[p2p-research] Feedback on a Summary/Explanation of John Maynard Keynes' General Theory

[Paul D. Fernhout]

These are notes on a link Ryan mentioned to me as a good summary of Keynes' 
ideas by Aaron Swartz, available here:
"A Summary/Explanation of John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory"
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/generaltheory

I'm just putting this to refer to it later. Most people here probably won't 
want to read this. :-) Ryan might be. Essentially though, it is my 
post-scarcity perspective on a summary of a book by John Maynard Keynes, as 
a sort of stream of consciousness, where I pick out some parts as I read it 
and reacted to them. Sometimes my reaction is more things they made me think 
about than reacting directly to the points in them.

This note is so long (about 93K) that anyone replying would have to break it 
up and trim most of it, given a 100K limit or so for this mailing list, or 
their reply will not go through.

All things in quotes below are a section of that page. Those are mostly just 
summaries of stuff Keynes wrote by Aaron Swartz, or sometimes Keynes' actual 
words (nested further in quotes). My notes are after. I included some 
material from that page to give context as to what my comments were inspired by.

Equals signs separate sections, I tried to keep it to one quote and one 
response between those equal signs. Sometimes there are several comments in 
relation to different parts of the same "section".

For reference on Keynes:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynes
"As a man of the centre described as undoubtedly having the greatest impact 
of any 20th century economist,[19] Keynes attracted considerable criticism 
from both sides of the political spectrum. In the 1920s, Keynes was seen as 
anti establishment and was mainly attacked from the right. In the "red 
1930s" many young economists favoured Marxist views even in Cambridge,[11] 
and while Keynes was engaging principally with the right to try and persuade 
them of the merits of more progressive policy, the most vociferous criticism 
against him came from the left who saw him as a supporter of capitalism. 
 From the 1950s and onwards most of the attacks against Keynes have again 
been from the right."

The book itself being discussed is available online here:
   http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/

While writing this I had idle thoughts of going back to school for a PhD in 
economics at a place nearby. :-)
   http://www.economics.rpi.edu/
"The Department offers courses in traditional fields such as introductory 
economics, microeconomics, macroeconomics, econometrics, and international 
economics. In addition, the Department's teaching and research includes 
specialized fields such as ecological economics, the economics of 
technological change, the economics of energy, research and development, 
monetary theory and policy, and financial regulation.  "

But the feeling eventually passed. :-) Especially when in my hubris I 
thought I'd like to be learning about this by giving the classes on it. :-)
But I just don't think I could take the boredom of slogging through historic 
model after historic model that was missing obvious things now. Still, maybe 
it might be made into fun if I coded up each model as a simulation?

I do think it would be fun to build computer models about all this. Or hang 
out with some people like that for a time. A nice list of all the types of 
simulation approaches out there these days:
  http://sk-3.tbm.tudelft.nl/simulation/node/126

Related by me:
"[p2p-research] FOSS modeling tools (was Re: Earth's carrying capacity and 
Catton)"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004130.html

Even in my notes below, my thoughts seem to keep coming back to computer 
simulations on these economic issues, maybe individual based models like was 
done at Brookings. It would be nice to be able to experiment on some of 
these themes, and maybe refine some ideas and also make them more 
persuasive, same as simulations have been proving useful in biology to study 
ecology and evolution and gain insight into various processes. That's my 
version of Andrew's point about wanting a mathematical basis for P2P. :-)

Keynes may well address issues I bring up in his other writings; if he has, 
feel free to point it out (also, I was working mostly from the summary, not 
the original, so another source of confusion).

Essentially, Keynes seems to assume (with some of these reading between the 
lines, others he says explicitly):
* people won't do good stuff unless they are paid to do it
* the only right way to get stuff or services is to buy them
* the only right way for people to get money is to earn it working
* the quality of the actual "work" in terms of enjoyability is ignored
* like most economists, promoting "community" is ignored
* it is good that banks are the first to get newly created money
* supply should come before demand
* innovation is not an important issue to consider in economies

Keynes was writing in 1935, so I'll cut him some slack on that last point, 
unlike the other ones. :-) But taken together, those points suggest why 
Keynes does not have that much to say about a P2P economy -- even though his 
writing is worth reading for its own sake as good writing by an obviously 
creative and playful mind who had a profound effect on global politics.

It seems like Keynes almost got post-scarcity though. He kind of saw it a 
little, in that he saw abundance was an implication of healthy economic 
policy. He talks about aspects of policy that might lead up to abundance and 
how it would change the value of money, but did not quite see how to get 
there or what it might look like, perhaps because of the above assumptions.

But, I'm writing almost a century later, and I have read a lot of sci-fi 
like by James P. Hogan written decades after Keynes' "General Theory", so 
I'm "standing on the shoulders of giants" here. :-)
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
http://www.beyondajoblessrecovery.org/

===============================================================

=== Book I: section 2

"""
There are two obvious problems with this. First, people may refuse to work 
for a lower nominal wage when they’ll accept working for a lower real (i.e. 
inflation-adjusted) wage. That is, if management decides to pay people $4 an 
hour instead of $5, people might go on strike, but nobody ever goes on 
strike demanding a raise because the cost of milk has gone up. (So inflation 
might actually be a better solution than wage cuts.)
   Second, if wages go down, then the cost of making things goes down, which 
means that prices go down, which means that in real terms wages end up 
staying about the same.
"""

In general, there is an issue about how people have lots of ways to spend 
their time, like with friends, family, hobbies, subsistence activities, and 
volunteerism, and so "paid work" competes with those other things. So, in 
choosing whether to "work" you weigh all of that.

As we think about a future economy or p2p society, where opportunities to do 
these alternative things increase, it may be even harder to get people to 
want to do paid work where someone tells you what to do. For example, right 
now the internet makes staying at home a lot more interesting than it used 
to be for most people. I read one article suggesting that people were not 
trying so hard to get new jobs because the internet was so entertaining, and 
so cheap to use.

So, it is not just a supply and demand of labor and work. It is also a 
supply and demand for entertainment, where paid work competes with other 
interesting things to do.

==== Book II: section 3

"""
     "The completeness of the [classical] victory is something of a 
curiosity and a mystery. It must have been due to a complex of suitabilities 
in the doctrine to the environment into which it was projected. That it 
reached conclusions quite different from what the ordinary uninstructed 
person would expect, added, I suppose, to its intellectual prestige. That 
its teaching, translated into practice, was austere and often unpalatable, 
lent it virtue. That it was adapted to carry a vast and consistent logical 
superstructure, gave it beauty. That it could explain much social injustice 
and apparent cruelty as an inevitable incident in the scheme of progress, 
and the attempt to change such things as likely on the whole to do more harm 
than good, commended it to authority. That it afforded a measure of 
justification to the free activities of the individual capitalist, attracted 
to it the support of the dominant social force behind authority."
     "But although the doctrine itself has remained unquestioned by orthodox 
economists up to a late date, its signal failure for purposes of scientific 
prediction has greatly impaired, in the course of time, the prestige of its 
practitioners. For professional economists, after Malthus, were apparently 
unmoved by the lack of correspondence between the results of their theory 
and the facts of observation;—a discrepancy which the ordinary man has not 
failed to observe, with the result of his growing unwillingness to accord to 
economists that measure of respect which he gives to other groups of 
scientists whose theoretical results are confirmed by observation when they 
are applied to the facts."
     "The celebrated optimism of traditional economic theory, which has led 
to economists being looked upon as Candides, who, having left this world for 
the cultivation of their gardens, teach that all is for the best in the best 
of all possible worlds provided we will let well alone, is also to be 
traced, I think, to their having neglected to take account of the drag on 
prosperity which can be exercised by an insufficiency of effective demand. 
For there would obviously be a natural tendency towards the optimum 
employment of resources in a society which was functioning after the manner 
of the classical postulates. It may well be that the classical theory 
represents the way in which we should like our economy to behave. But to 
assume that it actually does so is to assume our difficulties away."
"""

I'll agree with what Keynes said there. Very insightful, especially as a 
meta-reflection on the social dynamics of academia in 1935. And has it 
gotten any better since? Or maybe, worse? It still rings very true today.

And also, even in 1935: "insufficiency of effective demand".

==== Book II: section 4

"We can’t measure net output, but we can count the number of people 
employed. In general, if more people are working then more stuff is getting 
made, although this obviously isn’t a perfect connection. But employment is 
kind of a more interesting number and it will have to do."

Lots of ways that people can make work for each other -- bureaucracy, war, 
crime, competition, confusion, and so on... One third of every US health 
care dollar goes to bureaucracy.

==== Book II: section 4

"As problematic as this is, Keynes points out that it’s a lot more realistic 
than the classical theory, which just seems to magically assume everyone is 
paid in proportion to their productivity. By subsuming more efficient people 
with their machinery, Keynes says he better deals with the usual case, which 
is that the increase in efficiency goes to their boss (who owns the 
machines). And when more efficient workers actually are paid more, he takes 
that into account as noted above."

A key point in the Triple Revolution memorandum is disagreeing with the 
classical economic assumption that the the right to consume would magically 
distributed across society somehow. Thus they recommend doing it explicitly, 
with some form of basic income.

