Unemployment and Economic Policy

It is the peculiarity of every government/economy -all thus-far society and civilization, regardless of form- that changes in how it is constituted are determined in what is a system of hierarchically 'autonomous' bodies deciding (from that 'relatively independent' position) what is 'best' for its and subordinate constituencies. This situation is, simply, one inherent -but not terminally so, the evolution of all government out of primitively ignorant, congregational pecking-order (more of which, below). -Nor is it cynical to observe that 'everyone's right to vote his ignorance' in American democracy for example, is really a vote for one's own autonomy, however manifest, and an intended 'upgrade' of that(*1). The 'civilizational sophistication' of some one or other government/economy, consequently, is, in general, a measure of the degree to which it has evolved from such essentially idiomatic and mechanical consideration and operation to such as is based upon 'the nature and course of hominid evolution' as progressively and heuristically determined out of the continuing evolution of hard science.

What this means is that-
1 - The people of the world have thus far constituted a system of crude autonomies each of which operates -society and civilization evolving, like 'a new organism on the block diasporating and bumbling its way into a progressive investment of the closed-earth configuration-space-system-as-a-whole'.

2 - It is virtually unknown to 'decision-making autonomy' and only esoterically known in the population whole that 'an eventually more meaningful nature and course of hominid evolution and life-style-and-quality is critically dependent upon the nature of ongoing diasporation and its thus-far essentially haphazard investment'.
Given this situation, the title of this essay, Unemployment and Economic Policy, is very nearly arbitrary in that it might as equivalently comprise any pair of government/economy-related phrases. The fact is that all societal and civilizational problems today are dynamically interrelated -but exacerbatingly continuing because of ambiguities and inconsistencies in the language and thought processes underlying and constituting their existence and, consequently, their intended resolution. Consider the 'relative futility' of discussing the 'democratic rights' underlying the following rhetoricals, all of which are significant vectors in 'unemployment and economic policy'-

• How does Walt Disney's Quasimodo suggest a child's more 'sophisticatedly realistic' -eventually adult, understanding of society and civilization? (-'Pocahontas' anyone?)
  
• How does 'the Afro-American idiom and experience' NOT keep Blacks mired in it? -to the consternation, amusement and sometime 'enhancement' of White life-style-and-quality.
  [Appendixed is a brief, Afro-American-centered discussion of 'shortcomings in American multiculturalism'.]
  
• Regarding Microsoft's Bill Gates, how is his $18 billion 'worth' UNRELATED to the national deficit? -and what does that 'right to spend it as he sees fit' have to do with spending it in some way 'fitting the nature and course of hominid evolution'? -regarding, further, what consequences he leaves to future generations? -in some way NOT indenturing of some elemental segment of society?(*2)
  
• The 'holocaust' not withstanding (no lessons learned, apparently), how does the Hague tribunal NOT bring the UN and NATO to trial -along with Karadzic and Mladic, for having effectively channeled the massacre (alleged) of 7,000 Muslims at Srebrenica by non-interdiction? (-100,000 Hutu's, Tutsi's et cetera anyone?)

This essay then, addresses questions that economists themselves are increasingly asking: 'Are we solving the right problems? Are we using the right variables? -the right criteria?' More specifically, 'What is the validity of the substance/material and rationale of economics today?'.

This essay answers these questions thru a formal development of 'validity', which makes it possible, further, thru 'computerized stock-trading', to see validity becoming 'the properly sole and inevitable criterion governing unemployment and economic policy'. The analysis is formal in that it uses only the anthropology of that 'nature and course' and what is otherwise purely scientific in relation to lead to 'that matter of validity' by developing discrete sets of properties, 'beliefs' and situations out of what is, most broadly, 'the human phenomenon and things human'.

Of special concern here is the etiology of those underlying beliefs and manifest factionalisms, and of the nature and course of human progression in particular as a major factor lying well outside traditional consideration. The economics discussed here, consequently, develops out of hominid evolutionary properties as opposed to 'traditional theorization in how an economy should operate' based on noumenalisms(*4) -out of, essentially, the 'pecking-order and survival-of-the-fittest' mechanisms of classical, 'primitive' aristocracy.

