Its the arts

“

Man Bites Man! Elections ... Economy. It’s the Arts, Stupid?

"It’s the economy, stupid” - James Carville, strategist on Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign.
“The Greeks said that to marvel is the beginning of knowledge and where we cease to marvel we may be in
danger of ceasing to know” - Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 1960
“[Lascaux cave] art pays homage to that moment when human beings, through consciousness, separated
themselves from the animal realm, emerging as the unique entity that we know ourselves to be.” – Wade
Davis, Massey Lecture, 2009

Yup, there is more to art than gold, a lot more! All that glitters is not gold, but, often is made up
to trade like it! That is if some serious value added gets imputed. Art is more significant than
sculpted “Loonies” coins and illustration on specie of our aspirations. Art has always had a
function as our “money” only later impressed on it, but the addition of high-value has been
integral. Art has always been at economy’s core, much longer than specie gold.
The social content of a newly attributed early DaVinci study "La Bella Principessa" is a
compelling example1 of how dearly we will value that content. Conveyed on
something we can measure, a pound of oak panel, vellum and chalk, the piece
was auctioned twice in a decade at $25,000 as if gold by weight. That was its
auction price when traded merely as an attributed 19th century German work
as its social content. If we treat that worth as it is ‘its weight in gold’
reference base, then the rest is awesome social content a social phenomena
acting as money multiplier premium. Now many will consider paying over
$150 million given its new content attribution. Anyone interested in some rare
Black Tulip bulbs? There is art, and then the Artful Dodger.
Social content pays. That is what the 'Mad Men' knowingly sell. The induction of social content
in a product is value added to differentiate one product from others - seeking position in higher
priced niche market. It is also something we have done for millennia, creating cult and fetish art
from little of value like antler, bone or a conveniently workable stone. The supposition of surplus
has driven much economic theory, notwithstanding surplus might only occur one year in three on
the alluvium of the Nile or Euphrates and one year in seven most everywhere else the evidence
of culture and town exists even much earlier in the archaeological record we continue to uncover.
Yet, we find evidence of art being crafted through all time as we waited, for the snare, in blind
beside a deer track, or for the crop to ripen. Art is our economy’s primer. It is what we do.
Some like Wade Davis, vigorously argue our capacity for making art uniquely distinguishes us
from other animals. What resonates is that truth is overlooked by bias. We as a species have
indulged in articulating our relationship to the world through art we have made and left as record
of our place, gifted and traded these objects. Though it must also be said there are elaborate
examples of artwork made among animals, like the New Guinean and Australian Bowerbirds
building finely articulated display staging for the attraction of a mate to their nests. Much is in
1

http://arthistory.about.com/od/leonardo/ss/leonardo_la_bella_principessa.htm

Page 1 of 6

November 2012 © Copyright StockTakers Limited, All Rights Reserved. Copying Prohibited.
The author does not provide investment advice. In order to use reproduce or convey the material herein,
in any way, written agreement must be obtained from the author or its agent Architypes Inc.
StockTakers Limited is an Alberta corporation providing information on “likeables” equities.
StockTakers Limited encourages your seeking tax law advisor for capital gains tax dispositions.

