Collapse

My utopian tendencies arise, in part, from a belief I hold that present society is unsustainable on numerous levels. I have shied away from any essays describing this insufficiency for several reasons. Firstly I find the topic to be negative and critical which is generally an unproductive tone to approach anything one wishes to help with. Perhaps the reason it has been somewhat overlooked is a result of the fact there seems to be no way to make the news palatable. Secondly I have done very little in the way of research on the subject and cannot offer reliable information to support my beliefs, which is not to say that the information is not available. Lastly I have not wished to brand myself as an environmental activist. While it may be one of the more significant topics facing humanity that falls into the remit of this blog, it is far from the being the only topic. Once branded as an environmentalist the reader will tend to assume the known environmentalist's motives are for those ends alone. The general assumption that people who care about the environment care about very little else has not been helped by a few individuals who's approach to spreading the importance of this message has been counterproductive, and so I do not wish to add to this. Having outed myself as someone who sees the practical merits to conserving ecosystems and resources (aka; tree hugger/lefty/hippy/liberal) I would kindly ask the reader to take my motives to be those stated for all of my essays. Consider the difference between the person who goes from door to door spreading the good word and preaching in the street compared with the person who unassumingly attends weekly church. They both believe the same thing where as one forces it in your face while the other does not even require you to be aware of their beliefs to know them. This distinction between peoples approaches to religion (particularly those which offer salvation) is applicable to environmentalists, I wish to be regarded as someone who believes that humanity lacks sustainability and not as someone who preaches this belief and tells people to change. I may offer suggestions as to how society may operate in sustainable means but I will not castigate the individual nor impose my will upon them. This I feel would be a wise approach for others to use for activism and also for religious belief if they wish to gain support rather than alienating people.

I have been compelled to write this unplanned essay after watching a documentary called “Collapse” which discusses the unsustainable aspects of society and the issues that will arise from them. While a sobering experience it is pragmatic, offering both logical arguments and sensible advice, supported with some evidence. For the most part it is an interview with Michael Ruppert who is outstanding in all respects. While he is not entirely able to control his emotions, his restraint is remarkable, only serving to reinforce his apparent honesty and integrity. While his account is neither positive nor optimistic it was by all accounts the best attempt I have encountered at providing information on a vitally important topic in a manner than is unlikely to alienate people. Although I intend to provide a very brief synopsis of his ideas that specifically relate to the mechanisms of collapse I would recommend that you watch this documentary and encourage others to do so too. I hope that Ruppert has missed something in making his predictions as otherwise we are likely too short on time and resources to enact the changes needed to go on with a similar quality of life if he is at all accurate, which he has proved thus far to be. Predictions of time-scales aside, his logic is flawless and without some change to how we live the collapse he describes is inevitable. It may be far enough away that we have found new energy sources to exploit or be a slow enough process that we can suitably adapt while it occurs. There is even the outside possibility that humanity unites on this topic and solves things before a collapse irreversibly begins. The inevitable change may occur without cataclysmic consequence but this does not make it any less prudent to be prepared and informed about the causes and possible effects of those changes.

The main premise upon which Ruppert arrives at the conclusion of the imminent collapse of present society is the dependency we have on oil. It runs all of our transport, provides the vast majority of our electricity which we may enjoy in the home but is essential in industry for refrigeration and other processes that provide for our needs. Oil is used our plastics and our fertilizers, without oil Ruppert argues electric cars would be just as useless as those with a combustion engine based on the oil requirements in making a car. Mass industry and transport is so dependant on oil and it so engrained within those systems that they will fail as they supply runs out. Large cities will no longer be able to be supported by imported goods and humanity will return to living in small self sufficient communities. The level of oil we have left is unknown, and as far as I am concern not relevant to whether we should live sustainably. We can safely say we are past peak oil however, and as such the economy will suffer incredible turmoil.

The infinite economic paradigm as Ruppert calls it is a simple yet accurate portrayal of the global economy that rests on three premises.

1. Fiat currency

2. Fractional Reserve Banking

3. Compound Interest.

These are different terms for things I discussed at reasonable length in my economics essays that ensure the global economy is required to grow continually and create what Ruppert beautifully describes as a giant pyramid scheme. Fractional reserve banking and interest allow money to create more money as banks can loan out more than they have in reserve and charge for it. The total amount of money in the system always increases and we are able to print more money to balance this. Money however represents the value of something and the manner in which we can add value to commodities or harvest them is limited. This limitation is mostly our power and resources for which fossil fuels comprise the largest portion of both. Our economy has reached the stage of growth by which we cannot simply increase the money supply as we cannot create sufficient value to accommodate that new money. As oil is only getting more expensive the economic situation will decline with it in what Ruppert called the jagged plateau. This will mean loss of jobs and services reducing the quality of life for all, starting as ever with the poorest. This stage has already begun according to Ruppert.

The final aspect of Ruppert's argument predicting collapse is based on a dismissal of alternative energy sources. While most of what he says is true it is only a current truth and need not remain the case. We can at least be sure that as the price of oil increases our capitalist system will provide ever more incentive towards improving and producing alternatives. Being no expert on sustainable energy sources and recycling I won't say much on this subject other than I am more optimistic than Ruppert in this area (although a lot less informed), particularly as we are gaining a financial incentive to solve this problem as well as the moral one we already have.

The most chilling aspect of Ruppert's predictions are not the wars for resources of the social anarchy that may result as cities dissolve and people occupy the anger stage of the five stages of grief, or even the reverting to a medieval lifestyle but that of the necessary population loss. It is quite clear from the historic world population graphs that the massive recent spike closing fast on seven billion coincides with the use of fossil fuels coming onto the main stage. Before humanity was exploiting oil the world population had been very slowly and steadily increasing and was around a billion people. Ruppert argues that oil is the only thing that has allowed such an explosive growth to occur and if we were to remove that oil the planet could not support those extra people. That is a lot of people. While I think oil supports a lot of that extra population I also would argue that it has facilitated technologies that will not be entirely lost without the use of oil and that these technologies support a decent proportion of the population. Again, while I do not agree with the extent of the pessimism I agree with the logic and that we will observe less severe effects. Something only has as severe as the demise of six billion people still constitutes a very severe incident in my books.

The main area that I find myself in disagreement with Ruppert is the best way in which a collapse of society could occur. Ruppert thinks that a quick collapse would be best as a long one would ensure more extensive neglect to infrastructure thus making the recovery of humanity harder. I feel however that a quick collapse would have more undesirable social consequences. While I agree that small local communities are the best method humanity has of continued survival in a world without oil or suitable alternatives, I feel that a quick collapse will inhibit the formation of communities. A quick collapse is more likely to cause significant panic and unrest. Once a government has lost control while under the conditions of collapse (such as food, electricity and fuel shortages with potential for hyper-inflation) it will struggle to regain it. If anarchy were to descend on society with shortages on essentials it would not take many people who decide to look out only for themselves to destroy the chances of many communities from forming. The longer we can draw out the transition from an oil dependant society to an oil independent one the better in terms of gaining a good position to restart society and also in terms of the numbers of people that would die. Infrastructure may become severely neglected if a collapse was long but it is less likely to be vandalized and more likely to have coordinated work done upon it.

