Friday, February 3, 2012

Big Gross Numbers - Prequel

Having recovered, slightly, from yesterday's frustration of trying to make some big number sync, more or ball park less with each other I am back chasing the rabbit again in hopes that it will not disappear down some dark hole.

This whole exercise is characterized by a good example:  I am looking at the problem like Darwin was looking at nature:  Empirical.  Not knowing, consistent with the body of knowledge at his time, the extent of biological information we have now.  Trying to comprehend how nature came about and how it came to be the way it is.  Today he could have studied all the now known details starting at the lowest level like genetics and working up to a full understanding of evolution.  He did not know all that stuff then.  What he could do was look at things and figure it out without all the detailed micro knowledge base that has expanded since his time.

I could go to school and learn all the arcane smoke and mirrors knowledge about economics and therefore understand how all the gross numbers related to the monetary system (what the system is and what it does) and maybe I would see it all.  On the other hand I wonder if I would understand it any better than simply looking at the result now and deducing how it got that way rather than inducing an understanding from an academic study of all the basic information that builds up to a complete and theoretically simple top level description of the system structure and the relationship of that structure to how it works.

God made the structure and consequently the function of the natural world for us to deduce to its details.  It is a given that the structure was a perfect system.  On the other hand, humans created what money is and what it does out of nothing. Since it is a human construction not observing natural universal laws like nature but the entire structure  of what it is and what it does is subject to error in basic design and resulting defect in operation.

The only "natural law" dictating the non-natural real world conceptual systems developed by humans like money, or politics or any of the other conceptual thing that we humans create is reason, logic and truth.  Yes, I will include religion in that category  too.  

Historically our fundamental human conceptual systems were based on the thinking of a few people that created the structure for self benefit based on their logic, reasoning and truth with various degrees of accommodation for the general welfare of all society.

We seem to be working in the right direction of greater benefit of our social institution to a wider scope of society.  Each conceptual institution that humans have dreamed up is based on a shakey core of reason, logic or truth that simply does not produce the best possible outcome for society.  We all disagree on what that outcome is and the most powerful, who also stand to gain the most from their design and manipulation of the conceptual system determine its development and operation.

Our Constitution was the best attempt to level the playing field but it is a rough game.

I refuse to study and learn from the ground up all the knowledge that explains our current monetary and economic system and proclaim my knowledge by waving a Phd and all kinds of associated credentials.   I don't have the time and even I was young, I would not waste my time doing it.

If the system is broke and does not work, like a car that does not run, the evidence of its failure to fulfill the purpose is self evident.  The problem is that the car that does not run fulfills some one's purpose exactly and fulfills it exactly in accordance with their logic, reason and truth.  They are the ones that will say that I simply do not understand the system and that is my problem.  A problem that would be solved if I was an establishment economist in good standing with the priesthood and the tenants of its religion.

Stuff does not add up.  I do not have to all the way back to learning my numbers and abc's to see that.   All I care to do is to see, in the gross analysis like Darwin did, what it ads up to.  Looking at it from that standpoint I do not stand in awe of the creation of the system like Darwin did.  I stand in awe of a dysfunctional system and why it does not crumble of its own weight that cannot be supported by any fundamental reason, logic or truth that serves more than an increasingly small number of people and institutions that are benefiting to and increasing extent from its operation.

There is a law of the natural universe that comes in to play that does constrict any schemes and dreams that generate social conceptual structures made by humans.  Geometric or compound growth cannot continue forever.  Forces arise that dictate a stop and return to a balanced state.  Often by disastrous revolution not evolution.

The Big Gross Numbers of money is like looking at the forest to understand the trees and how they got to be the forest money.

If Darwin were alive today he would try to understand Money the same way he approached his understanding of nature. 

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