“

Stupid

our persuasive pitch as we set ourselves to craft objects according to a design of our invention.
For the Bowerbird also, art comes first and only is foremost to its success. The social content of
even these bird brain design endeavours is important adding value to secure a mate, their genetic
survival. Ritual gifting is found everywhere in social norms for cohering as a group, welcoming
group
the stranger in tolerance to our group, and then also, as diplomatic device to avoid warring.
e
To many it will seem very bizarre to see art as the base of our economic history but, we should
y,
think about that very carefully. Art objects have always conveyed status in possession of their
.
skills. Status display is central to our social order systems in
tatus
all cultures. Highest order display involves tribal fetish or
ighest
cult art objects and the gifting of such art objects.
Löwenmensch of the Ho
Hohlenstein Stadel Swabia 35000 BCE
is a clan animal headed human bodied figurine carved out of
mammoth ivory using a flint stone knife Venus of Dolni
knife.
Vĕstonice found in Moravia, Czech Republic, is first nude
female figurine in ceramic (before pots) dated to 29,000–
e
25,000 BCE. Fetish clan figures like bear, lion, mammoth,
horse, fox, rhino and owl are found. Ornament is the first use
of metals in corded style rings, and buckles for robes.
Innovation is all a
nnovation
about the artist driven skill-set solving the
ill-defined 'fuzzy' problem or materialize our cosmic riddle.
defined
Insight, heuristic, plausible inference, adduction, conjecture,
or inspiration, these flights of imagination are where science runs into art. The result is where
s
engineering gets its algorithms, once the mathematic
mathematicians connect the dots ... for our ready use of
what proves works to be practiced Art and science align, experiment drives both.
practiced.
,
both
With stick in the dirt, rock grinding rock or pencil and paper in hand we have always drawn our
focus by building our ideas into diagrams We think our challenges through as we process.
diagrams.
Petrogl
Petroglyphs have survived at
sites we carefully protect and
designate as worthy of
World Heritage. Our formal
stylizations
of
Project
Management could just as
likely be an expression of
Dada
symbolisms
for
process until the penny for
our thoughts drops into place
and we have drawn the
landscape of the solution we
have been seeking The
seeking.
SWOT diagram cast into
blocking
blocking-out the broadscope
Page 2 of 6

in any way, written agreement must b obtained from the author or its agent Architypes Inc.
be

“


of issues we need to work through. The Ishikawa Fishbone Diagram tool may be as likely an
ideogram for a fish hunting its prey, and not seen as the basis on which we build our strategy for
shipbuilding or introducing to market a popular small sports car modelled on the ethos of
boomers. Planning of projects is the highest order of managing them. It is the aspect most driven
by qualitative experience least susceptible to quantitative measures2. Art and science align
through our designing minds3, engaging experiment, advancing our knowledge.
High-value added can be driven by our susceptibility to persuasion in selling the arts. Persuasion
is social, making taste, leading right through all sectors of the population. It is also what sells the
smart phone and tablet now, ideas that the trail-blazing pioneers sustained too many bear traps
and arrows trying to bring to market. Dick Tracy as created by Chester Gould, must get some
credit, but it was IBM and Microsoft who suffered trying to bring these concepts to market too
soon. 'Sleek rounded corners' bringing-in the troops of lawyers to face-off in a design copyright
battle should not be between Apple and Samsung. The valise pouch or man-purse sized HP-35
wedge with tight corners at US$395 went to market in 1972. Sleek cornered slim coolness
slipping right into your shirt breast pocket were the distinctions of the £45 Sinclair Scientific,
those 40 years ago, when you finally could get rid of the plastic pocket protector. Too bad the
AAA batteries contactor clips of my Sinclair were not strong enough to survive a fumble-drop
from shirt-pocket onto my desk. Likely those lawyers will not admit Jobs said, “Steal any good
idea” as his mens reas. So also did Picasso advocate, seeing magic in the drawings of children.
Ötzi the Iceman appears from the dawn of Chalcolithic (Copper) Age metals smelting and
working 5,000 years ago carrying no coins on his trek through the Ötztal pass just pack foods;
stone-tipped arrows and bone tools; and also, a copper-head axe mounted on an yew burl haft a
high status display (possible trade) good left behind by his murderers
so as not to announce their crime by possession of such rare and
marvelous artefact. In his blood traces of arsenic from smelting ores
and in his skin and hair traces of copper filings confirm his artisanal
ability in copper working. Ötzi the Iceman seems to have been a
practised artisan, pioneering in the most advanced technology of his
time. Early records such as we have in Ötzi the Iceman of Western
Europe, Battle Axe of the Baltic Germanic speaking Celts, to the Fatyanovo–Balanovo culture of
the Volga in the Eastern Europe, are that a copper axe though less sharp than flaked chert stone
or shards of shell was carried for status among men while stone was more practical accordingly
carried by women and children for daily group oriented tasks of butchering and gathering.
It is what we visualize we can gain by having any item in our control that encourages our
valuation of any item offered in trade. That motive cannot be closeted just as its utility, often its
durability, but also its delight. It is delight that ‘Mad Men’ persuasions hinge into action adding
that value foremost to creating the niche market. This is a facet of demand that must be nurtured.
2
3

PBOK, Ch 3, 17of 20 tasks are specifically identified as qualitative, with remaining 3 quantitative.
This view I have long held. It appears confirmed in prior work of Georgy Polya and later Ranulph Glanville.