If all goes well the collapse may just be the step back that humanity needs to take in order to take the next two steps forwards. Anyone who subscribes to the school of logic can see that oil will run out if things remain as they are, and that a lack of oil would be very detrimental to humanity as it presently stands. Only scaremongers and pessimists however will guarantee that the end is nigh, for it is impossible to predict how things will adapt and change over time. Humanity has at least shown that it excels in the ability to adapt. The sooner we fully accept the need to adapt the better chances we have of extending the collapse and weathering it without incident.

Under Siege

We are under siege.

Beset from all sides.

Our assailant is patient.

When left unchecked their ranks swell.

They can outlast stone, concrete, brick and iron.

And so they wait for us to move on and give up the fight.

So that they may reclaim what was once only theirs.

Yet they bare no grudge.

Their war is not wrought of vengeance.

It is a war of creation.

The harder the war rages, the more life there is to be found.

So I am pleased to see their strongholds.

And their valiant efforts bring me comfort.

For their occupation would be harmonious.

It would provide ideal conditions for new beginnings.

Our defeat may not be so tragic.

So let these outcroppings serve as a reminder.

That we are more fragile than flowers and leaves.

And that there are others who would make use of what we call ours.

So we should appreciate what we have.

And what the cost of that is.

We must be humble.

For we are more plants than gods.

And for plants we are just a brief phase.

They were here long before us.

And are set to be so long after.

So before we rush to play god,

perhaps we should look to play at being like plants.

To ensure we do not cause ourselves to succumb to the siege.

But if we do,

the meek truly shall inherit the earth. 

These pictures were taken in an English city.

Of over 100,000 population.

They were all taken on one single 10 minute walk.

Across the city centre.

The sheer volume of pictures is to illustrate how much we do not see.

To show that even in our cities we are not sole masters.

That life will take any inch you let it.

That it will try anything, anywhere, despite resistance or hardship.

And that there is so much to be seen where one does not normally look.

Equality

Equality is one of my three fundamental building blocks for utopian society. While it may be a fundamental it will only be applied in a few specific ways rather than as much as possible throughout the society. I wish to maximise the freedom of all people with my ideal society, which is contrary to an attempt to make people equal in many respects. Equality is not universally a good thing, it is merely an way of approaching a group or system. The intent and results of trying to impose equality will determine how beneficial or detrimental it has been. The human rights movement seeks to gain equality in what rights are afforded to people, which is benevolent in intent and I would also regard as morally justified. The Nazis sought to create a form of equality in that they tried to make all people be of a certain breeding calibre. The motives for this desire were misguided and the results were cataclysmic. I use this rather extreme comparison to illustrate how the tool of equality is morally neutral, it just a way to do something, and so we must be very specific about where and how it should be applied to ensure only good results. We cannot infer anything from equality being a fundamental building block for society until we know the application of equality in the society.

"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal" - Aristotle.

It is evident from the outset that people are not all equal, some are taller, some are faster, some earn more money and so forth. I am in complete agreement with Aristotle that any attempt to make humans more equal in their skills, traits and abilities would be abhorrent. Even just to try and disguise and overlook this obvious facet of humanity, as had been attempted to some extents, appears to do only harm and is similarly undesirable. To confine individuality stifles artistic flair, denies personal freedoms and reduces the efficacy of the valuable mechanism of competition. A good maxim to approach the application of equality is to avoid the implementation of equality over any sphere where none is naturally observed. This maxim ensures no racial discrimination or what I deem to be immoral applications of eugenics. It also ensures that systems that operate under the maxim must recognize the desirable variance in humanity. Optimally then a utopia would be a meritocratic society in regards to human variance and use the principles of equality where human variance does not apply.

I would apply the principles of equality upon the following areas of society;

1. Any limit to a freedom of action imposed by society must apply to all members equally. In other words there should be none above the law.

2. The limits a society does impose on freedoms of action should be elected in a way that best represents the will of the people. This suggests a democratic system, ideally far more representative of any that exist presently (To define what I mean best a little more clearly I would suggest that where there are two or more distinct choices that the majority opinion be the prevailing rule however when a scalar difference between options exists, such as weather the punishment be twenty years or ten years, the average of the public opinion is likely the most representative (although does allow for unrepresentative tactical voting)).

3. Restrictions as to opinions or beliefs cannot exist, state may only prohibit certain actions. One cannot increase the overall freedom of people by any kind of restriction of belief and opinion in the same way that restriction certain actions increases the net freedom. To not be equally permissive of all beliefs and opinions goes against the first fundamental of aiming at the maximum reasonable freedom. It cannon therefore be a crime to agree with a crime, only to commit one (or to proliferate one – but that is a grey area and a subject worthy of an essay all to it's self).

3. All welfare, benefits, privileges and freedoms made available by state should be offered equally to all. I do not mean that each person should receive a welfare cheque but rather all members of the society who fall into sufficient poverty to require one should receive equal aid to others in the same situation. Much like the NHS who treat anyone who needs treating or public transport which all may use.

Before I proceed in justifying the above uses of equality I should like to talk about how society enables inequalities to arise that are beyond the scope of our natural variances. While I accept that there is huge variation in aptitude towards productivity or usefulness to society in people, I do not accept the idea that the capitalist system provides an appropriate reward on all accounts, and would describe it as a polarised meritocracy. To equalize wages would serve to create that worst form of inequality but to allow people's earnings to be entirely determined by a capitalist system will tend towards a polarized society where a majority exists relatively close to the poverty line while all the remaining surplus, almost regardless of the societies productivity, will fall into the hands of the few.

In regards the distribution of resources I imagine a scale with complete equality at one end and complete inequality at the other - capitalist societies tend to lie towards the latter end of this scale. Communists saw that this was unfair and unrepresentative but in their efforts to alleviate the problem they created many more by enforcing equality upon a thing which is naturally not so. Utopia is a search for the optimal point somewhere between those two extremes. The optimal point on this scale is what I would call the natural equality as it respects the natural differences in aptitudes but does not allow those differences to acquire disproportionate returns.

A capitalist society requires a mechanism that provides a gradual and continuous equalizing force so as to ensure that as improvements to society are made those improvements do not fall only on the very few. The mechanism I have described already exist in many forms such as income tax and other ways to redistribute wealth, which is a good start but as yet does not provide a strong enough counter to the effects of a capitalist economy. This requirement of an equalizing force is not the application of equality, as that would imply equalized wages, but it does fall into the scope of this essay as more equality is desirable than is presently observed. The route to achieving this is the application of taxation systems that do not result in costing the poor as much or more than the rich proportionally, and that are used to raise the bar of those in the worst condition socially.

