrates the fear that social breakdown and warfare causes.
Social Contract is the idea that rather than power just being top-down from conquering ruler, it also involves the mutual agreement of people. Using English history again. If the Norman Conquest was the model of Conquering Ruler the Magna Carta was and is the model of Social Contract. With the civil war still fresh in people's minds, after the death of Cronwell the nation feared a breakdown of social order again. So great was that fear that the ruling barons rather than begin fighting for control of the country again, decided to subjugate themselves to a new Monarch. This type of agreement would become known after John Nash who studied them post war. None of the Baron's achieved the optimum goal which would be ruling Britain, but by agreeing on a Monarch who they heavily limited the power of, they avoided the worse outcome of uncertain conflict.
Rulers who rule simply by power have very short reigns. A system constantly being forced into a shape will either die, or it will break out of its constraints. For a system to have longevity it must work at some deeper level. So we see that even while the Roman Empire was a brutal subjugation of states, it also provided a system for people within the subjugated states to broker power and wealth. Rome could never have controlled such a great empire without the cooperation at some level of the people it ruled.
In Dao De Ching Chapter 61 Lao Tze says this:
The great state should be like a river basin.
The mixing place of the world,
The feminine of the world.
The feminine always overcomes the masculine by softness
Because softness is lesser.
Therefore if a large state serves a small state
It will gain the small state.
If a small state serves a large state
It will gain the large state.
Therefore some serve in order to gain
And some gain despite their servitude.
The large state wants nothing more
Than to unite and feed its people.
The small state wants nothing more
Than to enter into the service of the right person.
Thus both get what they want.
Greatness lies in placing oneself below.
The relations been great and small in the world of power are complex and inter twinned. What appears to be a huge powerful empire is composed from smaller rulers who working with the empire achieve their own goals.
Unfortunately even Empires as great as the British Empire do not heed Lao Tze's advice. The British Empire was held together but a a continual game of deceit and broken promises. The Indians soon learned that the apparent good will that Empire pretended to have toward the local rulers was purely for show. In matters of power Britain always took the upper hand. Legendarily having promised both the Jews and the Arabs control of Palestine in reward for helping them fight the Turks, Britain gave Israel to the Jews and left a population of Arabs still embittered to this day. An empire built on such weak foundations was inevitably going to fail. In England we are taught to respect our Imperial leaders, but the truth is they made a terrible ignorant mess of things and the world suffers today.
So while property at its outset is the forceful conquest of land, if it was only a ruling elite extracting wealth from the peasants it would descend into rebellion fairly quickly. There is a balance between rulers and ruled. Even after the Norman Conquest where Saxons were treated as slaves, they had one benefit. Like the Barons after Magna Carta it was better the devil you know. With Normans in control of the country, the Saxons knew they would not need fight. The Normans would protect the new kingdom. The argument is that the rent paid on land by peasants to their knights is a protection racket. On one hand it is a theft that is violently punished if not paid. But on the other hand the payment ensures safety from unknown threats from overseas.
The importance of this idea of the ruling classes justifying their property, payments and leisure by providing protection from overseas threats remains very much at large today. In US more than Europe and as blogged already, the population are made to believe that the nation is under continual threat first from one enemy and then another. This type of social control goes all the way back to the origins of social contract. We are better together because while not perfect, the alternative is worse. Arguments for Europe even as I write this are essentially this ancient meme.
A quick look at nature illustrates some of this. Animals are rarely solitary. In some way or another they solve problems of living side by side their fellow creatures. There are continuing arguments in animal behaviour about how various patterns emerge but the balance of costs and benefits is central to current ideas. For example why do fish shoal? If you are swimming in a massive shoal you are less likely to find food because someone else is much more likely to get their before you. However if you run into a predator you are less likely to be the one eaten. Animals do live in a state of "business" in its Old English sense of bisignis that is anxiety. Stress hormones are high, as they are constantly on the look out for predators. In a shoal they presumably experience a relief of stress and don't feel so busy. Recently studies on the influence of Prozac leaking into water supplies shows that fish are much more relaxed now and less predator anxious! It must mean that normally they are experiencing a level of stress. But there is a another cost to shoaling because a shoal is much easier to find for predators than a single fish. So over all, the species experiences higher predation as a result of shoaling than if the fish all played hiding-seek individually, and they experience lower food intake too, but like serfs under their knight they experience some relief from the threat of invasion.
Analogous to shoaling this goes some way to explain why property has remained as a system. While the capitalist takes a cut of the worker's labour, and actually puts them into a state of "business" and stress through work this is perceived as a better state than not being employed. Being unemployed, like the solitary fish has its benefits, but the state of anxiety is greater due to a sense of "predation." Perhaps that sense in capitalism is just poverty, but I suspect it is more. We have seen how poverty is not a barrier to happiness. And we have seen how leisure is a status symbol and something to be desired. The anxiety caused by unemployment, that employment and ironically business actually reduces is something to be investigated. Certainly under capitalism if you do not own enough to be financially secure, and you do not have a job them you have no access to property and you are socially excluded. In many ways all the old structures are still here in Capitalism, despite a whitewash that pretends that they system is fair and open. Is this fear of social exclusion in capitalism that is caused by being without property the driving force behind the system?
Much to think through here.
The New Economics: Business, Laziness and Property
It is no accident that the word for Business is derived from busyness (Middle English). It is indeed the state of being active and busy, and later of having things to do. It is not a nice thing either deriving from the Old English "bisignis" meaning anxiety, one imagines it is an anxious state that motivates those in business to complete a task.
And if we combine this with the recent analysis of property we can see that those in busyness are set in motion by their landowners who ultimately derive from the class of people who conquered and enslaved them.
Now it is also interesting that in contrast to the anxious state of the employed, the ruling class distinguish themselves by being at ease and at leisure. In Georgian/Regency Jane Austin's time the key feature of an eligible bachelor in her books was their annual income. A quick search suggests that Mr Darcy was worth the equivalent of £3/4 million per year. But he did not get this money through his 9-5 job as a more modern image of a good husband might. This is income owed to him by workers on his estates (if he is landed gentry inheriting title and estate from the Norman Conquest) or, as was also the case by Georgian times, income from owning factories. The transition from Feudalism to Capitalism was well under way by the time of Jane Austin. A change of branding more than a change of system. It still meant that a class of owners were due an income from their subjects simply by virtue of owning the land or factories in which those people worked. It is such easy money that has always afforded the ruling classes the life of luxury, and it is capturing lands and workers to provide such easy income that has been a principle motivation for conquest and war.