Page 3 of 6


“


These are not accidents but values well known. These are the summary of Vitruvius’ surviving
view of the canon derived from Aristotle’s classical Hellenism. Much the same grounds are
likely found in common among all cultures. It is not mechanization that makes us human. Art is
precedent to science and all the production science and engineering make available.
Surplus of goods has not driven us to market, but the availability of art making goods offered in
trade. Bead work from shells, like wampum, is ‘idle-time’ art work leading to demand for shells
and their prevalence in use as the first ‘money’ in evidence which has existed deep into our
species behaviour as archaeology exposes. The carving of clan ‘magic’ images in bone, and
child’s finger imprint on figurines of crude fired clay predate more utile functions of these arts.
These are the first elements of trade goods as media of exchange. Metals even in smallest
quantities as first smelted from placer nuggets and ore were first beads for making art prestige
goods adding to our canon of jewellery ornament. These were high value added goods with
‘magic’ in them, “a new innocence of perception, liberated from the cataract of accepted belief.4”
“Art is in the act of making5” is not over simplified summary in Gombrich’s rich commentary on
our practice of art through all of time. We proceed in making images that satisfy through trial
and error, the core of scientific inquiry we have pursued from ancient to current order. “Where
we cease to marvel we may be in danger of ceasing to know” is classic Greek derived advice
economists abstruse theorizing ignores at peril of being just obtuse, merely irrelevant.
It is our innate desire for creating, which drives our market decision placing value on what is
offered in trade. That is always as it has been a factor of human aspirations. We participate in
adding value to corporations in the same way, bringing our value to add to its process.
The argument of John Nash6 has ‘Bill’ bagging a bundle much more highly valued by him than
by ‘Jack’ which can turn one quickly to the folk tale Jack of the Beanstalk trade of his mother’s
dry cow, for a handful of ‘magic’ beans. Like Nash's 'Bill' selling bean seed to 'Jack' who then
climbs to the clouds on it to steal a bag of gold and makes his escape down the beanstalk, there is
some serious 'magic' in this activity of trading.
Culturally, we have known this a long time and told many a folk tale to convey such wisdom to
our children. It is one of our first lessons in training entrepreneurship values. Some may actually
have taken their lessons to engage in selling the pea and shell game as adults, or more
pathologically selling bad fiction, that we can see as on the order of damned lie aiding fraud.
The ‘Mad Men’ run the gamut from using fair truth, to white and damned lies. “Magic, or New
and Improved” sound bite tempers and manipulates our decisions in the market. The spreading of
fair truth covers the conveyance of all, with the white and the damned. Art is then also exercised
without science, when ethos without experimental result, as is rife in financial product sales.
4

Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation, 1964
Sir Ernst Hans Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 1960
6
"The Bargaining Problem", John F. Nash, Econometrica (18): 155–62, 1950
5

Page 4 of 6


“


There is no economic system without consumer demand for production. That is the fundamental
truth of economics. Markets exist because there is demand. Or demand can be advocated by
“Mad Men” persuasions. They rush to microphones to get their agenda sold and imprinted on our
minds. The suppositions of surplus and need as central to .market theory is waste. Demand is the
core not supply. Trickle-down theory all you want and you will be bailing your canoe.
For the magic of symbol and image found created in our art always there has been demand. This
we can trace beyond 35,000 years, in artefacts and trade for their constituent materials is found in
our archaeology in every material that is found not of its place. What is out of its place bears
tremendous meanings. We have always needed to comprehend and include such in economic
discussion. Oddly this practical money of bone, chert, salt, and shells found in history is summed
by Carl Menger7 and left behind unworthy, as theory of money focus turns to specie alone. They
then assert credit follows the march of barter, to money, to credit which is far from real
economic record even as it was two centuries ago when Adam Smith made this conjecture.
Coin specie was first invented in Arcadian silver and later Croesus’ Lydian gold, but ‘money’ as
an exchange medium in social contracts has been in archeological evidence for more than 35,000
years, first in their raw inputs in shells and amber; and then, high-value added artefacts for status
goods both gifting within the tribal group (think of your life as children engaging group inclusion
without money, even in refrigerator art) and trading as an activity more widely where the
participants do not know each other. This life of trading evidently began before agriculture,
pottery or metals were known or towns invented. Informal monies such as these media and credit
contracts (even as IOU’s) arose in response of necessity and have been tendered where and as
market traders agree. People gift within their group, as well as trade in village and town.
To presume and think otherwise (as gold standard advances in common debate these days) is an
asocial view of market functions. Gold standard comes as aberration acting on the market
requiring a class of money changers and banking aimed to sequester value to isolated
constituencies outside its own. It is derived from classification in economics which aims to serve
those isolated constituencies, their own interests.
Some view specie invokes an asocial intrusion of government military financing8 on traditional
credit contracts arising with the Greek palace and plunder economy invention of coin. Strangely
that is where the economics of money theory begins and largely misses the point to merely
justify one side of economics, that of warring, ruining much to gain small portion for few in
plunder, instead of corporate creation and adding value, each to his ability. We must deal with
both formal and informal monies, specie and endogenous credit money if we are to advance
understanding economic operations in our society in an actual fully balanced and useful way.
The substance of The Modal Geometry does not need these distinctions in categories of money
but instead deals with the whole, all of them, in mapping from balance sheet data the added
7
8

