Vincent Ferrini, in his Gloucester Daily Times review of my book titled The Economic Process (2002), stated that the book “has the answers to universal poverty and the anxieties of the affluent.” Precisely. That is the essence of Concordian economics.
That is one of the reasons why the other day I participated in the Open Mic program of the Gloucester Writers, the organization that carries Ferrini’s legacy forward.
But there was another much deeper reason for me to be there that night. As I explained in the third edition of this book, the changes I have brought to economic theory make economics again intelligible to intellectuals. Intellectuals, therefore, are presented with the golden opportunity to neglect the misleading mathematics of modern economics and regain control of the full spectrum of public decisions concerning our life, liberty, and property. Just as intellectuals used to do before Adam Smith.
A tall order, perhaps; but an indispensable one. The ship of state is running through very perilous waters. Only sane and sound economic policies will right its course. All hands aboard!
Once intellectuals again assume responsibility for the content of our public discourse, they can participate fully in the performance of some of the most important tasks that are ahead of us here in Gloucester, and most other communities as well. I have put these tasks in the form of three interlocked Internet petitions:
The intent of these petitions is addressed in a variety of my writings and more intensively in To My Polis—with Love as well as in two recent articles:
The first petition calls for full respect by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) of the laws of nature—rather than evanescent statistical laws that the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) has imposed upon the Service amidst much mistrust engendered in fishermen, the general public, and especially in ecologists. Unnecessary dislocations in the family fishing fleet have occurred, as a consequence of which we import—at great burden on our international balance of payments—about 90% of the seafood consumption in the United States.
Biological laws on land as well as at sea tell us that nature keeps a balance in its affairs by allowing predators to do their job until they become so overpowering that their stocks collapse and, in turn, become the prey of the moment. It has to be highly recommended that the US Congress amend MSA to annul its destructive regulations and require the satisfaction of only two mandates: First, NMFS has to do the utmost to prevent overfishing by the large corporations, national as well as international corporations; second, NMFS has to allow fishermen to guard against overfishing by the natural predators of the moment and thus work in unison with—not against—the laws of nature.
NMFS has to tell fishermen what are the species of fish that are in abundant supply at the moment. They are the predators. To restrict our observation to only the most important sequence, at times herring and mackerel (the pelagics) that live in the middle of the water column are the natural predators of bottom fish; at other times the bottom fish are the predators of the pelagics. When the larvae of bottom fish rise to the surface of the water column in search of food, the plankton, and light, they become a feast for the pelagics. Ditto for the codlings that need to go back down the bottom of the ocean to live with their friends and relatives.
I was blown away when a Park Ranger in the Far West explained that the same relationships exist on land between trees and the bush underneath them. Ditto, when I learned that lemmings do not kill themselves by jumping off cliffs to make us laugh. They are chased by their predators. Ditto for the relationship between sheep and coyotes.
The forceful insertion of ecologists, and fisheries economists, into this discourse is a strange one. Only one question is allowed here. Do extreme ecologists ever consider that fish die by natural death—and that it is quite appropriate for fishermen to catch them before they die? Do tree-huggers prefer to see trees destroyed by fire, rather than being systematically harvested by lumberjacks? This, of course, is not the place to go into the relationships between family farms and corporate agricultural operations.
For millions of years, human beings used to adapt to these natural ebbs and flows. During the last forty years, due to a coincidence of events, fishermen have not respected the laws of nature. The breaking point has been a lack of market for pelagics. It is at this nodal point that the establishment of a surimi plant inserts itself in the discourse. Surimi offers a transformation of pelagics, or other fish, into seafood analogue that ultimately assumes the shape of shrimp or crab meat, and remains pure protein in the process. The surimi plant, by creating a market for pelagics, will approximate conditions needed to reestablish the natural balance in the fisheries.
Where will the money come from for funding the surimi plant and, conceivably, for the reconstruction of the fishing fleet along “green/low-carbon” lines, as long advocated by Susanne Altenburger and her late husband, Phil Bolger? The question can easily be extended to cover all needs of community economic development. The money is… where the money is created. As I have pointed out since 1987, money is created by the Federal Reserve System (the Fed). Hence the second petition.
The intent of the second petition is to create a natural ebb and flow movement in the process of capital formation. So far, we have allowed the “animal spirits” of mankind to run into an interminable cycle of boom and bust, which is creating faulty conditions of inordinate wealth for the few and miserable conditions for the many.
We can do better. We must do better. The second petition calls upon Congress to establish these three firm rules for the operations of the Fed: 1. Issue loans only for the creation of real wealth; 2. Issue loans at cost; 3. Issue loans to individual entrepreneurs, cooperatives, corporations with ESOPs and/or CSOPs, and to public entities with taxing power so that loans can be repaid. This last condition is more fully explained by the Gloucester Resolution, a resolution unanimously approved by the Gloucester City Council on September 2, 2008.
While simple, these rules are far from simplistic. They will put a stop to perhaps five thousand years of history in which money has controlled people, and will inaugurate an age in which people control money. This is the age of Economic Justice—for all, poor, middle class, and the rich. This is the age of Economic Rights and Responsibilities.
To my unending amazement, I have discovered that justice is a virtue and that justice is strictly linked to love as the supreme theologian virtue. It takes love to offer, and to receive, economic justice.
The intent of the third petition is to avoid the disasters that would follow from the next, widely anticipated collapse of the monetary system. Calling upon the utter wisdom of the seven-year Mosaic jubilee, which allowed for the cancellation of (unpayable) debt between Israelites, the recommendation is to systematically destroy the zeros in national and international accounts. If this reduction of zeros is done systematically, people will be in the same relative position in which they were before the automatic accumulation of those zeros. Make no mistake. There is little or no real wealth behind those impressive zeros. Actually, there is much distortion in the natural accumulation of real capital: The favorite is the financialization of the world.
What are the functions of Wall Street in this scheme of things? Well, to talk bluntly, Wall Street has to refrain from using its political powers to thwart an organic pattern of community development. Wall Street performs best when local communities thrive. Immediate confluence of interests can be expected especially in the area of deregulation.
Ready to help? You can help a lot by signing all three petitions and asking friends and relatives to sign them as well. (Those who live outside fishing communities will also have to design one or more petitions adapted to their local needs.) In a democracy, alone we count for nothing. It is together, it is as We the People, that we become masters of our destiny.
And, talking of our destiny, one discovers that there is a larger background to this work. Just yesterday, I wrote to a young inquiring friend: ”I am a believer. Therefore, it is easy for me to say that God has created each one of us and assigned a task in his Grand Design. Our first task is to love him and be loved by him, so that we may love others in equal measure. We are fulfilled (filled with joy) if we constantly do these three things—and overcome all obstacles that prevent us from obeying these three commandments. Not easy, but not that difficult either.”
The implementation of the three petitions mentioned above would go a long way to show what can real love, tough love, do for ourselves and our communities. It would also show much love for God. Is not God ultimately blamed for many of our misfortunes today? Our misfortunes are the fruit of our fumbling. Love is the ultimate cure for our current misfortunes and those that are about to come, if we do not mend our ways.
Carmine Gorga, PhD, is president of The Somist Institute.