Given the high status of leisure in society, it is interesting how the upper classes view those working classes who enjoy leisure. The tabloid journals of the 21st Century still heap loathing on the "freeloaders" of the working class who should dare to be so presumptuous as to enjoy lives of leisure. Working class people should be working! Only the upper class can dare to enjoy leisure. It is a very powerful class based element of society. When the working class enjoy leisure it is called laziness, and contrasts with the state of anxiety they should be experiencing which is business. The ruling classes despite gaining considerable free income and enjoying a leisure life are considered too well bred to be in a state of anxiety, their leisure is more like that of Greek Gods something deserved. They are never lazy.
Now I'm not necessarily suggesting that Business and Laziness are predefined. Within our ancient social order people might think that leisure does have some primordial value, that King's engaged in warfare and conquest of lands to provide income to support their lavish lifestyles. This may be partly true. Julius Caesar ransacked Europe not just for power, and not just to end the reign of the Celts, but also primarily because he had huge debts racked up by an extravagant lifestyle. But by the time of Julius Caesar leisure and opulent lifestyle were long, long established as signs of status. This is why Jesus was so arresting for the ancient mind: a king born in a stable! Completely incongruent. Christianity overturned the rules inherited from the ancient world. An eye for an eye was the law of King Nebuchadnezzar of what is now the Middle East. Jesus reversed this, turn the other cheek. As blogged already the Beautitudes is a sequence of heavy blows to break the mindset of the time. He smashed the old certainties much like Lao Tze did in China: many things depend upon the small, and so they are great. The "logos" (law, measure, word, standard, account book) does not come in fixed certainties like this would be very much the message of the Iron age across Asia. Already people were questioning the rigid system of accounts, debt and ownership that had been established.
Parallel to this analysis war, conquest, property and leisure is the religious culture in which work is not just business for a worldly master but is connected with our soul and God. Perhaps that should be a separate blog, but it is intimately connected to this one.
To finish here a moment with Nietzsche. This post very much supports his view of power being the driving force behind reality. Interestingly Nietzsche through his predecessor Schopenhauer was influenced by limited and misunderstood Eastern texts. Perhaps with better C19th scholarship we might never have had Nietzsche or Schopenhauer! Conquest of people is the opening act in history. Nietzsche would go on the explain Jewish thinking and Christianity as arising from the mentality of slaves rejecting the freedom of their masters and in so doing subverting what Nietzsche saw as the true nature of mankind. In the same way I'm suggesting here that the extant economics we have of business, employment, leisure and capitalism and under pinning this property are really just evolved from enslavement and conquest of people. A new economics, looking for peace, egalitarianism, happiness and security for the planet would not be derived from this poisoned root at all!
And if we combine this with the recent analysis of property we can see that those in busyness are set in motion by their landowners who ultimately derive from the class of people who conquered and enslaved them.
Now it is also interesting that in contrast to the anxious state of the employed, the ruling class distinguish themselves by being at ease and at leisure. In Georgian/Regency Jane Austin's time the key feature of an eligible bachelor in her books was their annual income. A quick search suggests that Mr Darcy was worth the equivalent of £3/4 million per year. But he did not get this money through his 9-5 job as a more modern image of a good husband might. This is income owed to him by workers on his estates (if he is landed gentry inheriting title and estate from the Norman Conquest) or, as was also the case by Georgian times, income from owning factories. The transition from Feudalism to Capitalism was well under way by the time of Jane Austin. A change of branding more than a change of system. It still meant that a class of owners were due an income from their subjects simply by virtue of owning the land or factories in which those people worked. It is such easy money that has always afforded the ruling classes the life of luxury, and it is capturing lands and workers to provide such easy income that has been a principle motivation for conquest and war.
Given the high status of leisure in society, it is interesting how the upper classes view those working classes who enjoy leisure. The tabloid journals of the 21st Century still heap loathing on the "freeloaders" of the working class who should dare to be so presumptuous as to enjoy lives of leisure. Working class people should be working! Only the upper class can dare to enjoy leisure. It is a very powerful class based element of society. When the working class enjoy leisure it is called laziness, and contrasts with the state of anxiety they should be experiencing which is business. The ruling classes despite gaining considerable free income and enjoying a leisure life are considered too well bred to be in a state of anxiety, their leisure is more like that of Greek Gods something deserved. They are never lazy.
Now I'm not necessarily suggesting that Business and Laziness are predefined. Within our ancient social order people might think that leisure does have some primordial value, that King's engaged in warfare and conquest of lands to provide income to support their lavish lifestyles. This may be partly true. Julius Caesar ransacked Europe not just for power, and not just to end the reign of the Celts, but also primarily because he had huge debts racked up by an extravagant lifestyle. But by the time of Julius Caesar leisure and opulent lifestyle were long, long established as signs of status. This is why Jesus was so arresting for the ancient mind: a king born in a stable! Completely incongruent. Christianity overturned the rules inherited from the ancient world. An eye for an eye was the law of King Nebuchadnezzar of what is now the Middle East. Jesus reversed this, turn the other cheek. As blogged already the Beautitudes is a sequence of heavy blows to break the mindset of the time. He smashed the old certainties much like Lao Tze did in China: many things depend upon the small, and so they are great. The "logos" (law, measure, word, standard, account book) does not come in fixed certainties like this would be very much the message of the Iron age across Asia. Already people were questioning the rigid system of accounts, debt and ownership that had been established.
Parallel to this analysis war, conquest, property and leisure is the religious culture in which work is not just business for a worldly master but is connected with our soul and God. Perhaps that should be a separate blog, but it is intimately connected to this one.
To finish here a moment with Nietzsche. This post very much supports his view of power being the driving force behind reality. Interestingly Nietzsche through his predecessor Schopenhauer was influenced by limited and misunderstood Eastern texts. Perhaps with better C19th scholarship we might never have had Nietzsche or Schopenhauer! Conquest of people is the opening act in history. Nietzsche would go on the explain Jewish thinking and Christianity as arising from the mentality of slaves rejecting the freedom of their masters and in so doing subverting what Nietzsche saw as the true nature of mankind. In the same way I'm suggesting here that the extant economics we have of business, employment, leisure and capitalism and under pinning this property are really just evolved from enslavement and conquest of people. A new economics, looking for peace, egalitarianism, happiness and security for the planet would not be derived from this poisoned root at all!
Sunday, 17 February 2019
Father of Faith
The story of Harishchandra (here from the 1991 version of Vishwamitra) ends with the once king being charged with the job of executing his own wife. To make matters worse he knows perfectly well that his wife is innocent and has been wrongly accused of murdering a prince.
In the Triangulations blog Sabio Lantz doesn't really add much understanding beyond giving his limited opinion.
The issue facing Harishchandra is well documented, in the West most famously handled in the Sophocles tragedy of Antigone. Does Antigone respect her duty as a citizen to obey the state ruling that her shamed brother Oedipus should remain unburied, or does she perform her duty as a sister to bury her brother. She chooses the latter and suffers the consequences.
