“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” It will collapse.
It is no longer a question of words. We have reached the point at which, as Lewis Carroll recognized so long ago, we have become the Masters of Words. Words have the meaning we give them.
Take just the words “terrorist” and “patriot.” Apply them to the fact of the assault on the Capital on January 6 of last year. You will see that there is a precise reversal of meaning when used by the right or by the left of our political spectrum.
Worse. Each group has developed a detailed ideology to justify its positions; and each group maintains, with greater or lesser justification, that it is contemplating the truth.
Words can no longer unify our country.
How to Proceed from Here?
Most everyone seems to be fixated on how the United States is going to break into a civil war and/or fragment into a number of states. A most convincing and exhaustive piece has recently been published in the pages of the Progressive Magazine: David Rosen, “Who Are Trump’s Committed Insurrectionists?“ It is time to act if we want to unify our country.
One more analysis like this, one more book from “the veritable Presidential library’s worth of books” on this topic, and we are surely going to break apart.
The supreme danger is not so much the breakup of our country but the loss of “the last best hope for mankind.” It took centuries of mental preparation to build the United States of America; no other country or group of countries has followed with higher ideals yet.
We had better preserve what we have; let us look at the other half of the glass. Rather than insisting on how the country will unavoidably break up, let us look at how to unify it.
The Only Way to Preserve What We Have is to Improve It
If we want to unify our country, it is time to act. We do not have much time. The most important project is to understand what holds MAGA People together, the swing vote that determines the elections.
Yes, race is a factor; but it is literally a skin-deep factor. Underneath it, there are basic questions of economics and power. Race, gender, ethnicity, culture are all tools of division.
As pointed out elsewhere, we have to understand that the affections that hold MAGA People together are the resentments and the afflictions that society inflicts upon them. Their lives are being eviscerated by the latifundia; yes, who knows about the latifundia any longer?
Ever since Constantine converted to Christianity, latifundia have disappeared from polite political imagination; but vast tracts of land—whether in the wilderness, in dilapidated downtowns, or in the undeveloped band of land that strangles the cities—are still controlled by few people and rich corporations: As a consequence, MAGA people tend to be corralled into crowded lots.
MAGA People’s lives are being eviscerated when money is lent to people with money on easy terms and the people without money are left to pay outrageous interest.
MAGA People’s lives are being eviscerated whenever two mega corporations are glued together; then the few gain more power and the people within and without both corporations suffer many afflictions.
MAGA People’s lives are being eviscerated by robots that take their jobs, their livelihood, away.
MAGA People are vociferous; they are surrounded by the “Silent Majority” who suffer from a variety of the same ills. If we understand the root of their suffering, we will understand what afflicts our country as a whole—and eventually much of the rest of the world.
The Overall Condition
As analyzed elsewhere, in a modern society one mostly finds the poor begging for entitlements, the middle class begging for a job, and the rich begging for tax abatements and subsidies.
No, economic oppression is not due to the ill will of any group of people, but to a blind “system” that has been allowed to grow while damaging, in one way or another, everyone in sight.
We simply do not know what we are doing to ourselves.
The “Malaise” of Institutions
Conditions that create negative effects are deeply rooted in our institutions. They are so deeply rooted that experts have no theory about how things come about.
It is through a field of study I have pursued for more than fifty years that it is possible to identify the lack of four economic rights and responsibilities as the precise cause of the afflictions of most people. As analyzed elsewhere, these are the four rights and responsibilities whose absence is creating havoc in our lives:
And then there is the Economic Content of the “Our Father”
Most interestingly, only in recent months I have discovered that these four economic rights and responsibilities form the deep economic content of the “Our Father.” They are implicitly embedded in the expression, ”give us our daily bread.”
Yes, Jesus meant precisely our earthly daily bread—in addition to our heavenly bread, of course. The parable of the loaves and the fishes makes that abundantly clear.
To make our daily bread we need access to four (modern) factors of production:
- Land on which to grow wheat and bake bread;
- Labor through which we grow our wheat and bake our bread;
- Money to buy the flower to make our daily bread and wood to fire our oven;
- Capital in the form of the oven and other tools of production.
