The goals of implementing the Work-Standard have been outlined in sufficient detail. Everything related to its conceptual framework is completed in order to describe how Arbeit and Geld are capable of changing the conduct of economics and finance. Much has been accomplished to discuss the basics and more comprehensive details. While nothing is truly perfect, a later generation could pick up on my research and develop their own ideas based on the discoveries I had made. They can take the Work-Standard and turn it into something worth striving for. In early Entries of The Third Place (1^st Ed.), I began my searching for ways to streamline and simplify the general ideas of the Work-Standard without sacrificing necessary information. If one were to reread the text from the beginning, the treatise was articulated to address a number of seemingly different topics that converged into a single coherent narrative about a recurring group of subjects.

Complete Summary

Technology and the Student Economy are both interrelated insofar as young people in general tend to interact with Technology as part of their personal, educational and professional lives. Technology can assist the Totality and the Student Body in fulfilling the aims of the Socialization of Young Minds by promoting their social values and behavioral norms on the world stage. It can even be used to protect themselves against excessive Economic Foreignization that normally arises from Real Trade Agreements (RTAs) within international trade. How the Student Body and Totality employ Technology in their everyday lives can influence their decision-making and behavior. For Technology represents Artforms which are drawn from the design philosophies of those who designed the Technology itself. The design philosophy in particular is how its designer receives the ability to revolutionize how others perceive Reality. The endeavor is not always guaranteed to be successful or occurs overnight, but it can be gradual one whose results will only begin to materialize long after the passing of its designers.    

How Technology and the Student Economy play their roles in the State of Total Mobilization are dependent on the Mode of Production that the Totality and State are relying on. It was from there that I gradually learned that Production for Profit and Production for Utility have far more in common with each other from the standpoint of the Student Economy. The first and second Modes of Production may have distinguishable characteristics, but neither were able to innovate in the realm of Student Economy and how it interacts with Technology. The concept of a Student Economy in both Modes of Production is to serve as an entity separated from the official national economy. The Custodial-Care Function does not support the State of Total Mobilization inasmuch as it has demonstrated itself to be a detriment to the overall experience.

Thus, it became necessary to devise a suitable alternative designed to accompany the third Mode of Production, Production for Dasein. The Total Educational Effort was designed to serve as that alternative compatible with the specifications of the Work-Standard. Most of the Entries in the treatise were designed to flesh out the SSE, introducing important information that could not have otherwise been discussed earlier in The Work-Standard (2^nd Ed.). Here, the Total Educational Effort attains its true essence as something intended to ensure that the Student Body are able to directly impact the direction of the State of Total Mobilization toward more beneficial ends.      

The Total Educational Effort, unlike the Custodial-Care Function, is designed to ensure that the Student Body will be able to learn something that they can reapply later on in Life. The Student Body is defined by a generation of people who receive their mandatory education and training before eventually joining the Totality. Any expertise, skills, experience and other qualities which were learned in the SSE are appliable to the Totality and the State. This entails that the national educational system is able to keep up with the Totality and the State on the latest technological developments. Moreover, it also implies that the SSE is capable of having the necessary infrastructure, means of production, NSFIs and even Equipmentalities that the Student Body will need to conduct live-training exercises. Doing so will allow the Student Body to train and prepare themselves for the State of Total Mobilization through the Total Educational Effort.

Next, I needed to discuss about the broader details of the Student Tournament and how it relates to Production for Dasein and the official Tournament of the VCS Economy. Given the obvious constraints of the national educational system, the proposal was to provide the Student Body with a limited selection of economic organizations through which they can operate. Cooperatives, Small Businesses, Workshops, Department Stores, Supermarkets, Second-Hand and Antique Stores were cited across multiple Entries as being the most suitable types of economic organizations for the Student Body. These economic organizations were conducive to establishing a closed cycle that provides prospective Economic Planners and Inspectors at the tertiary educational level with ample opportunities to study MTEP (Mission-Type Economic Planning). Applications of MTEP here in the Student Tournament of the SSE can then be reapplied in the official Tournament of the VCS Economy.

