Apologies Evan, I meant the Direct Democracy Party of New Zealand.
http://www.ddp.co.nz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17&Item id=46

Of course people desire all those things, but all other parties promise those same things as well, and the Social Credit Party has the added challenge of educating the populace of the current banking, finance, and economic realities, whilst contending with their critics dismissing them as the “funny money” party.

“New Zealand Democratic Party for Social Credit

An old favourite. Earned 21 per cent of the vote at the 1981 election but won only two seats. Acquired a reputation as the “funny money” party because of its economic policy.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10339555

“Funny money from Coralie Leyland, the elderly face of Social Credit, who got heckled with “print more money”. She does need to go home and knit and stop finding foreign banking conspiracies. She wasn’t the local candidate though, I guess there is only one straight-jacket in the party.”
http://libertyscott.blogspot.com/2005/09/aro-valley-electoral-meeting- verdict.html

“Although I greet the renewl of the Social Credit movement as a political force, I don’t think that in the current political climate it has any chance of making the necessary 5%”

Oh, we would do much better than making 5%.
Whenever people find out what we represent, it’s greeted with a yes in my experience. Independent Worker’s rights: an economy that inherently rewards and distributes wealth(employers and employees both on same team, both workers, no finance power in the middle); not one that rewards finance and concentrates it( it is the difference between someone working fulltime and not being able to pay their powerbill in time, like a recent tragic case, or working full time and owning thier own home, supporting their entire family while wife raises family if desired and being able to afford family holidays, more leisure time etc).
A commonwealth built into the system, not being more dependent on one or the other of individualism or various degrees of collectivism but both, making them essentially one and the same and in unison as they really are. Sustainable growth, democracy not bureacracy, a people’s media etc
We are not the party that will get “Moonshine the Monetary Reforming Morepork” advertised on msm, or acknowledgement by the media for one reason; we advocate a clear and logical path for the distribution of NZ’s wealth for all to share in with the framework of capitalism working as it’s suppose to work, to the benefit of all and not a few, basic neccesities available as a right, not a consumer priviledge.
New Zealanders gave over 20% of the vote to Democrats for Social Credit(which lead to mmp) and they didn’t even understand the platform, that is a clue is it not?
And the world needs it, someone has to lead:

http://www.democrats.org.nz

“New Zealand is an island nation. We are in the position of being able to set our own standards, determine our own direction and live according to our beliefs without unduly affecting any other nation. We can make our own rules. Our geographical isolation liberates us: we can please ourselves, and act courageously in our own best interests.

Unlike the Local Government Rates Inquiry report, Democrats for social credit monetary reform policies give New Zealanders the freedom to choose an independent future.”

Stephnie deRuyter
Party Leader

Apologies for not addressing you until now. I am familiar of the work of Clifford Hugh Douglas, who I learnt of from reading Death Grip by Michael Rowbotham, and Healthy Money, Healthy Planet by Deidre Kent, which forms the basis of my views on Economics. Although I greet the renewl of the Social Credit movement as a political force, I don’t think that in the current political climate it has any chance of making the necessary 5% and will only have a chance if they combine with likeminded political parties as a voting bloc. The Democratic Party of New Zealand have a very similar policy platform of yours and according to its leader has received interest from the Republican Party in merging.

“All of this was to counter Douglas because they saw that if Douglas came in with the social credit and the National Dividend, the power of the bankers and financing the production/purchasing power gap would be cut off at the knees.”

Alongside that they refer to the hyperinflationary printing of money by the Weimar Republic between the World Wars so as to tar the Social Credit movement with the same brush, whilst ignoring the fact that the reason the German government printed money in such huge quantities was to escape the onerous war reparations imposed by the Versaillies Treaty, whilst suffering the effects of the Great Depression. Some things never change, eh? Funny how US industrialists were only too happy to invest in Germany after Hitler came to power. Hmm.

“(’I know the secret of making the average American believe anything I want him to. Just let me control television…. You put something on the television and it becomes reality. If the world outside the TV set contradicts the images, people start trying to change the world to make it like the TV set images…..’

Hal Becker, media ‘expert’ and management consultant, the Futures Group, in an interview in 1981)”

He would likely admire Joseph Geobbels, the Nazi propoganda minister then.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.�

“Economic Democracy has to be built into the system, independent, not dependent, on people. It’s the only way Democracy has ever worked.”

Thats my belief too, but as long as we have the hogs in charge of the trough and the foxes in charge of the henhouse, true democracy has not got a chance.

2)Over half a century ago, a financial and industrial backed Fascist regime was able to use IBM machines to catalogue and isolate an entire race over the whole continent of Europe, which it occupied. Where did the strength for this situation to fully manifest come from, just more dumb politicians?

A couple of quotes: “And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to recieve a mark on their right hand, or in their forehead: And that no man might buy or sell save he had the mark.”-Revelation 13:16
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72S87-dWka4&mode=related&search=

“look how stupid everyone is, we can do whateva we want to do”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXL5kYZ2bTU&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvtOzxt6uZM&mode=related&search=

Three cheers for debt based democracy!!!
Beauracracy, of the people, by the people, for the “elite” class.

“You seem to have read something about Marx’

Yes I have actually only started reading Das Kapital in the last few days. I’ve known of his writings since high school, although the education system that I studied under (extremely conservative, American Christian education), understandably, wasn’t particularly complementary towards the rationalist philosphical movement that Marx was a member of.

Alot of he wrote is true today as it was 150 years ago, but the world has also changed markedly. He either was not aware of the concept of fractional reserve banking or didn’t envisage the complete delinking of money from a commodity value, which was completed when Nixon told international markets that the US dollar was no longer exchangeable for gold, he probably couldn’t imagine women’s emancipation let alone women’s suffrage or feminism, he certainly wouldn’t have imagined to the extent the material possessions, that even the poor can accumulate in the Western world, nor how universal education and healthcare could be distorted for corporate ends, plus he assumed no limits of resources.

