Economics: Household Management
By Bob Blain
()
About this ebook
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.
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.
Read more from Bob Blain
A Citizen Owned Money Supply Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Root of United States Public and Private Debt Told by the Pen of History Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Postcard Revolution Volume 2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Economics
Related ebooks
Simple Living: Building Your Ark: How to Survive and Prosper in Uncertain Times Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNonprofit Law Made Easy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNo Time LIke Now Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBank: An Outsider's Guide to Managing Small Business Finance Without Losing Your Shirt or Your Mind Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUniversal Law Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaster Your Debt: Slash Your Monthly Payments and Become Debt Free Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5FRAUD ON—and in—THE COURT Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYou Matter: Ten Spiritual Commitments for a Richer and More Meaningful Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTrust, Inc.: How to Create a Business Culture That Will Ignite Passion, Engagement, and Innovation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSaving Main Street and Its Retailers: Protecting Your Town, Jobs and Small Businesses from Globalization Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Tax Law of Unrelated Business for Nonprofit Organizations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAsk the RIGHT Questions Get the Right ANSWERS: For Sound Financial Retirement Planning Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTop Secrets for Protecting Yourself from Bad Debts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHelp! I Can't Pay My Bills: Surviving a Financial Crisis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsProject Executor Handbook Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEstate Planning Through Family Meetings: Without Breaking Up the Family Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEarning Six Figures in Corporate America Without a Degree Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStructured Settlements: A Guide For Prospective Sellers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRobert's Rules of Order: A Complete Guide to Robert's Rules of Order Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Military Credit Blueprint: The Step-By-Step Guide for Military Credit Repair Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHave More Cents: A Young Woman’s Guide to Saving Money and Still Doing What You Love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Law (in Plain English) for Small Business (Sixth Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow To Maximize Your Choice Voucher Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Annotated Common Law: with 2010 Foreword and Explanatory Notes Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Subrogation Complete Self-Assessment Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow To Sell Your Own House Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Economics For You
The Richest Man in Babylon: The most inspiring book on wealth ever written Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Intelligent Investor, Rev. Ed: The Definitive Book on Value Investing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn't Designed for You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 3rd Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wise as Fu*k: Simple Truths to Guide You Through the Sh*tstorms of Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Capitalism and Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Affluent Society Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A People's Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Capital in the Twenty-First Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Economics 101: From Consumer Behavior to Competitive Markets--Everything You Need to Know About Economics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works--and How It Fails Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Can't Lie to Me: The Revolutionary Program to Supercharge Your Inner Lie Detector and Get to the Truth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Men without Work: Post-Pandemic Edition (2022) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Economics
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Economics - Bob Blain
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