Filed under: Weekly Columns
PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/chaoseconomics6-14-6.pdf
Adam Smith was a brilliant guy, for his time. Actually for a long time. But now his time is over, because his eighteenth century views on economics, of free markets, and “The Wealth of Nations” are no longer the philosophical or the real underpinnings of what we call western enterprise. Adam Smith’s concepts have been replaced with a more evolutionarily consistent genre which I call Chaos Economics.
I suppose the fundamental problem with Smith today is that his work presupposes a divine or Providence that overshadows the ways of man. That was true for most of western history from Smith until the present. As others over time have pointed out Smith’s work not only has a supreme deity in his worldview, but also a high view of the goodness of humanity operating outside religious paradigms. None of those absolutes are present in the worldview of business and economics today. Today wealth or mammon has replaced God and nation as the prime motivator of human enterprise. As a consequence today our world runs on “Chaos Economics.”
One of my premises of Metis Phylogenesis is that “Change is the only constant.” I too have been guilty of that same oversight as Smith. God’s providence still works in change in the natural world, and sometimes that change can be stupendous by all standards. However, after the change event, everything naturally begins to grow to bring stability to the ecosystem, both in energy utilization and physical complexity.
Chaos Economics, true to its evolutionary roots attempts to create its god, mammon, out of continual chaos. In the world of global trade in which we live today, that not only is plausible, it can be done relatively easily. The key however, is to make virtually everyone believe that through the religion of evolution a true economic utopia can be formed. Of course that utopia is subject to a high degree of relativism, but when you really think about it, this true natural higher order out of absolute chaos is the ultimate model of the evolutionary cosmos. But evolution is not only bogus science it is also bogus philosophy so none of this will last very long.
Now it is true that I have missed out completely on understanding the religious bigotry that it takes to be a good evolutionist. As a consequence(?) I also have missed out in truly understanding how religion should have anything to do with my inherited intellectual prowess or my emotional feelings at all, but should rest upon the grace of God alone.
Let me explain. When I was a lad of 12 or so, I was indoctrinated into the Lutheran faith in the little town of Reardan, Washington. I was joined in my catechism class by Cheryl, Dorothy, and Gail the three best looking girls in my class, but that is another story. To this day I still believe that the Lutheran presentation is the world’s best understanding of the law -gospel tension in the Bible and how that relates to man’s bondage to sin and his resistance to God’s grace.
Pastor Daugs however, when it came to the Genesis creation account in the Bible impressed upon us that God really didn’t create the world like the Bible said, but that he used evolution to bring about the present world over millions and billions of years. I guess my brain quit evolving at that time, because I just could not understand how if the Bible was supposed to be a book that contained God’s absolute revelation of saving grace, then how could a portion that reads days, really mean billions of years. I mean you might be able to stretch a day into a few years by creative exegesis, but billions of years, give me a break, I may be young, but I’m not stupid.
Thank God, Martin Luther had other more important religious foolishness to deal with, in his day man’s evil heart had not yet invented evolution. However, I suppose that was the start of my life as a Martin Luther Lutheran, rather than just a Lutheran. “Here I stand, I can not do other wise!” may not be the literal rendition of what Luther said at the Diet of Worms, but I doubt Luther would find me using this misquote disturbing.
About ten years later on Mt. Spokane collecting plants for a Field Botany class, a similar epiphany occurred as I knelt down to collect a plant sample that had been covered with snow just a few weeks earlier, and now was part of a diverse field of various grasses and wildflowers. “Unless I can understand how this all exists just by chance, I shall have to be a bad scientist, (or no scientist at all).”
Life can get lonely when there is no one to share your fundamental beliefs. About ten years after Mt. Spokane, I learned there were other people on this earth that also believed that theistic evolution is bogus religion, and that all evolution is bogus science. Since then I have noticed that every day our ranks are growing, by God’s grace, not by man’s so called rational enlightenment. So belittling me as a stupid, religious, right wing Christian bigot, will have no effect on me or my teaching.
What this truly proves is that contrary to all the wishes of evil men and evil spirits, Jesus Christ is building and will continue to build and reform His church until the end of time. The next Reformation will be based on the true Gospel alone and what is now called Creation Science. That is a science of thousands not millions and billions of years. Which means change really happens rapidly, sometimes stupendously, but never chaotically, except as may be carried out in the affairs of evil men.
Chaotic change is established within economics to create wealth and to usurp national power. You don’t have to own anything to profit in this exercise, it helps, but it is not a requirement. All you really need is a market or demand for a commodity. It works even better if you can make everything a commodity exchangeable with other commodities via a monetary transaction. Simply put, the more transactions, either by buying or selling, more money is created and the richer you become. This is like your stock broker’s ability to make money on steroids.
Now creatively speaking one could develop this concept into a movie plot to take over the world, like the “Manchurian Candidate.” Luckily, if you believe in luck, nothing like this would ever happen in the real world. Oh, the title for this new blockbuster movie, “The Texas Candidate”
This could happen in the world however. Now we could use virtually anything to play this game, but for sake of a commodity that is near and dear to each of us, let’s use oil. As the title of this article says we call this game played out on the world stages for our benefit alone, Chaos Economics. Another subtitle that we will keep hidden except for the very few evolutionary elite is, “Be Your Own Market Maker.”
Market Makers are used in the stock market to even out daily swings in equity trading that can be brought about by people or institutions moving large blocks of company shares. This is theoretically carried out in the United States markets by “independent” brokerage houses and similar organizations, working for the benefit of the company. Since you are really only dealing with one entity, publicly traded stock, this process works well most of the time. Commodities, oil, gas, gold, silver, grain, etc., don’t have market makers because of the variety of sources and ways of handling the materials being traded. Rapid, chaotic changes in commodity prices, truly is the evolutionary roots of commodity trading.