“On the Origins of Money”, Carl Menger, Economic Journal, volume 2,(1892) p. 239-55, translated by C.A. Foley
David Graeber, Debt: the first 5000 years, NYC, 2011, agenda is not in the roots of social trade. The baby is in that bath.

Page 5 of 6


“


worth of the trading connections who build-in the vitality and outcome of each corporation. It is
from this mapping we derive the risk price as a measure of the individual firm against which we
are able to ascertain the place of its equity in the estimations of other market participants, much
as Nash’s ‘Bill’ and ‘Jack’ confirmed by evidence in their market behaviour. Two of three
equities trading above the risk price continue their price gain is real, evident proof. It is on the
basis of that evidence we can partition the entire market into “likeables” selected on the basis of
their risk price relationship to the market determined stock price. With very reasonable accuracy
the risk price exposes the partition between gainers and losers. It is powerful knowledge.
Be wary of the financial products industry newspeak for therein is no science for which they can
be accounted. They do not know risk, or volatility other than as consequence, you will suffer, not
they. Sales patter they have plenty, as these market Mad Men churn ‘news and gossip’ for your
fees. News making without results in useful return advantage for growing your wealth is all they
can do, just stirring-up investor angst with conflicted interpretations motivating markets churn9.
Knowing risk price, achieves capital security and necessary liquidity for our clients, and
outstanding gains in long term positions. You have market proof positive in our ABC’s Truth or
Dare portfolio results. We do know more and better than the entire industry as shown in our
continuing record for advantageous outrageous results obtained in real markets. Our methods
proceeding only from balance sheet data analysis obtain high return, capital security and
liquidity for your investment portfolios. That is very likeable.
Our reasons for having any equity in our portfolios are clear, concise and consistent. The equities
we hold are “likeables” tending to gain 67% of the time. We do not make stock prices but can
reasonably respond to stock price tendencies, by our knowing the risk price, from which to
measure the downside, and buying and holding accordingly. We exercise new fundamentals from
new theory we have put into policy obtaining 29% IRR average. Know What You Have. Have
What You Know
Our view is risk averse. Of course we earn our fee for doing that. Mail us for our help.
Ernst and Hans Goetze,
Architypes Inc and StockTakers Limited
Head Office
76 Midridge Close SE
Calgary, AB
T2X 1G1

72 Cornwall Street
Toronto, ON
M5A 4K5

351 Chemin Boulanger
Sutton, PQ
J0E 2K0
450 538-1270

9

http://riskwerk.com/2012/11/10/investor-angst/ One basic fact, one news wire playing the market, one service not involved in
conflict of interest which makes a mad mad world of newspeak. What do they know that is worthy of such filtered commentary?

Page 6 of 6


Its the arts

Empfohlen

Empfohlen

Weitere ähnliche Inhalte

Ähnlich wie Its the arts

Ähnlich wie Its the arts (13)

Mehr von Hans Goetze

Mehr von Hans Goetze (20)

Kürzlich hochgeladen

Kürzlich hochgeladen (20)

Its the arts