Personally I identify myself as a Green Syndicalist as I believe the class struggle, domination of economic affairs by the “capitalist” elite, and environmental destruction are inextricably linked.
http://www.cvoice.org/shantz.htm

“Abit off subject but if you have read alot of marx like i, and i would assume many on this forum, have. then i would advise also reading some of the work by Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, the three together are considered the grandfathers of modern sociology and they, together, present a very well rounded view on society and what makes it tick, marx by himself focuses too much on class structure and because of that looses alot of perspective (and accuracy).”

Thanks for the recommendations Sapient. I’ll make a point to look into the writings of those two that you cited. Perhaps you’d like to read this analysis of Marx.
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-marx.htm

“…for mental health disorders, alot of the increase is due to better meathods of detection and wider classifications.”

I did not mean to imply that the transformation of work is responsible all the increases mental health disorders in recent times, but as you say the un/employment related stresses are responsible for a good portion.

“It is this stumbling block that is often overlooked. It doesn’t matter if it is communism or capitalism - you have to pay somebody (they need to eat while building the factories) to set up the infastructure - factories, plant and equipment, transport system to get goods to purchasers, housing for workers, public transport to get workers to their work and most importantly to shops to buy the goods produced by the fellow workers, etc., etc., etc.”

Gerrit.
People forget that Marx wasn’t a hopeless utopian, anarchist, he acknowledged the need for “market” to both produce/purchase goods and services. What his writings were, was a critique of the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the elite capitalist classes (hmm some things haven’t changed) and a roadmap of how to achieve a more equal apportioning of both. In fact he wrote of the necessity of implementing a progressive, graduated income tax. Can’t have a tax on something that doesn’t exist, but then he hadn’t envisioned a fiat based fractional reserve banking system.

Like I said to samiula previously, people don’t just work to meet their basic needs, but to have leisure time and experiences, personal mobility, communications with widely dispersed loved ones, often it enables them to contribute to the public good, they are able to feel proud of their accomplishments, it enables them to achieve a higher level of status or influence etc etc. i.e they enjoy working, NOT bcause they want to see mere digits on their bank statement.

You are correct that labour required to build the infrastructure, produce any raw materials (metal, oil or whatever) also has to be factored in to the value of the product.

In a capitalist economy, the cost of the capital is (hopefully) covered by the accumulated profits. Furthermore, most capitalists won’t be happy if the profits only recover the cost of the capital, they will want a return over and above that.

To be fair to Marx, he mainly wrote about the capitalist economy, and wrote very little about how a communist economy would work. Perhaps his most well known work on communism is “The Communist Manifesto”, but this pales into insignificance when compared to the number of pages he wrote in Capital, and other works analysing the capitalist mode of production. Mind you, the Communist Manifesto is much easier reading than the other works, which are rather dry, in my personal opinion. Therefore, to claim that Marx was “proven wrong” because the economies of the Eastern European countries were so inefficient misses the point that Marx mostly wrote about capitalism.

“Therefore, you will understand that Marx believed that the value of products and services is, on average, determined by how much labour goes into creating the products and services.”

Dont forget to add in the cost of labour to create the infastructure, buildings and equipment needed to provide the goods and services.

These are usually capital costs that needed to be provided before you can generate income (and are able to collect taxes) from the goods and services.

It is this stumbling block that is often overlooked. It doesn’t matter if it is communism or capitalism - you have to pay somebody (they need to eat while building the factories) to set up the infastructure - factories, plant and equipment, transport system to get goods to purchasers, housing for workers, public transport to get workers to their work and most importantly to shops to buy the goods produced by the fellow workers, etc., etc., etc.

In a capitalist society the providers of the start up capital will want a return on their investment while in a communist system the state does not.

Even,

The social credit system is like all monetory distribution systems in being totally reliant on the right balance between tax payers and tax recipients.

Unless you address how you would maintain that balance (and make it worthwhile for the tax payers to get out of bed and generate the taxes) then I cant see your system working at all.

Your raygun example shows that state servants are more interested in arms production rather then alms distribution. That is not the fault of the monetory system, just the dumb politicians.

“so enjoy your personalised RFI chip when it’s made available for your own good of course”

No wonder nobody takes social creditors seriously when you come out with statements like that.

Even in the country with the biggest database computer capacity they cant get one state department to talk to another. An illegal immegrant can work in the USA, pay taxes, get a drivers license, work for a union and still not be picked up by their much vaunted homeland security system.

What you are forgetting with the chipping business is the pure volume of information arriving every second in a database somewhere. That information has to be queried into meaningful data and then some tax recipient has to do something with that information. No, those chipping system simply fall over under the weight of information and the inability to action it.

Have a look at the growing problem of toll evasion on major Sydney highways and how incapable the toll operators are in collecting the fines.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/revealed-toll-road-freeforall/2006  /09/19/1158431711219.html

Now mutiply this by a billion world wide and you have the reason chipping is not going to work. You simply cannot digest all the information flowing into the system and then enforce it.

Actually you did say “no punitive taxes” or something like that about a zillion posts ago and I took that as a maybe you didn’t mean it the way it came out sort of statement. It does make a difference and the Greens proposal of taxing polluters and taxing energy use/abuse would seem to fit reasonably well with the rest of your system.

Which is why I have been so hard on you in some ways. I needed to know where the gelt was coming from, even if I agreed with the rest of your thesis.

Now I have to digest this, for with the loop complete it looks much more like some Green party proposals than it did at first.

respectfully
BJ