Henry George Birthday Learning Event

Advancing Georgist Thought Through a Birthplace Learning Event

The Interplay of Land Value and Money in the Global Economy With Visiting German Researcher Stephen I. Ternyik, M.A. Thursday, September 10, 2015 3:00-5:00 pm Henry George Birthplace, Archive, and Historical Research Center 413 South Tenth Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147 About the Event Panelists will respond to a pre-circulated paper (abstract attached) written by BAHRC visiting researcher Stephen I. Ternyik in the format of a roundtable discussion. The purpose of this event is to better understand the decisive role of the value of land (natural resources) in today’s moneybased economy. The event is open to the public and will be streamed live.

About Stephen I. Ternyik Stephen received his Magister Artium degree in Education Management and Technology Evaluation from the Technical University of Berlin where he completed a thesis on learning and networking with computers. Prior to attending the Technical University, Stephen worked in medical service and completed four years of an industrial apprenticeship. He graduated from the Henry George Institute in New York in 1995 and was a visiting research fellow in technical creativity at Tokyo University in 1993. Stephen also studied ethical literature at many universities in Jerusalem.

Stephen currently works as a self-employed consultant and private entrepreneur. His current research interest includes the role of energy (natural resources/land) in human social life.

Stephen believes that as human societies advance, it becomes more imperative for these societies to learn about and practice using natural resources more efficiently. Stephen has authored five books, various articles and on-line courses on this subject and is a member of the German Physical Society/Division: Physics of Socio-Economic Systems. His current book extends his research models to human health.

To learn more about Stephen and his research, please visit: www.stephen.ternyik.scienceoflife.nl.

You can contact Stephen at: StephenJehucal@web.de.

Paper Abstract The work of Henry George is principally about the universal laws of human progress and decline, pointing to the key role of natural resources (the value of land) for economic production.

While this is the right direction and observation for scientific research, the methodical tools of Georgist thought have to be advanced in order to understand the different origin and nature of our modern monetary production economy, i.e. the current role of money for economic production and human life must be better and deeper reflected as almost all societal needs are reduced or translated into monetary value.

Today, money has become access to natural resources and specifically to energy; money and energy are now interchangeable. Every economic circuit in human history is actually an energy circuit from natural input to processed output; while money knows no physical limit, the amount of energy (natural resources) is physically limited. The maths of money has to be adjusted to the energetics of natural resources (land value); the more advanced a human economy becomes, the more it has to learn about the efficient use of land resources. Human ingenuity cannot alter the construction principles (natural laws) of reality.

Consequently, our artificial monetary machinery needs some natural brake to balance input and output of the eco-energy circuit; several Georgist thinkers have written about such measures, e.g. removing land value as collateral for banking loans, taxing capital interest gains and narrowing monetary transactions. The physical cycle reads: energy quantifies time/time quantifies production/money quantifies energy; as a result, the inter-changeability of money and energy needs the application of a natural ratio to reach a dynamic equilibrium.

American thinker John C. Hodge calls this a survivalist morality while former NASA physicist Edwin E. Klingman calls it an economic accounting system that can produce optimal resource allocation and distribution.

Panelists [will include brief bios and websites] Ed Dodson, BAHRC Senior Researcher (confirmed) Andy Mazzone, Henry George School of Social Science (confirmed) Scott Baker, Common Ground USA President (confirmed) Lindy Davies, Editor of the Georgist Journal Fred Foldvary, Economics Lecturer at San Jose State University Mason Gaffney, Emeritus Professor of Economics, UC Riverside Polly Cleveland, Adjunct Professor at Columbia School of International and Public Affairs Contact

Please contact BAHRC Director Alex Lough at henrygeorgebahrc@gmail.com for additional information. This event is co-sponsored with the Henry George School of Social Science