The system has to change, commodities need to be closer to the consumers with as little “middle meddling” as possible. These middle meddlers add not value to the commodity or the consumer.
Love this analysis Ann. It's another (and even deeper and more hidden systemic) layer examining money and financialization that all of the other leading economic reform movements like MMT, Keen's Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis, Hudson's financial parasitism, UBI/Positive Money and Ellen Brown's Public Banking revolve around.
It's becoming ever more clear that the money system and its current paradigm of Debt Only as the sole monopolistic form and vehicle for the creation and distribtion of money, and its shadowed, increasingly abstract, unregulated and crazy financialized derivative products ARE the problem.
So how do we change the current paradigm and its non-survival effects? I would say find a way that isolates finance and yet benefits all other economic agents individual and commercial. A "third way" that integrates the self interests of traditionally opposed economic and political perspectives, could lead to the rational empowerment of governments and that could super charge the kind of ecological sanity we've failed to generate for the last 50 years.
Finance/Money is where the real problem in economics exists. We live in Finance capitalism after all. As the senator from Illinois has put it regarding the senate: "Finance owns the joint." The truth is private money creation is not a legitimate economic business model. Why? Because profit making money creation adds cost and is always either pre-production (like for business loans) or post retail sale (as in a mortgage). Thus it is exposed as a wholly exterior and costly parasite on the actual and legitimate economic/productive process.
It is stupid and an ignoring of Lord Acton's dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely to grant Private Finance the virtual monopoly power to create the life's blood factor for every individual and every enterprise, namely money. But it is even more stupid to allow them to virtually monopolize the paradigm/pattern of money, that is create it ONLY as Debt.
Two of the signatures of accomplished paradigm change are complete conceptual opposition and inversion of temporal universe reality. For instance, the the paradigm change from Nomadic Hunting and Gathering For Food was Agriculture, Homesteading and Urbanization. Likewise, the Copernican Cosmological paradigm change was nothing more and certainly nothing less than the inversion of the positions of the earth and the sun in other words from geo-centrism to helio-centrism. Again, conceptual opposition and inversion of temporal universe reality. Hence, the present problematic monetary and financial paradigm is Direct and Reciprocal (as in accounting debits and credits) Debt Only, and the new paradigm is Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting...and the policy of a direct to the consumer 50% Discount at retail sale and a reciprocal rebate of the total of that discount back to the retailer granting it to the consumer not only fulfills the signatures of complete conceptual opposition (Debt as in Burden to repay to Gifting) and inversion of temporal universe reality (from chronic erosive inflation to beneficial price and asset deflation) but is the very expression of the new paradigm itself.
Finally, the keys to perceiving paradigm concepts are integrative of opposites thinking, simplicity not complexity and problem resolution not problem discovery and discription. This is because paradigm changes are the quintessential integrative phenomena. That is they are single operant factor concepts that resolve the problems and thus alter an entire pattern of a complexity. In other words an integration of the opposites of single/simple and complex and a change of emphasis from problem discovery to problem solution usually in a way that is integrative of the particles of truth in otherwise considered present opposite orthodoxies.
You're welcome Ann. There is an entire policy program that will regulate and stabilize the new monetary paradigm that is necessary, but the single most important thing we could do is implement a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at the point of retail sale where retailers give consumers a 50% discount on virtually every consumer product from a package of chewing gum to an automobile or a house. The monetary authority whether the FED/Bank of England or some other authority mandated to do so, would then rebate the entirety of that discount back to the retailer making them whole on their overheads and margins of profit. All the retailer would need to do is open a T-account labeled Sales Discounts and the monetary authority would debit or credit (whichever is the opposite of the normal balance) the retailer's books. What does this single policy do? It breaks up Finance's monopolistic paradigm for the creation and distribution of money, namely Debt Only with Direct (to the consumer) and Reciprocally (back to the enterprise) Monetary Gifting. The obvious, immediate and continuous benefits to individual agents (a 100% increase in their purchasing power because they can now buy $100 worth of goods for $50 and hence save $50 they would otherwise have to spend) and commercial and retail agents a potential doubling of demand for their goods and services. When was the last time a single policy doubled purchasing power without harming enterprise? Short answer never. The policy integrates the normally contentious self interests of business and the consumer, and in such a beneficial way that what retailer could resist opting into the policy because if you don't you have to get 100% of your price from the consumer while your competitor who does opt in only needs to get 50% of their price. It's "an offer enterprise cannot refuse". Likewise the consumer also could not resist going to whatever retailer was gifting them 50% of the price of virtually everything. And who would oppose these wild benefits? Why Finance of course because they are not in the market of Gifting money...ONLY creating it as Debt. So the policy exposes Finance's monopoly paradigm to create money only as debt and the beneficial effects of the policy isolates them from virtually all other economic agents individual and commercial.
The policy also ends inflation forever by implementing BENEFICIAL price and asset DEFLATION. Holy orthodoxy exploding temporal universe and mental inversion of reality! Phenomenon of which is the cardinal signature of a genuine paradigm change.
As I said there is an entire regulatory program and set of tax incentives and disincentives that accompany the main policy of the 50% Discount/Rebate policy so as to stabilize and protect te new paradigm.
Thank you for setting out in clear - and disturbing - terms the reality behind oil and food prices. The scale of the task facing the Left in tackling the real reasons our people are impoverished is truly daunting.
Would it be possible for you to develop the end of your article to give us options? I am not an economist, I try to understand, but I can't see a way for the Left in the UK to end the deregulation of global financial markets. Although we have Clinton and co to thank for what has happened to oil and food prices, it is not clear to me that even the US government could put that genie back in the bottle.
Can you please help me understand what we need to do?