My justification for equality of opinion is based on my interpretation of the origins of society. I agree mostly with Hobbes and his ideas about the social contract although I think it all began way before we had evolved into anything close to human! The group exists to allow all members a survival advantage, there is no logical reason not to join a group in evolutionary terms if it is advantageous to the individual. At some stage there was a “choice” made by the ancestors of every social animal to join a group as they felt the trade they were effectively making was in their greatest interest. One can observe in nature lone animals that normally exist in packs, this cannot happen so readily with humans as the things we learn in social life do not prepare us for life in the wild so well. The advantage any individual must gain for it to make sense to join the group is simply greater than that which they would be able to obtain otherwise and is not related at all to the advantage that may be gained by others from being in the group. If this were not the case packs of animals would not have alphas. Humanity however is beyond this stage as our existence in society is so far removed from how we would be able to exist in isolation and so there is much less chance that those who would not gain advantage from belonging to a society would remove themselves from it.

Although the advantages may not be equally distributed to all members of a society in which an individual consents to being a member we can all agree that the properties of this consent are equal. Their consent accounts for one individual as with any others consent, and it agrees to the same rules that others agree to. Consent is an intangible concept and cannot be measured, viewing consent as equal in this regard is the only reasonable way to quantify it. Democratic voting systems attempt to reflect this equality of consent to the social contract with equal weighting on votes for citizens. It is for this reason also that I regard the freedom of opinion and belief to be a part of the topic of equality as much the topic of freedom. While some beliefs or opinions may be more accurate or more beneficial in some regards than others it is not for the entity of society at large to judge as it is only in existence as a result of the beliefs and opinions of its members. It would seem paradoxical to deny the validity of something upon which you are founded. It is the equality of consent that the only “natural” equality that may be found and thus the basis for using equality to reasonably apply to areas of society where variations neither occur nor would be advantageous.

As most of our present societies do not offer a contract by which we agree to the rules in exchange for some benefits and offer us that choice, nor do they aptly enable us to exist outside of society I would argue that it would seem just and fair to ensure that all members willing to contribute to a society were afforded a level of advantage that were as comparable to the other members of the society in relative terms as may be found in social animals in nature. This comparison would be a reasonable approximation of the available offer their ancestors accepted upon the original formations of society in terms of possible gains relative to others. If it was found that top ranking pack animals on average received twice as much food as the lowest in the pack then I would aim roughly at a society where the best-off were about twice as rich as the poorest. This is how I would approximate the optimal natural equality for the variations in people and the advantages a society should confer to them as a result. Food is not the only resource that may be gained in animal societies, mating rights are one of the most significant differences in social animal hierarchies, so this method of approximation can only be a guide rather than an specific set of conditions to aim for.

I would like to reinforce the above argument to justify a move towards making the returns of society more equal for all members with the arguments first put forward by Edward Bellamy. He asserts that ninety percent of the productivity of all human labours was the result of technologies, improvements and tools made by our ancestors stretching all the way back to beyond the stone age. I think on average that figure is now greater than ninety percent but measuring how many man hours it would take a stone age man to build a microchip is not practical to measure nor relevant to understand the point. Bellamy goes on to argue the unfair nature of inheritance in that while a fathers estate may be split evenly between his offspring, when that estate is then split again to the next generation that the portion will only be split evenly when there are the same number of grandchildren for each of the first generation. If we are to suppose that we are all entitled to inherit some benefit from our ancestors in a fair manner then the vast majority of the advantages that can be conferred by society should be available to all as all are pretty near to common ancestry over a decent time period.

Even if one does not ascribe to the assumption of entitlement to inheritance then one must concede that it has only been through the benefits of society that any individual man has managed to make any significant advances. It is therefore the entity that is society that has claim over these advances and thus members of a society should have a share of what the advances may bring by what share of the society they comprise. The difference that should be allowable using this logic to constitute fair apportioning of resources is only the difference in productivity that can be gained from physical difference, the portion that has been gained through improvements made historically by others should be equal. Bellamy oddly concluded that this suggested equal wages, where as I would argue if he were correct that ninety percent of human productivity is due to the advances of society then the variance between the returns members could expect to receive would be about ten percent different to be in accordance with the logic used. I personally think that ten percent difference in returns for labour would not provide enough incentive nor reflect the non-monetary aspects of certain jobs and roles appropriately. Although I have no real justification beyond what I reckon would be a sensible figure for fair variance in returns, nor do I have a very precise figure to offer I will at least state for the record that I think that the correct maximum wealth gap a society similar to any current capitalist one should have is somewhere in the region of double the minimum wage to ten times that value (a single order of magnitude is pretty precise in many scientific schools...). I also err on the narrower end of that spectrum but I suspect that is some of my socialist bias, and even if it were the “correct” value it would be socially damaging to attempt such a huge transition in one go and would be better advised to slowly reduce the gap over a long period.

I have previously discussed how justice is a desirable attribute of a society much like freedom, but that unlike freedom, justice is subjective and cannot be satisfactorily defined. I believe concepts of equality may be used to offer justice to society in a manner which may be clearly defined (as per my four applications of equality in society). The evolutionary emergence of our concept of justice may be used to show how this may be the case. This is an argument first put forwards by John Stewart Mill and assumes (very reasonably) that individuals are self interested and that evolution is the mechanism by which life is re-designed. Self interest ensures we will attempt to help ourselves as best we can when we require something and that we will retaliate against those that would attempt us harm. Empathy allows us to put ourselves in the position of others and feel a portion of what they might feel. This is an emotion that has facilitated the socialization of many animals as it benefits the group when the members are empathic, which in turn allows the group to confer the greatest return of benefits to the individual. Self interest and the benefits of socialization evolved the feelings of empathy. I would describe the feelings we have of justice with a situation where we observe harm being done to another we empathise with. The retaliation we would like to see those causing harm receive if it were us in that situation is what we would call justice. In this case justice is in the form of retribution, however should there be no object causing harm with which to retaliate then we may only pity the person suffering harm. The person which is the object of our pity will receive justice through charity rather than retribution. Each persons own idea of justice is how they would like to be treated in a given situation and will be based on their condition in life. As such we will all have differing ideas of justice, we will never consider any charity just that rises the condition of someone suffering to above that of our own. The equality present in justice is how we come to form our view of what it is, that is by placing ourselves in each situation we wish to judge thus giving us an equal reference frame in each case. Not only do we put ourselves in each situation we also will conclude that justice will be served by bringing the condition of the other closer to that of our selves. While this is not an exact equality it is an equalizing tendency and serves to reinforce the idea of a narrowing wealth gap being just. We always view justice from the same reference point and therefore society must treat everyone the same in the eyes of the law. It is worth noting that the evolution of empathy and justice are the result of self interest and thus must be secondary to it. By this logic we can assume that acts of charity or retribution will not average out to be greater than acts of personal retaliation and self help. This again points towards a natural equality which narrows the gap in social conditions but never reaches a point of actual equality.