The Core of Concordian Economics
The four economic rights and responsibilities above form the core of Concordian economics. As our first Gloucester poet laureate, Vincent Ferrini, pointed out, Concordian economics has “the answers to universal poverty and the anxieties of the affluent.”
Yes, we have to find ways to implement these four economic rights and responsibilities if we want to redress many of the wrongs that afflict our modern society.
Toward a New World; Toward the Grand Compromise
The world of these four economic rights and responsibilities is a totally new intellectual and moral world. If we implement them, we do not need the transfer of even one cent of other people’s money into our pockets. That is the fundamental technical reason that makes this program eminently feasible.
To make this program politically feasible, we need to add a psychological ingredient. We need not threaten the affluent in order to achieve our goals.
On the contrary, we must abandon the threat of the use of pitchforks. The threat of pitchforks is not charitable: we need to love the rich as much as the poor.
To Threaten the Rich is not even Political.
During the Vietnam war, I received a great personal lesson. It was a snowy day in Watertown. I grabbed a chunk of snow and began to squeeze it. The harder I squeezed it, the harder the gentle snow became.
Ah, I said, “That is what is happening to the gentle Vietnamese people. We are never going to win this war.”
The same with the affluent. The more we threaten them, the harder will they resist.
We must abandon the threat of the use of pitchforks. As a Grand Compromise, in more than a fair exchange, we only need to shift our attention from
…economic privileges enjoyed by the affluent few
to
…economic rights and responsibilities exercised by everyone.
With the exercise of our four economic rights and responsibilities by everyone (the affluent are included in everyone), we will have 100% Capitalism, thus also achieving 100% of the goals of Socialism.
If 1% Capitalism is so Good for the Few, 100% Capitalism will do Wonders for Everyone.
Let our governments declare the creation of these four rights of access to the four factors of production and let unfettered markets exercise these four rights and responsibilities. We will then achieve 100% of the goals of Capitalism.
New wine asks for new wineskins. The old nomenclature is cumbersome and freighted with many unpleasant memories. Rather than using such words as Capitalism and Socialism, we might want to get acquainted with the word Concordianism.
In addition to many intellectual loops, there are certainly great practical loops to jump through on the road to Concordianism. We will learn mostly by doing. We will create a new world while implementing these four economic rights and responsibilities.
Why is This Plan Going to be Implemented Someday?
Its technical feasibility is a solid substratum, on top of which there are two “human” reasons to assure us that this plan is going to be implemented someday.
- One, because the plan breaks down the barriers that keep Republicans from really talking to Democrats and Capitalists from really talking to Socialists.
- Two: The plan is going to be implemented because Concordian economics is a new paradigm that is intelligible to everyone, except some professional economists who know economic theories but know nothing of the economic process.
At 86, let me be the kid who declares that the Emperor has no clothes. Most economists are irrational; they are interested only in preserving their positions of power.
No matter what is said to them, no matter who tells them that their positions are wrong, academic economists refuse to mend their ways.
With the use of obsolete linear math, with which they frighten everyone away from the study of economics, these economists contemplate only money—all the while they have no definition of money!
Even the purchase of a chocolate bar suggests that in addition to money any transaction involves real wealth as well as expressions of legal affairs concerning ownership indicated by the sales slip. Without the sales slip, one exits the store at risk of going to jail.
Concordian economics, as distinguished from mainstream economics, in addition to placing all internal elements of the economic process in indissoluble relation with each other, places the economic process in explicit relation with history, jurisprudence, sociology, and political science. Let us briefly observe a few benchmarks in these relations.
A Series of Intellectual Conversions
It certainly requires some effort of the will and the imagination to enter the world of Concordian economics. We need to convert our sight from what exists today to what is going to exist tomorrow. A Concordian world is indeed a new economic world: as the word implies, there is going to be much concord replacing much of today’s discord.
Actually, we are not going to fly blindly into the future. We are going to be assisted by much experience gained in the past. There is in a Concordian world much of the old economic world—but improved upon. What we mostly need to do is to abandon the abstractions that have prevailed in our discussions ever since John Locke’s publication of the Two Treatises of Government and reconnect with the ancient world of Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas. This was not a world of theories but a world of practice, the practice of economic justice.
