The Nature of Good Government

By H Doyle Smith

The government should be a government of people, not money. The Occupy Wall Street movement senses this but lacks focus. This book provides that focus.

The government has roles to play in the safety, conflict resolution, and pooling resources. The roles that the government has to play require strict adherence to the rules. There can be no

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prominent Books Edge LLC
• Release date: May 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9781958475751

H Doyle Smith

Being the son of a Southern Baptist minister, H. Doyle Smith has had an early start on reading the Holy Bible.Having read it five times even before he left his teen years, and then adding fifty years of further meditation, has given him profound understanding of what needs to be introduced in his book The Bible Is a Single Book. He is a member of Mensa and other high IQ societies. He has been a CPA for thirty years. At present, he is a member of a Lutheran church and very much involved in a men's prayer group. He is also a lay reader and a former tenor in the choir.

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Cover of The Nature of Good Government by H Doyle Smith

The Nature of Good Government

Copyright © 2024 H. Doyle Smith

ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-958475-74-4

ISBN (Hardback): 978-1-964494-05-0

ISBN (Ebook): 978-1-958475-75-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in the work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Printed in the United States of America.

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USA

Contents

Process Economics

On the Nature of Good Government

Biblical Religion and Government

The Ten Basic Rules

The Church Cannot Judge

The Christian’s Role

Respect to Whom Respect Is Due

Honor to Whom Honor Is Due

Taxes to Whom Taxes Are Due

The Way the World Works

Megaeconomics in History

The Natural Process of Accumulation

The Mathematical Scissors

The Inevitable Monopoly

Conclusions

Proposed Medical Reform Bill

Immigration as an American Problem

About the Author

Dedicated to my loving wife, Dolores.

Process Economics

Value

There is a

stream flowing behind my house. The bed of that stream is covered with gravel. It’s pretty to look at but serves no purpose otherwise.

I have a driveway in front of my house. After long use the gravel in that driveway has been pushed down in the ground so that in wet weather the driveway is very muddy and when it is dry the dust gets on things in the house.

I get a wheelbarrow and dig out the gravel in the creek bed. Now the gravel has a use, and I use that resource to accomplish the objective of restoring my driveway. This is an economic transaction.

How do I know this? The alternative is to use my relationship with my boss to work to acquire currency. I can then use that currency to pay someone to move that gravel for me. Those actions create data, and the data is reflective of an economic transaction.

If I use currency to describe this transaction the data involved appears twice, once when I earn the money and once when I pay for moving the gravel. If I use my wheelbarrow and time, it does not appear in any data.

Data economics, in which the transaction is the exchange of currency for goods and services, is reflective of the economy, and gives us an idea of what is going on in the economy. It does not work outside of data economics, and most economies do not use currency. When I first proposed that we look at value, rather than currency, my professor told me, You have to stop somewhere. The study of value goes beyond the confines of data economics and requires an understanding of the nature of the objective in the redefinition of economics. To deal with non-monetary economies requires going on when you would rather stop. The value of any resource is its ability to be used to accomplish an objective. It is important to understand the difference between resources and goods and services.

When I hire a lobbyist to speak for me with a politician. The value of the lobbyist’s relationship to the politician is a resource. When he gets paid for using that resource, it becomes a service. The difference is significant. I can approach the politician myself, establish a relationship with him and use that relationship to establish contact with the politician, but the value o that relationship exists only when there is an objective for which it can be used.

In the case involving gravel above, I have used a resource to accomplish an objective, a sound gravel driveway. The use of a resource to accomplish an objective ends up being the definition of an economic transaction. The value of any resource lies in its ability to be used to accomplish an objective.

A Backwater of World War II

World War II was fought from Moscow, across Europe and the Atlantic, to the Pacific, Japan, China and even to India. In this vast expanse, some locations were left isolated. One such location was the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. John Keats wrote about this area in the book, THEY FOUGHT ALONE.