The virtues that a society in appreciation of the merits of equality and a desire to be just will be imbued with are that of compassion, trust, mercy, generosity, loyalty, charity, pity, guilt and altruism. The tool of equality is designed, not to be able to provide the best conditions for any specific person, but to provide the best overall conditions for society so that it is able to confer these advantages back to the individual members. In this way it mimics the evolution of empathy and justice, that of secondary facilitators of self-interest. Maximum freedom is a utopian aim to reflect the self-interested desires of the individual where as equality is a secondary support to this self-interest that is able to provide advantages to the individual only through improvement to the society. In my utopian society there of only a few areas that require complete equality and these are derived from the equality of the social contract. These are the equality of law, the equality of opinion (or voting) and the equality of aid and welfare. As an aside, two of these are also the primary reasons we exist in society – protection and security. There are also a few situations where my utopian society desires the use of equalizing forces to create the conditions of a natural or just level of equality to represent only the variance in peoples. These are directed at equalizing power and control of resources which can both be achieved by targeting money. Beyond these few but significant uses utopia has little call for tool of equality. It remains a fundamental despite being secondary to freedom and not sought throughout the utopia because it is a key aspect of the social contract and thus the basis of any society.

People Types

When I first meet a person I find myself trying to work them out, to asses what makes them tick. I do this so that communication is easier and to increase the chances that all parties get their desired outcome from the interaction. The key factor in understanding a persons action is an awareness of what motivates them. Trying to guess what a person is specifically aiming to achieve based on their actions and circumstances alone will usually result in a statement about what you would be doing in that situation. You can use a general understanding of what motivates a person reasonably well to predict what they will do in any given situation or what their aim is with a comment they have made.

I found that when I first tried to explain my method of analysing people and how to both record and interpret the results that I was lost for words, and so I set about categorising and visually representing things in order that I may attempt an explanation. I have found it a useful tool in making friends and influencing people, in not causing offence and in many other social and political situations.

In order to find the primary sources of motivation underlying a persons actions we must find all the possible ways in which a person is motivated and then distil those into group with commonalities until only a few useful groups exist that are possible ways to motivate an individual. I wish at this stage to make a distinction between two kinds of motivation which I shall call animal and personal. The animal motivations include eating, sleeping, finding a mate and other body regulation functions. Personal motivations are harder to define, particularly as they also include the acquisition of a mate. I would describe them as the result of being self aware, the systems we have for understanding our place in the world and our justifications for our existence. Psychologists would describe personal motivations as those which increase the self-esteem or self-worth, but these are very dependant on the outlook and upbringing of the individual. Unfortunately this essay is only concerned with personal motivation as most animal motivations behind peoples actions are very easy to spot, predict and relate to.

I shall start by describing the groups I was left with after my initial distillation process, however there is a reason that I was lost for words on my first attempt at describing this system and that is words are a clumsy and ambiguous way of describing it. The reality is far more dynamic and fluid with great variance and tolerances in each individual but I will do my best to describe them suitably.

The Achiever;

is someone who gains their self-esteem by setting themselves goals and then accomplishing them. The goals the achiever will set are based on their perception of the environment and their view of themselves. An achiever can exist in all walkers of life as any occupation will provide the opportunity to complete goals. The achiever is more inclined to base their performance on a comparison with their own previous results than those of others.

The Winner;

is a person who strives to achieve goals much like the achiever however these goals will be based on what they think other people would regard as worthy goals. In essence it is the same mechanism as with the achiever but rather than conjuring up goals for themselves they allow society to set them. As a result the winner is solely concerned with their performance in comparison to other peoples performance. It is also the case that the winner's goals may not seem to relate to the character as you might expect where as the achiever's aims will seem more in keeping with their character.

The Follower;

is someone that, like the winner seeks to outsource their goals. The difference between the goals of the follower and the winner is that the winner adopts goals that society offers to make them look good. The follower however adopts the goals of a group be it a religion, company or even another person but rather than those goals directly reflecting well on the follower they tend to further the cause of that which they follow. Followers tend to be meek and humble in contrast to the winner and the achiever. The follower prefers to give over their efforts to a greater cause that will have a more significant impact than any one single life. The feeling of being a part of a larger movement or organisation provides a sense of social security and offers a great deal of self-worth and esteem via the actions of their greater cause.

A problem that can be observed in followers is when they surrender to much of their person to the organisation. A group ethos is fine, it is cultural and had advantages for the individual. A very mild example of a followers tendency is to support a sports team. The supporter allows a portion of their desires and happiness to be entirely in the control of the team and their successes. I regard a surrendering such as this to be healthy however when taken to extremes such as religious cults or political fanatics the individuals lose their grounding. They are less able to empathise with more common human forms of motivation and struggle more with normal social interaction. Originally I had a category for this extreme form called the devoted but removed it for being superfluous and the rarity of those types of people.

The Giver;

is a person who gains self esteem through their ability to help others and make them happy. The giver has some similarities to the follower in that they exert their efforts into the furthering of the cause of something other than themselves but differ in the sense that the giver is inclined towards helping anyone or anything they deem worthy rather than a specific person or organisation. The giver has not outsourced their goals as they retain the capacity to judge who gets help and how to give it. A giver is able to affirm their existence and significance by their positive effect on others which allows them to feel good about themselves. Givers are most distressed when two people they usually offer help to are at odds with each other and seek to smooth social situations out.

The Affecter;

is someone who, like the the giver and the winner, seek to see an impact which they have had on others. While the giver wants everyone to like them and the winner wants others to want to be them, the affecter merely wishes to be able to observe that they have had an effect in some way. Affecters dislike more than any of the others groups to be excluded (perhaps givers are equally averse to exclusion but it is hard to find a situation where that will occur), achiever's do not need the approval of others to affirm their success and winners are able to look at exclusion as an affirmation of their success. Affecters may take many social roles from the funny one to the group gossip.

These five groups are not distinct nor can they be visually represented in a neat and suitable way. I have described my observations by using five groups, not because there are five mechanisms in play but because it is the best way to group people in order to understand motives. It is possible to see how someone could appear to be a giver yet in fact be motivated by either winner or achiever mechanisms. I would suggest that all people have a capacity to act as a follower and act to act as an affecter, these are human dispositions. Some are more compelled to follow or affect while others are compelled much less so. Some are compelled to follow greatly but barely compelled to act as an affecter and vice versa. The most suitable means of representing people in this way is by placing them somewhere on an arbitrary linear scale for both.

To distinguish between the winner and the achiever I would like to use the words introvert and extrovert but these are already used terms for this sort of thing and so will be confusing as my intended meaning is quite specific where as the understood psychological meaning is more general. I would say the introvert looks to themselves for approval where as the extrovert looks to others. This is why a giver can really be a winner or an achiever because they can be acting either in that way to gain the approval of others or themselves.