"The Triple Revolution memorandum"
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isr/vol25/no03/adhoc.html
"""
As a first step to a new consensus it is essential to recognize that the 
traditional link between jobs and incomes is being broken. The economy of 
abundance can sustain all citizens in comfort and economic security whether 
or not they engage in what is commonly reckoned as work. Wealth produced by 
machines rather than by men is still wealth. We urge, therefore, that 
society, through its appropriate legal and governmental institutions, 
undertake an unqualified commitment to provide every individual and every 
family with an adequate income as a matter of right.
   This undertaking we consider to be essential to the emerging economic, 
social and political order in this country. We regard it as the only policy 
by which the quarter of the nation now dispossessed and soon-to-be 
dispossessed by lack of employment can be brought within the abundant 
society. The unqualified right to an income would take the place of the 
patchwork of welfare measures – from unemployment insurance to relief – 
designed to ensure that no citizen or resident of the United States actually 
starves.
   We do not pretend to visualize all of the consequences of this change in 
our values. It is clear, however, that the distribution of abundance in a 
cybernated society must be based on criteria strikingly different from those 
of an economic system based on scarcity. In retrospect, the establishment of 
the right to an income will prove to have been only the first step in the 
reconstruction of the value system of our society brought on by triple 
revolution.
"""

==== Book II: section 5

"""
Either way, new expectations don’t always take effect immediately (if you 
just opened a new store and then decide it wasn’t worth it, you don’t 
immediately close it). And the process of adjusting can have some odd 
effects: if you need to quickly ramp up production, you might keep hiring 
until you have more employees than you really need in the long-run. You use 
the extra people to get you up to speed, then you lay them off. The result 
is “a gradual crescendo in the level of employment, rising to a peak and 
then declining to the new long-period level.” This can happen even if you 
don’t expect to sell more things, but just a slightly different thing: you 
“overhire” to get up to speed on the new model, but then fire people until 
you’re back down to your previous level.
    "An uninterrupted process of transition, such as the above, to a new 
long-period position can be complicated in detail. But the actual course of 
events is more complicated still. For the state of expectation is liable to 
constant change, a new expectation being superimposed long before the 
previous change has fully worked itself out; so that the economic machine is 
occupied at any given time with a number of overlapping activities, the 
existence of which is due to various past states of expectation."
   That said, today’s decisions are based on the conditions of today and 
expectations about tomorrow — not on past expectations or the conditions of 
the past. And, in practice, people don’t calculate their expectations from 
scratch each morning. They keep doing what they did yesterday unless they 
have a reason to change. Long-term expectations can’t be easily checked, so 
when they do change, they often change suddenly. Thus they can’t even be 
approximately estimated.
"""

Insightful, and beginning of talking about people's mental models, as well 
as feedback issues and timeconstants and inertia. And the possibility for 
sudden change of long term expectations. A lot of cybernetic ideas here.

On hiring, people may hire a lot to then pick the best fit for their company 
after evaluating performance. (Because performance depends in part on 
physical and mental health, as well as philosophical outlook, and also 
deference, employers are evaluating all that indirectly, which is not so 
obvious from an employment interview and may be illegal to ask about.)

Also on hiring, what if it makes more economic sense (or requires less 
management) to buy a machine to do the work? Or even try to "crowdsource" 
it? That is a different problem than Keynes thought much about. But it is 
the issue our society more and more faces now with robots and AI and the 
internet and the free culture movement.

===== Book II: section 6

"When you’re producing something, there are a couple of things involved. One 
is the amount of capital and equipment and so on you use up, which we’ll 
call the user cost. Another is the amount you pay to employees and other 
companies and so on, the factor cost. These two combined are the prime cost. 
The entrepreneur’s income is the value of his output less the prime cost — 
that’s what he tries to maximize."

Confusion of physical and fiat dollars under one word "capital". This 
problem is woven throughout mainstream economics.

==== Book II: section 6

"[AS: I’ve been saying businesses because I find it clearer, but Keynes 
actually says entrepreneurs. I think I also use this kind of interchangeably 
with capitalists. Sorry.]"

Difference between a model of reality and reality itself.

People believing in a model and acting on it may make the model more true 
sometimes.

One may have a different model but still accept you need to interact with 
people working from a different model. And you must then think about what 
model they have of your model. And what their model is of your model as far 
as their model. Etc? :-)

===== Book III: section 8

"""
“The fundamental psychological law,” he says, is that, on average, the 
amount people spend increases as the amount they make increases, but not as 
quickly. (If you make $50K a year, you might spend $40K of it. If you make 
$1M, you might spend $500K of it. Obviously a lot more in absolute terms, 
but far less proportionately.) And this is especially true in the short-term 
— people’s habits take time to catch up with their incomes.
   But this means that as national income increases, a smaller proportion of 
it will get spent, so more of it will have to be invested. And when national 
income falls, a larger proportion gets spent as people dip into savings and 
governments go into deficit. This is fortunate, because lower consumption 
also means lower income (when people buy less, businesses make less, so they 
pay you less). If consumption fell at the same rate as income, we’d fall 
into a downward spiral: lower consumption would mean lower income, which in 
turn would mean lower consumption, and soon we’d all be out of a job.
"""

Important to understand feedback cycles. And cybernetics.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics
"Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory 
systems. Cybernetics is closely related to control theory and systems 
theory. Both in its origins and in its evolution in the second-half of the 
20th century, cybernetics is equally applicable to physical and social (that 
is, language-based) systems."

I talk about that here, in terms of three levels of modelling for rethinking 
economics:
   http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html

==== Book III: section 8

"""
“Consumption — to repeat the obvious — is the sole end and object of all 
economic activity.” What are we making things for if not to use them? People 
can either be put to work making things for people to use today or making 
things for people to use tomorrow, but that tomorrow “cannot be pushed 
indefinitely into the future.” After all, an hour of labor cannot be “saved” 
and put into a bank for a rainy day! If people are out of work now, the time 
they’re wasting will never be recovered. [AS: This is truly brilliant. It’s 
hard to convey the excitement I felt when reading this.] Saving money for 
the future is not the same as making things for the future — it’s only the 
latter that’s useful.
"""

Ignores that fact that work may be more or less pleasurable or more or less 
personally developing depending on the type of work or the work environment. 
Work can also be play and education. Related:
"The Three Boxes of Life and How to Get Out of Them: An Introduction to 
Life/Work Planning" by Richard N. Bolles
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Boxes-Life-How-Them/dp/0913668583

Richard Bolles (also writes "What Color is Your Parachute") advises on how 
individuals can integrate work, play, and learning into every year of their 
life (as opposed to school for years, work for years, retire for years). 
But, I don't recall him talking about how to change society so that happens 
naturally for everyone? This is obvious an issue economist neglect. Like Bob 
Black says, no one wants to talk about "work" itself, just who will do it 
and how much different people will get out of that.
   http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html

=== Book III: section 8

"Another way to look at it is the more stuff we make for tomorrow, the less 
stuff we need to make tomorrow. And then what do we do? At some point we 
just need to consume more stuff."

Or, people become satiated or "satisfice" in some area and focus higher up 
in "Maslow's hierarchy of needs" like to be social, be respected for 
contributions, or to be creative and self-actualizing (the last may be 
facilitated by leaving paid employment for many).
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

==== Book III: section 8

"""
People seem to recognize this when it comes to government making stuff. 
‘“What will you do,” it is asked, “when you have built all the houses and 
roads and town halls and electric grids and water supplies and so forth 
which the stationary population of the future can be expected to require?”’ 
But the same logic applies to private investment. What will we do when we’ve 
built all the factories the people of the future can be expected to use?
   Money can’t survive on its own. If we don’t ever spend it, it becomes 
worthless.
"""

Exactly. And in fact, to draw a different conclusion then implied, money 
does become worthless in a post-scarcity economy. And not just worthless 
like a confederate dollar (ignoring historical value to collectors), but 
worthless as in people don't think about it much or let their behavior be 
governed by it.

===== Book III: section 10

"But spending can have negative effects as well. [AS: Keynes apparently has 
government investment — i.e. stimulus — in mind here, although he never 
really comes out and says it.] If the interest rate goes up, that will slow 
investment. If people lose “confidence” because of all the spending, they 
may decide to hold onto their money. And some of the money can “leak” out to 
other countries. But this just weakens the multiplier, it doesn’t eliminate it."

I've reached section #10 but I begin to lose interest as he talks about 
"interest". :-) And other monetary policy.

General beginning of a feeling that there is a  confusion in Keynes' work 
between cybernetic levels from mixing physical stuff, with human actions, 
with fiat dollar ration unit kanban tokens, lumped together in some sort of 
commonality called capital or cost or money or something like that. :-)

==== Book III: section 10

But, still good stuff ahead:

"“Pyramid-building, earthquakes, even wars may serve to increase wealth, if 
the education of our statesmen on the principles of the classical economics 
stands in the way of anything better.”"

Because inflation from printing money (or countering deflation) is an 
unavoidable tax on the wealthiest as far as they hoard currency? Or because 
it justifies direct taxation to move control of resources from the wealthy 
to the poor who become workers?

