Keep Calm, Don’t panic.. it’s only a game.
I think in these times we are having it needs to be stated, and stated clearly and simply that this financial crisis we are having is only a financial crisis – it’s not a real crisis. The crops have not failed, we have not run out of food or the ability to grow food. It might be objected that we are fast running out of the money to buy food and this is true but it is quite different altogether from actually running out of food.
I want you to think long and hard about the next statement I’m going to make : “The
Financial system is an artificial system”. I want you to think about this statement when you see hungry people in Africa and the coming food queues in the Euro zone, when you are stuck on a squashed tube train or in a traffic jam on the way to a job you don’t care for but you need to do to pay the rent, I want you to think about it when you see 600 women a day in the UK abort their precious unborn babies, when
you see women in your office with computer mouse mats with faded pictures of their
children, I want you to think about it when you wake up in the middle of the night because you can’t sleep because you can’t pay the mortgage – it’s an artificial system – it’s made up !
The “laws of economics” – on the odd time when they are not just plain wrong – are merely the effects of the rules of the game. In a game like football there are two types or law : the law of physics : if you kick the ball hard it will go far, and the artificial laws – the rules of the game – “if you kick the ball before the whistle is blown the goal does not count etc…. The rules of the game can be changed, whereas the laws of physics can’t. Most of the “Laws of Economics” are just the result of the artificial rules of the financial system – and these can also be changed.
Now that you hopefully have started to think about this concept it might be better for you to stop reading and do you own thinking and come up with a better system or improved rules.
Maybe ask your friendly neighbourhood financial system designer to come up with
something, demand your MP set up a committee to investigate this problem and get the best brains in the country and from abroad to address this technical issue.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and I’ve set up a little WordPress blog that attempts, to show, in four or five articles, some of the major shortfalls in “economic laws” as we now know them along with a halfway adaptation of the present financial system in order to fix it that I’ve called NEFS – Net Export Financial Simulation.
I think it’s a really good start but if you read it, you may then think about it using NEFS as your starting point and it might be better if you think about this important issue using your own starting point.
Calling all Game Theorists
NEFS is a half-way house between the present financial system and a new one all together.
What I’m going to do now is show you what I think could be a “new one altogether” :
I’ve called it “Points”.
In a Points system you have
a) People
b) The Points Office
c) Business
In a Points system you don’t use money – you use Points – like in a child’s game.
The first thing to note is, unlike a modern bank, a Points Office is not a business, it has no shares, no dividends – it’s best thought of as ticket kiosk issuing points instead of tickets.
What happens is that the “Policy manager” of the Points office is elected – like a politician by the people. In the election hustings, various potential Policy managers put forward various policies themes : Richer people, more holidays, better schools, better roads, shops, better food… better stuff.
Then, upon election, Business comes to the policy manager to request points for various projects and the Points Policy manager issues Points with reference to the election manifesto. The business then pays the people Points to work to build what the people have had some major say in in terms of general theme and emphasis.
At the next election of the “Policy manager” the policies are reviewed by the electorate. If these policy offices are regionalised then different areas will have different characters depending on the profile of work done in the area.
What price ? – how many points. As part of the terms and conditions of the points issued to business it’s a good idea to compare quotes from different business as to a) how many points they need to get the job done and b) what percentage on top of cost they will charge the customers. So if the business wanted to make T-Shirts then, at a cost of 5 Points per T-Shirt they could charge 10 % profit and sell the T-shirts for 5.5 Points. As the Points issuing office could be aware of this it could issue to all the people 0.5 points X the number of T-Shirts sold so that the people would have the points to buy the goods – as you will see in the WordPress blog I show that there is a major mathematical problem with Profit in the present system : Under the Current system the business could only sell all the T-Shirts it makes if someone somewhere goes in to debt for 0.5 per T-Shirt so, as you can see from what I call the Sisyphus Equation using numbers from the National Accounts : Net Retained Profit of Companies = Net debt of everyone else – Individuals + Government + Foreigners – to
the penny.
A suggested feature of the system is that the Points office be allowed to issue Points to the people for free – this addresses another huge difficulty of our present financial system. We live a computerised production age – we don’t need full employment of old fashioned inefficient human labour lugging things up ramps here and there to produce all the goods and services we need and want – that’s the facts of the real production potential we have and this clashes somewhat tragically with the artificial rules of the Financial system that says if you don’t have one of the few jobs left you will be poor.
Such a system is not a monopoly – it’s a very good idea to have several different business’s producing similar goods, also if people want to save their points and use it for a project that is off-manifesto then they can do that with their own saved points and then they can charge as much as they want for the produce, but if they are going to be using public points then their reward is say 10 percent of profits should they sell their stock. It maybe an idea for them to sell their goods for less than the cost of them and the points office could then write-off the rest so goods produced via the points office, which is via the will of the people in rough terms, could be a lot cheaper and easier to sell. This would encourage other business to use the points office and in this way the will of the people will be brought to bear on the what they spend their time working on and what is in the shops for them to buy.
The Points office and the electorate won’t get it all right all the time – especially at first – there will doubtlessly be a learning curve.
This thing about the business going to the points office to get points to pay the people to set’em a working is not novel. It’s what happens at the moment with business going to the bank to loan money except there is no election of the man who chooses which of the businesses to loan the money to.
By using the word “Points” instead of “Credits” or “Script” or “New Money” or something like that I hope to make it easier for people to “get it” – that it’s only a game and then natural human ingenuity and professional Game theorists can then hopefully come up with something better than the “NEFS” and “Points” Systems I’ve come up with and/or make useful additions and critiques of it. – What do you think ?
netexportfinancialsimulation 