What is not generally recognized is that John Locke subtly shifted our attention from economic justice to the justice of property rights. To which Karl Marx and the Socialists answered: Yes, let us rather talk of the injustice of property rights.
And there we still stand today.
Sad.
Shared Equity
In all this there is a reality that is not yet fully realized: Once Karl Marx conceded that labor is a commodity to be bought and sold on the market, he gave up the struggle for justice before entering the ring.
In Concordian economics, workers are the owners of what they produce—and one does not need a separate struggle to affirm this principle. Everyone is the owner of what he/she/it produces.
Yes, Virginia, machines do produce wealth and the wealth they produce, in a civilized society, accrues automatically to the owner of the machine.
And if there were no other reasons, this is the ultimate reason why—as I have been urging for the last forty years—labor unions should stop “fighting” for higher wages and start negotiating for an equity share of corporations in which their members work. The higher the equity share gained for their members, the higher the membership dues to which they are entitled.
Higher wages create inflation. Thus, the cat eats its own tail. What an incredibly pitiful situation.
Economic Justice
The pearl on top of Concordian economics is this: The fight for equitable distribution of the wealth created is not going to be a lonely struggle for the unions. It is going to be a common struggle for any community as a whole. To make ourselves that much stronger, we need to reconnect with the past, the world of Henry George, and Louis D. Brandeis—among other figures of the Progressive Movement.
We need to shift our attention from the justice-injustice of property rights to the deep well of economic justice. To do this we need to abandon the abstractions of mainstream economics, abstractions built upon the world we have inherited from Adam Smith (the father of modern economics), and plunge head-on into the world of Concordian economics.
A Bit About Concordian Economic Theory
We can enter the world of Concordian economics at any point. Much of this world is in a variety of sources on the Internet, freely available to anyone, to criticize, to improve upon, to implement.
One of my mottos that has made my life enjoyable has been this: If you agree with me tell your friends; if you disagree, tell me, but tell me why. So far no one has seriously disagreed with me.
On the contrary, I have been blessed to have some of the best readers I could have asked for: Professor Franco Modigliani, a Nobel Laureate in economics at MIT, for 27 years; and Professor Meyer L. Burstein, one of the sharpest minds in economics, for 23 years. They subtly guided and contributed to my research.
The Journal of Economic Literature, in its December 2017 issue (p. 1642), annotating for the second time – my fundamental book titled The Economic Process (2002, 2009, 2016), has recognized that:
“Expanded third edition presents the transformation of economic theory into Concordian economics, shifting the understanding of the economic system from a mechanical, Newtonian entity to a more dynamic, relational process.”
The World of Concordian Economic Policy
Concordian economics, of course, allows us to create a whole new set of economic policies. The most important and most urgent of these policies is Concordian monetary policy—whose inspiration is not only Nicole Oresme, but especially Benjamin Franklin.
In a spurt of moral fortitude, the Federal Reserve System has responded to my work in monetary policy by saying,
“Given your proposal, I suggest that you contact your state and federal representatives.”
The scarcity of my resources of time and energy has not fostered a satisfactory response yet.
Debt Jubilee
Included in this presentation is a revamping of the Mosaic Debt Jubilee to be executed every seven years.
This monetary program ought to be implemented at the earliest possible moment—but certainly the day after a major Stock Market crash has occurred. If we implement this proposed plan of action, the damage of a Stock Market crash will be minimized.
If we then implement all four sets of economic rights and responsibilities, in ten years’ time we are going to change the world from nations of beggars to nations of producers. Responsible producers will guard against waste and pollution.
Other Components of Concordian Economic Policy
These are the other three components of Concordian economic policy:
- Labor has to become the owner of what it produces. Louis O. Kelso and his many followers offer invaluable insights to achieve this goal.
- Taxes have to be paid on land and natural resources that we want to keep under private control. If we do that, latifundia are going to decrease; overcrowding in cities is, in parallel, going to decrease. The pearl here is that we can then consider the gradual reduction of all the taxes that suffocate our modern world. And to do this we, in parallel, need to reduce the gargantuan size of the state. Yes, Virginia, the state today has grown into a gargantuan proportion. Many people do want to achieve success on their own merits. Henry George and his many followers offer invaluable insights to achieve this goal.