I learned of this market making game from the President of Georgia Pacific Securities in Vancouver, BC, about the time I learned I was not alone as a Bible believing creation scientist, but that may be superfluous to this scenario. In Vancouver market making had to do with playing penny gold stocks on the Vancouver Stock Exchange, but it will work if you have a big position in just about any traded commodity. In the process others can also make money on your skill, and even if they just track your work. However, chances are they will just get bored or figure out the whole process is too much work and develop a trading software package to sell on weekend morning infomercials. That’s a lot easier when you are working for yourself, and you don’t, for some reason, want to hire the human production units to perform the market making task.
So you are the CEO of a big multinational oil company. Now at the $50.00 price per barrel of crude oil you can make substantial profits in your vertically integrated company. Every time crude oil changes hands within this structure you get a cut, so life is good. However, even with your long term contracts for cheap oil from dolt third world countries, if the price gets down to say $40.00 per barrel, not only are your company profits not going to be as easy to maintain, your bonus millions, stock options, and golden parachute may also be affected. God knows if $50.00 per barrel is good, $70.00 would be even nicer. What this world really needs is a little stupendous change to set the chaos ball rolling.
Biding your time, enter the 2005 hurricane season, and your prayers have been answered. “Our capacity to produce gasoline has been absolutely devastated by Hurricane Katrina, it is just so awful, it will take years, and years to return to maximum capacity destroyed by the hurricane. (Especially if we don’t plan on adding anymore capacity to the system, we’ve got to keep those profits high).
Reacting to all that bad news, and by withholding just a little of our supply, the free markets move quickly into the $70.00 per barrel range. “Hallelujah, Praise the lord, Me!” Now all we have to do is maintain the price, and crank up the propaganda mill: “The demand for oil is skyrocketing by the second in India and China, we will never be able to catch up again. Then there is the Iraq uncertainty, and Iran’s nuclear intentions, and where ever you look in the world there is continuing evolutionary chaos happening. Demand is outstripping supply, the world is evolving, we need those profits to find more oil, or to diversify into new green sustainable energy sources.” We can write creative press releases until the current cows are changed into crude oil.
This is where the fun begins and the money really starts to flow, we have created a bench mark price we want to hold. All we have to do is to play the market by continuing to foster uncertainty. We buy long, sell short, or the other way around, all we need to do is just make sure the market is continually doing something. This is really cool, we get paid no matter what happens, and only now and then do we actually have to fiddle with actual supplies to maintain the price we have determined to suit our current chaotic interests.
This playing with the markets outside the news cycle was really not possible when I had my discussions all those years ago in Vancouver, because the computing hardware had not really been developed at that time. Today it is. All you need to do is to design some software that finds statistical significance in what looks to be a random series of numbers and then take advantage of those trends to buy and sell accordingly.
If you want some simple models to do this on your own, as I said earlier, just turn on your TV on weekend mornings and you will find simple computer models that do this for the poor simple investor, right in the middle of the rest of the religious broadcasting. These models however, are really just analysis programs that pick up subtile trends in the markets and give you recommendations to buy or sell. As a little investor you can’t manipulate the markets, you can only follow them.
However, if you do have the ability to create a little market making news every now and then, to which the markets will react, and program that into your much more sophisticated computer program, you will know much better how and when to buy and sell. Those perceived chaotic market fluctuations just serving to make you richer and a more highly evolved person or enterprise. Now instead of manufacturing gasoline from crude oil however, we are manufacturing information to create chaos. The margins on this manufacturing endeavor, are almost limitless, if we don’t get too greedy.
Perhaps a less complicated model will help explain, one that doesn’t need computers to feed off chaos. How about selling advertising at a consistently higher price than your competitors, by creating strife when really what is needed is leadership to form a consensus. Strife is where Fox News Channel’s “fair and balanced” is at its best. If you can get two very opined people with different worldviews yelling at one another, as long as you get the ratings, the whole world can go to hell, as the discussion that took place on one of their shows last weekend just goes to prove. You are crying all the way to the bank, and your followers believe that you are not a lackey in the liberal news establishment. Still, you are truly only manufacturing high margin chaotic information, with little true investment in infrastructure.
In the world of global enterprise, Rupert Murdoch is one of the world’s best, proving chaos works wonderfully, especially when dealing with human personalities that have the created ability to relate to each other as well as just things. It’s not about who’s right or left, right or wrong. its all about we dare not find anyone that can build consensus, even if that means Bill O’Reilly is always doubly right. The irony in the whole picture is that he normally is doubly right, and yet he does it with such humility.
Consensus building is what this country needs, but building a consensus on an evolutionary worldview is impossible, because it is a godless religious paradigm. Just because it is a religious paradigm does not make it evil, but if it is true in any fashion all of life is meaningless. However, if creation by God is true, then understanding His role and plans for mankind is all that matters, and is the only source for understanding life, death, and any human goodness.
Our latest Chronicles:
The Nature Deficit Divide; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/naturedeficit3-8-6.pdf
Birds & Snakes; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/birdsnsnakes3-15-6.pdf
Given Gifts; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/givengifts4-12-6.pdf
Our rights and our dusty responsibility; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/rightrespon4-19-6.pdf
Solomon's folly today; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/solomontoday4-26-6.pdf
America Amok; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/aamok5-3-6.pdf
Creation Speaks; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/creationspeaks5-10-6.pdf
It’s all about time; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/abouttime5-17-6.pdf
Rootless in the world; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/rootless5-24-6.pdf
Unity in Diversity; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/unitydiversity5-31-6.pdf
Evolved Units; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/evolvedunits6-7-6.pdf
