Situation Clarification E

 

The underlying pressing point, having put forward this idea of a separate currency, is how to bring it about. Again we require devil’s advocacy – I would imagine by those with legal skills. The reason I say that? It is the requirement of this new system to have a full mandate, right to the top, unassailable. It needs legal enshrinement. So I’m imagining that a court case could well be the way. But are there terms, anywhere in the law, which could accommodate this? I imagine it as a highest-level landmark case, establishing afresh the right of the people to be cared for. If those in power won’t properly supply these needs, then we expect to be able to do so for ourselves, with a set of separated resources. With specific points made about profit-seeking being counter to these needs being met, in other words not a best practice scenario. Alternatively, if there’s another, easier way, bring it on.

It can probably be envisaged as a human rights case. There are, after all, enormous anomalies already in our civilisation as regards these issues. We say that it’s a human right to have adequate accommodation, but in practice we have to afford it, and many are increasingly struggling. We say it’s a human right to have adequate food, but many of us struggle because the money we have for living doesn’t stretch that far comfortably. There is something fundamentally contradictory about the claim of these things being human rights and then not providing them as a matter of course. Making them a reward rather than a right – that’s again a very simple confusion of two ideas, which need separating out into their respective strands for clarity. This human rights issue is a much bigger issue even than the one I’m tackling. But the same principles could well be utilised for this lesser situation.

There’s also the anticipation of commentary at concept level, saying something along the lines of “why do you want to reinvent the wheel? We don’t need the complication of two currencies. Just campaign for pounds to do what you ask.” I would be more than happy to embrace this. I simply am not sure it could be brought about, mainly because the people responsible for guiding the change through are so in hock to profit-associated interests that there would be ‘great unwillingness’ (to be euphemistic) to bringing it about. But it’s good to think about, for sure. Could we create a new political party which has as a clear first principle that the scientific model of economics revealed by Modern Monetary Theory needs to be embraced, the pseudo-scientific one of orthodox economics relegated rightly to history? The only hesitation I have about that would be that it’s asking people to vote for the new operations. In other words, the mandate to do this would have to be fought for amongst all the nonsense of political elections, rather than in the cool of rooms where expert people can strategise.

Simply enacting this superior analysis as the best practice would no doubt engender an objection in some quarters: “but that’s undemocratic!”. This is a matter of how we understand society’s operation: there are many things, after all, in how our world is ordered, for which we have not voted. They are decided upon by people with skill as the best means of attaining a goal – that’s what all those government departments full of civil servants were designed to do, after all. As much as it would be good for us all to vote on everything, it’s not very practical. (Spoiler – there might be a way. More later.)

If we understand that our society’s economics needs to be seen in a different light which represents a more fact-based scientific approach, we are understanding that this represents ‘best practice’ and clearly should be followed by civil servants anyway, as a matter of course. It shouldn’t require our voting to do so. (This of course brings up a recognition of its own about the reason for the original comment: there’s a high likelihood that the idea of this change needing electoral imprimatur represents more than anything a wish to have it stymied: “let’s, through a typically ‘pseud’ embrace of high principle (“democracy”), make sure this gets kicked into the long grass” – your classic political shenanigans. The thing would be to be alive to this, and make sure it doesn’t happen.)

Two basic takeaways at this point:

1. Public purpose enterprises should be non-profit, as this is clear best practice

2. Orthodox economics is pseudoscientific, and needs replacing with a better model