Keynes is dancing around the idea of a basic income, but won't admit it 
because it would be against the culture he is in, assuming work is only done 
if it is motivated by a need to eat or, after the belly is full, greed and 
insecurity?

==== Book III: section 10

"(Keynes goes on to contrast gold-mining with building new houses which, 
being actually useful, has the side effect of decreasing the rent of old ones.)
     "Ancient Egypt was doubly fortunate, and doubtless owed to this its 
fabled wealth, in that it possessed two activities, namely, pyramid-building 
as well as the search for the precious metals, the fruits of which, since 
they could not serve the needs of man by being consumed, did not stale with 
abundance. The Middle Ages built cathedrals and sang dirges. Two pyramids, 
two masses for the dead, are twice as good as one; but not so two railways 
from London to York. Thus we are so sensible, have schooled ourselves to so 
close a semblance of prudent financiers, taking careful thought before we 
add to the “financial” burdens of posterity by building them houses to live 
in, that we have no such easy escape from the sufferings of unemployment. We 
have to accept them as an inevitable result of applying to the conduct of 
the State the maxims which are best calculated to “enrich” an individual by 
enabling him to pile up claims to enjoyment which he does not intend to 
exercise at any definite time. [emphasis added]"
"""

Yes. See, here in deep insight. Not building physical things for a 
post-scarcity future where money does not matter because the economic model 
says not to. He is seeing the madness. It seems the economic model is 
defending itself. The mythology is defending its own existence and 
dominance. The memes are self-perpetuating by being a self-fulfilling prophecy.

===== Book IV: section 11

"Of course there’s lots of different things you can invest in; we’re 
assuming that you do whatever maximizes your expected return. And obviously 
you’ll keep borrowing money and investing it until your expected return 
reaches the market rate of interest."

Ignores risk of economic change and cultural change. Ignores obsolescence.

===== Book IV: section 11

"(Tyler Cowen, in his critical comments on the General Theory is struck by a 
throw-off clause in this chapter: Keynes says that it’s unlikely interest 
rates will go up if people expect inflation, since if people expected 
inflation prices would have gone up already. He writes: ”This simple yet 
powerful point doesn’t get the attention it ought to.  Storage costs for 
goods and services may eliminate this paradox but perhaps not completely. 
It is striking how few economists have thought this problem through.”)"

New science sees investment ideas as spreading like a virus -- memetics. So, 
there are lags.

===== Book IV: section 12

"As we noted before, capitalists invest if they expect future sales to be 
high. But how do they know what future sales will be? “If we speak frankly, 
we have to admit that our basis of knowledge for estimating the yield ten 
years hence of a railway, a copper mine, a textile factory, the goodwill of 
a patent medicine, an Atlantic liner, a building in the City of London 
amounts to little and sometimes to nothing; or even five years hence.”"

And it is even worse almost a century later.

===== Book IV: section 12

"""
In olden days, what happened was that rough-riding men of business thought 
taking risks was manly and invested their money as a way of life. They got 
it in their head that they were going to build a railroad, and by Jove they 
did. They didn’t sit down and calculate whether they could have made more 
money buying bonds instead. Bonds are for wusses.
   But now people invest their money in the stock market, which revises its 
profitability estimates minute-by-minute. “It is as though a farmer, having 
tapped his barometer after breakfast, could decide to remove his capital 
from the farming business between 10 and 11 in the morning and reconsider 
whether he should return to it later in the week.” And since much new 
investment money is raised on the stock market, it’s these estimates which 
influence new investment.
"""

Funny.

But there is some truth to it. There are something like hundreds of 
trillions of dollars in currency-like things sloshing around in the global 
financial systems. They can buy and sell farm hour to hour. Part of the 
crisis may be exactly this. The theory and abstract and mythical has 
overwhelmed the practice and specific and physical.

===== Book IV: section 12

"""
   "This is the inevitable result of investment markets organised with a 
view to so-called “liquidity”. Of the maxims of orthodox finance none, 
surely, is more anti-social than the fetish of liquidity, the doctrine that 
it is a positive virtue on the part of investment institutions to 
concentrate their resources upon the holding of “liquid” securities. It 
forgets that there is no such thing as liquidity of investment for the 
community as a whole. The social object of skilled investment should be to 
defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelop our future. The 
actual, private object of the most skilled investment to-day is “to beat the 
gun”, as the Americans so well express it, to outwit the crowd, and to pass 
the bad, or depreciating, half-crown to the other fellow."
"""

Very insightful. And another aspect of transitioning to a post-scarcity 
world? Also, the cost of competition as a mindset?

====== Book IV: section 12

"""
   "Or, to change the metaphor slightly, professional investment may be 
likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to 
pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being 
awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the 
average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor 
has to pick, not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those 
which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all 
of whom are looking at the problem from the same point of view. It is not a 
case of choosing those which, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the 
prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the 
prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our 
intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average 
opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practise the fourth, fifth 
and higher degrees."
""""

See earlier comment on models. Which I revised a little after reading this.


===== Book IV: section 12

"And we return to the problem that many of our economic decisions depend on 
our “spontaneous optimism,” our “animal spirits,” our “urge to action rather 
than inaction,” not “the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative 
benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.” This means not only that 
slumps get exaggerated (since they depress animal spirits, worsening the 
slump) but that economic performance depends to a large degree on keeping 
businessmen happy. If electing FDR gets them depressed, they might pull back 
their investments and send the economy into a slump. This isn’t a 
conspiracy, it’s just the natural outcome of a system that depends on rich 
people feeling good. “In estimating the prospects of investment, we must 
have regard, therefore, to the nerves and hysteria and even the digestions 
and reactions to the weather of those upon whose spontaneous activity it 
largely depends.”"

What kind of way is that to run an economy planning for an abundant future?
A system that depends on rich people feeling good? But, yes, from my own 
experience, I would say that is what we have.


===== Book IV: section 13

"OK, so we have the following model: more money reduces the interest rate 
(as long as liquidity preference doesn’t go up faster), lower interest rates 
increase investment (as long as expected return doesn’t fall faster), more 
investment leads to more employment (as long as the propensity to consume 
doesn’t fall faster), and if employment increases prices will rise which can 
increase liquidity preference and thus require more money.
   The public can’t control the amount of hoarding, since that’s necessarily 
equal to the amount of cash. All it can do is change the price of hoarding — 
the interest rate."

Sounds too simplistic. There may be lots of other factors. What we need to 
do is to make economics an experimental science. That is difficult to do in 
reality, but simulations of individuals (Individual Based Modelling) like 
was done at Brookings could help.
"Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science From the Bottom Up"
http://www.brookings.edu/press/Books/1996/artifsoc.aspx

Much of it might still be speculation, and garbage in, garbage out, but at 
least we could test these simple rules economists suggest and see if they 
are sensitive to minor changes in assumptions or adding in some other behaviors.

===== Book IV: section 13

"[AS: And so this is the famous paradox of thrift. While each person thinks 
they’ll do better off by saving money instead of spending it, if a whole 
country decides to save their money, they’re all worse off, since nobody 
will have a job.]"

That seems quite true. It would be interesting to simulate this.

There might be p2p implications, as a sort of inverse. When people hoard all 
their own copyrights, they are worse off. When they share them with each 
other as a commons, everyone is better off, and there is a true gift 
economy. But if only a few share, and everyone else is a free rider, and 
then uses the extra information to harm the few gift givers (but still 
keeping a proprietary economy going), then the gift givers might be worse 
off. There may be some critical thresholds here. Axelrod looked into some of 
this in "The Evolution of Cooperation" using computer simulations and an 
iterative prisoner's dilemma contest.

==== Book IV: section 14

"It’s difficult to get people to realize that investing money doesn’t 
actually lead to an increase in investments. The problem is that capitalists 
aren’t buying capital per se, they’re buying an expected yield. They don’t 
care how good the machine is at making widgets, what matters is whether they 
can make money selling the widgets. If interest rates go up, it no longer 
becomes possible for them to make money, even though the machine remains 
unchanged."

This is one big difference from Jacque Fresco's Resource Based Economy.

==== Book IV: section 16

"""
OK, so we’re in a liquidity trap. There are all sorts of practical problems 
with lowering interest below zero, so instead what happens is that, in 
laissez-faire, employment falls to reach the new low levels. The only thing 
that can save us is if “millionaires find their satisfaction in building 
mighty mansions to contain their bodies when alive and pyramids to shelter 
them after death, or, repenting of their sins, erect cathedrals and endow 
monasteries or foreign missions.” That’s no way to run a country. ...
   So the government will print money to keep the interest rate at a level 
corresponding to full employment. Presumably this means that interest rates 
will become very low (although you don’t want them so low that nobody’s 
making things to sell today). But as interest rates get lower, it becomes 
profitable to invest in building things with smaller and smaller expected 
yields.
   If this happens, then it seems likely that within a generation expected 
return will reach zero [AS: !!] and everything will reach its marginal cost.
   This gets rid of the most objectionable features of capitalism — people 
could still become rich by saving money, but there would be nothing left to 
invest it in, so their money wouldn’t ever grow. It would be the end of the 
rentier — the rich person who grows richer by using his wealth to exploiting 
others.
"""

This is the famous part about printing our way out of a recession. But, the 
big question is, who gets the money first, as essentially a gift? A basic 
income to citizens? Or the banks? Or spent to hire workers on public 
projects? Or given to private business as subsidies to hire workers?

