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Install the Team Glossary Pack in a doc where you want to reference the glossary.When prompted to enter the name “Glossary” for your API token.Select from the list the glossary you want to use.Use the formula =Term(Account, “term”) to look up a term from the glossary.
Glossary
Using the glossary
Glossary
Term
Definition
Capital
Anything real (physical)
Co-op
A producer/s of goods and/or services.
Colonialism
The forced integration of a nation’s economy and society into the capitalist world system, administered through the formal political control by one nation over another nation or territory.
Credit
Currency or Money
Economist
“an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today." Lawrence J. Peter
Evolution
1) Becoming. 2) A process of development. 3) Improving one's nature-spirit-and-soul. 4) Expanding one's limits.
Exchange
A transaction of equal values.
Imperialism
The arrangement that enables the systematic transfer of value from the Global South to the Global North, or, in other words, from the periphery to the imperial core of the capitalist world system.
Money
A transferable unit of Credit.
Mutual Credit
Credit extended between members of a network to facilitate transactions. Typically interest-free and independent of third-party approval. As an informational currency, its supply adjusts naturally based on the transactional needs of the network, unlike traditional currencies, which have fixed supplies, such as gold.
Neo-colonialism
A political arrangement in which Southern states appear to have political independence, but are economically subordinated to the dictates of Northern capital
Rentier
One who earns income from capital without working
stigmergy
is the result of free mutual coordination in open ecosystems. It’s a mechanism of indirect coordination between agents or actions, in which the aftereffects of one action guide a subsequent action.
Trade
Movement of goods and exchanges of values. Results can be even or unfair.
There are no rows in this table
See also for more highly detailed descriptions:
from
FOSTER DEFINITIONS
ANARCHIST: One who denies the validity of institutions as such—all exercise of discretion
over others—confounding POWER with AUTHORITY.
ARCHITECT: One whose function is to apply aesthetic theory to the technological function of
structures.
ARTS, FINE & INDUSTRIAL: Their central function is communication, while the central
function of Industrial arts is the facilitation of other functions. Not the distinction between work
and leisure.
AUTHORITY: Exercise of discretion over others with responsibility to them; warranted by
comparative ignorance. Distinguish from POWER.
BAD: That which destroys the ability to participate in other activities.
BARBARISM: Organized use of predation to provide means of life.
BRUTALITY: Irrational show of coercive force without instrumental validity.
CAUSE: Applies to the interconnectedness of the run of the facts, with no “nature” of its own.
No item in the continuum that is human life can be regarded as a cause alone, separable from
effect.
CIVILIZATION: The relative development of the arts and sciences; it is never plural; can't be
lost despite changing power structures.
COMPROMISE: Both sides abandon some part of their position. It never solves a problem
because concerned with "how much" is abandoned rather than "what," the identification of
which requires a criterion of judgment.
CONSCIENCE: The sum of comprehensions of validity in one's own behavior; awareness of
degree of integrity.
CONSUMPTION: Destruction, in the sense of elimination from inventory, but not destructive.
This would seem to be corollary to the definition of investment as variation in aggregate
inventory.
CONTINUITY: Cumulatively developmental, instrumental contribution to a total process. Not
continuousness.
CULTURE: A particular application of the arts and sciences.
DEFENSE: Aggression is never valid. Self-defense is always valid. A decision to defend
oneself in war must be made if you are to proceed on rational grounds. PACIFISM has no
foundation in fact.
DEMOCRACY: The process and structure by which the people decide.
DEVELOPMENTAL CONTINUITY: Foster’s later specification for the content of VALUE—the
criterion of judgment. Objects, beliefs, and behaviors that adjust to maintain correlated
behavior. Cf. INSTRUMENTAL VALUE
DIGNITY: The outward expression of integrity.
DISCIPLINE: Self-control in trying circumstances. Not obedience.
ECONOMICS: The study of how the means of life are provided.
EDUCATION: Provision of the opportunity to comprehend the arts and sciences and their
applications to the everyday lives of everybody.
EQUALITY: In the instrumental sense, Justice & Equality are different words for the same
thing. They describe conditions of inquiry maximal to constant experiment in human
experience. They describe a condition of human affairs in which the individual as part of
society can make a maximum contribution, given his individual uniquenesses and talents and
shortcomings, to the efficient carrying on of the life process of all men.
ETHICS: The study of the difference between right and wrong.
FASCISM: A system in which power is the theory and the criterion of value.
FEUDALISM: The system in which function and status are determined by inheritance.
FREEDOM: Means absence of prescription to most of the world’s peoples, who have
experienced power-imposing institutions. To North Americans, who experienced over two
centuries of frontier life without power-imposing institutions, it means area of discretion over
one’s own behavior.
FRONTIER: An area of land which is outside the control of a judicial establishment, with one or
more factors of production outside market accountancy.
GOVERNMENT: The organized exercise of sovereignty.