The system has to change, commodities need to be closer to the consumers with as little “middle meddling” as possible. These middle meddlers add not value to the commodity or the consumer.
Thanks for the cogent paragraph about heroine Brooksley Borne.
Love this analysis Ann. It's another (and even deeper and more hidden systemic) layer examining money and financialization that all of the other leading economic reform movements like MMT, Keen's Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis, Hudson's financial parasitism, UBI/Positive Money and Ellen Brown's Public Banking revolve around.
It's becoming ever more clear that the money system and its current paradigm of Debt Only as the sole monopolistic form and vehicle for the creation and distribtion of money, and its shadowed, increasingly abstract, unregulated and crazy financialized derivative products ARE the problem.
So how do we change the current paradigm and its non-survival effects? I would say find a way that isolates finance and yet benefits all other economic agents individual and commercial. A "third way" that integrates the self interests of traditionally opposed economic and political perspectives, could lead to the rational empowerment of governments and that could super charge the kind of ecological sanity we've failed to generate for the last 50 years.
Thanks Steve...tell more about 'isolating finance'..
Finance/Money is where the real problem in economics exists. We live in Finance capitalism after all. As the senator from Illinois has put it regarding the senate: "Finance owns the joint." The truth is private money creation is not a legitimate economic business model. Why? Because profit making money creation adds cost and is always either pre-production (like for business loans) or post retail sale (as in a mortgage). Thus it is exposed as a wholly exterior and costly parasite on the actual and legitimate economic/productive process.
It is stupid and an ignoring of Lord Acton's dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely to grant Private Finance the virtual monopoly power to create the life's blood factor for every individual and every enterprise, namely money. But it is even more stupid to allow them to virtually monopolize the paradigm/pattern of money, that is create it ONLY as Debt.
Two of the signatures of accomplished paradigm change are complete conceptual opposition and inversion of temporal universe reality. For instance, the the paradigm change from Nomadic Hunting and Gathering For Food was Agriculture, Homesteading and Urbanization. Likewise, the Copernican Cosmological paradigm change was nothing more and certainly nothing less than the inversion of the positions of the earth and the sun in other words from geo-centrism to helio-centrism. Again, conceptual opposition and inversion of temporal universe reality. Hence, the present problematic monetary and financial paradigm is Direct and Reciprocal (as in accounting debits and credits) Debt Only, and the new paradigm is Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting...and the policy of a direct to the consumer 50% Discount at retail sale and a reciprocal rebate of the total of that discount back to the retailer granting it to the consumer not only fulfills the signatures of complete conceptual opposition (Debt as in Burden to repay to Gifting) and inversion of temporal universe reality (from chronic erosive inflation to beneficial price and asset deflation) but is the very expression of the new paradigm itself.
Finally, the keys to perceiving paradigm concepts are integrative of opposites thinking, simplicity not complexity and problem resolution not problem discovery and discription. This is because paradigm changes are the quintessential integrative phenomena. That is they are single operant factor concepts that resolve the problems and thus alter an entire pattern of a complexity. In other words an integration of the opposites of single/simple and complex and a change of emphasis from problem discovery to problem solution usually in a way that is integrative of the particles of truth in otherwise considered present opposite orthodoxies.
You're welcome Ann. There is an entire policy program that will regulate and stabilize the new monetary paradigm that is necessary, but the single most important thing we could do is implement a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at the point of retail sale where retailers give consumers a 50% discount on virtually every consumer product from a package of chewing gum to an automobile or a house. The monetary authority whether the FED/Bank of England or some other authority mandated to do so, would then rebate the entirety of that discount back to the retailer making them whole on their overheads and margins of profit. All the retailer would need to do is open a T-account labeled Sales Discounts and the monetary authority would debit or credit (whichever is the opposite of the normal balance) the retailer's books. What does this single policy do? It breaks up Finance's monopolistic paradigm for the creation and distribution of money, namely Debt Only with Direct (to the consumer) and Reciprocally (back to the enterprise) Monetary Gifting. The obvious, immediate and continuous benefits to individual agents (a 100% increase in their purchasing power because they can now buy $100 worth of goods for $50 and hence save $50 they would otherwise have to spend) and commercial and retail agents a potential doubling of demand for their goods and services. When was the last time a single policy doubled purchasing power without harming enterprise? Short answer never. The policy integrates the normally contentious self interests of business and the consumer, and in such a beneficial way that what retailer could resist opting into the policy because if you don't you have to get 100% of your price from the consumer while your competitor who does opt in only needs to get 50% of their price. It's "an offer enterprise cannot refuse". Likewise the consumer also could not resist going to whatever retailer was gifting them 50% of the price of virtually everything. And who would oppose these wild benefits? Why Finance of course because they are not in the market of Gifting money...ONLY creating it as Debt. So the policy exposes Finance's monopoly paradigm to create money only as debt and the beneficial effects of the policy isolates them from virtually all other economic agents individual and commercial.
The policy also ends inflation forever by implementing BENEFICIAL price and asset DEFLATION. Holy orthodoxy exploding temporal universe and mental inversion of reality! Phenomenon of which is the cardinal signature of a genuine paradigm change.
As I said there is an entire regulatory program and set of tax incentives and disincentives that accompany the main policy of the 50% Discount/Rebate policy so as to stabilize and protect te new paradigm.
Thank you for setting out in clear - and disturbing - terms the reality behind oil and food prices. The scale of the task facing the Left in tackling the real reasons our people are impoverished is truly daunting.
Would it be possible for you to develop the end of your article to give us options? I am not an economist, I try to understand, but I can't see a way for the Left in the UK to end the deregulation of global financial markets. Although we have Clinton and co to thank for what has happened to oil and food prices, it is not clear to me that even the US government could put that genie back in the bottle.
Can you please help me understand what we need to do?