Updating Our Sociologies of Social Choosing
An important admonish to truth from Joe Zammit-Lucia in is most recent Random Thoughts
It is not the job of Government to solve problems.
True.
But this...
Government's job is to create the conditions under which we might be better able to solve our own problems
As a lawyer who works in the law that is the milieu of Government, I find this job description more than a little overbroad. Which is problematic, I contend, because it obfuscates the other elements in our sociology of social choosing that also need to do their own jobs well, for all of us to live together, well.
A job description that better fits my experience as a lawyer working in the law, and therefor also in Government, would be in two parts:
I also hit the "pause" button when I read
better able to solve our own problems
It resonates as true with my own lived experience to frame the economy as a mutual aid society for sharing an abundance of technology solutions to the everyday problems of everyday people living our own best lives, under the circumstances then prevailing, every day, through enterprise as a configuration of Knowledge (of technology) + Networks (of connections for supply through distribution) + Routines for converting cost-for-value into value-for-price, using money as "a technology that communities use to trade debts" (Michael Mainelli) through legal instruments for effecting transactions between people who are separated by distances of time, place and social connection that is also the social energy though which society directs our individual insights and initiative towards some activities, and away from others.
It also resonates are true that the economy is also an artificial world that we make for ourselves, in which to live, through our technologies, out of the world of Nature into which we all are born, as a safe and dignified house for humanity that we construct, and episodically de-construct to re-construct, within built environments of Urban, Rural, Curated and Left-Alone Landscapes along the creative edge of a constantly changing and adaptively evolving human partnership with Nature.
Which means that we are constantly creating our future history by choosing new beginnings from among evolving possibilities, from time to time, and over time, as times change, to fit the changing times, through inquiry for insight and new learning that can inform innovation for evolving prosperous adaptations to life’s constant changes, making new choices more popular as better fit to changing times, while letting previously popular choices fade into history as a good fit at an earlier time.
So it resonates with me to frame our human way of being as more about choosing new beginnings to fit the changing times than solving problems.
Which can, of course, also be expressed as solving the problem of choosing new beginnings to fit the changing times.
Which raises the question of how do "we" choose?
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As individuals we can choose individually by paying the price for value through transactions with Enterprise according to the logic of price-for-performance, constrained by availability and ability to pay.
But we don't determine what is available. Someone else does.
And our ability to control our ability to pay is dependent on the larger patterns of money being made to flow through the economy and society.
So, who controls those flows?
Rules of Conduct and Subsidies for Policy contribute to "the conditions under which we might be better able" to evolve prosperous adaptations to life's constant changes (this is to my mind a better way to describe our human experience of life's constant changes than "solving problems").
But more is needed.
As I lawyer, when I look for an answer to this question, I see multiple institutions of agency, authority and accountability for making social choices:
In the exercise of its Police Powers, Government is sui generis, and whole unto itself.
But in the exercise of its powers to provide subsides to enterprise for Policy, Government also serves as an institution of Finance, aggregating money set aside by others (albeit under force of law, as taxes), for a purpose, for a time, as savings for investment in financing for enterprise, and allocating those aggregations as subsidies for enterprise in furtherance of Policy.
Which raises the question of what other institutions of Finance aggregate money set aside by others as savings for investment in financing for enterprise, and allocate those aggregation to enterprise, as money made to flow into enterprise for its use in doing its work, for a time, at a cost, and on terms that inform the businesses that inform the technologies that inform the choices that inform the economy that informs society that informs the future as our new frontier.
Institutions are creatures of the law/government, and if we look at finance through the lens of the law, we can see at least six parts to the whole of Finance. These include:
This law-informed configuration of the institutions of Finance gives the lie to the prevailing narrative of a triumvirate of Private Sector, Public Sector and Non-Profit/Philanthropy, by showing that the Private Sector is actually compromised of at least four non-governmental, non-philanthropic institutions of Finance, each with its own unique manage and logic for aggregating savings and allocating those aggregations as financing for enterprise: Family & Friends (the true Private Money); Banking & Insurance (Working Money); Exchanges & Funds (Mad Money); and Pensions & Endowments (Fiduciary Money).
Once we untether ourselves from this false triumvirate of Finance, we find ourselves tumbling through a series of new definitions of Money and Investment and Finance and Enterprise and Technology and the Economy to arrive at: