More Evidence That The Entirety Of Orthodox Economics Is Simply An Extension Of Class Hegemony - Maintained As A Cultural Habit

Consider the latest missive from the Congressional Budget Office.

The Long-Run Effects of Federal Budget Deficits on National Saving and Private Domestic Investment

After reading this several times over, a simple question has to be posed.

If [someone] starts with a big enough myth, can they get whole populations and disciplines to go along with nonsense? The answer throughout history is .... "sure!"

Yet where does that leave us? Before even considering the CBO's data, please consider the following questions, to establish and orient to context. After all, without context, data is meaningless.

Questions:

1) Is the entirety of orthodox economics simply an extension of class hegemony - maintained as a cultural habit?

2) Is it actually a generally agreed upon cultural taboo to question the nonsensical axioms of orthodox economics?

3) Is orthodox economics inseparable from "court" management theory, used by aristocrats to manage "their" assets?

While pondering that context, consider the reality that there is a gulf between fiat currency operations (e.g., MMT) and orthodox economics, simply because any aggregate, operational approach, by definition, is tuned to SOME stated purpose - aka, group policy.

Orthodox economics, on the other hand, steadfastly refuses to accept national policy as a reference axiom - maintaining that it is merely a set of tools, or methods. Yet no tool users set down their tools at the end of the day without considering what they were using them for, and why.

That claim of being a method divorced from purpose ought to set off warning bells. "Danger Will Robinson. Danger Will Robinson. Control Frauds are running loose in our Policy Staff!"

Orthodox economics is Machiavelli's Economics, by any other name?

All functional diversions of patterns of tool-use from consensus purpose, constitute - by default - various shades of Control Fraud. Simply because special interests will always fill a policy void left dangling, lacking aggregate purpose.

The result? Innocent Frauds may practice only Innocent Control Fraud (ICF) by default, but it is control fraud nonetheless. The concept holds, even if you prefer to call it incompetence.

Is there any resistance to this widespread lack of aggregate purpose for economic theory? Perhaps. See the following article.

CBO’s scoring system holds U.S. government back on long-term programs

However, this text is so long-winded that it's difficult to fully discern whether the author's Context Awareness is consistently rooted in allegiance to public purpose, fraud or incompetence. Maybe a bewildering mix of all three? :(

Back to the CBO article. Let's now get to their treatment of data.

They soon get right to their beginning myth, then base all economic modeling around this assumption.

'Deficits thus “crowd out” private domestic investment in the long run.'

And how do they get their conclusions to support their premise? With the rudderless tool of "orthodox economic theory" of course! Starting with a definition connected to no context whatsoever:

"The sum S + (T – G) equals national saving"

They're referring to a common, presumed notation. I = S + (T – G) – NFI

Rearranging, we get:  S + (T – G) = I + NFI

So for the CBO, "national saving" = (priv+biz saving) + (taxes - total spending). In other words, "national saving" = (Public Investment) + NetForeignInvestment.

Just as an aside, how does a growing nation "save" Public Initiative? Beats me. For the sake of the CBO's lunatic ramblings, however, let's ignore that functonal sanity test, and go back to considering the form of their policy delusion.

Next, note that I + NFI = trade balance (pos or neg), in econ jargon.

So far, so close.

Yet one implicit point becomes clear, though unstated! Managing the trade deficit is their implied control variable? Their "objective?"

(For Pete's sake! That is gold-std thinking. It's like the CBO office is staffed by blondes listening to a variant of the "breathe-in, breathe-out" tapes.)

First off, they're treating the sum of pub+priv savings as a static asset. There's no presence nor discussion of sinks and sources in their model?

What is the reality? 

* return-on-coordination = a net source of real + nominal dynamic assets;

(which counts more than the possession of any static assets)
(and don't forget compounding; 
some teamwork really is more useful than other teamwork)

* conversely, net stupidity or net ignorance easily produce a net sink of both dynamic and static assets;

We have a key problem in using macro-economic theory to shape national policy. Regardless of all the definitions & rhetoric, there is no formal acknowledgement of Public Purpose in orthodox macro economics!

What is our national objective? Our Public Purpose?

..Which economic model variable TRACKS that objective? 

..Which methods drive variables to push economic models in the direction of that objective?

