Economics: Household Management

By Bob Blain

The economics profession is ripe for a paradigm shift. Anomalies proliferate with an increasing number of economists searching for a more valid, reliable and helpful approach, whether it is adjustments in GDP, neoKeynesianism, critical theory, monetary reform, or more sublte changes such as modifying "scarcity" to mean "limits." This little book offers an example of what economics could be with money clarified as never before as a medium of communication whose job is to promote reciprocity among cooperating specialists in our global household. It returns Economics to its original meaning, household management and identifies entropy, not scarcity, as the problem and cooperation, not competition, as the solution. It addresses the two defects in money ignored by the prevailing scarcity-competition orthodoxy; that money originates as interest-bearing debt; and that money has no definition of its denominator, only a name, for example, dollar, dinar, peso, and franc. The corrections are to originate money as a right of citizenship and to denominate money in Hours representing work time. Throughout United States history, people have tried to get the money supply changed to what many of them have called "honest" money, but they failed to change it. The debt problems we face today are now so severe that we have the chance to succeed where they failed. You can help by reading Economics as global household management.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bob Blain
• Release date: Apr 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310336126

Bob Blain

Bob has a Masters degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, both in sociology. He taught sociology for two years at The Ohio State University then taught sociology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville from 1968 to his re-tirement (new tires) in 2001. He has spoken on monetary reform in New Zealand, Australia, Poland, Libya, India, and Togo in Africa as well as at many conferences in the United States and Canada.

Book preview

ECONOMICS

HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT

Bob Blain, Ph.D.

Sociologist

Copyright 2016

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 9781310336126

Table of Contents

The Goal

Household Management Economics

Judging Wealth by Life Expectancy

Life Expectancy and Gross Domestic Price

Cooperation

Organization and Entropy

Value and Cost

Communication over Information Chains

Money Communication

The ABC of Money

The Money Denominator Problem

Reciprocity

The Two Faces of Debt

Money Origination

Citizen Share Money

Currency Equal Work Time Exchange Rates

Democratic World Government

Managing Mismanagement

Obstacles to Adoption

A New Beginning

Other Books by Bob

The Goal

The goal is a global household of people and nations peacefully providing each other with the goods and services necessary for a good life.

My goal in writing this book is to introduce economics as household management rather than as a field of conflict among people competing for scarce resources. My premise is that entropy is the problem and cooperation, not competition, is our best option for maximizing our effectiveness and efficiency in producing and distributing the resources we all need in our global household. The paradigm and theory derive from the integration of concepts from across the social sciences detailed in Weaving Golden Threads: Integrating Social Theory.

A Note on Sociology

The word sociology comes from the Latin socius meaning companion or partner and the Greek logos meaning principle of order. Sociology is the study and identification of principles of order that govern people living as companions or partners in groups. I will present economics here as applied sociology. Sociologists study societies holistically - identifying what promotes the well-being of people in groups, and how those relationships can be improved. Talcott Parsons (1902-1979), my teacher at Harvard in the 1960s, had his PhD in economics. He left economics for sociology because he thought economics was too narrow. As a sociologist and former student of Parsons, here I am returning to economics to share with you the broader conception of economics that Parsons inspired me to pursue.

Back to TOC

Household Management Economics

The word economics originated from the two Greek words oikos, meaning household, and nomos, meaning management. Literally, economics means household management. That is the perspective from which I have written this introduction to economics. It is very different from the textbooks that now dominate the economics profession.

Those textbooks are written from the perspective of an economy as people in conflict, competing against each other because they believe that there can never be enough for everyone. That perspective explains why conflict, stress and inequality pervade economic affairs today.

Our theories are not simply representations of reality; they shape reality. Economics taught as people competing for scarce resources promotes an economy of people competing for resources that their competition makes scarce.

Economics that teaches students how to cooperate as members of a household to meet everyone's needs effectively and efficiently promotes an economy of people cooperating effectively and efficiently to everyones benefit. Household management economics can promote the general welfare and ensure domestic tranquility promised in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Household management economics returns economics to its original meaning and purpose, human cooperation and well-being.

Economics as a specialized application of sociological knowledge to household management is necessary because the human household has grown far beyond what we know as a family household.

Households

Families are small groups of people in face-to-face communication cooperating to do the jobs necessary for setting up and maintaining their household.

Families

Cooperation is face-to-face. Every in a family can know what everyone else is doing to help the family meet everyone’s needs. They can see it.

Villages are gatherings of