Driving Down the Economy Through Inflation

Inflation is probably our worst enemy. However, one gets the feeling that some governments, particularly the British and the American governments have been unusually complacent about the consequences.

It interesting to see ads for American designed cars on English television. It is almost as if the European market were about to export production to America, and you wonder how the States could recover their competitive position in the automobile industry. Well, we know that what goes into cars comes from a world of sources, literally. But, it makes you think when you realize just how weak the US dollar has become over George Bush's tenure at the White House. So, inflation is not about the cost of things American, but the cost of raw materials.

Well, it would seem to me that we have at least four negative things going on that would feed an inflationary binge. We have:

• High energy prices , particularly, oil prices which will feed into just about every industry. Transport intensive industries are but the start. Gone may be the days of strawberries from Chile on the shelves of British retailers, but I could be wrong. There are just some things that people will buy no matter what the price.

• Growth in national and international money supply well beyond what is called our real economy production, which is goods and services. You know this has to happen during a world crisis in the form of a credit crunch that threatens to deflate the world economy by downward pressure on the marketable value of big things, such as houses. Governments are keeping interest rates affordable so that we don't have further deflation in property values. They are in fact inflating the economies until real demand and monetary demand get into balance. This could take some time.

• People clawing back the real value of what they have been used to, even though their economy can't afford it. Oh yes! Strikes and civil discontent with a general feeling of malaise. Possibly, there is a feeling of being suffocated by the cost of living not retreating. As people are forced to save in real terms, i.e. they can't afford to live as before, they actually save, which means they pay more and profits for things are siphoned out of the economy to pay for energy. The likes of Shell, Iran and Iraq become wealthier while property owners and consumers struggle much harder to keep what they had.

• You wonder how much it costs to build an army these days. Well, we are now paying for military purchases in the future. We are saving for an almighty war preparation effort. Those that will be buying are the energy exporters, who are creating tourist areas in the sun while negotiating arrangements for self protection. Armies and miltiary build up these days can be bought. Our terrorist people may even be receiving some of this money.

Heh! Slow Down! The Hidden Dimensions of Change!

Who do I think I am talking to anyways? Do you ever get the feeling that there is much more to the universe than our physical realities? But, why? What makes you think that? Are you insane, crazy, ill, possessed, religious, philosophical, frightened, desperate, nuts, bonkers, wild, driven, gifted, depressed, dada, strange, born again, revitalized, touched, scared to death, amazed, confused! It doesn't change a thing if you are, or does it? Why so much change and where is it leading?

Why do we react the way we do? Or, maybe you don't react because you are already aware at a deep level that continuous change is inevitable. Call it creative destruction, industrial change, product cycles, globalization, the economy, creative design, Darwinism, survival of the fittest, new paradigms, or just evolution. We see change all around us. We are insubstantial and in a permanent state of flux. We are insignificant in the grand order of things and just plain puny. The only thing is, just about everything that matters suffers from the same condition of being continually changed.

We don't seem to be in control. Yet, we relate closely to much of what is around us and we form attachments and meaning. Some of us derive much more meaning than others. Some see meaning in things others just stare at in amazement and wonder. Some see meaning in things that are just as fleeting as the objects around us, but have no substance. Some see meaning from symbols, words, images, hieroglyphics, mathematics, abstractions, conceptual models, theories, axioms and derivations that completely leave others wondering what is going on.

It is a rare event in one's life to stare into the eyes of a wild animal who instinctively kills for a living. I stared into the eyes of a fox cub that was just a week or more old. It looked into my eyes and saw nothing threatening. I stood still and just watched it looking into my eyes. For a moment something may have happened between us. In a way, we were friends, if only for a short while. Our relationship was conditional. As long as I did not move, the cub would not move.

I do not know whether it sensed danger, or was just puzzled and instinctively knew how to react. In any event, the cub just relaxed and became what it already was, a newcomer to the world, a world in which it would be quickly transformed into an instinctive killing machine with human-like qualities. I wondered at that moment what would define its future. Its parents would ensure that it knew how to kill either in defense or in a proactive feeding effort.

Would this little creature become a killing machine that killed for the joy of killing itself? My feeling is that when desperate, the fox will change into a frenzied unreasoning animal that does what its oldest nature guides it to do, and that is to exercise force on its environment proactively.

Obviously, when you look into the eyes of a baby cub fox, you are changing its perception of the universe. It will remember the event though possibly not in a conscious way. As a temporary friend, you give the future of the fox an element of hope that it will evolve into something less than its basest form.

Hidden behind change is language. The extent to which language is developed predisposes the range of possibilities for change using the words that form the language of change. The extension of language is within the nature of change. In computer science, we use computer language to create objects, and the objects have much the same components as real living things. A programmer can create an object that will behave in certain ways and may even evolve. What can happen within a computer language is that a 'create' routine evolves from the nature of language itself. Language, and by that almost all language evolves to contain creation and destruction processes or words.

There is hidden within the nature of language a dimension that predisposes the language to evolve. This is not a process that one can define as Darwinian, but a possibility that emerges out of the very essense of language. Within language there is a hidden nature waiting to emerge and that hidden nature contains life and death for all any any forms that are part of the language. This is Wooh's second law, which states that 'within language is a predisposition to change and evolution whereby elements of the language are created and destroyed and eventually have the potential to create and destroy. Without these hidden dimensions, the language does not have the potential to be.'

What have I just said? I have said that being arises out of a language and as a language there is the potential for the creation and destruction of all elements of that language. This is very rough and ready I know!