- And how to respect the property of others? This is the fourth set of economic rights and responsibilities that forms Concordian economic policy. Very very briefly, what we have today is the Pac-Man approach to industrial development. Against it, I have devised the Brandeis Rule, in honor of the great Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis. Starting with the largest corporations, evaluating the results, and gradually enlarging the circle, this rule will prevent corporations from buying other corporations or being bought. Corporations are free to grow internally as they want, but not by committing industrial murder.
In brief, we will finally have solved the problems that existed in the ancient world of our ancestors: a world of privileges for the few will be transformed into a world of rights and duties for everyone.
How to Reach Concord?
Let me count the ways. With the exercise of my economic responsibilities, you do not have to do anything. You simply benefit from the fallout of my actions.
What assures me that you’ll return the favor? A very simple fact: the exercise of your rights turns exclusively to your benefit.
There is no mystery in these effects. These are the natural consequences of interdependence: economic, ecological, and human interdependence. While with discord any action generally calls for an equal and contrary reaction: thus, we have 1 – 1 = 0. With concord, we have 1 + 1 = 2.
It is not only math and physics that give us these results. A great knower of the human soul, Plutarch, said:
“Moral good is a practical stimulus: it is no sooner seen, than it inspires an impulse to practice…”
Benefits of Interdependence
The possible interventions of interdependence seem to be countless. I have observed the potential benefits of a few of them.
First, in our intellectual understanding of the economic reality, from scarcity to the misuse of morality to the abuse of international power.
And then in such practical applications as:
- the fast-spreading use of cash-back programs;
- the use of cash to pay for health care, the Amish way;
- downtown developments through racial harmony;
- three types of local interdependence funds;
- science applied to fisheries development;
- rewarding all-labor programs, including child-rearing and housework;
- the financial independence project;
- development of three sets of teams to create peace and justice in the world;
- the universal use of the Bancor.
Through these and many other potential applications, Concordian economics is going to restore relevance to this most necessary of all mental disciplines, economics.
Full Disclosure
There is a long story behind the world of Concordian economics. I’ll make the long story short.
Concordian economics was born when, after a summer of intellectual struggle with Keynes’ General Theory, I defined Saving as all nonproductive wealth. (I later learned that economists work with any one of the 100,000 possible definitions of this word.)
Then, everything changed.
Once I inserted this definition in Keynes’ model of the economic system, the model that stands at the basis of all mainstream economics, the model was shattered.
A New Model
After I constructed a new model, I was faced with two mathematically consistent models. Mathematics could not help me or anyone else determine which was the better model. Assistance had to be found elsewhere.
It was then that I took the first steps of my long trek through the woods and forest glades of logic and epistemology. Unawares at first, I used all the principles of logic and all the tools of epistemology. It was thus I solved the key intellectual problem of our age.
I created the Relational Method of Analysis at a moment in which the world is still guided by the famous book by Paul Feyerabend, Against Method. As said before, everything goes. We have no method to determine what is true. We are the Masters of Words.
But that is not right. Unwise as we are, we have created another Tower of Babel.
Words are indecipherable again; they only help to confuse ourselves.
With all the tools of epistemology, with all the principles of logic, we can change all that. The great advantage is that there is no need to explain any of these tools to any intellectual. They are well known to any intellectual.
The Relational Method of Analysis
Using all principles of logic and all tools of epistemology, I have gradually been to transform economics from a linear to a tridimensional discipline. From the study of money alone, we can now study the integration of money, real wealth of table and chairs, and legal wealth (the economic value of ownership rights).
But beyond that, have also been able to apply this method of analysis to a variety of other intellectual disciplines. Concordian economics is now at the core of the ongoing transformation of Rationalism into Relationalism.
Under the guidance of Relationalism, we are gradually going to put everything in harmonic relation with everything else. The most beguiling revelations of Relationalism so far for me are these:
- Women are not irrational, they are relational;
- God is not rational, he/she/it is relational.
Let us sink these two propositions into our heart-of-hearts: How much tension are they dissipating from our lives?