Unlike Antigone Harishchandra does not obey his duty as a husband, but rather obeys his role as an executioner.
Now there is important value in the story (rather lost to Sabio Lantz). The issue facing us all is whether to allow the conditional world to influence us, or whether to remain steadfast to unconditional Truth. Sin and evil after all are none other than people being weak and swaying from what they should do.
It is commonly said in the West even today that every man has his price. Every man has is breaking point. That is the bet that Vishwamitra made with the gods and he won. Harishchandra had no breaking point, he was absolutely resolute in the face of conditional sufferings. In metaphysical terms his will and his mind were a single point, a diamond without flaw. This is why he is so highly valued.
Truth in the story of Harishchandra is to fulfil what you need to fulfil. I do not know enough about Hindu duties, but it seems that your role in society was a greater duty than your duty to your wife. The Bhagavad Gita is exactly the same message to Arjuna. There is no point saying you will take a swim in an ice cold lake, but then when you test the water back out. This is allowing the mind to be determined by conditional forces, and this is mortality. Even in Buddhism (which is quite opposed in fact to the Hindu message) there is the same message in Dhammapada Flowers:
Death sweeps away
The person obsessed
With gathering flowers,
As a great flood sweeps away a sleeping village.
The person obsessed
With gathering flowers,
Insatiable for sense pleasures,
Is under the sway of Death.
Those who seek to be defined by the conditional world, who in Hindu terms base their decisions not on what is right but upon what is apparent are in the grip of death. To beat death we must look inside our minds and shore them up against the influence of the impermanent and changing world. The pure mind is unchanging, and only the man who knows this can follow the path of truth unbroken.
Now it is interesting as Sabio Lantz points out that we have the same test set for Abraham in the old testament. This is currently dated to about 250BCE. This is several hundred years after the Harishchandra story. But they are all Iron Age, when Asia saw the rise again of great Kings and Kingdoms after the Bronze Age collapse.
Abraham begins the great religions of Judeism and its off shoots Christianity, Islam and Ba'hai. His importance lies in his obedience to direct commands from God. Kierkegaard in "Fear and Trembling" examines how such a "direct command" could occur. We commonly have two types of command. The Ethical command from the community law (Antigone being told by the state to leave her brother unburied conflicting with the sisterly law to bury him), and the Aesthetic command from our own wishes. Harishchandra typifies the strength of a person to overcome his Aesthetic wishes even in extreme cases. But Abraham is neither. There is no law that commands he must sacrifice his son. If he personally wishes to sacrifice his son then he is a monster displaying no love or parental duty to his child. But this cannot be the case because Abraham does not sacrifice his son in the end. Soren concludes there must be a "divine madness" that is incomprehensible to people outside the Divine connection, but which never-the-less is more than a personal wish by Abraham.
Regardless the metaphysics both stories end the same. Having proved their willingness to obey external orders far beyond the breaking point of mere mortals, showing complete command over themselves God reveals himself and ends the test.
Perhaps some might think of concentration camps and people doing horrific things under orders. The difference here is that in most cases of people subordinating themselves to authority they were not personally involved. Were someone asked to kill their own family they might think again. And if they were prepared to do so, we might assume they were too traumatised and numbed to the situation that they did not know what they were doing. Yet Abraham and Harishchandra are of good mind. Indeed that is the point they are of the best mind.
So I wonder if comparing these similar stories side by side we gain some insight into both of them and into the root ideas that fed these cultures and religions.
todo: apparently we can roll Job into this as well, but I have not studied that story.
The New Economics: Possession vs Property (Apple Trees II)
The obvious flaw with John Locke's analysis of property is that he confuses possession with property. If possession was property then the person picking the acorns or apples would own those acorns and apples. Yet in reality the owner of the land owns them and possession amounts to theft. Ownership makes possession a crime if you are not the owner and so they cannot be the same.
Now English law does however value possession: they say "possession is 9/10th of the law". If "de facto" one is in possession then they have a very strong case for ownership. However clearly anyone claiming that because they live in a house, or live on land, they own the house or land is not getting very far. There are cases where landlords have been careless and allowed their land to lapse in use, and I believe courts will "de facto" respect the current tenant. But generally ownership is aggressively protected, and especially the financial returns on that land. In more modern economics shares in companies are another important class of ownership from which income can be extracted.
Ownership has a very special quality that makes it differ from possession. The best example of this I saw in Arrian of Nicomedia. Alexander the Great is marching his huge army past some Indian sages taking a stroll and the account continues thus:
At the sight of him and his army they did nothing else but stamp with their feet on the earth, upon which they were stepping. When he asked them by means of interpreters what was the meaning of their action, they replied as follows: "king Alexander, every man possesses as much of the earth as this, upon which we have stepped; but thou being only a man like the rest of us, except in being meddlesome and arrogant, art come over so great a part of the earth from thy own land, giving trouble both to thyself and others. And yet thou also wilt soon die, and possess only as much of the earth as is sufficient for thy body to be buried in."
[The Anabasis of Alexander by Arrian, translated by E. J. Chinnock. Book VII, Chapter II. Alexander's Dealings with the Indian Sages]
Possession is limited by our physical dimensions. We can only occupy so much land, our bellies can only eat so much, our eyes can only see so much, our minds can only think so much. But by virtue of records in paper we may claim ownership of an indefinite amount. Alexander in written accounts was leader of a huge empire that he had conquered and been accepted as leader of. Yet this is an imaginary and paper Alexander. The real Alexander as these sages pointed out could never occupy any more land than they or any other person. In Anarchism possession is highly valued, while ownership because it depends upon quite abstract social departments and document to enforce it is considered unnecessary.
The absurdity of Ownership is well captured by an anecdote I was told recently. An extremely wealth Indian family were travelling in London to set their daughter up for college. She saw a house she liked in Chelsea and the father promised to buy it for her. After making enquiries his staff informed him that he already owned it. When we are so removed from what we own that a multi-million pound house in Chelsea can be unknowingly owned one wonders the purpose of ownership. It is pure abstract paperwork. I believe a similar thing happened in the early days of The Simpsons cartoon. It came to the attention of some keen lawyer that the cartoon had made some libellous comments about Fox. He quickly realised he wasn't going to get far with the case when he was discovered that Fox owned The Simpsons. You can never be fooled about what you possess, but what you own is infinite and can become extremely tenuous.
I meant to discuss the next part in Property and Soul but will start briefly here. Possession is primarily a physical attribute. It is not just people who may possess. A tree may possess a magnificent canopy of blossoms. A flower may possess a heavenly fragrance. A mountain may possess a snow covered cap, and the light of the setting sun may possess a dreamy hue. Possession is very natural and organic, it is how the world is, quite free from documentation and metaphysics. No one needs ask of the clouds when they possess a heavy indigo countenance whether they are conscious and whether they have a right to ownership of that appearance: it is what they are.