Somehow this last pant links to creating a post-scarcity economy, where 
money does not matter. However, I think it puts too much emphasis on cash 
and bonds. There are other forms of wealth like stocks and land which allow 
one to more directly control what is being done. So, there will still be a 
value for those with cash to buy things and then do things with them. But 
the aspiration will be more aesthetic and "product-oriented" than 
"profit-oriented". (Product-oriented being a term used on the P2P and OM 
list by ).


=== Book IV: section 17

"""
The big problem is that money is the one thing market processes can’t 
adjust. 1) You can’t just go ahead and make it — it can’t be “grown like a 
crop or manufactured like a motor-car.” 2) You can’t reclaim it from use for 
other purposes — it doesn’t have any. (Land can’t be grown either, but if we 
really needed to we could free some up by moving closer together. 3) It’s 
very easy to store — it doesn’t spoil. Which is why the suggestion of making 
it spoil (by printing money with expiration dates, etc.) are on the right track.
   Otherwise, our only relief comes from printing more money.
     "Thus in the absence of money and in the absence — we must, of course, 
also suppose — of any other commodity with the assumed characteristics of 
money, the rates of interest would only reach equilibrium when there is full 
employment. Unemployment develops, that is to say, because people want the 
moon; — men cannot be employed when the object of desire (i.e. money) is 
something which cannot be produced and the demand for which cannot be 
readily choked off. There is no remedy but to persuade the public that green 
cheese is practically the same thing and to have a green cheese factory 
(i.e. a central bank) under public control.
     It is interesting to notice that the characteristic which has been 
traditionally supposed to render gold especially suitable for use as the 
standard of value, namely, its inelasticity of supply, turns out to be 
precisely the characteristic which is at the bottom of the trouble."
"""

Ah, now I see the rationale for leaving a gold standard.

Basically, the economic control system had this dysfunction. There is a need 
for "kanban tokens" to make the system work by signaling demand, but gold 
has a fixed amount to make kanbans. So, by printing fiat dollars, which 
cannot be counterfeited under penalty of law and imprisonment, you now have 
a system where the number of Kanban tokens can be adjusted up or down as 
needed. (There is still the issue of where the tokens should be placed first 
when they are created, or how they should be moved sometimes by the 
government, taxed from one part of the economic factory where they might be 
piling up and placed somewhere else in the economic factory that needs 
activity).

Alternative currencies, LETS system, and even barter (the token passed 
around is a social obligation), are similar ideas to make more kanban tokens.

Still, there are other approaches than an exchange system. A resource based 
economy. A gift economy. A subsistence economy.

=== Book IV: section 18

"18: Keynes restates the theory."

The exact words of the restatement can be found here:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch18.htm

Some obvious issues in the first paragraphs from there:
"""
We have now reached a point where we can gather together the threads of our 
argument. To begin with, it may be useful to make clear which elements in 
the economic system we usually take as given, which are the independent 
variables of our system and which are the dependent variables.
   We take as given the existing skill and quantity of available labour, the 
existing quality and quantity of available equipment, the existing 
technique, the degree of competition, the tastes and habits of the consumer, 
the disutility of different intensifies of labour and of the activities of 
supervision and organisation, as well as the social structure including the 
forces, other than our variables set forth below, which determine the 
distribution of the national income. This does not mean that we assume these 
factors to be constant; but merely that, in this place and context, we are 
not considering or taking into account the effects and consequences of 
changes in them.
   Our independent variables are, in the first instance, the propensity to 
consume, the schedule of the marginal efficiency of capital and the rate of 
interest, though, as we have already seen, these are capable of further 
analysis.
   Our dependent variables are the volume of employment and the national 
income (or national dividend) measured in wage-units. ...
   The schedule of the marginal efficiency of capital depends, however, 
partly on the given factors and partly on the prospective yield of 
capital-assets of different kinds; whilst the rate of interest depends 
partly on the state of liquidity-preference (i.e. on the liquidity function) 
and partly on the quantity of money measured in terms of wage-units.  Thus 
we can sometimes regard our ultimate independent variables as consisting of 
(1) the three fundamental psychological factors, namely, the psychological 
propensity to consume, the psychological attitude to liquidity and the 
psychological expectation of future yield from capital-assets, (2) the 
wage-unit as determined by the bargains reached between employers and 
employed, and (3) the quantity of money as determined by the action of the 
central bank; so that, if we take as given the factors specified above, 
these variables determine the national income (or dividend) and the quantity 
of employment. But these again would be capable of being subjected to 
further analysis, and are not, so to speak, our ultimate atomic independent 
elements.
"""

On the second paragraph: People have preferences at what they work at. They 
also learn and grow on the job as well as off it, and the internet is 
speeding that. The pace of invention and innovation in our society is 
accelerating exponentially, it seems, both as regard better materials and 
designs, but also as regards better automation, robots, AI, computing, and 
networking. So, even if Keynes' model may have been very useful in 1935, it 
is certainly out of date now to ignore those things. Those issues of human 
learning and technical change are now essential to future useful economic 
models.

Related, to show that point, from my wistful musing on a PhD in this: :-)
http://www.economics.rpi.edu/index.php?siteid=18&pageid=332
"""
The other focal area for Rensselaer's department of economics is 
technological change, the dynamic process at the root of economic growth. 
The bulk of economic growth - 87.5% according to Nobelist Robert Solow's 
(1957) initial estimates, stems from technological change: improvements in 
efficiency and effectiveness of industry. And Solow's estimates do not even 
correct for the "hedonic" price changes needed to account for improvements 
in products' features and quality, nor for the development of new goods and 
services. To understand how to achieve the kinds and amount of economic 
growth we desire, we must understand technological change and its role in 
the industries where it occurs.
"""

On the fourth paragraph: By assuming that the volume of employment is a 
dependent variable, Keynes' has assumed away anything interesting in terms 
of other sorts of economic planning, like a more centrally planned Buddhist 
Economics approach to full employment like EF Schumacher wrote about.

On the last paragraph there (I ellipsed one), it is clear that the entire 
theory is resting on assumptions about "human nature" in a sense. About 
things like whether demand by healthy users for goods and services is 
limited or unlimited.

==== Book V: section 20

"We’ve said that employment ultimately comes from demand. So why should the 
government promote investment instead of demand? It’s because investment 
comes first. If you give people money to buy more (say) iPods, then first 
all the existing iPods get sold. This raises the price, which makes Apple 
richer but doesn’t help any employees — and Apple likes to save its money 
much more than its employees do. Eventually they begin to run out of iPods 
and start investing in additional factories to make more. And then those 
factories hire people to work there, who spend their wages on other things. 
It works, it’s just slow — if you want to get people employed quickly, 
you’re better off starting with building the factories."

But, that assumes a few things. First, who gets the money first, as a sort 
of gift from the goverment that creates the Kanban tokens? If you give it to 
the banks or industry first, the distribution of social power is different 
than if you give it to the citizens first.

Also, it seems like China these days can popup a new factory in weeks, or at 
most months. Why can't people in the USA do that? Besides, if you build 
capacity first, you can't be sure there is demand. People might prefer to 
buy laptops instead of iPods. Or they might prefer to pay for services like 
restaurant meals. If you believe in the free market, you should let the 
citizens decide what they want to buy. Granted, in theory, the businesses 
are guessing what people want and producing for that, but it still puts the 
control more in the hands of the businesses than the citizens.


==== Book V: section 21

"How does money influence demand? Primarily thru the rate of interest, which 
depends on liquidity preferences, marginal efficiencies, and investment 
multipliers. But these all depend on other complicating factors."

I just can't see that. It sounds fancy, but when average people have money 
in their hands, they spend it (up to a point of diminishing returns).

There may also be some sort of mental shift in at least three ways.
One is when people think they have enough to stop buying for themselves. 
Another is when people think they have enough to give to help others. 
Another is when people think they have enough to start thinking like an 
investor.


==== Book VI: section 22

"Because these things go together, they’re sometimes mistaken as the cause, 
but note that it’s the expected return which falls first, then interest 
rates rise."

Just using this as an example of the qualitative modeling process that is 
going on, focusing on cybernetic issues of delays, orderings of activities, 
cause and effect, and so on. (And a bit of fuzzy logic in the formal Lotfi 
Zadeh sense?) So much focus on what causes what. But, what if, ultimately, 
they all cause each other? :-) This is where individual based modelling 
could help, to study the system in operation, poke at it, and profile how it 
responds in various ways to gain insight into it. Steve Bankes talks about 
this at RAND (gaining insight from models, not so much using them to 
directly predict what happens).

