Dear f/w friends
Many thanks to Michael and others off-list.
I insert some comments in the below.
----------
>From: Michael Spencer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Re: Torn
>Date: Tue, Dec 7, 1999, 3:08 am
>
>
>> Is a simpler life style (snip) of lesser quality?
> ....
>>> Central to this oikonimos is our use of money.
>>> [full quote below]
>
>Let me see if I have this right: Because of the structure lent to the
>system by the presence and use of money, each act of an individual is
>is commoditized and becomes a transaction that either enriches or
>impoverishes him. So for the individual, the system has two
>agressive attractors at the extrema of the financial scale.
>
>Is that right?
j: Yes, i think that that might be so. Certainly, in terms of outcomes,
people are being sifted into two groups - in one, 450 or so people, own as
much as 3billion.
>
>In the overall capitalist system, the one in which individuals are the
>components, there seems to be an attractor to a region of phase space
>where a few individuals (of which many are corporations) have vast
>financial assets and most have approximately nil. It has been said
>that this is the natural course of capitalism.
j: And thus, so, we see.
>
>Has anyone proposed a phase space model of capitalist economy that
>that represents money in a way that that would let us test the effect
>of removing money or removing one or more of the purely financial
>components on the distribution of wealth?
j; I'd love to see it !
>
>Brian Arthur's work on positive feedback in the economy is now going
>on 10 years old. Has he or anyone else pushed this approach further,
>beyond the narrow cases that he describes? (I regret that I'm not
>keeping up -- it's been 4 years since I've been able to spend a whole
>day in a first class bookstore.)
j: Sadly a component part of capitalism's outputsfor lots (ie most ! )
of us !
>
>- Mike
>
>--
>Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada
j; Hugs to all - down home, and elsewhere !
*****************
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>URL: http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/mspencer/home.html
>---
>
>
>"john courtneidge" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> But ! Simplicity is a cusp that's unachieveable in a market economy, since,
>> in such a madhouse, activity results either in (ever escalating) profit
>> accumulation, or in (ever escalating) impoverishment.
>>
>> (This could be graphed, were e-mails there yet!)
>>
>> The solution is to invert the 'values' that lead to this cusp and, so,
>> create the cusp as the default condition - to move, in other words, to an
>> economics (an 'oikonimos') based on giving out, rather than accumulating in
>> of, both, material 'goods' and spiritual 'bads.'
>>
>> Central to this oikonimos is our use of money.
>