With Ownership it is quite different. A mountain that owns the clouds that attend the high seat of its summit we would expect to send an army after anyone stealing those clouds, or at least send a barrister to represent them in court as they enforce their ownership. When we speak of ownership we are speaking of the structure of our society and the active powers that be. As already mentioned those powers have been very reluctant to accept most of human race, let alone finer metaphysical questions of what creatures can have a right to ownership.
So where did Ownership come from? I believe ownership is based in violence. In Britain the incumbent status quo was established by the Norman conquest of the Saxons in 1066. Harold was killed and William took over ownership of Britain. As if to prove the hypothesis here the first thing William did was compile the Doomsday Book which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records was under taken to find out "what land the king himself had, and what stock upon the land; or, what dues he ought to have by the year from the shire". Conquest of England meant income for the King. This without question is the origins of property. The Saxons were subjugated and became slaves to the Normans for the next few centuries until through marriage the Welsh King Henry took the throne and broke with Brittany. In that move not only did England become a sovereign nation again, but the Celts took power from the Saxons : the red dragon indeed did emerge victorious over the white saxon dragon as prophesied by Merlin. Under Henry the English reestablished themselves, but the divisions of the Feudal System set up by the Normans were never dismantled and to this day we have a country ruled and owned by lords and knights who get paid rent by tenants.
To remind us the violent nature of property and ownership the cost for ignoring ownership was always violence. Often death, but gradually this evolved into penal servitude and prison. Only very very recently have human rights stepped in to suggest that there is a more fundamental basis to law than ownership. But at root the system is based on ownership of property first and life second. It is the winnings of war by the victorious in battle that underpin the structure of our society.
If we have one demon in the workings of modern Economics to blame for the destruction of the planet it seems to be ownership and behind it war: possession by force.
But we have a problem because ownership is built on violence and power. Ultimately war is waged to gain power and ownership. Kings conquering, or today Nations conquering to establish property rights for economics.
Its a far cry from Adam Smith and his genteel book on property and free market to realising that the system of apparent peace and stability was built upon bloodshed, terror and brutal enforcement of ownership rights. Nietzsche would celebrate all this. In his view power was the ruling force of nature and the emergence of ruling people who subjugated other people to their Will was what it was all about. Ownership would be exactly what a ruling people would do to record and account the enslavement that they had people under. This forest belongs to Lord ABC, anyone without found trespassing without the express consent of Lord ABC will be executed. This is the reality of ownership. This is the reality of the origins of modern economics in the Georgian period.
So the New Economics must first tackle the violence between people, before it can begin to solve the violence we have committed against nature and the planet.
There is hope as much of the violence between people has been outlawed. Racism and sexism are two areas of violence where there is much hope. Next I need analysis how this has changed and how far mankind can go to end violence between ruling classes of owners and their subjects who do not own.
(todo: Nash equilibria, social contract. There is more to the status quo than simply victor and vanquished.)
Now English law does however value possession: they say "possession is 9/10th of the law". If "de facto" one is in possession then they have a very strong case for ownership. However clearly anyone claiming that because they live in a house, or live on land, they own the house or land is not getting very far. There are cases where landlords have been careless and allowed their land to lapse in use, and I believe courts will "de facto" respect the current tenant. But generally ownership is aggressively protected, and especially the financial returns on that land. In more modern economics shares in companies are another important class of ownership from which income can be extracted.
Ownership has a very special quality that makes it differ from possession. The best example of this I saw in Arrian of Nicomedia. Alexander the Great is marching his huge army past some Indian sages taking a stroll and the account continues thus:
At the sight of him and his army they did nothing else but stamp with their feet on the earth, upon which they were stepping. When he asked them by means of interpreters what was the meaning of their action, they replied as follows: "king Alexander, every man possesses as much of the earth as this, upon which we have stepped; but thou being only a man like the rest of us, except in being meddlesome and arrogant, art come over so great a part of the earth from thy own land, giving trouble both to thyself and others. And yet thou also wilt soon die, and possess only as much of the earth as is sufficient for thy body to be buried in."
[The Anabasis of Alexander by Arrian, translated by E. J. Chinnock. Book VII, Chapter II. Alexander's Dealings with the Indian Sages]
Possession is limited by our physical dimensions. We can only occupy so much land, our bellies can only eat so much, our eyes can only see so much, our minds can only think so much. But by virtue of records in paper we may claim ownership of an indefinite amount. Alexander in written accounts was leader of a huge empire that he had conquered and been accepted as leader of. Yet this is an imaginary and paper Alexander. The real Alexander as these sages pointed out could never occupy any more land than they or any other person. In Anarchism possession is highly valued, while ownership because it depends upon quite abstract social departments and document to enforce it is considered unnecessary.
The absurdity of Ownership is well captured by an anecdote I was told recently. An extremely wealth Indian family were travelling in London to set their daughter up for college. She saw a house she liked in Chelsea and the father promised to buy it for her. After making enquiries his staff informed him that he already owned it. When we are so removed from what we own that a multi-million pound house in Chelsea can be unknowingly owned one wonders the purpose of ownership. It is pure abstract paperwork. I believe a similar thing happened in the early days of The Simpsons cartoon. It came to the attention of some keen lawyer that the cartoon had made some libellous comments about Fox. He quickly realised he wasn't going to get far with the case when he was discovered that Fox owned The Simpsons. You can never be fooled about what you possess, but what you own is infinite and can become extremely tenuous.
I meant to discuss the next part in Property and Soul but will start briefly here. Possession is primarily a physical attribute. It is not just people who may possess. A tree may possess a magnificent canopy of blossoms. A flower may possess a heavenly fragrance. A mountain may possess a snow covered cap, and the light of the setting sun may possess a dreamy hue. Possession is very natural and organic, it is how the world is, quite free from documentation and metaphysics. No one needs ask of the clouds when they possess a heavy indigo countenance whether they are conscious and whether they have a right to ownership of that appearance: it is what they are.
With Ownership it is quite different. A mountain that owns the clouds that attend the high seat of its summit we would expect to send an army after anyone stealing those clouds, or at least send a barrister to represent them in court as they enforce their ownership. When we speak of ownership we are speaking of the structure of our society and the active powers that be. As already mentioned those powers have been very reluctant to accept most of human race, let alone finer metaphysical questions of what creatures can have a right to ownership.