Introvert and extrovert are the two halves of the linear scale describing the affecter tendency. In most cases, such as the giver, the motives will be some combination of both effect. Being kind makes you feel good about yourself but also makes others think well of you and thus hits two birds with one stone (assuming you have a disposition that is not entirely polar on the described scale, which is undesirable as extremes tend to be any combination of; socially stigmatised, outcast, depressed or socially disadvantaged to some degree such as the highly insecure polar extrovert or the recluse and emphatically distant polar introvert). The affecter is essentially just quite an “extroverted” person with no specific outlet for their requirement to interact, winners and some givers however have found some agreeable outlet for their level of extrovertness, otherwise they too would be affecters.

Rather than five groups we have now two actual mechanisms in play that may be used to describe the groups; ones tendency to follow other's causes and ones requirement to observe an affect in others. Although these two scales seem to represent human social motives most accurately I find them less useful than the five arbitrary groups in assessing the actions of others. Factors not accounted for by the two scales will determine how people perceive the world and therefore how they will manifest their particular dispositions. The five groups on the other hand broadly outline a basic idea of manifestations of various combinations of positions on the two scales. Some groups account for a much larger range within the two scales than others and some groups overlap some of the same combinations to account for differing possible manifestations of them.

My five groups could be extended to allow greater depth but my preference is for the least I feel necessary. These groups are a lot like the Belbin list of the nine roles people adopt in groups or the Merrill-Wilson group of four personality types, rather than an absolute plot on a set of scales they are mix-and-match allowing you to be a bit of this and a bit of that etc. There are likely links between my groups and the groups in these other systems and, as I have shown with the extrovert/introvert idea, links with Myers-Briggs method of categorising people. As we are using clumsy language to describe something far more complicated and not entirely understood it is quite easy to appreciate how all of these existing systems are equally right and are just differing ways of viewing it. Generally the existing systems are designed for a larger scale practical use than the easing of social interaction and so focus on group team work and how best to encourage productivity. These systems focus on personality types which assuredly contain elements of that persons underlying personal motives but only in specific ways making them less useful for predictions in the larger scope of social interactions.

A combination of all available methods of grouping peoples character and disposition is likely the most accurate description of people we have available at present. The more you know about a person the more able you are to understand the nuances of their behaviour, this applies in both the application of these various ambiguous groupings and by good old fashioned spending time with people. The latter far outdoes the former as humans are so vastly diverse that no degree of groupings and categories can ever hope to fully describe an individual, only their likely tendencies. Diverse as humans may be there are finite different possible arrangements of DNA and within those combinations there will be many repeated traits. Certainly each person is then moulded by experience and nurture which will also differ but commonalities are found throughout people, in mannerisms, speech, opinions and indeed motives (facilitated in part by the follower tendency). Most things we would use to describe people may also be observed in others, it is the different combinations and ranges of these myriad building blocks that make individuals. Our own understandings of people, our interpretations of how to best group character traits and our intuition regarding people based on our life's worth of observing others will always be the best tools we have because we do not need to use language to apply it. We can try and understand other peoples systems to gain a better understanding for ourselves but it seems unlikely that we will be able to apply it to the same effect as the person who devised it. My recommendation for taking anything useful from this kind of psychology is to interpret what you read into your own way of understanding things and in a way that fits with your observations.

Returning to my model I should like to describe a possible mechanism for the alteration over time of a characters motives and to an extend their general contentedness. Imagine we set an arbitrary level for a person in each of the five groups – affecter, achiever, giver, winner and follower, to account for how much of that persons self-esteem would be gained from each groups mechanisms to optimally suit that persons disposition. I should then like to set another level in each of the groups to show the actual level they received in the course of a time period. The further below the desired levels the actual is, the more discontent the person will be. Say a winner has failed to impress anyone at all in the time period then they will be discontent. Some people have higher overall levels that they desire than others and could be described as needier although I dislike the negative connotations of the word to be happy using it in this context.

Regardless of how high any particular persons desired levels might be I predict that they will be shaped over time by the average level they achieve in each category relative to their desire such that the desired level is able to slowly shift to be more in accordance with the achieved levels. If a person who is broadly a winner with some follower dispositions fails to gain much renown or respect in their efforts over a long enough period of time but, gains greater reward from the things they have chosen to follow than they desired, then they will gradually become more of a follower and less of a winner, provided their actual levels remain roughly that way. I suspect that nurture and experience play the largest part in these dispositions but it would be curious to note any biological indicators that correlate with the trends I have described in peoples base motives.

I am not sure how useful divulging this system will be, particularly as I have not given much time to provide examples of its use, nor do I intend to as they would be too lacking in both detail and number to really paint a good picture of the usefulness of this system. First one needs to roughly assess the various levels in another and then they are able to use that knowledge to predict motive and understand actions. The latter part is largely common sense, if you know someone to be basically a pure winner and they do something not related to eating, sleeping or mating then you can be assured that the only reason they have just done what ever it was they did to either impress those in view or to impress others than will hear about those actions. Although most people are a mixture of most categories there are generally one that predominates and one can usually eliminate most other categories through the person actions not making any sense in those contexts. It is the actions that only really conform to one of the groups in terms of making sense by having a motive that enable the best predictions about a persons character. When you spot these you can comfortably say that person is in part deriving their self-esteem from this mechanism. 

Civil Unrest in London

For those who are not familiar with recent events in England I shall briefly give my understanding of what occurred in early August 2011. A person was shot and killed by armed police, the details of the shooting have not been entirely disclosed and so speculation on the specifics is not too useful although a police officer was also injured in the incident by a firearm, giving the police reason to use lethal force. This lead to a peaceful protest in north London regarding the use of weapons in the police force. This protest became a riot which then spread throughout the capital and then to other locations within England over the course of the next few days. The riots, although triggered by the initial protest were not in support of the protest, they were not organized and simply ended in a great deal of looting, vandalism and violence.

While the riots are deplorable and sadden me greatly due to the dimmer view I now have of my fellow man it is worth having a look at the social causes. People may take my arguments to mean I am allocating blame for the riots to the system and not the participants, however this is far from the case. Blame is not a tool that helps us achieve anything and proliferates hatred. Those who vandalized, assaulted and stole over these days should be held entirely accountable and served justice for their actions, it is no way to behave, regardless of the motives. I can certainly sympathize with those who feel forceful measures should have been employed earlier in preventing the riots, and to those also who feel an example must be made of those found guilty of participating.