Wendel Fertig was a businessman, who was left behind when the Americans retreated from the country. After establishing radio contact with American forces, Fertig was given a commission as a Coronel. The book describes the fighting there, but one theme of the book dealt with the economic arrangement that made the Philippinos economically strong even while the Japanese held the upper hand militarily.

The basis for the success of this economic arrangement was the designation of the worth of the dollar as equal to a bushel of rice or a bushel of corn. There were four things about this designation that made the economy successful.

Value is the ability of a resource to accomplish an objective. The objective of both rice and corn was to eliminate hunger. We are hungry at least three times every day, Since the dollar was equivalent to a resource that had value at lest three times every day, it maintained its value over time.

Both rice and corn were available to everyone. These were a common crop on the Island, and everyone could acquire these crops easily. If a crop has no value and is not available it cannot be used as a basis for an economy.

The crop could not be accumulated. In 1930, the Smoot-Hawley tariff placed such a burden on foreigners that they could not sell their products in the United States. As a result, the medium of exchange was collected in Fort Knox as the foreign companies paid for their purchases in gold. The result was that there was no currency circulating outside that Fort. There was no currency available to pay for the transportation of food from Florida to New York, so the crops were rotting in the fields in Florida, while people were starving in New York.

Last, the value of the dollar was designated. That value of a dollar in Mindanao during World War II was designated as worth one bushel of either rice or corn.

Now, you will note that we have two resources, corn and rice involved. It was not the resource that gave value to the dollar, but the objective.

The economy that developed on Mindanao during World War II came to a crashing halt.

One soldier was offered the service of having his clothes washed and gave the woman soap. Soap was rare on Mindanao and the woman felt that she had been paid a lot for her service.

A second soldier, offered the same service, accepted but gave the woman nothing. A third soldier gave the woman who offered the same service $50.

So was the value of the dollar a bushel of rice, nothing, soap, or one fiftieth of a wash?

Without a set value to the dollar, the economy collapsed.

Petroleum As The Resource for Valuation

When we look at the American economy in history we fand that a similar mechanism made the United States economy strong for many years.

There are two elements here. One is currency, The other is valuation of the resources.

Currency is designated currency, but it cannot be valued by its ability to be used to accomplish an objective. Gold is a good currency, since it has a designated value, but it is not used up by application of the rules of value. It is not used up. Currency is something that will be received by a person, stored until needed, and then used in a exchange for other resources. If the gold that backs the value of the currency is made into jewelry, it will not serve again as currency. It has a designed relationship to the dollar, but as objectives are found, its value goes up. If those objectives are accomplished and not continued, the value of the currency goes down.

The value of the dollar is a different matter. The book THEY FOUGHT ALONE illustrates that the value of a dollar, to be strong needs to be tied to a value of a continuing objective. In the case of Mindanao during World War II, that value was based on the continuing objective of eliminating hunger.

In the United States, after the Civil war, John D Rockefeller acquired a monopoly in oil. He set the price of that oil at twenty-eight dollars a barrel. Oil was used to heat homes and provide light at night. This was a continuing objective, so anyone could compare the value of other objectives and establish a value for it.

This understanding provided a continuing value for oil. It had value, that is it could be used to accomplish an objective and the objective was continuing. It was available; the Standard Oil Trust provided it was available to all at a standard price. It could not be accumulated. People had no normal way of storing oil. And it had a designated price.

This understanding of the valuation of the dollar is a useful mechanism for understanding any economy. The fact that there are two different mechanisms involved helps illustrate the problem of competing definitions.

In a currency economy, there must be currency to use for exchange. In 1930 Congress enacted the Smoot-Hawley

Reviews for The Nature of Good Government

[sadiecooney · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is an interactive way to help children cope with divorce. It gives insight to real life situations from children. The perspective is that of a child whose parents are getting a divorce. The book includes coloring activities that help the child understand their upcoming life events. I would give this book to a child that might need help coping with their parents’ decision to divorce. I went through this and had a lot of family support, but I loved reading as a child and I would have loved this book!