Just think about it. This really smart guy, John Maynard Kenyes, is 
basically trying to do these simulations in his head, based on making some 
assumption along the way, looking at a few paths with only one actor 
standing in for a swarm of them, so, one "consumer", one "worker", one 
"business sector", and so on, limited by what he can keep in his mind in 
1935. We can do so much more now (not to underestimate what one mind can do, 
but the computers can help, as basically a fancy blackboard).

Examples from physics:
   "MyPhysicsLab – Physics Simulation with Java"
   http://www.myphysicslab.com/
   "List of Physics Games"
   http://www.fun-motion.com/list-of-physics-games/


==== Book VI: section 22

"""
So even lowering interest rates isn’t enough to recover from the crash. And 
“it is not so easy to revive the marginal efficiency of capital, determined, 
as it is, by the uncontrollable and disobedient psychology of the business 
world. It is the return of confidence, to speak in ordinary language, which 
is so insusceptible to control in an economy of individualistic capitalism. 
This is the aspect of the slump which bankers and business men have been 
right in emphasising, and which the economists who have put their faith in a 
‘purely monetary’ remedy have underestimated.”
"""

That psychology thing again... :-) And I agree. But such a difference from a 
"Resource Based Economy" or a "Gift economy" or a "subsistence economy" 
(even as those might have their own social psychological issues).

==== Book VI: section 22

"But there’s two kinds of overinvestment: disappointing investments, where 
the investment would have made sense except the economy collapsed, and 
genuine overinvestment, where the investment could never have made money. 
It’s only the second kind that’s an actual waste of resources, and the 
solution to it isn’t raising interest rates “which would probably deter some 
useful investments and might further diminish the propensity to consume, but 
in taking drastic steps, by redistributing incomes or otherwise, to 
stimulate the propensity to consume.”"

I probably agree with the redistributing income, as a basic income. :-)

As an aside, from a resource perspective, the first part of this is 
problematical in terms of saying what sorts of investments are a "waste of 
resources". Capital lumps together the real physical tools and goods with 
the imaginary fiat dollars (or even their gold equivalent, which are maybe 
just thought to be important based on imaginary value for exchange, not real 
value for use). Even if an investment pays back, negative externalities like 
pollution might make it bad for society. Or if an investment does not 
payback, positive externalities like jobs created or new ideas or cleaning 
up pollution might make it good for society. The word "externality" is not 
on that webpage at all.

Not sure what Keynes had to say about externalities?

Doing a Google search, came across:
   "Negative Externalities and Dueling Economists"
   http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/02/negative_extern.html
refereces:
"Keynes on cutting the payroll tax in a downturn"
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/02/keynes-on-cutting-the-payroll-tax-in-a-downturn.html#c147859979
"""
I think negative externalities accrue when we disparage poor expert 
consensus in a way that doesn't clearly lead to advocating for better expert 
consensus.
   As for unearthing an old Keynes letter, I understand it may be fighting 
fire with fire, but really, I think the economics and legal profession 
should move away the prerational human tendency to want to derive policy 
wisdom from interpreting the texts of ancestors. Let's leave that to 
religious fundamentalism.
   I'm more intrigued by the empirical work of folks like Romer and Barro 
and others, than the dueling sacred texts of Keynes and Mises.
"""

Also came across, from 1998:
"Keynes and the neoclassical synthesis: Einsteinian versus Newtonian 
macroeconomics"
http://books.google.com/books?id=MX0Knhfh93IC&dq=keynes+externality&source=gbs_navlinks_s
"This remarkable book offers a critical assessment of the Neoclassical 
Synthesis, long regarded as the standard interpretation of Keynes. It offers 
a fresh interpretation of Keynes, drawing an unusual distinction between 
Einsteinian and Newtonian macroeconomics."


==== Book VI: section 22

"""
Why does redistributing income work? Think about the dot-com bubble where 
everyone was blowing money on useless fiber-optic cable. If venture 
capitalists are spending all their money on useless cable, the solution is 
to take their money away. Instead, you can give it to poor people, who will 
use it to buy useful things like food and clothing.
   What happens isn’t so much excessive investment as misdirected 
investment. Everyone builds houses thinking they’ll all sell for lots and 
lots, then they find they aren’t actually selling for so much and the 
economy collapses. “We reach a condition where there is a shortage of 
houses, but where nevertheless no one can afford to live in the houses that 
there are.”
"""

Makes sense to me. But somehow I feel the issue must be deeper. It has to do 
with control and democracy as well. In a way, people are not politically 
free unless they are economically secure (and a basic income provides that).

There is something here about "utility". What is the some of successfully 
met desires across society? You would think it would be higher if resources 
and control were more evenly spread around than concentrated in a few 
points. Unless, one might argue, the few concentration points were somehow 
making better decisions than the masses, and were making good decisions on 
behalf of the masses (like what products to make, or what jobs to create).

==== Book VI: section 22

"In short, increasing interest rates to kill booms “belongs to the species 
of remedy which cures the disease by killing the patient.”"

Except I've heard a lot of talk about that in the past decade from the Fed, 
worrying about "inflation". But they are not very Keynesian these days, are 
they? Neoliberalism?

==== Book VI: section 22


"""
What would the world of the permanent boom look like? It’s conceivable that 
it might lead not just to full employment, but full investment — a world 
with so much plenty that you couldn’t expect to make a profit on any kind of 
durable good. “Moreover, this situation might be reached comparatively 
soon—say within twenty-five years or less. I must not be taken to deny this, 
because I assert that a state of full investment in the strict sense has 
never yet occurred, not even momentarily.”
"""

So, that is moving to post-scarcity?

==== Book VI: section 22

"Others say the problem is that the country is so unequal that poor people 
can’t spend enough. The solution, they propose, is redistributing money to 
the poor to promote jobs."

Maybe a moral argument is enough for a basic income? We just want everyone 
to have at least the basics? Even if it destroyed jobs, it might be the 
right thing to do, morally.

==== Book VI: section 23

"The classical school — including Keynes in earlier years — grew up mocking 
mercantilism (protectionism) as incoherent and absurd. But maybe it makes 
some sense: Growth depends on the inducements to new investment. Investment 
is either foreign or domestic. Domestic investment is encouraged by the 
interest rate and foreign investment by the balance of trade. Thus, if you 
ignore direct investment by the government (as people had), these are the 
two things to be concerned about."

Domestic investment can be encouraged by people just wanting to do things. 
:-) Like "Blue Origin" started by Jeff Bezos. :-)
   http://www.blueorigin.com/

Or Willow Garage:
   http://www.willowgarage.com/

Or any charitable foundation, for that matter.

Now, he was writing in 1935. But the existence of a large non-profit sector 
shows that people will do things without a desire for profit. They may still 
have to balance their books somehow, but they don't need to come out ahead 
directly.

==== Book VI: section 23

"But the worst part of the international gold system is the way it sets 
countries against one another. For a country could only keep its citizens 
employed if it had gold, and the only way to get gold was by taking it from 
another country (and thus throwing them out of work). “Never in history was 
there a method devised of such efficacy for setting each country’s advantage 
at variance with its neighbours’!”"

Interesting. Another kanban issues. The economy can't work because they 
don't have enough officially produced kanban tokens with widespread 
acceptance to make the stigmergic market operate.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban
"Kanban is a signaling system to trigger action. As its name suggests, 
kanban historically uses cards to signal the need for an item. However, 
other devices such as plastic markers (kanban squares) or balls (often golf 
balls) or an empty part-transport trolley or floor location can also be used 
to trigger the movement, production, or supply of a unit in a factory. It 
was out of a need to maintain the level of improvements that the kanban 
system was devised by Toyota. Kanban became an effective tool to support the 
running of the production system as a whole. In addition, it proved to be an 
excellent way for promoting improvements because reducing the number of 
kanban in circulation highlighted problem areas.[2]"

What is the difference between golf balls and gold coins in practice? Other 
than gold coins are harder to counterfeit than golf balls? That's the 
difference between the gold standard and fiat dollars. I'll go this far. 
There is not difference between fiat dollars and those kanban golf balls. 
They are the same thing, used for the same purpose. And you can build a 
digital factory control system that uses digital tokens instead of real 
ones, just like we can build a digital banking system that moves virtual 
dollars around instead of paper ones.

More from wikipedia:
"""
Many manufacturers have implemented electronic kanban systems.[5] Electronic 
kanban systems, or E-Kanban systems, help to eliminate common problems such 
as manual entry errors and lost cards.[6] E-Kanban systems can be integrated 
into enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Integrating E-Kanban 
systems into ERP systems allows for real-time demand signaling across the 
supply chain and improved visibility. Data pulled from E-Kanban systems can 
be used to optimize inventory levels by better tracking supplier lead and 
replenishment times.[7]
"""

As it says there, "reducing the number of kanban in circulation highlighted 
problem areas". Is that what happens in a downturn? I'm not sure how that 
information is used in kanban systems.