The operation of MTEP in the Student Tournament allows the Student Body to establish and maintain its own Student Body from which to coordinate their activities in a functioning Council Democracy. As part of the broader discussions of Council Democracy, I documented three ways in which the workspace can be governed and three types of economic organization, all of which are relevant to the Social Ranking System. More importantly, I also addressed how MTEP differed from most conventional forms of economic planning by demonstrating how it can integrate the Heimarbeit (Homework or “Work-from-Home”) of the Cottage Industry and the Actual Geld of the wealthy into the LER (Life-Energization Reciprocity) Process for the Life-Energy Reserve. I even provided an opportunity for Intellectual Property to be reapplied in the Work-Standard vis-à-vis the dynamics of Productive/Personal Property-as-Power. It proved vital in pointing out how the concept of the Work-World and its Domains fleshed out the details of Productive/Personal Property-as-Power.  

That in turn allowed me to properly contend with the Informal Economy which tends to arise in most conventional forms of economic planning. And the Social Ranking System, because its design philosophy happens to be the Work-Standard, helped lay the groundwork for abolishing Rents and Mortgages, providing introductory forays into urban planning for the Council State’s central government as well as its subordinate regional and local governments. My discussions of urban planning were still focused on the broader descriptions of the interactions between Technology and the Student Economy within Production for Dasein. Land development and construction projects initiated by the Council State can become the basis for future towns and cities. The Council State should develop its country in a manner where the automobile and mass transportation are capable of coexisting rather than striving to supplant each other as the sole primary means of transportation. The specifications of the Work-Standard’s LER Process will provide the Council State with the necessary methods to provide mass transportation systems as one among many different sources of tax revenue.

By spending an entire Section about the construction and development of urban and rural areas, I was able to discuss more about the SSE. Information that I could never have addressed in The Work-Standard (2^nd Ed.) were discussed there in satisfactory detail. Those included the conferring of Citizenship and the Interpersonal Compacts. A general rundown of the SSE delved into how it applies to the State of Total Mobilization. A few more were descriptions of how the Student Tournament interacts with the official Tournament and the National Intranet.

Despite being the shortest of the five Sections, the real focus of Section Four was to discuss about the historical background behind the Custodial-Care Function and why it is necessary for the Total Educational Effort to challenge. Drawing from historical evidence to support my claims and relying on the arguments of Mary Perkins Ryan, I was able to deduce that the Custodial-Care Function specifically arose as a response to the 1960s Counterculture. The Counterculture threatened the integrity of the SSE’s rival, the OECD-Type Student Economy, which forced the Empire of Liberty to pursue attempts at ensuring that another Counterculture would not happen again. Although a discussion of the Counterculture is beyond the focus of this treatise, I felt that no discussion of the Total Educational Effort would not be complete without also discussing about how the historical conditions in which the Custodial-Care Function assumed its proper form.

With all of the information from the preceding four Sections, I was able to introduce the concept of the Shopping Citadel and its related subvariants. Everything in Section Five is a culmination of what has been discussed previously. It is precisely at the Shopping Citadel that we find the Total Educational Effort interacting with the State of Total Mobilization. It also there where the Student Body interacts with Technology vis-à-vis the Socialization of Young Minds and Economic Foreignization as part of their encounters with Foreigners. A Shopping Citadel, like a Real Economic Zone (REZ), is capable of facilitating Real Trade Agreements (RTAs) through its ability to host Foreign Enterprises as one of its Rent-free tenants.

Concluding Remarks

If there was anything written by me on my Blog that proved to be influential in the writing of The Third Place (1^st Ed.), it was arguably a five-part series of Blog posts from 2021. Entitled “The Commanding Heights of Powerball Gambits,” these Blog posts contained kernels of ideas that later went on to affect the outcome of the First Edition. Each post featured a basic rough sketch of ideas that formed the general point of reference for the SSE, the VCS Economy, the Reciprocal-Reserve Banking System, the Council State, and the National Internet. While the ideas contained therein are technically a bit dated, especially when compared to what was written later in The Work-Standard (2^nd Ed.) and this treatise, I felt compelled to include in the Appendix. But without that series of Blog post, I would never have been able to complete First Edition of The Third Place.

Categories: Third Place

Tags: ARPLAN, Economics, Finance, Mary Perkins Ryan, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Socialist Finance, Socialist Student Economy, Third Place, Total Educational Effort, Total Mobilization, Work-Standard