“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
—Albert Einstein
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” — Buckminster Fuller
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
— Proverbs 29:18
Concordian economics discloses the dynamic nature of economic systems.
Both Keynes’ and Hayek’s shared the belief that there existed a need to revisit the economic discourse that began in the thirties and involved their respective analyses of growth and the business cycle. This paper looks at these topics and discovers some of the deep methodological, cultural, substantive, and ideological roots of the chasm that existed between Keynes and Hayek. The reasons for the chasm are understood with the aid of Concordian economics, a framework of analysis through which prism both Keynesian and Austrian economists might finally have a serious conversation with one another.
In a previous post we saw how Concordian economics offers a paradigm through which we can, not only talk of the importance of the Principle of Subsidiarity, but even automatically implement the important recommendations advocated by this principle.
Here we will see how Concordian economics automatically implements the content of two more principles that are an important outgrowth of Subsidiarity: Solidarity and Sustainability.
There is much wisdom in the Principle of Subsidiarity. See, e.g., Thomas C. Behr, Social Justice and Subsidiarity. This is a key principle of the social doctrine of the Catholic Church. Concordian economics offers the opportunity for an automatic application of this principle.
I have written about money woes issues separately in the past on a variety of venues, but consistently on Econintersect and Talk Markets. Let me now gather these thoughts together. A confluence of impelling crises requires this synthesis. Here I argue for the institution of a global currency – the Bancor – first proposed by John Maynard Keynes at Bretton Woods in 1944.
Over the years, I have written in many venues about the extreme importance of four economic rights and responsibilities and their transformation into four Concordian economic policies. My writings on this topic have consistently received the most readers, all over the world.
To my unending surprise, spurred by our immediate needs I have recently discovered
another major—major—ability of Concordian economics. Here it is: With the tools offered by
Concordian economics, we can stop inflation cold.
Let us see how.
“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.