Kurzweil Discusses 15 Years of Secular Stagnation
Sam Ghandchi
http://www.ghandchi.com/979-kurzweil-gilder-english.htm

کورزویل، پانزده سال رکود مدوام را بحث می کند
http://www.ghandchi.com/979-kurzweil-gilder.htm

Ray Kurzweil has just published his very interesting dialogue with George Gilder (1). Gilder speaks for reconsidering gold, including the digital form of bitcoin and argues against government manipulating money, i.e. printing currency or artificially suppressing interest rates. Gilder aptly quotes former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers saying the world’s economies are "entering an era of secular stagnation, and possibly permanent decline of innovation." Gilder sees "digital alternatives and gold as forms of money offering escape from the centralized regime of monetarism" which he sees responsible for the secular stagnation of the last 15 years.

Gilder's conclusion is as follows: "Monetarism (control of money), Keynesianism (control of spending), and Mercantilism (control of trade) all foster the illusion that government power can drive economic growth and wealth creation. What government does under this illusion is redistribute wealth, usually to the already rich and politically favored inside players."

I cannot agree more with Mr. Gilder's conclusion, but Gilder's own theory is another form of monetarism. To explain the early crises of industrial societies, similar monetarist attempts were made, but finally the successful theory of money was the one which returned to classical economists as a way to understand what was beneath the money relations that were expressed in various monetarist views of the economies of industrial society of that time.

The economic reality of successes of entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley before dotcom bust of the year 2000 has a fundamental mechanism which I have explained in "Social Justice and the Computer Revolution" (2) where "uniqueness value" is at the heart of the economic activity of post-industrial economies. In today's wording, the problem lies with the reality of "winner takes all" in this sector (3). The reward system and existing tax system that we have inherited from the industrial society allow this mechanism as legal. Until a time we can frame an alternative income model (4) to consider new rights for the losers at the table, we are sitting on top of the tree and cutting the stems that have supported us to get to the top in the first place. There is a Persian proverb that says the one who sits on top of the tree and saws the roots is only doing disservice to himself.

Hoping for a democratic and secular futurist republic in Iran,

Sam Ghandchi, Editor/Publisher
IRANSCOPE
http://www.ghandchi.com 
http://www.iranscope.com
August 10, 2015

Footnotes:
 

1. Ask Ray | Renowned economist and author George Gilder’s new information theory of money
http://www.kurzweilai.net/ask-ray-renowned-economist-and-author-george-gilders-new-information-theory-of-money

2. Social Justice and the Computer Revolution
http://www.ghandchi.com/238-SocialJustice.htm

3. Mr. Piketty, Winner-Take-All is the Problem
http://www.ghandchi.com/835-piketty-winnertakeall-english.htm

4. Alternative Income-Social Justice in Post-Industrial Society
http://www.ghandchi.com/427-AlternativeIncomeEng.htm

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