So where did Ownership come from? I believe ownership is based in violence. In Britain the incumbent status quo was established by the Norman conquest of the Saxons in 1066. Harold was killed and William took over ownership of Britain. As if to prove the hypothesis here the first thing William did was compile the Doomsday Book which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records was under taken to find out "what land the king himself had, and what stock upon the land; or, what dues he ought to have by the year from the shire". Conquest of England meant income for the King. This without question is the origins of property. The Saxons were subjugated and became slaves to the Normans for the next few centuries until through marriage the Welsh King Henry took the throne and broke with Brittany. In that move not only did England become a sovereign nation again, but the Celts took power from the Saxons : the red dragon indeed did emerge victorious over the white saxon dragon as prophesied by Merlin. Under Henry the English reestablished themselves, but the divisions of the Feudal System set up by the Normans were never dismantled and to this day we have a country ruled and owned by lords and knights who get paid rent by tenants.
To remind us the violent nature of property and ownership the cost for ignoring ownership was always violence. Often death, but gradually this evolved into penal servitude and prison. Only very very recently have human rights stepped in to suggest that there is a more fundamental basis to law than ownership. But at root the system is based on ownership of property first and life second. It is the winnings of war by the victorious in battle that underpin the structure of our society.
If we have one demon in the workings of modern Economics to blame for the destruction of the planet it seems to be ownership and behind it war: possession by force.
But we have a problem because ownership is built on violence and power. Ultimately war is waged to gain power and ownership. Kings conquering, or today Nations conquering to establish property rights for economics.
Its a far cry from Adam Smith and his genteel book on property and free market to realising that the system of apparent peace and stability was built upon bloodshed, terror and brutal enforcement of ownership rights. Nietzsche would celebrate all this. In his view power was the ruling force of nature and the emergence of ruling people who subjugated other people to their Will was what it was all about. Ownership would be exactly what a ruling people would do to record and account the enslavement that they had people under. This forest belongs to Lord ABC, anyone without found trespassing without the express consent of Lord ABC will be executed. This is the reality of ownership. This is the reality of the origins of modern economics in the Georgian period.
So the New Economics must first tackle the violence between people, before it can begin to solve the violence we have committed against nature and the planet.
There is hope as much of the violence between people has been outlawed. Racism and sexism are two areas of violence where there is much hope. Next I need analysis how this has changed and how far mankind can go to end violence between ruling classes of owners and their subjects who do not own.
(todo: Nash equilibria, social contract. There is more to the status quo than simply victor and vanquished.)
The New Economics: Blessed are the Poor
Today, as in ancient times, it was believed that the opposite was true: that the wealthy were happy and blessed. Little has changed over thousands of years and almost all economic wisdom is based on this belief.
Yet paradoxically Jesus says the complete opposite. This more than anything probably would be reason for many to ignore him. How can he make any sense?
In Greek Luke 6:20 : Μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοί (translated as : blessed are the poor) and in Matthew 5:3 the same Μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοὶ τῷ πνεύματι (blessed are the poor in spirit). Μακάριοι means roughly happy, and πτωχοί destitute and opposite of wealthy. Definitely an apparent and deliberate oxymoron.
When Adam Smith writes his "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" he is looking not just into the wealth, but also the assumed happiness as well. One and the other are linked in Western thinking.
Large chunks of this blog devoted to smashing that connection and arguing that wealth is relative. The blessed in New Guinean tribes may have a colourful headdress of rare bird feathers. Turn up to work in New York with that and you will be laughed at. Wealth is contextual and social.
But surely there are unconditional needs and necessities without which all people feel poor. In Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" he argues that even within the depths of the depravity that was the Nazi Holocaust the victims could still discover wealth. He describes a young woman who is near death:
“This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. "I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard," she told me. "In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously." Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, "This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness." Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. "I often talk to this tree," she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. "Yes." What did it say to her? She answered, "It said to me, 'I am here-I am here-I am life, eternal life.”
Is this the "poor" that Jesus is speaking of? In our wealthy and luxurious lives we actually obscure the true wealth that lies throughout this world. The destitute have access to a wealth that the rich have actually obliterated with all the lazy comfort and dazzlingly full lives.
What do the ascetics and Cynics find in their self imposed solitude and poverty? Buddha famously tackled this problem at the outset of his enquiry into happiness. He took on an ultimately ascetic life driven by the Hindu belief that Tapas and spiritual wealth was gained through self mortification and torment. This is an old idea as well. It comes down to the West as Jesus hanging on a cross and later Odin hanging on Yggdrasil. Jesus won eternal life, and Odin amongst other things was given the Runes.
After almost killing himself with starvation Buddha realised that such extreme torment was not progressing him toward Enlightenment and he broke his self torture. The story goes that resting under a tree he was given a bowl of rice pudding by a girl believing him to be the spirit of that tree. In that simple act of giving Buddha realised that accepting nourishment and kindness were necessary parts of the spiritual life. There was indeed a Middle Way between absolute mortification and indulgence. His period of asceticism did provide him with progress, but to teach him it was wrong rather than the correct way.
I have argued before in the blog that regardless of Middle Path there is no absolute level of wealth. It may indeed turn out that we are, like the girl in Auschwitz, so impoverished that we will die from our deprivation but this does not exclude us from true wealth. However Buddha is saying that such deprivation does nothing for our spiritual growth. Being so deprived can upset our strength and peace so that we have little energy and resolve to progress our spiritual growth. But having too much physical wealth can have the same effect also, and obscure our path with more base activities.
I am resistant to draw a bell curve here and say that there is an optimal level of wealth. It is I maintain relative. Where the optimal falls for one person and another, and one culture and another will be different. In a society of great wealth it may well be higher than in a society of great simplicity. Seeing a branch of a tree outside your window may be wealth enough in a community of people with so little.
But I hope this post has thrown a spanner in the works of the Economic view of Wealth and Happiness. The pursuit of Happiness and Wealth are really quite separate and disconnected. It is sufficient for a society to supply only enough wealth that people may be able to find the right level of poverty.
The goal of true economics is not riches, but simply the give people the opportunity to find the right level of poverty.
==Addition
Buddha gives us a very simple manifesto on happiness that covers much of the above (printed in full below)
With special significance to Economics are lines 3,4
Contented and easily satisfied,
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm and wise and skilful,
Not proud or demanding in nature.
Also translated as:
May they be content and easily supported,
unburdened with their senses calmed.
May they be wise,
not arrogant and without desire for the possessions of others.
There is a Chinese saying that it is easier for a poor man to live in a rich man's house than vice versa. Returning to the relative nature of wealth, for a poor man being given an apple is a great treat and something they will appreciate. But for a rich man such an identical act may have much less meaning. In this way the poor man lives in a richer world than the rich man. This is very much the irony of wealth. The Metta Sutra is saying that a peaceful and calm mind is much more open to the world and finds greater and deeper satisfaction in its existence. While the wealthy mind may become distracted and be always running in search of new experiences and "hits" each needing to be greater than the last to break through the noise and insensitivity of the mind. Such a mind is poor because it needs so much to even be normal. We all know the deep satisfaction that comes from appreciating something simple, but fully. We may not be able to attain it very easily if our lives are busy and distracted, but we know that this is true happiness. I requires discipline and frugality to slow down the running machine of expectations and wants so that we can step off and be at peace.