Orthodox macro economists can't answer those questions because asking them is NOT allowed in the framework of orthodox macro economic modeling! It's a theoretical accounting method that refuses to acknowledge any purpose OTHER than ex post, static asset accounting.

At the same time, economic theory studiously ignores the evolution of banking operations!

You couldn't make this up. A management theory that refuses to consider aggregate purpose and also ignores evolving operations. What could go wrong?

Again, merely for the sake of tempo in this comedy routine, let's continue anyway.

Does anyone see a National Assessment System at work in any of this?

I'm getting the feeling that it's all implicitly biased to make & keep key political constituents rich, no matter what happens to our country. Smells like teenage aristocratic philosophy? The CBO really is advising us to manage currency_issuer finances just like currency_user finances? We need an electorate which knows the difference, so we can maintain a policy staff which knows it.

Let's reconsider something that is implicit in our National Policy Guide: "Assume some myth or propaganda, then see what our macro economic models mean ... relative to that myth." [Alrighty then! Werks fur mi!]

That's no way to run a family, a company, an army, or a nation - all of which set AGGREGATE objectives first, and then explore all options for achieving them.

Our curreny National Policy Guide is, however, how royalty look at the serfs in their various "possessions." If citizens and aggregate don't matter, then of course orthodox macro economics works. Just treat humanity as another variable to manipulate [without their will]. The simple question is "who does it work FOR?"

To me, the CBO's logic is NOT a model for managing national development.

It IS, however, a model for managing who privately owns any and all declared static assets (or thinks they own them).

We need an electorate, Congress & CBO that puts out a yearly report entitled:

"The Long-Run Effects of
Federal Thinking Deficits
on Adaptive Rate Of The USA"

OpenOperations "Visual Economy" HighSchool Challenge

Open Operations is issuing a Challenge to EVERY HIGH SCHOOL IN THE USA, heck, in the world, to develop and present simple system visualizations in two categories:

1) Visual model for how Personnel System Methods make an Adaptive Organization.

2) Visual models for how Credit, currency, criminology & policy Methods make a Scalable National Economy. (5 subsections)

For more details, see below.


Why this challenge, now?  In many domain areas, we have endless criticism of things that are wrong, and and many illogical things to correct.  Take CREDIT, CURRENCY, CRIMINOLOGY AND FISCAL/TAX POLICY in general.   Despite growing numbers of critics, gridlock abounds, and OUR COUNTRY IS BECOMING A LESS RATHER THAN A MORE PERFECT UNION.  Identifying what's wrong is no longer rate limiting.  Our biggest problem is in coordinating coherent responses to what are still very distributed perceptions.  Our group-awareness of context is lagging context change, and is never adequately close to being coherent.

What to do?  Target aggregate context awareness.  How?  Here's our idea.

I just had a long talk with Peter Groen of CosiTech about the evolution of domain-specific exaqmples of "campaign momentum."

Peter is an IT person focused on distributing enabling IT tools, starting with OpenSource Health IT. He's basically the co-father of the VA's ViSTA open-source healthcare system.

I tried to impress upon Peter that there's a developmental step - widely discussed in biology - that is prior to coherent demand for tools.  Peter grasped it, and agreed in principle.

In health, for example, the bulk of our population had, after decades of education, arrived at a coherent view of personal & public health as systems.

The elements of that context awareness?  Recognition of a system, with components like vitamins, trace minerals, organs, blood pressure, infectious agents, immune responses, draining swamps, clean water, epidemiology, etc, etc.   Few now argue about the details, and instead share a common view.

With that common view came coherent context awareness.  Subsequently, citizens & clinicians began recognizing and crating tools to fill holes where the context model demanded data.  Health IT tools became obviously demanded, as one obligatory part of SYSTEM INSTRUMENTATION, but only once group awareness of a system was established.

Similarly, specific types of navigation tools proliferated AFTER more people realized that the world was round and circled the sun, not before.  For personal/public health, the response was rapidly spreading demand for all the diagnostic-tracking tools we know today, from charting of diets/exercise/toxins/nutrition all the way up to shareable electronic health records & statistics from public databases.

In the case of other systems?  We're just beginning to build coherent public awareness.  Take:

  military personnel systems;

  currency systems;

  public policy systems ... .