The questions I wish to probe are what social conditions allow events like this to trigger, to which the answer is succinct and clear and that is that there is a lack of public respect for state institutions. The level of respect the public feel for those in government has been declining since the days of Margaret Thatcher, who was the last respected prime minister to hold office in the UK despite paradoxically being somewhat hated by a large proportion of people, even those who respected her. The media has mocked, belittled and manipulated politicians more in direct correlation with the decline in respect. High ranking officials and politicians have not helped them selves either recently with blatant dishonesty, accepting bribes, losing/divulging state secrets, suspicious wars, financial crises, expenses scandals and the cringe-worthy patronising of the public. The split coalition government need not have been a detrimental effect but in hindsight it certainly has not gained the government any respect and likely lost some too.

The police have lost some respect recently as an institution due to the wide publication of a few instances of police violence, likely facilitated by the internet as I am sure instances like this have always occurred. To retain the confidence of the public the police force needs to deal with violent officers severely rather than try and dumb the incident down or cover it up. For a police force to work the public need to be able to feel they can trust any uniform regardless of who is wearing it and a single incident that is not properly resolved can shatter this trust bond. To add to this there have also been a few fairly recent incidents of police using lethal force is questionable situations. This is mostly unfortunate, as it is very hard to operate perfectly under very stressful conditions, but the consequences are high. To avoid loss of public faith when the odd inevitable accident occurs I feel like the open and honest approach is the only available option which has not as yet been practised in this country in my memory.

Those from the generations during and just after World War II had pride and respect and camaraderie. Politicians were believed, the public got behind their ideas rather than picking them apart in cheap satire. In this period society thrived, it was not perfect but in the context of this essay it was solid. The best word to describe what has been lost from politicians and those in high office in England is integrity. I have given some recent examples to demonstrate this loss but I have not offered any explanation for why this loss has been observed. I suspect the answer is not a simple one but I do not know what it is. I speculate that it is largely due to social conditions and how they affect the voting public and those in positions of power. I would argue that our relative opulence with no social direction other than to redeposit it into the capitalist economy has a large part to play in the present social conditions. We are not fighting a war or competing in a space race, I am not advocating war as a positive, but nations, just like people, need direction, and winning a war is most certainly that.

I would also argue that the power balance has shifted away from governments and towards media outlets and big business. This power shift is obviously not in the best interests of society as media outlets and big business are interested in profits and not the state of the nation. In much the same way that middle management lackeys who tow the company line rather than stand for the well-being of the workers do not gain the respect of the workers, the politicians and officials who pander to large corporations lose the respect of the public. I am sure there are many other possible reasons that have contributed to a lack of respect for officials but I would strongly argue that it is this lack of respect that has brought about conditions suitable for rioting and social unrest.

All that is left to do with the assertion that a lack of public respect for the state will lead to riots is to suggest ways in which a state can gain respect. I mentioned honesty and transparency with information as good methods to deal with issues in the police force and the same applies across the board. People will generally assume the worst when they do not know, we are afraid of the unknown. I should like to see more genuine people in politics who spoke their minds and I should like to see the public more accepting of such people and voting for them. I respect the politician who admits they will raise taxes, I might not like the idea of paying more tax however and so the problem becomes clearer. Those who wish to avoid future riots may wish to consider their motives when they next cast their votes as there is more to politics than manifestos.

Steps have been taken to reduce the extent to which a single company can have control over media outlets in the country which is a great move to reduce the control they have over politicians. This is the most important industry to ensure has a lot of competition however not the only industry and so these steps are only the first that must be made in removing influence of individual interests in politics.

It is ironic that the main factor in curtailing the recent riots was not the efforts of those in power but the response of the non-rioting public who were appalled and wished to distance themselves from the rioting contingent of society. Social stigma is what saved the day so woe betide any government without respect who must deal with civil unrest with direction that has public support. In such a situation the government will fail, the only thing they are able to chose is the death toll. The best prevention for such a thing is to have the support of the people, which serves everyone's interests, the politicians and the public.

Economics Part III: Solutions

Being a perfectionist and a utopian, the ways in which I devised solutions to economic problems was very idealistic. I envisaged a perfect society then fitted an appropriate economic system to that society. As such the vast number of my solutions are not practicable in most, if not all, modern economies. Rather than detail the complete utopian economic system at this stage I will outline a few ways in which we could make moves in that direction and attempt to suggest alternate solutions that my help in our actual economic climate rather than my idealists world. Prior to that I will recap what I consider to be the main problems we observe in the present system.

1. The tendency for capital to aggregate

2. The problems of large companies monopolies and their tendencies to form.

3. Real values being distorted by the existence of multiple currencies

4. The control of the money supply resting mainly in the private sector and thus largely speculative

5. The incentive to use capital rapidly so as to not lose value on it

6. The boom bust economic cycle

1.

The manner in which capital will naturally flow towards large pools of capital has some merits. An argument in it's favour is that it creates the ability to undertake grand projects that may otherwise struggle to gain the required funds. Another is that it creates a demand for goods that are too expensive to be used by everyone, by having a demand those goods will become cheaper over time and subsequently become available to the masses. In purely economic terms the gravity of capital is not too much of a problem, it is in a more general social manner in which I think there is cause for concern. Economically the gravity of capital encourages massive companies and monopolies which are a mixed blessing and will be discussed in turn.

The wealth gap is a social issue and it is exacerbated by allowing capital to aggregate. A great deal of studies have shown that a large wealth gap is linked to high crime rate. Although much harder to measure it is fairly easy to observe for the open minded traveller that the people in areas with narrow wealth gaps tend to be far happier in their lives (it is also worth noting that the areas with narrower wealth gaps tend to be the poorer overall areas yet that does not seem to impact the content of the people). Other social grounds to want to reduce the aggregating properties of capital is the argument that money is power, and by allowing individuals to obtain an incredible degree of power they may reduce the freedoms of others.

Capital will always have a tendency to aggregate because of it's flexible purchasing power and economies of scale. These are aspects of trade we do not wish to eliminate so the solution is to minimise the negative repercussions they cause. There are two well understood routes towards this end, progressive tax systems and restrictions on loans. Both of these routes, as we shall see become a theme in this essay, have pros and cons. A progressive tax system will help to reduce the wealth gap as it takes proportionally more money from those who have more. The downside is it can deter some of the most skilled workers and profitable companies from operating in societies where they will retain less of their profits. A sensible welfare system has a similar effect of reducing the wealth gap and has less economic downsides than heavy progressive taxes, although costs a government rather than funding it.

Restrictions upon loans does not directly reduce the wealth gap but it would reduce the rate at which capital was able to flow over time to larger pools of capital thus serving a similar end. An additional advantage that restrictions upon loans offers, which progressive taxes do not, is that a larger portion of a societies labour and wealth would be put to more productive use as the lending of money would not be as profitable so it would not be able to employ as much labour. This advantage comes at the cost of potentially stifling growth by making necessary capital unobtainable to would-be entrepreneurs.

