Suppose that the earth is worth £100 billion and we have a trade delegation from Mars who offer to buy all that we can export over a 25-year period and they will pay us the equivalent of £50 billion in Martian money. We earthlings toil away on the strength of £50 billion for 25 years and we ship to Mars over the 25-year period all that we can produce. But in so doing we use all the earth's energy resources, minerals and chemicals.
Now in reality of course we cannot ship to Mars, etc. But the essence of commercial activity around the world is based on the same principles, i.e. take raw materials from A, manufacture at B and sell to C. All sales of earth's tangibles are goods, all goods depreciate unless they gain some antique/appreciation value in which case they may appreciate, but on the whole depreciation is the order of the day. The only way a company can gain revenue is to keep adding value to materials, produce depreciating goods and that is the foundation of consumerism. In effect what is created is an energetic phenomenon of which the earth's resources is the loser and wealth is the gain - but wealth as far as a company is concerned can only be expressed in the form of assets, i.e. reality and notional wealth.
Example 2. The Motor Car
It is to show here the effect of energy upon reality. The concern is that in reality man¬made energy is nothing, that what it produces is nothing. The principle of the motor car is that first there is a metal machine with seats that depreciates; into that machine pour petrol, which is refined from oil, which is a finite resource. The car burns off the petrol and effects two products, one of which is motion, the second of which is exhaust gas which pollutes the environment. Human beings value the motion because it presents opportunity so it is generally regarded that the product of a motor car is motion and that exhaust gases are an unavoidable by-product which we wish would go away.
However, the truth is the reverse. The only real product from the motor car is exhaust gas, insofar as you can stop the car and it still produces gas. The fact is that motion is only an intangible like eating and does not exist. So in reality we trade the earth's finite oil resource for the reality of an exhaust gas because we appreciate the intangible reality of motion but the cost is a heavy depreciation of finite reality.
Example 3. The Football Match
What is important about a football match? 22 players, activity, possibly goals. What are the most important elements of the football match - is it the players, the activity or the goals? The answer is the players; no activity or goals without the players. The important thing to remember about the players is that they existed before, during and after the game, i.e. that they were realities. The activity in the game was an intangible, purely energy. The goals or lack of them was the product. The reason I use this example is because I want to align the context to commerce. In commerce, money acts as the players, market force acts as the activity and wealth creation acts as the goal/goals. But like the football match, people still exist before they are players and this is the same with money. Money just does not fall out of the sky. It is developed out of activity and subsequently compounds into wealth. I will be going on to suggest that in wealth creation, money represents players, the activity is the market and the goal is power over reality. And that this power ever compounds to force markets for depreciating reality.
Using examples always helps to illustrate points. In the case of examples one and two, what shows up is a dichotomy of values. In example number one, the dichotomy of value is created and what is artificially created is the existence of a one-way force. It is not easy to describe in real terms how to avoid split values, but in the process of creating wealth to the nth degree there is forced wealth which in reality becomes real inflation and the effect on reality is real depreciation. All notions of value become frustrated.
What is evident is that wealth that is manufactured has to return to earth in some form to avoid frustration of objectives - just like gardening. There is a tendency to see economic activity as a bubble remote from the real world and this notion cannot be sustained. The result of this is that there is an ever-growing tendency in societies to over-value money and money growth as a value. Money growth is not supported by reality growth. Q.E.D.
In Example number two, the motor car, there is another dichotomy of values. At the heart of this notion is the value of energy, principally artificial energy; and there is a chapter on energy. We perceive what we want to perceive. We do not perceive what we do not want to perceive. In the case of the car we perceive that the value is motion even though motion does not exist, and we perceive that value because it is intangible, because we are intangible and because it is a direct value to man. It is seen as extremely useful so there is maintained pursuit in the direction of value and virtual ignorance of any anti-values, even though motion is not a tangible reality.
In Example number three, we have notion of a 2-way activity dominated by a one-way-force, namely a beneficial outcome.
All these examples serve to show how much our lives have become dominated by one-way/two-way activities, usually expressed by top and bottom, winners and losers, and so on. This kind of thinking serves to fuel a notion that we are all pushing away from something, in a straight line. But what we have shown in examples above is that eventually top and bottom can become so far away that any notions of either end can fuse into one, i.e. both top and bottom are either valueless or are anti-values; in other words top and bottom meet. This can only happen because in reality straight lines do not exist. Any force in a given direction is bound to meet up with the reality that there is only cycle.
Accompanied with a notion of cycle is perfect balance and balance is reflected in nature both in ecological terms and in the environment in general. This only serves to suggest that any notions man has about "progress" can only be sustained if a notion of balance and cycle both in economic and reality terms is maintained as a priority in thinking, i.e. economies have to be tuned to produce as near as possibly reality cycle. Raw materials, energy sources, should be used to support life; they should not become so invasive that at a point in the future when resources diminish there is a collapse in the ability of the human to survive and is damaged because he has lost the arts and crafts and skills to produce his own means of maintaining existence.
FACT OR FICTION
Fact - the realities on the planet comprise land, sea, animal, plant, mineral, chemical, oil, gas. These are properties that have to greater or lesser extent value to man in an economic concept. However it is important to remember that even the apparent valueless areas are of value because they are part of the infrastructure of the earth and consequent upon that, therefore, is that all the earth has real value.