Not also that in the second translation we are asked to not be have desire for the possessions of others. Not quite the 10th Commandment of the Jews, but a gentle reminder that happiness lies in appreciating what you have got, and not always wishing you had what other people have. You will always meet people with things you want, and uncontrolled you may feel that your life is then less worthwhile. But a moments self-reproach will reveal that one minute you are happy with what you have, and now compared with another you are no longer happy without anything actually changing except your mind! It is our minds that make us wealth or impoverished. And if it is our minds that make us feel wealthy or impoverished then why should what another has make any difference? Quickly we see the error in such thinking, and how basing our happiness on what we have is a recipe for unhappiness. We do not account what we have to be happy, we simply appreciate what we have. This is especially true of our families. Often I imagine (I am not married) we may find reason to be unhappy with our partner. And sometimes we may trip into thinking they are flawed and a bad partner, someone we should separate from. Yet a moments reflection may reveal that it is our mind that is changing more than our partner. Indeed they may have changed, but it is much more likely that our mind has changed. If we remember to appreciate what we have, even if it is just a branch in our window, we are on the path to happiness. And when we are happy, our partner is much more likely to be happy too, so it is not just selfish to be content but a benefit to all.
How that passage flies in the face of Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand. For Adam Smith each person striving for what they want in a perfectly free market leads to everything falling into the rights hands at the right price. I have proven this to myself with computer models. There is a better system however which Smith never looks at. His is a system of exchange, where you buy and sell things. In a system where you give what you think people need, and what you can spare it actually arrives at the Smith equilibrium only much faster. The reason is that for an exchange to occur in Smiths economics both parties have to be able to exchange. In the Giving system it does not require exchange, so goods can change hands immediately without waiting for payment. I will explore the mathematics of the giving system in detail at some stage. Both systems suffer from cheats. Smith is very careful to point out that Invisible Hand only works in a legal system. Likewise the Giving system can lead to generous individuals being exploited by selfish individuals (who from the analysis here are also unhappy - one flaw of the view that wealth is happiness is that cheats are seen as winners which means that people think that we need the Smith system, but actually cheats become unhappy and no human legal system is needed to ensure this! It is called Karma in the East and Wrath of God in the West).
A quick addendum on frugality and middle path. All economics does require the flow of good from producers to consumers. If people become misers then economics grinds to a halt. Frugality does not mean "miser". Excellent example of the poverty of being a miser at the start of this video: Why Frugal Living May Not Make You Happy. Frugality simple means being enjoying the happiness of being peaceful and content, not expecting continual happiness from material possessions, not endlessly striving for new things, but rather turning down the volume and the contrast, re balancing and appreciating what you have. Perhaps having a conversation with the branch that you can see from your window.
.oO= Metta Sutra =Oo.
This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech,
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied,
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm and wise and skilful,
Not proud or demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove.
Wishing: In gladness and in safety,
May all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born —
May all beings be at ease!
Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will
Wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings;
Radiating kindness over the entire world:
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.
Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.
By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.
Addition: just to summarise the practical economic parts of this. There are 2 laws (1) That wealth is relative and (2) that wealth has an optimum. Combined we have the following relationship between happiness and wealth.
Even to me this graph seems wrong. Surely the extremely wealthy are more happy than the extremely poor. But this is relative so we are saying the extremely wealthy and extremely poor relative to their community. We will have to ask the tyrants and Emperors of the world how happy they are. The problem is that they may well be able to distract themselves with wealth to disguise unhappiness. This after all is the diagnosis that the wealth fill their lives so much that there is left little room for what we might call God or Authentic Wealth.
Yet paradoxically Jesus says the complete opposite. This more than anything probably would be reason for many to ignore him. How can he make any sense?
In Greek Luke 6:20 : Μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοί (translated as : blessed are the poor) and in Matthew 5:3 the same Μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοὶ τῷ πνεύματι (blessed are the poor in spirit). Μακάριοι means roughly happy, and πτωχοί destitute and opposite of wealthy. Definitely an apparent and deliberate oxymoron.
When Adam Smith writes his "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" he is looking not just into the wealth, but also the assumed happiness as well. One and the other are linked in Western thinking.
Large chunks of this blog devoted to smashing that connection and arguing that wealth is relative. The blessed in New Guinean tribes may have a colourful headdress of rare bird feathers. Turn up to work in New York with that and you will be laughed at. Wealth is contextual and social.
But surely there are unconditional needs and necessities without which all people feel poor. In Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" he argues that even within the depths of the depravity that was the Nazi Holocaust the victims could still discover wealth. He describes a young woman who is near death:
“This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. "I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard," she told me. "In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously." Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, "This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness." Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. "I often talk to this tree," she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. "Yes." What did it say to her? She answered, "It said to me, 'I am here-I am here-I am life, eternal life.”
Is this the "poor" that Jesus is speaking of? In our wealthy and luxurious lives we actually obscure the true wealth that lies throughout this world. The destitute have access to a wealth that the rich have actually obliterated with all the lazy comfort and dazzlingly full lives.
What do the ascetics and Cynics find in their self imposed solitude and poverty? Buddha famously tackled this problem at the outset of his enquiry into happiness. He took on an ultimately ascetic life driven by the Hindu belief that Tapas and spiritual wealth was gained through self mortification and torment. This is an old idea as well. It comes down to the West as Jesus hanging on a cross and later Odin hanging on Yggdrasil. Jesus won eternal life, and Odin amongst other things was given the Runes.
After almost killing himself with starvation Buddha realised that such extreme torment was not progressing him toward Enlightenment and he broke his self torture. The story goes that resting under a tree he was given a bowl of rice pudding by a girl believing him to be the spirit of that tree. In that simple act of giving Buddha realised that accepting nourishment and kindness were necessary parts of the spiritual life. There was indeed a Middle Way between absolute mortification and indulgence. His period of asceticism did provide him with progress, but to teach him it was wrong rather than the correct way.
I have argued before in the blog that regardless of Middle Path there is no absolute level of wealth. It may indeed turn out that we are, like the girl in Auschwitz, so impoverished that we will die from our deprivation but this does not exclude us from true wealth. However Buddha is saying that such deprivation does nothing for our spiritual growth. Being so deprived can upset our strength and peace so that we have little energy and resolve to progress our spiritual growth. But having too much physical wealth can have the same effect also, and obscure our path with more base activities.
I am resistant to draw a bell curve here and say that there is an optimal level of wealth. It is I maintain relative. Where the optimal falls for one person and another, and one culture and another will be different. In a society of great wealth it may well be higher than in a society of great simplicity. Seeing a branch of a tree outside your window may be wealth enough in a community of people with so little.