The correct approach to loans or the sale of capital is a very tricky subject. Restrictions to loans is an ambiguous term and needs some clarification before any advantages it may confer can really be justified. Essentially whenever money is borrowed in return for interest paid on the loan, the interest is all money that is directly flowing to a larger pool of capital. When that money is borrowed so that it may fund productive labour that is good for society but it will still syphon some of the wealth. When people borrow money to fund their private lives it has no benefit to society while syphoning wealth. We have built up around a system where credit is essential for business and for individuals. A house tends to be such a vast investment that a loan is nearly always required in order to purchase one. If we were to move away from the frequent private need of credit it would be to the overall advantage of society to prohibit most forms of private loan. Moving away from a credit orientated economy, even for just the private sector, is no easy feat but there are some easy areas where we could make a start. Credit cards and higher purchase deals on products could be restricted, the latter very easily. Such a move would appear to have damaged the economy initially as less sales would be made and finance companies would be less profitable however many of the sales that were not made would have become bad debt and the money that was not made by the credit card companies would remain in the hands of the people.

A different way to restrict the polarisation of capital via the interest paid on loans is to reduce the profit that the lender is allowed to make from issuing a loan. This has several good effects, firstly it reduces the profits of the lender such that they must asses risk more carefully and therefore avoid acquiring bad debts, a bank could not just charge greater interest to compensate for higher risks. Secondly it stimulates an economy in that capital may be obtained more cheaply for those the lenders deem to not be a risk. Lower interest rates on loans also means the flow of capital towards capital will be slowed. Sadly all these proposed restrictions will likely annoy a lot of people, not least the finance sector who would stand to lose a great deal of profits. The finance sector has already grown to be one of the largest sectors world wide, only challenged by the oil companies, and as such they wield great political power. Forcing restrictions to the ways in which money is loaned for profit is in the interest of society but will be a slow process at best.

The aspect of loans which relate to business transactions and set up are a much more problematic case. While reducing the interest rates that could be charged to businesses would still be beneficial, the matter of implementing restrictions beyond that is very difficult to find an optimal solution for. Ideally capital should be available for would-be and capable entrepreneurs and companies looking to make efficiency improvements, however ideally it would also be free of charge and never fall into the hands of those that would squander it. Presently we place the responsibility of finding those capable of turning capital into profit with the finance sector and in return they take a significant portion of the spoils. Asset allocation is not something I have completely solved in my utopian economy as yet and so offering solutions for our chaotic and speculative economy is well beyond me at this time.

The free market allocating assets does appear to provide a good method of allocation in many respects yet it has its failings beyond that of syphoning wealth. Long term investments are often some of the most beneficial to society, such as the creation of new infrastructure, yet are unappealing to the finance sector for their slow returns and the unpredictable nature of the future. To encourage funding of these forms of investment a government is able to either subsidize those loans or provide the capital themselves. The latter option is appealing but history has repeatedly shown us that governments are not well suited to spending money sensibly and efficiently with satisfactory consistency. A sensible starting place to improve the effect of business loans is to tentatively reduce the allowable profits that may be made on issuing business loans while ensuring this reduction is a dynamic and flexible system. The state could also investigate ways in which it could provide grants and interest free loans that were of comparable usefulness to society as the private sector loans.

A final suggestion on the prevention of aggregating capital is an increased incentive for companies to operate reasonable profit sharing schemes with all employees. Rather than operating profit sharing schemes as a token addition, like a bonus, to a salary one could support themselves on alone, a more equal split between wages and a share of the employers profits is my suggestion. Not only would this be a fair and sensible way to distribute wealth it would encourage workers in all areas of a company, regardless of their prospects within the company to work well as they will be a direct benefactor of the companies successes. Another way to phase it would be to say that it maximises the potential of the division of labour. Governments could offer tax breaks to companies offering profit sharing schemes of this nature and allow differing regulations for minimum wages etc. to encourage profit sharing.

2.

The aggregation of capital helps companies to grow, which has both advantages and disadvantages for society. As companies get larger they are more able to gain advantages from economies of scale which is an advantage that may be conferred to society by reducing the cost of their commodity. This in turn will help that company to grow yet further, a force which is likely much more powerful in the formation of massive companies than the aggregation of capital is. As companies become larger they also have more access to capital and are inclined towards spending it in ways that do not confer and advantage to society, such as advertising. The last issue concerning large companies that I wish to discuss is their ability to deal with competition. The larger a company is the more aggressive it may be with pricing and location selection, in effect increasing it's own costs to force another company out of the market. This is a cost that the public will pay for but that provides them no long term advantage. A smaller company may have a better product and have the potential to serve society better yet a bigger company could spend some capital to neutralize the threat of the smaller company. In doing this the larger company costs the public and denies them the possibility of the alternative.

A monopoly is undesirable even though it may have the best potential to exploit economies of scale for two reasons. First it has no incentive to improve as there is no available alternative and secondly it is able to charge whatever makes it the most profit rather than the price determined by the markets. Companies tend towards these monopolistic conditions as they gain market share. There are ways to prevent companies gaining too great a market share but they are not universally applicable. Firstly it is hard to know where the best compromise in market share is between good economies of scale and good competition, especially as this will vary from industry to industry. Secondly there is little way to tell or prove if a company has gained and retained their market share by producing the best products and serving the public interest best or by adverts, marketing, underhand pricing strategies and so forth. The former kind of company will best serve society it is allowed to grow without hindrance or interference with where as the latter kind of company is best kept smaller and with less power.

An idea that would allow society some control over large companies is giving the state the ability to purchase shares of a company in some proportion to that companies market share. The mechanism to decide when a state purchased part of a company and then if/how it became involved in decision making for that company. Ideally it would be some democratic mechanism so as to reflect the public opinion of the large company in question. I think the first moves towards moderating the more socially dangerous large companies is to concede that it is not just monopolies that break down the efficacy of free markets and allow bodies like the competition commission more scope to investigate any company of significant market share. Interest free state funded worker by-outs or forced franchising are alternate methods by which a government could look to reduce the formation of socially damaging large businesses. I should ultimately like to see a dynamic system where the distinction between a private company and a state funded service is less clear as companies grow in size,

3.

The capacity for altering real values of commodities due to imbalances in exchange rates can allow large economies to take advantage of the labours of others as shown in part II of this series. There are two very simple solutions to get around this each with their own downsides. Firstly there is moving to a single global currency which would be a large undertaking and cause for nations to squabble with one another. As the Euro has shown us recently there are other serious issues with joining currencies that can occur where nations experience rapid changes in costs and the economic chaos start to bankrupt the nation which puts strains on the currency.

The second solution is easier to implement and requires less social changes or agreements between nations. If a nation were to impose import and export duties of a specific value upon goods entering and leaving the country then the effects of altering currency values can be negated. The specific value is unfortunately hard to accurately asses as it requires a value for both nations rates of inflation and an idea of the average lag phase between currencies being exchanged and then returning to the home nation.

If country A sells goods to country B and country A has roughly 1% annual inflation and country B has 3% and the lag phase of the return of currency A from country B to country A is two years then a 4% duty should be levied on the sale of goods from country A to country B at that time.