... Humans generally supercede each other not by 'reinventing the wheel' or by arbitrarily adopting the idlemind-occupation of others, but by assimilating routine mechanisms of viability and, more specifically, by learning, optimizing and exploring-for (oftentimes unknowingly) other 'viability-advancing properties of econiche constituency' -essentially increasing knowledge... The greater the assimilation of the phenomenology, the greater the configuration space entering both viability and life-style-and-quality.
(-from Kernel Properties of The Hominid Organism)

1 - There is a base-domain of resource/environment/'phenomeknowledge' and labor genetically fundamental to organism viability(*6 -elaborated in The Base-domain of Human Requirements).

2 - Primitive occupation in deficit of that employment is pejorative to that organism (viability) and therefore conducive to its supercession by another same or other organism (next).

3 - (definition) Occupation in excess of that basic employment is 'life-style-and-quality' (next) -manifest of incipient and evolving cerebration.

4 - Primitive life-style-and-quality (expression) is a measure of 'facility/capability for investing the econiche system to organism viability advantage' -essentially as 'knowledge' out of pecking-order, 'ease of sustenance' et cetera.

5 - 'Reificational investment' (on the other hand) either 'fails' phenomenologically-sound understanding(*7) and is therefore 'of essentially noumenal influence' on viability, or it assimilates that transportable knowledge into further enabling organism-whole viability and evolution (eg Lucy-to-sapiens progression).

6 - 'Occupation in excess of basic employment' therefore, is life-style-and-quality partitionable as either -but not both-

a) intrinsic 'the nature and course of hominid evolution', or-

b) primitively and inherently 'circumstantial' -and perhaps noumenal, within it.

The degree to which these properties are assimilated then, is a measure of the civilizational sophistication of a people and, therein -more than the form of its government/economy, a measure of the 'propriety' and validity of its operational demeanor and laws in service of the organism-whole. Thus (primitively) 'one avails himself of another to do his work for him' primarily to further his 'pecking-ordered, survival-of-the-fittest primacy' -and hierarchic government/economy follows that- whereas aristocratizing man(*9), on the other hand, 'avails himself of another in service of the organism-whole'.

In effect, the criteria thru which virtually all autonomy is ... manifest (traditional economy), has been 'wrong' with respect to intrinsic aristocratization where there is no such thing as a 'right' way to run an economy -call it democracy, meritocracy or any other noumenalism. The idea of 'certain natural freedoms' -that 'One has the right to earn as much as he can and spend it in any way he choose' for example, even within constraints of arbitrarily any relatively fixed form of government, is based entirely upon precedents of an evolving mankind diasporating into an uninhabited resource/environment -comparatively primitive, a situation no longer 'unqualifiedly true' for a mankind whose increasing idlemind-time [evolution-intrinsic] is occupied not by classical pecking-ordered mechanisms but by the nature of that occupation and 'what the system can bear'. (-from Economics and The Human Condition)

-and in the failing or absence of that employment 'due to circumstances beyond his control'-
2 - There should be support of such life-style-and-quality for some similarly determined period of time during which one may either find such employment or acquire skills or education into it.

-and this failing for 'absence or de/evolution of such employment'-
3 - Other such employment should be 'created' (typically by government agency) during which time life-style-and-quality should continue to be supported.
These principles of 'thus-far sapiens' are more or less everywhere accepted, but without respect to 'validity', thus what the constituent 'thinks he knows' about the government and the economy and where that should be going is determined primarily by what is 'meaningful to him and his own' -and something of 'a perceived momentum assumed properly continuing and upgrading that' -goods and services, life-style-and-quality and the employment that 'earns' them. He does not see the whole as largely inherited out of circumstance and idlemind-occupation (below) -that what he really knows about the system is measurable only in the degree to which his assimilation of such as the above six evolutionary properties is manifest. These 'common principles of employment', consequently, have little merit where the 'real value's of goods and services are determined, literally, by their roles in 'the nature and course of continuing human progresssion'. Thus-

Intrinsic of vertebrate genetics and generally promotive of organism-whole evolution -warm-blooded in particular , is that 'feeling good physically' translates into 'natural-selection (physical) well-being'. The single, most important characteristic/property identifying hominid 'nature and course' then, is 'increasing organism-whole life-style-and-quality (Property 6a, in particular) out of decreasing (physical) labor genetically fundamental to organism-whole viability' (Property 1), and it is 'optimizing' this particular evolution that determines the 'validity' of goods and services and, therein, of their 'production, distribution and consumption' -that constitutes in effect, an ultimately only one possible and proper economic criterion.
(*p)