For these areas, THERE IS NO COHERENT CONTEXT MODEL!  Yet!

Why? First, we're not teaching the prior need for coherent context awareness to students.  Second, we don't provide enough ways for youth to PRACTICE the overriding return-on-coordination that scales up to trump any & all heroic but unscalable local practices.  Why memorize data BEFORE knowing what it's for?  Most data is irrelevant, most of the time.   Data can be generated or retrieved upon demand.  Adaptation primarily involves creating & capturing new methods for determining what tiny fraction of data matters, when it finally matters.

This is a distributed problem where adults have all the relevant data, but where AMERICA DOES NOT KNOW WHAT AMERICA KNOWS.   Worse yet, we don't know how little we need to know!   When that occurs, it's up to youth to come up with their own, coherent group-awareness of group-context.

Since DATA IS MEANINGLESS WITHOUT CONTEXT, we must first build group context-awareness before trying to utilize all the data we've been producing like projectile vomit.

Ergo, for neglected domains where coordination is now rate-limiting, our absolute first need is to disseminate simple models for visualizing & picturing system and system-component models.  

In our current context, we need simple models letting any Trudy, Nick or Harriet visualize how personnel (not just personal) methods make an organization, and how credit/currency/criminology policy methods make a national economy.  

With an iterative approach to such frameworks, people can fit in more detailed visualizations of sub-systems like credit systems, currency systems, criminology systems, and policy systems ... that are actually coherent visualizations of actual systems, rather than uncoordinated and unscalable ideologies. 

   The necessary visualization models need to be as simple as the currently popular but absolutely culturally worthless mobile-phone video games. :)

We have an emerging electorate that visualizes Grand Theft Auto better than they do Grand Theft Economy!   We can fix that.  The way to fix it soonest is to go through a logical process.

1) CREATE multiple, simple visualizations of context.

     Is the world flat or round?   

     Is an economy a dynamic equilibrium among distributed, conflicting, forces .... or a centrally commanded feudal system of, by & for the 1%, narrow-minded ideologues?

2) ADEQUATELY DISTRIBUTE competing, summary visualizations of as many models as possible.  Let juries of our peers - in Open Source courts or "selection markets" - converge to what is or isn't coherent.

3) CONVERGE to adequately shared context awareness. Then let the explosion of Open Source tools begin.  

If we can have Open Source Health tools & practices, then we can also have Open Source Policy tools & practices ... but only after achieving adequately shared public awareness of an economy as a coherent system.  If we as land and sea-faring nomads can invent celestial navigation tools and practices, then we, as Context Nomads, can also invent tools for navigating any context whatsoever.  To navigate, you first have to model which signs are most useful, and then monitor and leverage them appropriately.

Hence, Operations Institute, the OpenOperations Forum and Cosi Open Business & Economics are collaborating on a Challenge to EVERY HIGH SCHOOL IN THE USA, heck, in the world, to develop and present simple system visualizations in two categories:

1) Visual model for how Personnel System Methods make an Adaptive Organization.

2) Visual model for how Credit, currency, criminology & policy Methods make a Scalable National Economy.

Upon reflection, it seems necessary to divide scalable economics into 5, overall stages, especially for students being introduced to scalable systems theory.
     a) credit operations      b) monetary operations      c) regulatory operations      d) national policy operations [public ambitions]      e) a->d combined (adjusted, actual or "dynamic" national policy).

All models submitted for review must include a metric representing the sum "quality of distributed decision-making."   That metric will drive coherency as a selection criteria, thereby building in adaptive rate as the continuous goal, regardless of any pattern of context inputs.

All team members must be named, and - to practice coherent coordination - at least 4 disciplines must be represented.  For example: art student, choreography student, physics student, engineering student, etc, etc.

We suggest that all visualizations be submitted as YouTube videos and/or mobile phone apps.  We'll work with partners to create appropriate channels.

Open Operations Forum and collaborators will begin developing a distributed network of rewards for participating student teams.  Our initial approach will be to connect students to professions in any & all fields targeted above, and also to professionals in those fields who contribute by participation.   Thereby, participation result will be its own rewards.

Those with additional suggestions for further student incentives are free to contact us.