More from Wikipedia:
"""
An important determinant of the success of production scheduling based on 
"pushing" the demand is the quality of the demand forecast which can receive 
such "push". Kanban, by contrast, is part of an approach of receiving the 
"pull" from the demand. Therefore the supply, or production is determined 
according to the actual demand of the customers. In contexts where supply 
time is lengthy and demand is difficult to forecast, the best one can do is 
to respond quickly to observed demand. This is exactly what a kanban system 
can help: it is used as a demand signal which immediately propagates through 
the supply chain. This can be used to ensure that intermediate stocks held 
in the supply chain are better managed, usually smaller. Where the supply 
response cannot be quick enough to meet actual demand fluctuations, causing 
significant lost sales, then stock building may be deemed as appropriate 
which can be achieved by issuing more kanban.
"""

Centrally planned economies may focus on push (from forecasts). Market 
economies focus on pull from demand indicated by willingness to spend fiat 
dollars for some item (which then pulls along the entire supply chain all 
the way back to raw material extraction). So, when someone goes to the store 
and buys an iPod, that person is effectively pulling on a really long string 
which branches endlessly into all areas of the economy, and that pull is 
transmitted by the flow of the fiat dollars in exchange for goods and 
services throughout every interface between companies in the economic 
system. (And, even internally, companies may have divisions that pay each 
other, too, as an internal kanban system.)

But, this is why Keynes is wrong to focus on giving the dollars to the 
companies first to build production, and then hire workers, so the workers 
then have wages to buy the production. Again: "In contexts where supply time 
is lengthy and demand is difficult to forecast, the best one can do is to 
respond quickly to observed demand. This is exactly what a kanban system can 
help: it is used as a demand signal which immediately propagates through the 
supply chain."

The problem is seeing the gold coin or fiat dollar as "wealth" as opposed to 
just a signal. And the issue is then, how do you give people permission to 
transmit signals in a reasonable way given other constraints on the system 
(resources) and an expectation about human nature if humans need to be 
motivated to work inside the system?

But with robots and AI and better materials and better design, less and less 
do people need to be working inside the economic machine.


==== Book VI: section 23

"""
"It is convenient to mention at this point the strange, unduly neglected 
prophet Silvio Gesell (1862-1930), whose work contains flashes of deep 
insight and who only just failed to reach down to the essence of the matter. 
In the post-war years his devotees bombarded me with copies of his works; 
yet, owing to certain palpable defects in the argument, I entirely failed to 
discover their merit. As is often the case with imperfectly analysed 
intuitions, their significance only became apparent after I had reached my 
own conclusions in my own way. Meanwhile, like other academic economists, I 
treated his profoundly original strivings as being no better than those of a 
crank. Since few of the readers of this book are likely to be well 
acquainted with the significance of Gesell, I will give to him what would be 
otherwise a disproportionate space."
"""

And also:
"""
Keynes also discusses Bernard Mandeville’s incredible book, The Fable of the 
Bees. This incredible work of economic thought described the division of 
labor and the invisible hand in 1705, a full seventy years before Adam 
Smith. And, Keynes points out, it’s largely about the paradox of thrift — 
centuries before Keynes! It’s basically been written out of economic 
history, in part, no doubt, because it was written in the form of a 
scandalous satirical epic poem. Indeed, it so scandalized its readers at the 
time that it was “convicted as a nuisance by the grand jury of Middlesex in 
1723, which stands out in the history of the moral sciences for its 
scandalous reputation.”
"""

Maybe both those comments relate to me on post-scarcity with my satire? :-)
   http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
"""
I forget who said this: "Sometimes you need to go a long way out of your way 
to go a few steps correctly". Pogo?
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_(comics)
Probably something I read in my class yearbook over two decades ago. Anyway, 
this essay is all those wrong steps. :-) But this work is freely licensed 
(see the end) so feel free to use it to help go a few steps correctly. :-) 
If I were to write it over, I'd try to be more upbeat about how PU was 
making steady progress towards a better future (from where it and our 
society was coming from). I hope someone can do that, and perhaps just show 
this essay is perhaps a dark shadow from the past.
"""

=== Book VI: section 23

"""
Finally we come to Major Douglas, who led the unorthodox Social Credit 
movement in the UK: ...
"""

 From that chapter by Keynes:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch23.htm
"Since the war there has been a spate of heretical theories of 
under-consumption, of which those of Major Douglas are the most famous. The 
strength of Major Douglas’s advocacy has, of course, largely depended on 
orthodoxy having no valid reply to much of his destructive criticism. On the 
other hand, the detail of his diagnosis, in particular the so-called A + B 
theorem, includes much mere mystification. If Major Douglas had limited his 
B-items to the financial provisions made by entrepreneurs to which no 
current expenditure on replacements and renewals corresponds, he would be 
nearer the truth. But even in that case it is necessary to allow for the 
possibility of these provisions being offset by new investment in other 
directions as well as by increased expenditure on consumption. Major Douglas 
is entitled to claim, as against some of his orthodox adversaries, that he 
at least has not been wholly oblivious of the outstanding problem of our 
economic system. Yet he has scarcely established an equal claim to rank — a 
private, perhaps, but not a major in the brave army of heretics — with 
Mandeville, Malthus, Gesell and Hobson, who, following their intuitions, 
have preferred to see the truth obscurely and imperfectly rather than to 
maintain error, reached indeed with clearness and consistency and by easy 
logic, but on hypotheses inappropriate to the facts."

Social Credit is a form of "basic income". It is interesting to see Keynes 
dismiss it one of the originators of the idea.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit
"""
According to Douglas, the true purpose of production is consumption, and 
production must serve the genuine, freely expressed interests of consumers. 
Each citizen is to have a beneficial, not direct, inheritance in the 
communal capital conferred by complete and dynamic access to the fruits of 
industry assured by the National Dividend and Compensated Price.[2] 
Consumers, fully provided with adequate purchasing power, will establish the 
policy of production through exercise of their monetary vote.[2] In this 
view, the term economic democracy does not mean worker control of 
industry.[2] Removing the policy of production from banking institutions, 
government, and industry, Social Credit envisages an "aristocracy of 
producers, serving and accredited by a democracy of consumers."[2] Assuming 
the only safe place for power is in many hands, Social Credit is a 
distributive philosophy, and its policy is to disperse power to individuals. 
Social Credit philosophy is best summed by Douglas when he said, “Systems 
were made for men, and not men for systems, and the interest of man which is 
self-development, is above all systems, whether theological, political or 
economic.”[3]
   The policy proposals of Social Credit attracted widespread interest in 
the decades between the world wars of the twentieth century because of their 
relevance to economic conditions of the time. Douglas called attention to 
the excess of production capacity over consumer purchasing power, an 
observation that was also made by John Maynard Keynes in his book, The 
General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.[4] While Douglas shared 
with Keynes some criticisms of the monetary and banking systems, his unique 
remedies were disputed and even rejected by most economists and bankers of 
the time. Remnants of Social Credit still exist within Social Credit Parties 
throughout the world, but not in the purest form originally advanced by 
Major C. H. Douglas. Likewise, the Keynesian Revolution of the 1940s and 
1950s was eventually eroded by neoclassical economists and banking 
interests. Now as Keynes' ideas seem the most generally accepted response to 
the Financial crisis of 2007–2009,[5] modern analysts like Richard C. Cook 
argue the need for a renewed interest in the long dormant ideas of Major 
Douglas.[6]
"""

Although, that still misses ideas from EF Schumacher, Charles Fourier, and 
Bob Black that the nature of the work itself means a lot to the worker who 
spends much of their life doing it. Making worktime fun, social, a growth 
experience, and joyful is a big deal. One could even invert the paradigm -- 
what a worker does outside of work is only to prepare him or her to be able 
to work. It is the work experience that matters to a person's quality of 
life. :-)

And now I see that Douglas said the same thing I worked out almost a century 
later in relation to kanban:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit#The_nature_of_money_and_credit
"""
Douglas also criticized classical economics because it was based upon a 
barter economy, whereas the modern economy is a monetary one. To the 
classical economist, money is a medium of exchange. Douglas argued that this 
may have once been the case when the majority of wealth was produced by 
individuals who subsequently exchanged it with each other. But in modern 
economies, division of labour splits production into multiple processes, and 
wealth is produced by people working in association with each other. For 
instance, an automobile worker does not produce any wealth (i.e., the 
automobile) by himself, but only in conjunction with other auto workers, the 
producers of roads, gasoline, insurance etc.
   In this view, wealth is a pool upon which people can draw, and the 
efficiency gained by individuals cooperating in the productive process is 
known as the “unearned increment of association” – historic accumulations of 
which constitute what Douglas called the cultural heritage. The means of 
drawing upon this pool are the tickets distributed by the banking system.
   Initially, money originated from the productive system, when cattle 
owners punched leather discs which represented a head of cattle. These discs 
could then be exchanged for corn, and the corn producers could then exchange 
the disc for a head of cattle at a later date. The word “pecuniary” comes 
from the Latin “pecus,” meaning "cattle".[11] Today, the productive system 
and the distributive/monetary system are two separate entities. Douglas 
demonstrated that loans create deposits, and presented mathematical proof in 
his book Social Credit.[12] Bank credit comprises the vast majority of 
money, and is created every time a bank makes a loan.[13] Douglas was also 
one of the first to understand the creditary nature of money. The word 
credit derives from the Latin "credere", meaning "to believe". "The 
essential quality of money, therefore, is that a man shall believe that he 
can get what he wants by the aid of it."[14]
   Douglas believed that money should not be regarded as a commodity but 
rather as a ticket, a means of distribution of production[15] "There are two 
sides to this question of a ticket representing something that we can call, 
if we like, a value. There is the ticket itself – the money which forms the 
thing we call 'effective demand' – and there is something we call a price 
opposite to it."[15] Money is effective demand, and the means of reclaiming 
that money are prices and taxes. As real capital replaces labour in the 
process of modernization, money should become increasingly an instrument of 
distribution.
   Douglas also claimed the problem of production, or scarcity, had long 
been solved. The new problem was one of distribution. However; so long as 
orthodox economics makes scarcity a value, banks will continue to believe 
that they are creating value for the money they produce by making it 
scarce.[16] Douglas criticized the banking system on two counts:
    1. for being a form of government which has been centralizing its power 
for centuries, and
    2. for claiming ownership to the money they create.
The former Douglas identified as being anti-social in policy.[17] The latter 
he claimed was equivalent to claiming ownership of the nation.[18] Money, 
Douglas claimed, was merely an abstract representation of the real credit of 
the community, which is the ability of the community to deliver goods and 
services, when, and where they are required.
"""