ORGANISM-SUSTENANCE-RELATED occupation (OSR) is generally identifiable as activity more or less directly connected with the sustenance of oneself and his dependents -'routine' operation or decision-making of an essentially physical nature, in general, in the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services -food, clothing, health, education, housing, furnishings or disport as entailed by 'basic, routine life'. Validity then, is determined by what role the activity and service or commodity plays in the genetically fundamental viability of the evolutionally 'natural-selecting' and intellectually advancing life-form-whole. That a man's occupation is taxi-driving, for example, is sustenance-related (his) however 'elemental' that taxi-driving relationship with 'the nature and course of human progression' (more of which below); that his cab is in some way 'excessive' of its fundamental purpose of transportation on the other hand, may or may not be 'sustenance-related', and may well have aspects of 'cost effectiveness' about it entering its 'item validity'(*d). The machinist, manual laborer, bank officer, surgeon, employment-seeker and even the thief, for further examples, are all OSR-employed as are also the professional football-player, musician and 'arts (any) critic' -the latter group because 'mental and physical well-being' ('life-style-and-quality', below) is an inherent consequence of human genetic imperative. Validity then, depends ultimately and critically upon occupation-item-role in organism-whole progression(*e), upon what we 'know' about the OSR activity of the at-hand principal of interest and of his life-style-and-quality in relation to that.

OSR occupation then, also identifies something of an individual's 'basic cost-of-living' (momently) in what is 'an evolving government/economy of the organism-whole'. There is for every still-diasporating government/economy therefore(*6), a poverty-level below which some non-self-sustaining 'drone/burden' (for want of a better word) is 'maintained' by some self-sustaining constituency above. What this identifies to one degree or another ('validity' considered by neither group) is some overpopulation unemployed and superfluous to employment in the commonest sense, but employed, nevertheless and effectively, in 'procreation and consumption' -a primary drain on the economy and the 'configuration space', and 'pejorative, consequently, to the well-being of the organism-whole' (more of which below):

It is neither 'mentally' nor physiologically possible for science and technology, government or any other agency or combination to generate, arbitrarily, either employment or 'idlemind occupation' -especially 'meritable', for everyone in overpopulation of what actual labor is required to sustain him.
(-from Arms Reduction and Global Reconstruction, *f)

'INTELLECTUAL' occupation, like that aspect of 'organism-sustenance related', is also 'what one does to earn his keep', but in a non-routine, space-investing way 'creative' or investigative of some new, facilitational or sometimes esoteric activity affecting organism sustenance or life-style-and-quality (next). Activity here varies from what is unambiguously identifiable (phenomenologically-based terms -*g), to what is (thus-far-sapiens) ostensibly noumenal, but nevertheless still qualifiable in those such terms. Validity, consequently, depends critically upon the sophistication of the evaluating principal and the constituency to which he relates the subject intellectual activity. The following occupations indicate something of the hierarchy inherent 'intellectual occupation and validity'.

• Medical research, theoretical mathematics or physics -and 'the course of human evolution and progression' based on that, and 'non-hermeneutic learning' in general
  
• Bridge or commercial product 'conceptualization and design' in general (-development is OSR, above), everything from 'a better hypodermic needle' to 'Whatever makes money, works' (-subject to 'democratic regulation', *h).
  
• Clinical psychiatry, economic theorization, legislation generation and (yes!) the management of a corporation.
  
• Liberal arts and art-world activity in general, everything from conceptualization, design and development to support of that -raising money, legislation et cetera- and 'critique of the whole, critique itself included'.
  
• Philosophy in general, 'policy' formulation et cetera, and the hermeneutics of 'experience new-to-the-organism' in particular.
  

LIFE-STYLE-AND-QUALITY (manifesting) is 'what one does or avails himself and his dependents of (the 'surrounds') when NOT earning his keep' -when he is effectively 'consuming' (as opposed to 'processing') the food, clothing, health, education, housing, furnishings, disport et cetera that (typically) locate and identify him in society(*i). Thus, for example, one needs the living quarters, transportation and LSQ elements that sustain the mental and physical well-being and functional capability necessary or promotive to his occupation (OSR or intellectual)(*j), and the growing child needs the education and the rock-climbing and horse-play that are the 'discovery' without which mankind could not have so evolved and is not likely to progress. -Nor for that matter is one's 'puttering-around' or his hobby to be disconsidered; the problem is one of 'validity' and therefore of excesses -'sophistication' the key(*k).