It is also important to remember that with the exception of plant, undersea life, animal life, which is regeneratable, the remainder of existence is finite and that the only natural sources of energy are wind and water, each having cyclical nature. It must therefore be -true that if you were to construct a balance sheet of the earth the assets grouped into two categories, fixed and current. Fixed would be land, sea, river, etc. Current would be animal, plant/regeneratables, including people. Economic activity is such on the earth that in real terms it depreciates the fixed assets, temporarily appreciates the people asset which eventually depreciates the temporary nature of the appreciation to current asset, leaving a net deficit in fixed assets. If God represents the investment holder, he isn't getting a very good deal.
People represent current assets. The important thing is that they arrive, wax and wane, then die; in the meantime there are new arrivals and so on, i.e. there is some kind of cycle which does mean that human life on the planet should be relatively secure as long as we do not commit hari-kiri. It is consequent therefore that human life has infinite possibilities so that we cannot go around in political terms thinking of the next 5 years or 50 years. We should be thinking 500 years and beyond.
Fiction - money. Money was created as a utility to act as a base in preference to barter. It is purely functional but in essence represents capability as a power over reality. Money now attracts things like interest rates, exchange rates, which are all very well but in fact only serve to over-value money in relation to actuality. Consequently they are essentially inflationary in the sense that if you have an item costing £1 and £1 is worth £1 and you add 10%, the item has not changed - you just over-value its intrinsic worth in relation to reality, i.e. more money buys you less.
Wealth - Wealth is artificial and a compound of money. Wealth used to be considered an aggregate of money that enabled a lavish lifestyle and still does in the minds of private citizens. Consequently wealth has always been an aim in private life and business life. But insofar as wealth is the only measure that we have in determining the value of reality and as wealth is an increasing phenomenon and reality a depreciating phenomenon, wealth has become increasingly inflated which is probably why land, property, antiques, works of art, appreciate so much in that they stay secure when wealth does not. However, wealth is the real power over reality as stated previously, and its power has become so great that it has become the force of commerce, trade and industry. In wealth, man has unwittingly created an artificial power over creation. The fuel of wealth is a combination of money, labour, earth's resources. Such is the power of wealth that men have become subservient to it and are being carried along on a tide of misdirection to the extent that we no longer control our own lives - the wealth drive does.
Private Wealth - Private individuals' wealth comprises of foods that they have eaten or got and not yet eaten, goods that they have purchased which have either fully depreciated and have been committed to the scrap heap or are still useful, property and land, investment items, services which have been purchased, savings and investments - the important thing to consider is that investments usually mean a recourse into business somewhere along the line and act as a spur to wealth creation.
I have no quarrel with individual wealth or the concept of incentive to improve it. The important thing to remember is that by and large, individual wealth is generated out of revenue as opposed to asset disposal, except if private property is disposed of.
Company Wealth - Here we will make a distinction between small private companies usually run by one or two people who treat any profit from their business as a combination of earnings and investment money and are capable because of their relative autonomy to shape the direction of the company, i.e. they are capable of self-regulation.
Distinct from the above, and this is where we get down to the nitty gritty, are so-called private companies which are neither one thing nor the other; they are private in the sense that they are privately owned, but they are publicly declared and owned by degree by shareholders; consequently they become an artificial phenomenon engaged in commercial activity in support of wealth creation, another artificial phenomenon, i.e. an artificial driving force behind the creation of wealth. The first rule in business is to stay in business, and the second is to make a profit. These are the commercial drives. The wealth of a company comprises assets which they use in the course of business but, usually annually, they are forced to re-appraise the company worth. In the process what was revenue which is either surplus or loss, has to be reconciled into the balance sheet. The reappraisal annually notions profitability and what companies are looking for is a surplus to pay shareholders dividends to keep them happy, a healthy return on capital employed in order to keep them buoyant. What public companies have to do as well as trading, is keep one eye over the shoulder on relative share values to stave off predators and to maintain investment.
In effect, a company is hung, drawn and quartered as because of the make-up it is forced ever in an upward direction. What profit is made gets turned into capital; the capital becomes appreciated, so in order to maintain momentum they are forced to either put-up prices, increase production etc. But most of all as profits build they are forced to consider expansion or invest-elsewhere because they are obliged to employ capital. Further, they can only employ capital in, tangibilities and the only way that can be justified is if they are going to save on expenses (usually people or power) or increase production. In essence what we have in commerce, trade and industry is a huge unstoppable wealth creating machine whose worth is only reflected in the tangible reality that it possesses, whose effect is to generate consumerism by virtue of forcing a market for consumer durables that depreciate rapidly, or services that depreciate instantly, i.e. passing reality assets with a limited timespan of life in exchange for wealth. Since the war our wealth in commerce, trade and industry has spiralled so much so that our interdependence for markets with the rest of the world has become interlaced with an inter-dependence in capital. I could not estimate the "free" world capital or free world personal wealth but whatever it is, economists would say is the value of capital goods, land and equipment engaged in business and private wealth in terms of goods and services. I would say that it is also the money used in depreciating the earth in order to gain capital, equipment, goods and services. We know that we have ecological and environmental problems and we know that if we leave them unchecked they will not go away. What is needed is to take the sting out of wealth creating, stop it imposing unnecessary manufacture. Redirect capital into businesses that operate more slowly; use less raw materials; generate employment that pushes revenue into the market in such a way that we buy fewer but better quality items, taking the pace out of consumerism and taking the pressure off unnecessary capital building which in any notion of real terms is building inflation by depleting reality by comparison with increased wealth.