All the same stuff I've been thinking, but I have the benefit of reading 
about all this from many sources, and even maybe forgetting some and 
rethinking it and then reading it again. :-) And I've seen that page before 
but not read it all.

But those were criticism I just made of Keynes. Who gets the money that is 
created *first*?

Douglas's A+B theorem sounds a little like what I wrote about (I think on 
the OM list) where, rather than what he did, I broke all payments into two 
categories -- for "labor" and for "rent". I wrote on the p2p list too:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-September/004646.html

And it made it on the blog:
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/natural-vs-artificial-profit/2009/08/04

Other; I could not find the exact one I was thinking of:
http://groups.google.com/groups/search?hl=en&q=fernhout+labor+rent+produce+open+manufacturing
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/68ca5a4cc550bf16?hl=en

And somewhere I talked about workers essentially "renting" their bodies and 
minds, so labor is a form of rent too, except a consciousness goes with that 
renting for the worker (that might not like the work), but no consciousness 
goes for the capitalist (or not much, they may pay attention to an property 
they own occasionally).

Douglas had written:
"""
"A factory or other productive organization has, besides its economic 
function as a producer of goods, a financial aspect—it may be regarded on 
the one hand as a device for the distribution of purchasing-power to 
individuals through the media of wages, salaries, and dividends; and on the 
other hand as a manufactory of prices – financial values. From this 
standpoint, its payments may be divided into two groups:
     Group A - All payments made to individuals (wages, salaries, and 
dividends).
     Group B - All payments made to other organizations (raw materials, bank 
charges, and other external costs).
"""

What I had said elsewhere was to break payments into two things at each 
level. So, you have a paint factory. What part of the money goes to labor 
and what part to rent? Well, directly, you have labor costs. And you may pay 
rent for the land the factory is on. But, you buy things like machinery to 
mix paint. Well, that machinery cost then goes into labor and rent too. 
There is the labor to put it together, and the rent for the land that 
factory is on, or the rent on some patent that is used. But the machine is 
made from materials or other parts, which similarly can be broken down into 
rent and labor. Then one can talk about the equity of this. Even for labor 
it is not clear -- why should one laborer get more than another? There may 
be justifications, but they are just that, justifications, and they depend 
on assumptions and values. As to rent, again, how you feel about it depends 
on assumptions and values. What I don't know for sure is, looking at 
anything I have purchase, what part of the price went to labor and what part 
went to rent? If I knew that, I might buy differently (to promote labor). 
Paying for labor may be justified. But rent is essentially just paying for 
artificial scarcity, to someone not adding much to the product. Note, what 
is called "rent" for "renting" a building may not actually be all "rent" in 
this sense, since the building has upkeep. And then one can talk about 
"risk" versus "rent", and whether risk justifies rent somehow.

Actually, if I had to pick a model, maybe it would be better to say 
everything costs because of rent, not everything costs because of labor. :-) 
Because of saying a laborer is renting their body and mind and consciousness.

The social credit issue is, by what reasoning are various rents arrived at 
and considered valid? And when can the state take part of the rent for its 
own purposes or to redistribute it? What is the state's ownership role when 
someone rents a piece of land they claim to own? What is the state's 
ownership role when a person rents their body, that they can claim some of 
the income as taxes?

Still, neither capture the idea that "ownership" itself might be taxable. 
:-) So, if you own some land (or some cash) and you are not renting it and 
so have no income, does the state still have a right to nibble away at it 
with property taxes? I'd suggest, from what I agree with Keynes on, that 
yes, it's probably a good idea, to help keep those assets moving through the 
economy and prevent long-term hoarding. Although, is hoarding currency 
different than hoarding land? Currency demurrage is related to this.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_%28currency%29

So, maybe government is charging "rent" on the idea of "ownership" when it 
taxes property?

Then should workers have to pay a "head tax", because they rent their bodies 
and minds? Somehow, that seems wrong. Maybe it could be considered covered 
in the basic income? :-)


=== Book VI: section 24

"The two great economic problems are unemployment and inequality. We have 
addressed the first, but what are its implications of the second? Inequality 
has been addressed somewhat by government redistribution, but some are 
hesitant to go further because they believe that growth is promoted by 
savings and so taking away the savings of the rich will retard growth. We 
have seen that it’s quite the opposite — that redistribution, by increasing 
effective demand, promotes growth. “One of the chief social justifications 
of great inequality of wealth is, therefore, removed.”"

So, more support for a basic income.


=== Book VI: section 24

"""
   "Now, though this state of affairs would be quite compatible with some 
measure of individualism, yet it would mean the euthanasia of the rentier, 
and, consequently, the euthanasia of the cumulative oppressive power of the 
capitalist to exploit the scarcity-value of capital. Interest today rewards 
no genuine sacrifice, any more than does the rent of land. The owner of 
capital can obtain interest because capital is scarce, just as the owner of 
land can obtain rent because land is scarce. But whilst there may be 
intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of land, there are no intrinsic reasons 
for the scarcity of capital. An intrinsic reason for such scarcity, in the 
sense of a genuine sacrifice which could only be called forth by the offer 
of a reward in the shape of interest, would not exist, in the long run, 
except in the event of the individual propensity to consume proving to be of 
such a character that net saving in conditions of full employment comes to 
an end before capital has become sufficiently abundant. But even so, it will 
still be possible for communal saving through the agency of the State to be 
maintained at a level which will allow the growth of capital up to the point 
where it ceases to be scarce."
   "I see, therefore, the rentier aspect of capitalism as a transitional 
phase which will disappear when it has done its work. And with the 
disappearance of its rentier aspect much else in it besides will suffer a 
sea-change. It will be, moreover, a great advantage of the order of events 
which I am advocating, that the euthanasia of the rentier, of the 
functionless investor, will be nothing sudden, merely a gradual but 
prolonged continuance of what we have seen recently in Great Britain, and 
will need no revolution."
"""

So, maybe a way forward to post-scarcity? From 1935?

Still, even if interest is at zero, if you borrow, you must pay back. If you 
own the money, you can spend it without thoughts of repayment. So, taxation 
to keep money circulating is very different than expecting people to borrow. 
It just emotionally is a different issue. Even as, perhaps, logically it 
might be the same. But when you borrow, you generally have to sign 
contracts, and those contracts may limit how you can spend the money. So, 
there are deeper issues here about control.

=== Book VI: section 24

"""
   "Thus we might aim in practice (there being nothing in this which is 
unattainable) at an increase in the volume of capital until it ceases to be 
scarce, so that the functionless investor will no longer receive a bonus; 
and at a scheme of direct taxation which allows the intelligence and 
determination and executive skill of the financier, the entrepreneur et hoc 
genus omen (who are certainly so fond of their craft that their labour could 
be obtained much cheaper than at present), to be harnessed to the service of 
the community on reasonable terms of reward."
"""

But see there, he can't just allow for taxes and giving it to citizens to 
spend as they wish. It has to be that the state purchase the services of 
someone for some state-decided end. The magic of the market is that people 
decide what they want from what's available, and other try to guess what 
people will want (or, sadly, through advertising increase people's wants 
perhaps unhealthily). So, Keynes is implicitly arguing "the state knows 
best" here as far as how to spend that money that is taxed (or printed). 
Giving it to the citizens directly seems more democratic.

Is there perhaps an undue fear from this comment?
   http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Democracy&defid=3956841
"""
A democracy cannot survive as a permanent form of government. It can last 
only until its citizens discover that they can vote themselves largesse from 
the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority (who vote) will vote 
for those candidates promising the greatest benefits from the public purse, 
with the result that a democracy will always collapse from loose fiscal 
policies, always followed by a dictatorship. ... (Lord Thomas MacCauley, May 
23, 1857)
"""

But, is that really true? That was said almost a century before Keynes. And 
Keynes seems to actively rebut that ideas. What Keynes is suggesting is that 
prosperity comes exactly from such votes. Neoliberalism, giving tax cuts to 
the rich, has proved disastrous, compared to the 91% marginal tax rate the 
USA had under President Franklin Roosevelt.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt

So, the facts and Keynes both seem to dispute Lord Thomas MacCauley and his 
Neoliberal successors like Alan Greenspan and even our current mainstream 
financial leaders who draw from an Ayn Rand-like form of Propertarian 
Libertarianism.


