----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 8:56
PM
Subject: Re: [socialcredit] Joe on
Wal-Mart, Discount and CIR
A very interesting prospect, Joe.
Sufficiently so that I will camp on your bandwagon for a round or two.
Round one: Next door in the tar
sands. It is my understanding that the resource has been virtually if
not absolutely and irrevocably given away to the developing corporations
(i.e. the oil companies), on the understanding that the benefit to Alberta
and to Canada ("unemployed eastern bastards") is jobs. As the
world price of crude goes up, so does the attraction of extraction, and so
do tensions within Canada, as noted on news the past couple of days.
Analysis of crude prices in the New York Times over the past week has
focused on a lengthy analysis last Sunday on the Saudi Arabian resource
(featuring a Saudi expert) and concluding that expectations of increased
flow from that source--long a mainstay of optimistic U.S. energy
forecasters, simply cannot and will not be met. That, plus the failure
of an Iraqi government to come together, with the
consequent likelihood that its oil resources will come under control of
Iranian Shiites, and the belligerence of the upstart Chavez in Venezuela
does seem to portend long term high and rising prices for Canadian fossil
fuel consumers. "Hey! Isn't it our oil?" "Sorry, loser;
get your ass back in gear and make those credit card payments!" One of
the hot items on the NYT this past week-end has been an editorial by a
staff journalist who has a vacation home in Quebec where he hobnobs
with the hoi poloi of corporate America and Canada. His message:
back off on the belligerence over NAFTA and soft wood; What if the
Canadians decide to hit us where it would really hurt and get anal retentive
about oil exports?"
Is this quite plausible scenario likely
to wake up a lot of Canadians to consider the possibility that the
government is in fact our enemy, having gone over to the side of the real
power controllers? Might we dream of Harper and Layton exercising some
real leadership and vowing together to lead a dictatorship of
real democracy to its lobbyists, bureaucrats, central bank and
financial regulators? Well, maybe, but I doubt that the
campaign could get as far as an election before the remnants of the U.S.
Army showed up to protect the property of Americans and make Canada
safe for freedom. One of my American friends sent me an article today
by Pat Buchanan calling G.W. Bush a traitor to his country and oath of
office for not having repelled the invasion of Arizona and New Mexico by
Mexicans and other Latinos. A real threat, compared to the phony one
against Saddam Hussein! As the U.S. comes unraveled, we will become an
increasingly tempting and easy mark for its power
brokers.
Round two: Katrina. Although
it is now being tut-tutted as an extreme case of short-term planning
solutions, New Orleans is not unique among North American or world cities in
designing and implementing urban infrastructure to protect and enhance
the collective life of its citizens/residents. Cities are an
expression of community, of collective effort, and much of the
infrastructure is financed and paid for collectively. This fact of
modern life is a negation of the atomistic rationality of standard economics
for the past century, as sharply pointed out by the revolt of the young
French graduate students who founded Post-Autistic Economics (I believe I
circulated refrence to a handy account of this from May Harper's
recently). There is growing recognition among Heterodox Economists
(another grouping) that there is more to cultural heritage and productive
capacity than individual actors. Society is important. This is
the primary theme of the Society for Advancement of Socio-Economics, for
example, spurred into being by Amitai Etzioni, among others, who also took a
focus on Communitarian Studies (I don't recall the formal title of this
grouping). Honorary members of the SASE board of directors include
venerables like J.K. Galbraith and other economists whose names don't come
back on the instant. Google it.
My point here is that the cultural heritage
includes a growing component of what public finance and welfare economics
literature used to define as quintessential "public goods".
Privatization of public utilities has produced many disaster stories in
the past couple of decades, with taxpayers now forced to pick of the bill to
pay the dismissal costs of scoundrels, when formerly all they had to do was
pay modest utility bills. Furthermore, municipalities are forced to go
to their ratepayers for financing of desperately needed infrastructure
investment, in sewers, water supply, medical services, etc. and are
resentful of senior governments that sit on the national revenues and
creditability. I met around a boardroom lunchtable recently with some
local politicians and their small business colleagues and noted with
interest their willingness to listen to accounts of how Bank of Canada used
to control credit (monetary) issue and keep production going without
inflation--during wartime. Then after war, it is payback time.
An interesting connection, war and debt finance. Why does the
Government now do its bank borrowing from private banks rather than the
BoC? (Obviously to help CIBC pay back the hit on its latest mega-folly,
Enron.) It collects taxes to pay interest to banks instead of paying
it to the BoC--of which it is sole shareholder. Shouldn't
municipal politicians and citizens be getting a break from government's
constitutional ability to borrow at lower rates of interest than banks
charge, by having loans arranged from the central bank. That was the
rationale of the activists who arranged the luncheon, and their
modest audience were receptive to exploring further. Might this
be a source of further pain that will tip citizens out of their apathetic
ignorance? Even in Alberta, where medical and health care services are
being disrupted and curtailed in the name of private
"efficiency" ???????????????????????????????????????????????
Keith
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 11:18
AM
Subject: Re: [socialcredit] Wal-Mart,
Retail Discount and CIR
Hi
Keith,
Douglas discusses Japan
in the PDF file Wally provided, "The Douglas System of Social Credit",
which was a transcript of his presentation to the Alberta Agricultural
Commitee in 1934. I seem to recall seeing some other, similar,
comments from him elsewhere, though I'd have to go back and look just
where now.
In answer to your
question:-
"It does bring up the further question of whether it is conceivable
to implement the Douglas solution in one country, even if its citizens did
get themselves roused sufficiently to take over their government.
What then is a positive strategy for advancing the agenda--aside from the
educational program advocated by Vic Bridger, as we have discussed?"
I would say that would very much depend
on the situation that 'prompts' such an attempt. There are a lot of
possibilities. Imagine, for instance, what could happen if the
current 'softwood lumber' dispute between Canada and the USA remained
unresolved. As it may well be.
Suppose the now very small number of very
large Canadian forest companies that dominate 80% or more of that
trade currently, woke up one morning and found the USA 'lumber
lobby' had managed to get an effective increase in the current
tariff. One arranged in a manner that thwarts their
efforts to lower 'unit cost' and beat the present
duty. One that renders their current course of
increased concentration of ownership and facilities completely
unprofitable. That the US tariff did actually exclude
all but the necessary 29% or so 'shortfall' the US has each year in its
own softwood lumber production, no matter how 'efficient' the
Canadian mills got, no matter even if the various provincial
governments 'gave' them the Crown timber resource for
free. Suppose concurrent with that the efforts to find 'other
markets' failed to bear fruit.
Suddenly there's a very interesting
situation. Here we have on the one hand the largest and best mills
in the world, ones that have done everything in vogue in
current 'economic' thinking to survive and prosper, and none of it
works anymore. At some point, I would think, the fallout from a
'disaster' like that, if it occured somewhat suddenly, (which it just
could), might prompt some thinking amongst the general public as to what
really goes on. They might just ask 'WHY', if our ancestors came to
this country to ''live life more abundantly'' amongst
"abundant" natural resources that enabled them to do just that, do we
now have to submit to paying 'world price' to access any of
them? A 'world price' set high enough to deny increasing
numbers of us the very things our ancestors came here for in the
first place.
Joe
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