To show what an incredibly wide-ranging savant I am, my topic for today is economics.  Annoyed for many years by loose references to “capitalism” and “socialism” and other economic terms, and disgusted by current discussions of the value of a Keynesian stimulus when a nations is considered to be bad off economically as ours now is which consist of one set of mediocrities saying such stimulis don’t work, and a second set of mediocrities saying they do.  Me?  I don’t care which side is right–although I tend to believe it’s impossible to determine in advance when a stimulus will work, or seem to work, and when it won’t.   What angers me, though, is the idea that if it could be determined which side was right, its policy is the one that should be followed, because what counts is economic health.

That complicates the matter too much, I now see.  It brings up the problem of defining “economic health.”  Let me put that aside but accepting that the view of those whose opinions count in the big world on this matter are right that it has to do with things like the gross . . .  it used to be the “gross national product” but is no something slightly different.  The “gross domestic product?”  Anyway, let’s call “economic health” low unemployment, no one complaining about low wages or salaries, stock market trades always increasing in number, slight inflation, etc.”  I don’t care about the effect of a stimulus on it.  That’s because I believe in freedom.

That brings me to my first new coinage, “libranomics.”  It means what I think “capitalism” is taken to mean by many.  I find that term confusingly used–which may well be my fault.  It seems to me it first meant, or ought always to have meant, simply an economy based on the lending of capital.  

Wow, I just left my entry-in-progress here to do something I rarely do–research.  I started an Internet search, now under way, on “the history of capitalism.”  Dot dot dot.  I am now waiting to get to “investopedia.com.”  Dot dot dot.  No help at investopedia although it has a nice little introduction to economics.  Now, god forbid, to Wikipedia.  Dot dot dot.  The Wikipedia entry was better but didn’t work for me.  But it had a wonderful reproduction of a Lorrain painting, “Seaport”:

It’s representational, so–for me, a craftwork, not an artwork.  But stunning.  I’m sure I could write five or six thousand words saying why I think it close to as wonderful a culturework as any other painting I’ve ever seen.  Ah, I’d do that right now if I was sure I’d live another forty years or so.  Part of its appeal is something I’m sure I have a name for but can’t remember.  It’s the revealed ability to do something of value that few can do–as representational works of this complexity are.  It brought to my mind the value of forcing children to draw when they are young, because even those without talent will then be able to appreciate works like Lorraine’s, and the ability to appreciate such works is something that can be of the highest genuine economic value although ignored by economics academics.  But the painting is definitely also of the highest value because it came before photography.  To capture such an otherwise long-lost moment–a sky-moment, a quotidiation moment, a city-moment, a sea-with-ships moment!  How lucky Lorraine was to be able to, and how lucky we that he was.

As for capitalism, I guess I’d have to read a book on the subject to find out if my impression of its best meaning is right, but I have to get this entry out of the way, so have no time to do that, even if I had such a book.  So I’ll just say that it seems to me that what is important about capitalism is not it’s freedom, although that is important, but the way it used capital and–especially–the loan of capital at interest, that was important.  What I’m fairly sure of is that capitalism means something different from what my “libranomics” does.   “Libranomics” means–ah, Wikipedia has it: “Laissez-faire is an economic environment in which transactions between private parties are free from tariffs, government subsidies, and enforced monopolies, with only enough government regulations sufficient to protect property rights against theft and aggression. The phrase laissez-faire is French and literally means ‘let [them] do,’ but it broadly implies ‘let it be,’ ‘let them do as they will,’ or ‘leave it alone.’ Scholars generally believe a laissez-faire state or a completely free market has never existed.”  So we don’t need my “libranomics.”  I’m keeping it, anyway, because it’s shorter, and be used as the basis of my second coinage for today, “libraconomy,” (Lee bruh CAH uh mee), for a genuine laissez-faire economy.  “Laissez-faire” can’t serve as well for such a word.

I’m finally to why I’m look down on the discussions of economic stimuli: they are not libranomical.  A government determines what a citizen’s money is to be spent on, which should not be a matter of whether a bunch of so-called experts, or even a huge majority of citizens, agree is a good thing to spend it on (although there are exceptions to every rule), and I believe that is immoral: a citizen should be the only one to decide what his money is spent on–with only a few exceptions, the national defense being an obvious one.   

I maintain that an economically free citizen will be more productive than a slave, and happier.  I realize that many disagree with me, so would not be annoyed by discussions of who is right in that matter the way I am about discussions of the value of economic stimuli.  I’m very much in favor of capitalism, I might add, but don’t see it as necessarily associated with libranomics.

Have I settled anything, or even provided a new way of looking at some aspect of economics?  No.  I feel I’ve cleared a reasonable knowleplex (i.e., in knowlecular psychology, an understanding of a discipline, a complex of inter-related knowlecules or bits of knowledge)  to go from to greater sophistication, though.  I’ve also had fun after being in a funk for too long–due, I fear, to my too strong addiction to avoiding addiction.

.