=== Book VI: section 24

"""
   "It may turn out that the propensity to consume will be so easily 
strengthened by the effects of a falling rate of interest, that full 
employment can be reached with a rate of accumulation little greater than at 
present. In this event a scheme for the higher taxation of large incomes and 
inheritances might be open to the objection that it would lead to full 
employment with a rate of accumulation which was reduced considerably below 
the current level." I must not be supposed to deny the possibility, or even 
the probability, of this outcome. For in such matters it is rash to predict 
how the average man will react to a changed environment.
""""

I see more clearly now. Keynes needs to focus on "full employment" because, 
unlike Bob Black, he can't accept the value of "full unemployment" which 
would be possible with a basic income and extensive automation or, 
alternatively, restructuring work to make it into play or "hard fun".

There is some sort of "work ethic" at the core there. This sense that income 
has to be linked to jobs. Maybe that is another aspect of rejecting the idea 
of giving government printed money (well, there was none on the gold 
standard) directly to citizens? Giving it to banks to loan to companies to 
then hire workers fits with this model of an ideal that people need to work 
to earn a right to consume -- so, a scarcity model. And again, a likely 
assumption that people will not do anything useful without pay. Except then, 
why do people raise children without pay? That has got to be a more 
demanding task than many others.

But, at least, he admits he does not know.

But here is a paradox. Many of the wealthy people he talks about have no 
need to work their entire lives, even with high taxes, because they have so 
much money. Then why do they work so hard to have more money? Even if it is 
for their children, why do they have children and then do so much work on 
their behalf? (Well, that was before reliable birth control, true.) Anyway, 
even then, there were examples of the rich who worked, and examples of the 
priesthood who worked for not much material gain, and probably artists and 
so on. So, he did not want to see that, maybe?

=== Book VI: section 24

"""
Now the State will still have to guide things; it seems unlikely that just 
controlling interest rates will be enough to ensure this utopian state of 
affairs. Instead, it might turn out “a somewhat comprehensive socialisation 
of investment will prove the only means of securing an approximation to full 
employment; though this need not exclude all manner of compromises and of 
devices by which public authority will co-operate with private initiative.”
"""

I really see how far we have fallen (a point Ryan has made. :-). I now 
understand his point better.

I agree, even though I'd rather have someone beyond Keynes, at least give us 
Keynes back instead of neoliberal free market fundamentalists like Greenspan 
and a lot of US "fiscal conservatives" at this point.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

What a better world this would have been the last thirty years. And then we 
could have built beyond that on our own via a gift economy and peer 
production etc. Still, at least we got the "socialist" internet. That is 
exactly the kind of thing Keynes suggested. But perhaps today it could never 
have been invented? Well, we're getting military robots now out of our 
military socialist enterprise (DARPA) maybe with some dual use aspects. 
Should I be happy about that? :-)

=== Book VI: section 24

"""
   ""Whilst, therefore, the enlargement of the functions of government, 
involved in the task of adjusting to one another the propensity to consume 
and the inducement to invest, would seem to a nineteenth-century publicist 
or to a contemporary American financier to be a terrific encroachment on 
individualism, I defend it, on the contrary, both as the only practicable 
means of avoiding the destruction of existing economic forms in their 
entirety and as the condition of the successful functioning of individual 
initiative.
"""

Again, Keynes is not getting how a basic income would be more compatible 
with a free market ideal than state-decided public works. :-) Not that I am 
against public works if they are needed.

=== Book VI: section 24

""""
   "For if effective demand is deficient, not only is the public scandal of 
wasted resources intolerable, but the individual enterpriser who seeks to 
bring these resources into action is operating with the odds loaded against 
him. The game of hazard which he plays is furnished with many zeros, so that 
the players as a whole will lose if they have the energy and hope to deal 
all the cards. Hitherto the increment of the world’s wealth has fallen short 
of the aggregate of positive individual savings; and the difference has been 
made up by the losses of those whose courage and initiative have not been 
supplemented by exceptional skill or unusual good fortune. But if effective 
demand is adequate, average skill and average good fortune will be enough."
"""

"Deficient" effective demand means "limited" demand. He sees that as the 
problem. I see it as part of the solution, in the context of increasing 
automation. :-) Abundance happens when supply exceeds demand (without 
unaccounted for negative externalities).

On his point in the second half, tell me about it. :-)
   http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/historyandfuture.html


=== Book VI: section 24

"""
   "At the present moment people are unusually expectant of a more 
fundamental diagnosis; more particularly ready to receive it; eager to try 
it out, if it should be even plausible. But apart from this contemporary 
mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are 
right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly 
understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who 
believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are 
usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear 
voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler 
of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly 
exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, 
immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and 
political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories 
after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which 
civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events 
are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested 
interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."
"""

Yes, I have to agree. I can see how the ideology, or "mythology" as I call 
it, after Conceptual Guerilla:
   "The Mythology of Wealth"
   http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402

Mythology is indeed a powerful thing.

===========================

General issue: it feels to me like Keynes assumes nothing significant gets 
done unless people are paid to do it. So, workers need to get paid to make 
things. Entrepreneurs need to get paid to spend the money they control to 
buy equipment and arrange for workers to use it with raw materials. So, for 
example, a new bridge for a community might not get built unless the 
community is taxed and a company is paid to hire workers and build the bridge.

But, historically, like in Peru, communities will work together to build 
communal resources like bridges, with no money changing hands. This is a 
sort of P2P enterprise as a gift to the commons. Then everyone can go over 
the common bridge. Example:
   http://www.rutahsa.com/k-chaca.html
"Each year in June, the people of the comunidad campesina of Huinchiri, 
along with villagers from three other nearby communities, rebuild a 
suspension bridge across the canyon of the upper Río Apurimac. The bridge is 
a keshwa chaca made of ropes hand woven of qqoya grass, a type of Andean 
bunchgrass. A steel girder bridge crosses the canyon a short distance 
upstream from the keshwa chaca, so it is not necessary that this rope bridge 
be rebuilt for any present-day transportation purposes. And yet the Quechua 
people continue to build the bridge annually, as apparently they have done 
since Inka times. It is their custom, and by maintaining the bridge they 
honor their ancestors and Pachamama. "

It makes me realize that there is, essentially, a religious aspect of P2P 
perhaps at some point. An honoring of some spirit, of a god, of ancestors, 
of the community, of togetherness, of the commons, or something like that.

There is also a blindness in the writing, noted above, about the issue of 
who gets the money first: workers or companies doing public works, average 
citizens as a basic income, banks to loan out, or perhaps companies through 
direct subsidies of some sort (job creation credits or wage subsidies).

 From the Wikipedia article on Keynes:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynes
"""
Joseph Schumpeter was an economist of the same age as Keynes and one of his 
main rivals. He was among the first reviewers to argue that Keynes's General 
Theory was not a general theory, but was in fact a special case.[84] He said 
the work expressed "the attitude of a decaying civilisation". After Keynes's 
death Schumpeter wrote a brief biographical piece called Keynes the 
Economist - on a personal level he was very positive about Keynes as a man; 
praising his pleasant nature, courtesy and kindness. He assessed some of 
Keynes biographical and editorial work as among the best he'd ever seen. Yet 
Schumpeter remained critical about Keynes's economics, linking Keynes's 
childlessness to what Schumpeter saw as an essentially short term view. He 
considered Keynes to have a kind of unconscious patriotism that caused him 
to fail to understand the problems of other nations. For Schumpeter:[85] 
"Practical Keynesianism is a seedling which cannot be transplanted into 
foreign soil: it dies there and become poisonous as it dies."
"""

I think there is some truth to that, reading the above summary, and seeing 
Keynes's disagreement with Douglas and Social Credit (a basic income). He 
saw very far, but not that far all the way to abundance. He remained mired 
in scarcity, in part because, as above, his starting assumptions were to 
exclude both exponentially increasing innovation and healthy humans limiting 
their own demands. Still, he clearly saw something new was possible with 
"the disappearance of its rentier aspect".

So, like his comments, but consider as me applying them to Keynes: "It is 
convenient to mention at this point the strange, unduly neglected prophet 
Silvio Gesell (1862-1930), whose work contains flashes of deep insight and 
who only just failed to reach down to the essence of the matter."

Keynes got close, but even though he kept talking about limited demand as 
the big problem, never saw that it was actually the *solution* to creating 
affluence, if coupled with exponentially increasing technological capacity.

Maybe he might have gotten that if he had read this:
   "The Original Affluent Society" by Marshall Sahlins
   http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
"Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other 
group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent 
society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's 
material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is 
therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to 
bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a 
tragedy of modern times."

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
http://www.beyondajoblessrecovery.org/