[The difference between inflation rates ( 3 – 1 = 2 ) times by the lag phase ( 2 x 2 = 4), if the lag phase was 6 months then the duty would be 1% ( 2 x 0.5 = 1 )]

Accurately measuring ones own countries inflation rates is far from an exact science. Measuring lag phases and other nations inflation rates adds further inaccuracy to the solution. This solution may also alienate nations from global trading to an extent as their prices increase and become more variable in nature.

4.

Generally he most relevant factor in assessing the money supply of a nation is by looking to see how much credit the finance sector is issuing. The stronger the economy appears to be the more willing the finance sector will be to issue credit and so the money supply increases thus inflating the currency. Banks are able to issue loans beyond the actual credit they have on their balance sheets because of the returns they are due over time, hence the effect of increasing the amount of money in the system. While increased investment from banks has the effect of stimulating the economy it also helps ensure a boom bust cycle will occur as no significant forces exist that counter this positive feedback effect. Boom bust cycles might well have some economic merits in that growth is as quick as it can be for periods yet there are frequent culling periods where by companies that have not kept pace with the times go bust. Socially however this upheaval is not helpful as people lose jobs and become stressed. The aim is to find a solution where economies and businesses are allowed to rapidly evolve and adapt as with the boom bust cycle but that also provide social stability. It would seem impossible to maximise the benefits of both aspects so an appropriate balance must be found that exists between the two.

Limits on what banks may charge as interest are one of the best solutions for this issue as well as others. As increased investment drives inflation the profits that can be made on loads with fixed interest is reduced and so a negative feedback mechanism would be introduced to the system. Another solution is to impose limits on lending, in the extreme case a bank would only be allowed to loan what it has on it's balance sheets which would limit the rate at which a boom would runaway in to a bust. More reasonable restrictions to limit the issuing of credit where banks are able to put themselves into the negative but to a lesser degree are being considered in light of the most recent bust. This will certainly help the problem and is a good place to start without angering the finance sector too greatly. The main difficulty is making restrictions that are not able to be easily bypassed by banks in a legal sense by achieving the same end but by different means. The complexity of present day economics is largely down to the finance sector inventing new ways to continue to do things that have historically been controlled in some manner. Specific restrictions are hard to keep being useful and eventually just serve to clutter up the industry with needless bureaucracy. More general restrictions that can apply across the board that are difficult to misinterpret are the best approach.

5.

The incentive to use capital quickly is driven by inflation and the knowledge that money loses value over time. The only real way to achieve this is to develop a system that operates under deflation. The reason I view the incentive to use capital quickly as detrimental to society is because it reduces the relevance of actual efficiency in a process. It may well become more efficient in a fiscal sense to immediately do something where as in time and resources terms it may be better to wait. In essence the changes in money cause a divergence between what is best for the individual and what is best for society. Efficient use of labour and resources are best for society where as maximum profitability is best for the individual. These two do go hand in hand for the most part but the closer they are the better, and this is best achieved by minimising the effect of time on the value of money.

In an individual sense I would also argue that inflation encourages consumerism. People would rather buy cheap and often and like to spend the majority of their disposable income, which gives the appearance of boosting the economy. Although money will be circulating faster and there will be a greater demand for goods this does not really advance the condition of society. In fact more labour and resources will be expended than are required and things will tend towards compromising quality for cost. As society improves under an inflating currency the improvements made to labour and production are not used to directly benefit the society but instead fuel a greater demand for consumer goods. Those no longer employed in the improving industries tend to exert their labours on supplying the increasing demand for consumer goods. This creates quite a static environment where peoples situations remain very much the same while they acquire more stuff. I have no problems with people wanting stuff but I should like to see a system set up so that peoples actions were less directly influenced by the economic climate and more by their personal preferences. To create such a climate would require inflation rates and interest rates to be as close to zero as possible, with the latter obviously being less close.

6.

The boom bust cycle exists as a result of the private sector having a great deal of control upon the economy, in particular the money supply as dealt with in section 4. The problem of the boom bust cycle can be controlled to a large extent with some monitoring and the use of controls or restrictions on certain limits. When in the boom period of the cycle inflation wants to be a low as possible while charged interest rates on loans are better off higher. Also in a boom the degree of debt a bank can have and continue lending with should be far lower. In a bust period each of those three factors wishes to be the other way around. This way a depression is alleviated by creating an incentive to spend and invest capital and greater ease of obtaining it which in turn creates jobs and circulates money faster. A boom is likewise stymied from spiralling rapidly our of control and well beyond it's means to self support. Low inflations and high cost on obtaining capital are both factors that will help rein in excessive growth. The factors discussed are all private sector mechanisms but the state can also play an important role in facilitating the required shifts in economic climate to act as a another dampener in the boom bust cycle. When in a depression a state should massively increase public spending and incur debt or mint money to do so, this will increase the money supply and cause inflation stimulating the economy. This must be done reasonably as hyper inflation will cause all manner of social and economic disasters. When in times of strong economic growth the state is best advised to freeze public sector wages, repay all government debts and invest little in new infrastructure. This may seem like a counter intuitive approach but that is because it is pre-emptive, most states are too large to simply go with the economic flow and must act instead to preserve stability. A state can also aid the climate appropriately by increasing progressive taxes in times of a boom and increasing spending in the welfare system in a bust.

If you were to plot a graph of economy strength (in whatever measure you deem best) verses time in a boom bust economy it would be very spiky with rapid increases in strength followed by rapid declines. The aim of imposing variable restriction to interest charges and lender debt levels combined with attempts to control inflation is to act as a negative feedback system so that a graph of economy strength would no longer be spiky but comprised of smooth curves that undulate up and down like gentle waves on the sea.

There are many difficulties with all of these simple solutions, firstly how does one judge the condition of the economy exactly? There are many different ways to do this and many different opinions as to the current state of things and so electing exactly how to behave would be hard. Economies are too chaotic to allow the use of rigid and approximate equations to directly govern state decisions however equations could be designed that would act as a guide and would perhaps suggest a range of appropriate levels that could be set.

That concludes this essay series on economics but it is assuredly not the last time that I shall be touching on the subject. There is due an essay describing my utopian economic system which will refer to much of the content in these essays, both in ways to optimise the positive aspects of trade and different suggestions to avoid the problems that have been highlighted here. Money is a great tool and can be used to create conditions where the optimal fiscal choice for the individual coincides with the best actions for society as a whole which is somewhat of a mantra in my utopian economy yet is is a wise mantra for any economist. People are self interested, which should be used to an economies advantage, but when a flaw exists in a system people will exploit that to their advantage. I hope with this essay series I have shown mechanically where these flaws lie and how they have come to be exploited. I also hope that my proposed solutions are not too ambiguous or optimistic to be of any merit towards the continued improvement of society regardless of the utopian considerations.