[The relationship between 'intellectual' and 'life-style-and-quality' (LSQ) occupations is especially important in that much of scientific and technological advance is directed into the design and development of goods and services (OSR production and distribution following that) 'enriching' LSQ -'intellectual' American free-enterprise in particular, promoting a pecking-order-based (primitive) consumption more or less without respect to 'what the system can bear' -where validity, if it comes up at all, is 'a happy coincidence'.]

IDLEMIND-OCCUPATION exists as 'the generally primitive and pejorative-to-society activity that one defaults to (genetic imperative) in the absence of physical or mental capabilities and/or circumstances required for productive activity' (above) -a situation in which one has 'nothing to do', and of one, typically, that society has 'nothing better to do with' due (again typically) to social and economic conditions in religion, ethnicity, 'relative overpopulation' et cetera that reflect 'the only thus-far evolution of aristocratizing mankind'. -It is the 'occupation' of the primitive mind.

[Primitive and early man had little idlemind-time taken up as all time was either by just trying to stay alive or recovering from that -largely a matter of where one stood in 'the pecking-order of things'. But one has only to observe someone with 'nothing to do' -clinically, to understand the importance of 'meritable experience' in life-style-and-quality... In the absence of viability-related or motivating circumstances, the idle mind is occupied either 'best as can out of experience' or it defaults: the 'financially able to indulge themselves' do so, for example, and the destitute or unemployable beg, steal, vandalize, drink or drug-out. It is the 'how' and 'by what' of that occupation that is a major factor in the human condition(*l). -from Kernel Properties of the Hominid Organism.]

• There is an initial 'first-order validity' which relates every commodity to organism viability with completely specifiable phenomenology.
  -and, re-entrantly-
  
• The validity of every commodity with respect to others in that dynamic viabilty (labor and 'thinking' also commodities) is statistical and determinable only thru heuristic process.
  

(*n)

(*o) Purpose in 'earning one's keep' by computerized stock-trading is, quite simply, minimizing one's sustenance-related activity with the more 'esoteric' purpose of maximizing autonomy of life-style-and-quality -'having whatever time and money necessary to do what one feels like doing when he feels like doing it' -necessarily, therein, as little 'work' (clearly undesirable) possible. Whatever (stock) makes money, consequently, 'works', regardless of validity -'substance' irrelevant. Computerized stock-trading, in effect, is 'the highest form of classically aristocratic -and primitive, freeloading' -sucking on the system, but 'What the system, ultimately and only a matter of time, will not bear'. -And worse, this freeloader will do anything within law constraints (not uncommonly 'without') to secure and 'advance' that modus operandi/vivendi.
[Economists (and stockholders) will argue that the stock mechanism is 'good' for the economy, but the problem with this typical pronouncement is that its support is based more on very personal lifestyle-and-quality (occupation) than on validity (intellectual).]

This 'doing what comes naturally' is, of course, the real subject of this essay, and the fact is that that has been the overwhelmingly primary operational mode of only-thus-far-evolved Homo sapiens:

In effect, the criterion by which virtually all autonomy has 'hominid-being' governed -traditional economy if one prefers- has been 'wrong' with respect to intrinsic aristocratization where there is no such thing as a 'right' way to run an economy, call it democracy, meritocracy or any other noumenalism. The idea of 'certain natural freedoms' -that 'One has the right to earn as much as he can and spend it in any way he choose' for example, even within constraints of arbitrarily any relatively fixed form of government, is based entirely upon precedents of an evolving mankind diasporating into an uninhabited resource/environment -comparatively primitive, a situation no longer 'unqualifiedly true' for a mankind whose idlemind-time is increasingly occupied -intrinsically, not by classical pecking-ordered mechanisms but by the nature of that occupation and 'what the system can bear'. (-from Economics and The Human Condition -Economics note 2)

feedback? perryb@condition.org
First posted: May 20, 1996; Last modified: July 25, 2005