HABIT: A pattern of behavior learned by repetition in situations in which it appears to satisfy
functionally the requirements of the situations. Habits are applicable where solutions to
particular kinds of problems have been attained with sufficient accuracy to permit continued
operation without serious infringement of the continuum in question. Cf. REASON.
HEDONISM: The doctrine that pleasure is the sole or chief good and that moral duty is fulfilled
in the gratification of pleasure-seeking instincts.
IDEA: A comprehension of the consequences of some activity which it precedes.
INDIVIDUALISM: The theory that assumes that the only source of validity for an individual's
behavior is the convicted accreditation of that individual.
INFLATION: True inflation exists when price level increases themselves cause further
increases; partial inflation when rising price level does not eventuate in further price increases.
INSTITUTION: A prescribed pattern of correlated behavior.
INSTRUMENTAL EFFICIENCY. Foster’s early specification of the content of VALUE—the
criterion of judgment. Objects, beliefs, and behaviors “working” to correlate developmental
behavior.
INSTRUMENTAL VALUE: The criterion of judgment that seeks evidence of instrumentally-
efficient means that “work” to achieve developmentally-continuous ends.
INVESTMENT: The rate of variation of inventory of a community (for Keynes, inventory of
business); the difference between the rate of production and the rate of destruction In
classical tradition, increasing capital accumulation is good, but increasing inventory is bad, in
that it leads to decreasing investment and income. In Keynes, capital accumulation is inventory
and is good, leading to questioning of the proper character of inventory.
ISM: That which stands for or represents a body of theory, the validity of the assumptions of
which is based on the theory itself. It is always teleological, demonstrating how to achieve a
preconceived end outside of the life process.
JUDGMENT: The rational faculty in human behavior that connects the present and the future.
We know for certain that the future will become the present, and our judgments now are
questions of fact about a particular operation of choosing among alternatives the functioning of
which are projections in human imagination into the future. You can’t make a judgment in the
past, in that sense. All judgments are connections between the present and the future; they are
hypothetical projections of choices within one’s area of discretion into combinations which are
not yet.
JUSTICE: Cf. EQUALITY above.
LAG: Cultural lag hypothesis advanced by Ogburn, Social Change, 1922. Denotes something
inherently different between culture and technology. Institutional adjustment is assumed to lag
technological change. We do have institutional problems brought about by change of industrial
arts, but this is very recent, only since science has adopted instrumental value theory. It used
to be the opposite: family, government, market invented before the wheel.
LEISURE: An attribute of employment, not an alternative to employment. It is an alternative to
working when you are employed, … available to those who have placement in the institutional
structure we call employment. As a descriptive fact, it is not an attribute of unemployment at
all. That’s why we have always thought that unemployment wasn’t leisurely at all. It is the most
not-[leisurely] that you can imagine. In the case of non-availability of alternative placement in
the economic structure, so as to receive income--which is the presumption of the theory we are
considering--there is [no leisure] involved, yet all of it is “not working.
LIBERAL: One willing to alter the established institutional order to solve problems.
LICENSE: Institutionally-enforced improper choice.
LOVE. The integration of two personalities.
MAN: A social animal whose social life consists of integrated patterns of behavior.
MISSING MIDDLE: Foster’s characterization of a bifurcation or assertion of an ontological
difference in kind; taken from propositions in formal logic expressing conjunctive-disjunctive
relations: something is either A or non-A. Foster rejected bifurcations of pleasure and pain,
fact and value, means and ends, cause and effect, theory and practice.
MODEL: A form of inquiry starting from axioms and deducing logically consistent inferences.
Alternative to THEORY.
MORES PRINCIPLE: Institutional structures are both determined by and constituted of habits
of thought & action. This assumption is false.
PACIFISM: Cf. DEFENSE.
PHILOSOPHY: The deliberate effort to think coherently over the entire field of human
experience, i.e., the rational effort 1) to build generalizations which are inclusive of the whole of
human experience and 2) to verify and/or negate these generalizations by observing singular
applications. Generic with science, the only difference being in universes: all-inclusive
philosophy and sciences as singular applications of philosophy.
POLITICAL ECONOMY: The pattern of institutions through which the character and level of
real income are determined.
POLITICAL FUNCTION: The process of determining public policy.
POWER: The unwarranted exercise of discretion over others without responsibility to them.
PRINCIPLE: Etymologically, refers to an inclusive and continuing operational proposition to
which there are no exceptions.
PROFIT: The ratio (as time rates) of un-obligated proceeds (beyond costs) to investment; net
proceeds/net costs.
PROGRESS: The advance of civilization; sometimes defined as rate of capital accumulation
necessary for invention.
PUGNACITY: A human capacity, sometimes treated as a principle of human behavior.
PROPERTY: An asset to which the right of return is attached; may include discretion over use.
PUBLIC UTILITY: An enterprise regulated as to price and product, but privately owned.
REASON: The human capacity exercised in selecting alternatives in problematic situations in
which habitual behavior fails to satisfy the requirements of the situation.
