| Subject: | Re: [socialcredit] Swanwick Principles | | Date: | Wednesday, December 14, 2005 03:55:55 (-0800) | | From: | William B. Ryan <w_b_ryan @.....com>
|
| In reply to: | Message 3204 (written by Triumphofthepast) |
We really do risk losing the forest for the trees when
we take some statement or sentence in isolation out of
context from any author, and read something into it
that might or might not have been intended by the
author, in hypercritical interpretation of grammar,
syntax and specific choice of words.
*Warning Democracy* is a compilation of addresses
given in various venues around the time of Swanwick.
Perhaps this from Warning Democracy will shed light on
the meaning of Swanwick 2:-
-------------------
Douglas --> If I have an income of £500 per annum and
I save, as the phrase goes, £100 per annum of this
sum, either by the simple process of putting it in a
bank, or by the investment of it in an insurance
policy, I decrease my expenditure by 20 per cent., and
I certainly provide myself with money for use at some
future time. But there is no physical saving
corresponding to this money saving.
-------
Comment --> In the hypothetical world of pure barter*
you would have to personally accumulate things before
you could have capital; the accumulation of things
that you are refraining from consuming would be
constituent to the process of investment. The
orthodox statement is: "You can invest only what you
have saved or borrowed from others who have saved."
Douglas is here utilizing the logical method of
reductio ad absurdum to demonstrate the point that we
are no longer constrained by the system of barter but
live in a world of contract for future performance
(credit).
He is not saying that people shouldn't individually
save, but that the financial system should accommodate
their personally rational behavior. It is the
difference in perspective between the old and the new
economics.
-
Douglas --> In fact, owing to the interconnection of
the financial system with the producing system, there
is probably an actual destruction of wealth due to the
fact that I do not spend the whole of my income.
-------
Comment --> If saving behavior is not fully
accommodated that necessarily would be the case as
matter of logic. Remember always in reading Douglas
he is frequently utilizing the method of reductio,
which begins by assuming the validity of what he is
refuting. Moreover, he often uses a subtle compound
reductio, which makes his stuff extremely profound in
very few words, but difficult to translate into plain
language.
But please note, much truth can be discerned by the
human mind only through reductio; there's no other
way. Remove the reductio from that expression of truth
and you have nonsense. Which is, by the way, what
most interpreters of Douglas have done pro and con.
In his dividend and rebate accounting adjustment
programs, he is proposing a system of rational
accommodation. The behavior is both inadequately and
erratically accommodated at present in the financial
system as historically evolved.
-
* Which may never have existed. See the Innes papers:
http://www.geocities.com/new_economics/innes/
--- Triumphofthepast@aol.com wrote:
"'Shall be . . . shall be . . . shall be'. Obviously,
these are all prescriptive, not descriptive." (me)
"Please for the moment put aside what Douglas intended
to say in Swanwick 2."
(Bill)
I don't care to put it aside, since it is the subject.
Why not just concede the point made above, which is
obvious enough, and then go from there?
Michael
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