But I hope this post has thrown a spanner in the works of the Economic view of Wealth and Happiness. The pursuit of Happiness and Wealth are really quite separate and disconnected. It is sufficient for a society to supply only enough wealth that people may be able to find the right level of poverty.
The goal of true economics is not riches, but simply the give people the opportunity to find the right level of poverty.
==Addition
Buddha gives us a very simple manifesto on happiness that covers much of the above (printed in full below)
With special significance to Economics are lines 3,4
Contented and easily satisfied,
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm and wise and skilful,
Not proud or demanding in nature.
May they be content and easily supported,
unburdened with their senses calmed.
May they be wise,
not arrogant and without desire for the possessions of others.
There is a Chinese saying that it is easier for a poor man to live in a rich man's house than vice versa. Returning to the relative nature of wealth, for a poor man being given an apple is a great treat and something they will appreciate. But for a rich man such an identical act may have much less meaning. In this way the poor man lives in a richer world than the rich man. This is very much the irony of wealth. The Metta Sutra is saying that a peaceful and calm mind is much more open to the world and finds greater and deeper satisfaction in its existence. While the wealthy mind may become distracted and be always running in search of new experiences and "hits" each needing to be greater than the last to break through the noise and insensitivity of the mind. Such a mind is poor because it needs so much to even be normal. We all know the deep satisfaction that comes from appreciating something simple, but fully. We may not be able to attain it very easily if our lives are busy and distracted, but we know that this is true happiness. I requires discipline and frugality to slow down the running machine of expectations and wants so that we can step off and be at peace.
Not also that in the second translation we are asked to not be have desire for the possessions of others. Not quite the 10th Commandment of the Jews, but a gentle reminder that happiness lies in appreciating what you have got, and not always wishing you had what other people have. You will always meet people with things you want, and uncontrolled you may feel that your life is then less worthwhile. But a moments self-reproach will reveal that one minute you are happy with what you have, and now compared with another you are no longer happy without anything actually changing except your mind! It is our minds that make us wealth or impoverished. And if it is our minds that make us feel wealthy or impoverished then why should what another has make any difference? Quickly we see the error in such thinking, and how basing our happiness on what we have is a recipe for unhappiness. We do not account what we have to be happy, we simply appreciate what we have. This is especially true of our families. Often I imagine (I am not married) we may find reason to be unhappy with our partner. And sometimes we may trip into thinking they are flawed and a bad partner, someone we should separate from. Yet a moments reflection may reveal that it is our mind that is changing more than our partner. Indeed they may have changed, but it is much more likely that our mind has changed. If we remember to appreciate what we have, even if it is just a branch in our window, we are on the path to happiness. And when we are happy, our partner is much more likely to be happy too, so it is not just selfish to be content but a benefit to all.
How that passage flies in the face of Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand. For Adam Smith each person striving for what they want in a perfectly free market leads to everything falling into the rights hands at the right price. I have proven this to myself with computer models. There is a better system however which Smith never looks at. His is a system of exchange, where you buy and sell things. In a system where you give what you think people need, and what you can spare it actually arrives at the Smith equilibrium only much faster. The reason is that for an exchange to occur in Smiths economics both parties have to be able to exchange. In the Giving system it does not require exchange, so goods can change hands immediately without waiting for payment. I will explore the mathematics of the giving system in detail at some stage. Both systems suffer from cheats. Smith is very careful to point out that Invisible Hand only works in a legal system. Likewise the Giving system can lead to generous individuals being exploited by selfish individuals (who from the analysis here are also unhappy - one flaw of the view that wealth is happiness is that cheats are seen as winners which means that people think that we need the Smith system, but actually cheats become unhappy and no human legal system is needed to ensure this! It is called Karma in the East and Wrath of God in the West).
A quick addendum on frugality and middle path. All economics does require the flow of good from producers to consumers. If people become misers then economics grinds to a halt. Frugality does not mean "miser". Excellent example of the poverty of being a miser at the start of this video: Why Frugal Living May Not Make You Happy. Frugality simple means being enjoying the happiness of being peaceful and content, not expecting continual happiness from material possessions, not endlessly striving for new things, but rather turning down the volume and the contrast, re balancing and appreciating what you have. Perhaps having a conversation with the branch that you can see from your window.
.oO= Metta Sutra =Oo.
This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech,
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied,
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm and wise and skilful,
Not proud or demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove.
Wishing: In gladness and in safety,
May all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born —
May all beings be at ease!
Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will
Wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings;
Radiating kindness over the entire world:
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.
Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.
By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.
Addition: just to summarise the practical economic parts of this. There are 2 laws (1) That wealth is relative and (2) that wealth has an optimum. Combined we have the following relationship between happiness and wealth.
What is Enlightenment?
Famously the mind is often likened to a cup. The point of this metaphor is many fold but in particular a cup works because it is not the same as its contents. A cup can hold many drinks again and again over the course of its lifetime, and the Mind similarly will hold many experiences again and again over its lifetime.
The unenlightened mind confuses the experiences with itself. So when that mind experiences sadness or happiness it thinks it really is happiness or sadness. This is typified by liking and disliking experiences and then grasping for what it likes and rejecting what it does not like.
In contrast the enlightened Mind never confuses itself with its contents and regardless whether it likes the drink it currently holds or not, it lets it be drunk, allows itself to empty and be ready for the next drink.
We know we lose awareness of our true nature when we start to linger in experiences, or start to fear them arising. In Buddhism Causation is a central idea, and the enlightened Mind starts to accept the coming and going of mental states as simply waves on an ocean, things stirred up by the winds of the world acting upon us. No wave is too big for the Mind as it is in fact infinite. The only finite thing is our weakness and attachment to particular states.
Cup is a good metaphor because it also captures the idea that the mind is only able to experience because it is itself empty of experience. Like a full cup we know the cup is empty because it has drink within it. This is why the Heart Sutra begins: Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form. The Mind is never actually empty, a drink leaves as another comes so unless we meditate extremely deeply we will never experience its emptiness. But we know from the changing drinks that the cup is not the same as the drinks. The presence of each drink, reminds us that we are actually empty.
Cup is a good metaphor because we need to pick up a cup to drink. But when we have drunk we put the cup down again. If we keep holding onto the cup after the drink has gone in memory of something we enjoyed, or grip the cup in expectation of the same drink then we start to experience Tanha. This is the source of suffering, it is when things start to stick and cause suffering. After we confuse mind with its experiences, we start to grasp at mind in the hope of getting those experiences again, or we start to reject mind in the hope of avoiding experiences. We turn against our self. Mind is always unaffected by what happens, and when enlightened we let what happens simply come and go, picking up what we need, and setting it down again afterwards.