RELIGION: The search for the nature of cause beyond ordinary experience.
RESPONSIBILITY: Accountability for one’s behavior.
SABOTAGE, PEACEFUL: The willful, deliberate, planned curtailment of the provision of the
means of life.
SCIENCE: Science is not an ism. It is a method, a process. It arrays facts in causal terms, in
line with a theoretical formulation, which is a theory of value, a criterion of judgment. 1)
proposing generalizations as working hypotheses, and 2) verifying or negating them in singular
applications. The two steps are separately identifiable but operationally joined, since the first
is accomplished through the second.
SIGNIFICANCE: Applicability to real problems.
SOVEREIGNTY: The resolution beyond which there is no appeal.
SPECULATION: The effort to gain by changes in price levels.
STYLE: The individual character of tool use.
SUBSIDY: A payment which would not have been received if real cost were the limiting factor.
SYNDICALISM: The system in which function and status are determined by economic role.
TECHNOLOGY: The application of theory—arts and sciences—to physical fact, social process,
and the use of social and physical tools.
TELEOLOGY: An outside-of-process directional determinant or identification.
THEORY: The identification of data and hypotheses about relationships bringing into
intellectual availability alternatives which in fact solve a problematic situation. Erroneous
theory does not permit one to get at the right evidence or arrange it for analysis. Alternative
methodology to MODEL, going from specific to general: if first is true, next is probably true. At
least one statement must be empirically verifiable.
When we cannot predict, it is because we do not have applicable theory. If the theory is right,
we can predict—in any area.
UTILITY: Some things give more pleasure or pain than others, and people make judgments
about them. But those traits do not explain how things come to be judged desirable or
undesirable. A criterion of judgment is still needed.
UTILITY THEORY OF VALUE: Identifies want satisfaction as the criterion of judgment. It is
almost universally assumed but cannot be applied because it is irrelevant to the causal
continuum of human experience. It is impossible to apply an erroneous criterion.
UTILITARIANISM: The doctrine that the useful is the good. The determinant of right conduct is
the usefulness of its consequences; especially the doctrine that the aim of moral action is the
largest possible balance of pleasure over pain or the greatest happiness of the greatest
number.
VALUATION: a result of applying a criterion when judging comparative worth; the selection of
proper behavior, choosing alternatives which are available but not yet operative.
VALUE: The criterion of judgment.
VALUES: A collection of valuations; things held dear conditionally. Never continuing factors.
WAR: Never solves problems, but determines who will make policy after it is over.
*****
Carbon Footprint
The amount of carbon emitted by a person, organization, business, or nation. Originally measured in hectares, it referred to the amount of land required to absorb the carbon emitted, hence a ‘footprint’. It is more commonly measured in tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), but it can also be measured in tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
Climate Change
The destabilizing of the climate through the release of greenhouse gases. Human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, is changing the composition of the atmosphere. This traps heat within the atmosphere, creating a global warming effect. The term ‘climate change’ is more useful than ‘global warming’, because it reflects the broader effects of change, including floods, drought, sea level rise, etc.
Contraction and Convergence
A global solution to climate change that recognises that all people have an equal right to emit carbon and distributes a carbon quota to each country on a per capita basis. Under such a principle, which was adopted by the IPCC in 2000, industrializing countries would be allowed to grow their emissions, while others would reduce theirs.
Ecological Footprint
The is a measure in hectares of how much of the Earth’s capacity humanity requires to produce all the resources it consumes and to absorb the waste it generates using current technology and resource management practices.
Economics
The root of the word is Greek, and means ‘the art of household management’. At its most basic it is the way that we organise the distribution of goods, resources and funds.
Economic Growth
The expansion of economic activity within a given country, or the world as a whole, usually measured by Gross Domestic Product. Since economic growth is closely tied to carbon emissions and resource use, it is a key driver of climate change and resource depletion.
For-Profit Entity
An entity in which financial surpluses may be distributed to shareholders. The primary objective of such an entity is almost always to create the greatest financial return possible (ie. perpetual growth).
Gross Domestic Product
Gross Domestic Product is the most common way of measuring the activity in an economy, and adds together investment with the value of all goods and services exchanged. It is considered a proxy measurement of standard of living by many politicians.
Not for Profit Entity
An entity without individual owners. The primary objective of such an entity is almost always to fulfil a social purpose.
Overshoot
is the situation when human demand on the Earth’s capacity exceeds the Earth’s supply, or regenerative capacity.
Peak Oil
The threshold at which remaining oil reserves become too difficult or too expensive to extract.
Steady State Economy
A way of organizing the distribution of goods, resources, and funds that does not need to grow. It is stable, rather than growing in its use of materials or accumulation of debt. A would still change and evolve, but without an increase in material throughput.
Well-being
A general term for a life well lived, incorporating life expectancy, literacy and life satisfaction. Many reformers believe well-being represents a better measure of progress than economic growth.
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