Successful outcomes can always be interpreted in short, medium and long-term metrics.* For more pragmatic monitoring of cultural outcomes, how about promoting more distributed understanding of the following methods?
.. fiat currency accounting?
.. proportional population employment?
.. survival of the country (capabilities, affinity, options & output of the USA).
Yes, there are measures that let the public track success, but that doesn't mean that they're used. Most of our current cultural problems were very directly addressed by the Automatic Stabilizers enacted during the 1930s-1940s (social security, FDIC, unemployment benefits, etc). The first cultural method to be sysematically undermined was regulation of Control Fraud - despite the myth of the SEC, DoJ District Attorneys and the FBI actions against White Collar Crime - (google William K. Black), and that's only because we let absolute crooks and traitors like Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers bribe, sweet talk and BS our Congress into gradually deregulating financial crime, right up to repealing Glass-Steagall.
Everything else is policy war between local vs long-distance merchants** over currency supply, either restricting it to preserve the buying power of hoarded cash, or letting it depreciate to scale net national liquidity with national growth. Let's see how many people can grasp the following, dynamic systems argument.
How do we afford to pay the "fiat interest on fiat bonds."
If carried far enough, that discussion eventually leads to 2 points.
First, we can't fail to pay the interest, since we can always generate as much fiat liquidity units as we want.
So, second, the argument reduces to either
a) arbitrarily maintaining the purchasing power of previously hoarded fiat (liquidity units), by progressively depriving an increasingly complex economy of both relative liquidity AND return-on-coordination [That is, pay the fiat interest by draining private savings of previously issue currency; even though population, capabilities and cultural options are all increasing. Even fools don't want that, when faced with a choice. Only pure sociopaths do.]
or
b) Enlarge the fiat currency base [# of liquidity units] with expanded public spending initiative, thereby SUPPOSEDLY diluting the buying power of yesterday's liquidity units. Why? TO PROVIDE ENOUGH LIQUIDITY TO RAPIDLY EXPLORE THE EXPANDING OPTIONS FACING TOMORROW'S POPULATION! More people, more capabilities, more options worth exploring = better/faster/cheaper new stuff to buy with old liquidity units.
To be blunt, social species - and modern economies - work because Return-on-Coordination far outraces inflation. Inflation is just one - faux - aspect of the always affordable cost-of-coordination. There's only one return that exceeds the cost of coordination, and that's the immense return on coordination. Luckily R-on-C far outstrips C-of-C, always, if we just let it.
Our task is to scale liquidity proportionally with the product of population-x-capabilities, so that we can rapidly explore all our emerging group options.
That, in a nutshell, is the "SOCIAL-SPECIES OPTION." It's an easy choice for those with the brains to sense dynamic incentives. Chase the biggest return, dummy! It's a dilemma only for overly-isolated Luddites. Our task is evolve and stay in the adaptive race, by organizing on a larger scale ... or else become a has been culture, either extinct or a domesticated lunch source for some other, more rapidly adapting culture - i.e., one optimizing it's liquidity in order to explore it's expanding options faster than our culture does.
People who save static assets excessively, including hoarding fiat, aka, hoard public initiative, are constraining today's dynamic output and thereby depriving their grandchildren of expanded options.
Our granchildren's options are reduced without our full investment in generating those options. Our Output Gap => grandchildren's Options Gap, and the relationship is not linear, but exponential.
If our output gap is "j", their options gap is [j(e)], i.e., "j" to some unpredictable exponential "e".
That's how evolution has worked since the dawn of time. We die & get out of the way so that our descendents can be far more than we were. It's called sexual recombination, or cultural recombination, or - in general form - Options Recombination. If we don't allow our own culture to reconfigure as fast as it could - we preclude it from exploring it's exponentially expanding options.
(see the "Traveling Entrepreneurs Task")
This all follows from the simple, bottom-up dynamics of adaptive systems.
Walter Shewhart: "In all complex systems, the highest cost, by far, is the cost of coordination."
Obvious corollary: "In all complex systems, the highest RETURN, by far, is the RETURN on coordination."
* This previously appeared as a comment at Seeking Alpha, and a longer, discussion at Economic Intersect.
** Actually, the clan-war between long distance & short distance merchants is unnecessary. It's a non-cooperative battle to tilt policies to favor one or the other, beyond adaptive utility. Policies favoring long-distance mercantilism over local resiliency can easily spill over into reduced Adaptive Rate. Yet that happens only if we let it happen. Systems tilt into maladaptive process patterns only in the absence of adequate public discourse. We're not all stupid, just ignorant - and above all else, unpracticed - when it comes to grasping all the changing nuances of emerging Situational Awareness.
People who save static assets excessively, including hoarding fiat, aka, hoard public initiative, are constraining today's dynamic output and thereby depriving their grandchildren of expanded options.
Our granchildren's options are reduced without our full investment in generating those options. Our Output Gap => grandchildren's Options Gap, and the relationship is not linear, but exponential.
If our output gap is "j", their options gap is [j(e)], i.e., "j" to some unpredictable exponential "e".
That's how evolution has worked since the dawn of time. We die & get out of the way so that our descendents can be far more than we were. It's called sexual recombination, or cultural recombination, or - in general form - Options Recombination. If we don't allow our own culture to reconfigure as fast as it could - we preclude it from exploring it's exponentially expanding options.
(see the "Traveling Entrepreneurs Task")
This all follows from the simple, bottom-up dynamics of adaptive systems.
Walter Shewhart: "In all complex systems, the highest cost, by far, is the cost of coordination."
Obvious corollary: "In all complex systems, the highest RETURN, by far, is the RETURN on coordination."
* This previously appeared as a comment at Seeking Alpha, and a longer, discussion at Economic Intersect.
** Actually, the clan-war between long distance & short distance merchants is unnecessary. It's a non-cooperative battle to tilt policies to favor one or the other, beyond adaptive utility. Policies favoring long-distance mercantilism over local resiliency can easily spill over into reduced Adaptive Rate. Yet that happens only if we let it happen. Systems tilt into maladaptive process patterns only in the absence of adequate public discourse. We're not all stupid, just ignorant - and above all else, unpracticed - when it comes to grasping all the changing nuances of emerging Situational Awareness.
1 comment:
There is no need for a currency to either appreciate or depreciate but appreciation and depreciation are SUBJECTIVE to a large extent which is why we need liberty wrt what we use for the payment of private debts.
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