It is such a common mistake to think that Enlightenment is some kind of positive experience. Ironically this is what unenlightenment is. It is often said that it is not what happens to you that matters, but how you handle it. The enlightened mind does not care what happens to it, because it knows how to be filled and emptied.
However I have made the mistake of thinking, that in which case we do not care what happens to us. We can be lazy in our spiritual affairs and know that nothing matters. This is nihilism, one of the extremes that Buddha warns us against. Enlightened Mind does not deliberately ignore its contents. Being free to receive experiences and let them go does not mean we are dulled to them. Such a mind is no-mind. We may as well be dead with this mind. Enlightenment mind does not dull itself in order to tolerate unpleasant experiences. It is more profound than that. How can it be empty if it refuses to be filled? An enlightened mind is able to accept all experiences as they are, and see its empty nature in so doing.
Another mistake is to take Enlightened Mind to mean some impartial, aloof, cool and unemotional mind that does not engage deeply with the world. We think I am not emotionally affected by that, therefore I must be indifferent from it, therefore I am unattached and therefore I have attained liberation. How wrong this is! As in the previous paragraph the Enlightened Mind is a large cup that wishes to be filled. The difference is that the cup always sees itself in the drink that it holds. Like the mirror of the Shenxiu or better the Huineng's no-mirror we see the mind in the world around us. When we feel, we also see the world around us. Dulling our emotions to attain some fake indifference is simply developing no-mind. If we allow the cup to fill and empty with freedom, we will begin to see ourselves more clearly. What is the problem with anger anyway? It is either not wanting to fill our cup with anger, or getting stuck with anger in our cup. The unenlightened mind panics when it sees anger arise because it doesn't like it. It starts all kinds of activities to avoid the anger, like throwing the hurt out in aggressive behaviour to other people. It may become violent in a desperate attempt to dissipate this unpleasant energy in the world around it. Conversely it may be passive and hold onto the pain feeling it burn over a long period of time. Enlightened mind can just let the anger come, feel the burn and pour it out again as it subsides. And enlightened mind can even see itself in the anger as it fills and empties. Unenlightened Mind does not see itself as a condition of the arising of the anger, it rather see the anger as a part of it. Unenlightened mind believes it is of the same type as anger. "You have made me angry" the Unenlightened Mind says to another, and this fuels even more anger as the Mind feels the pain of this anger burn. Unenlightened Mind is the stage upon which anger can come and strut around. The Enlightened Person is no more angry than a theatre is Macbeth. "I have become angry" means no more than "I am staging Macbeth tonight." Tomorrow we have a new show. This is enlightenment.
The unenlightened mind confuses the experiences with itself. So when that mind experiences sadness or happiness it thinks it really is happiness or sadness. This is typified by liking and disliking experiences and then grasping for what it likes and rejecting what it does not like.
In contrast the enlightened Mind never confuses itself with its contents and regardless whether it likes the drink it currently holds or not, it lets it be drunk, allows itself to empty and be ready for the next drink.
We know we lose awareness of our true nature when we start to linger in experiences, or start to fear them arising. In Buddhism Causation is a central idea, and the enlightened Mind starts to accept the coming and going of mental states as simply waves on an ocean, things stirred up by the winds of the world acting upon us. No wave is too big for the Mind as it is in fact infinite. The only finite thing is our weakness and attachment to particular states.
Cup is a good metaphor because it also captures the idea that the mind is only able to experience because it is itself empty of experience. Like a full cup we know the cup is empty because it has drink within it. This is why the Heart Sutra begins: Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form. The Mind is never actually empty, a drink leaves as another comes so unless we meditate extremely deeply we will never experience its emptiness. But we know from the changing drinks that the cup is not the same as the drinks. The presence of each drink, reminds us that we are actually empty.
Cup is a good metaphor because we need to pick up a cup to drink. But when we have drunk we put the cup down again. If we keep holding onto the cup after the drink has gone in memory of something we enjoyed, or grip the cup in expectation of the same drink then we start to experience Tanha. This is the source of suffering, it is when things start to stick and cause suffering. After we confuse mind with its experiences, we start to grasp at mind in the hope of getting those experiences again, or we start to reject mind in the hope of avoiding experiences. We turn against our self. Mind is always unaffected by what happens, and when enlightened we let what happens simply come and go, picking up what we need, and setting it down again afterwards.
It is such a common mistake to think that Enlightenment is some kind of positive experience. Ironically this is what unenlightenment is. It is often said that it is not what happens to you that matters, but how you handle it. The enlightened mind does not care what happens to it, because it knows how to be filled and emptied.
However I have made the mistake of thinking, that in which case we do not care what happens to us. We can be lazy in our spiritual affairs and know that nothing matters. This is nihilism, one of the extremes that Buddha warns us against. Enlightened Mind does not deliberately ignore its contents. Being free to receive experiences and let them go does not mean we are dulled to them. Such a mind is no-mind. We may as well be dead with this mind. Enlightenment mind does not dull itself in order to tolerate unpleasant experiences. It is more profound than that. How can it be empty if it refuses to be filled? An enlightened mind is able to accept all experiences as they are, and see its empty nature in so doing.
Another mistake is to take Enlightened Mind to mean some impartial, aloof, cool and unemotional mind that does not engage deeply with the world. We think I am not emotionally affected by that, therefore I must be indifferent from it, therefore I am unattached and therefore I have attained liberation. How wrong this is! As in the previous paragraph the Enlightened Mind is a large cup that wishes to be filled. The difference is that the cup always sees itself in the drink that it holds. Like the mirror of the Shenxiu or better the Huineng's no-mirror we see the mind in the world around us. When we feel, we also see the world around us. Dulling our emotions to attain some fake indifference is simply developing no-mind. If we allow the cup to fill and empty with freedom, we will begin to see ourselves more clearly. What is the problem with anger anyway? It is either not wanting to fill our cup with anger, or getting stuck with anger in our cup. The unenlightened mind panics when it sees anger arise because it doesn't like it. It starts all kinds of activities to avoid the anger, like throwing the hurt out in aggressive behaviour to other people. It may become violent in a desperate attempt to dissipate this unpleasant energy in the world around it. Conversely it may be passive and hold onto the pain feeling it burn over a long period of time. Enlightened mind can just let the anger come, feel the burn and pour it out again as it subsides. And enlightened mind can even see itself in the anger as it fills and empties. Unenlightened Mind does not see itself as a condition of the arising of the anger, it rather see the anger as a part of it. Unenlightened mind believes it is of the same type as anger. "You have made me angry" the Unenlightened Mind says to another, and this fuels even more anger as the Mind feels the pain of this anger burn. Unenlightened Mind is the stage upon which anger can come and strut around. The Enlightened Person is no more angry than a theatre is Macbeth. "I have become angry" means no more than "I am staging Macbeth tonight." Tomorrow we have a new show. This is enlightenment.
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