THE TRANSFORMATION OF FISHER KING TO ROBBER BARON Douglas focused upon the institution of finance and its relationship to the economic processes of production, distribution and exchange. He demonstrated that general free market equilibrium theory ignored time and money, giving rise to implausible explanations for the failure in distribution which arose from theoretically impossible unemployment. The Douglas theories accord well with non-equilibrium explorations of Marx's economics (see Freeman 1995. Freeman and Carchedi 1996), which have been reviewed in more detail elsewhere (Hutchinson and Burkitt 1997). A key concept in the Douglas economics was the centrality of the cultural heritage of knowledge and skills. Although these could be privatised and exploited for private gain, capitalist competition did nothing to increase the total stock of wealth. Douglas recommended the adaptation of the money system to facilitate provision of a sufficiency for all without the necessity for wasteful production accompanied by the deliberate creation of scarcity. His scheme for a national dividend or basic income was designed to introduce money in to the system as credit rather than debt. SABOTAGE AND THE CULTURAL INHERITANCE In Social Credit, Douglas (1924) expanded upon Veblen's On the Nature and Uses of Sabotage. His chapter on "Sabotage and the Cultural Inheritance" describes the artificial money value system which promotes value in exchange over all other values. For instance, if it is necessary for me to cross a large river, a boat would seem to be my immediate requirement. Its utilitarian value to me consists in its ability to transport me across the river... But the generally accepted opinion of its value would be directly proportional to my ability or the ability of someone else, to submit to penalisation financially for the use of the boat, and this again would be directly proportional to the urgency of my need and would be enhanced by the absence of other boats. It should be particularly noted that this kind of value is not inherent - it is one remove away from the simple usefulness of the boat. (Douglas 1924: 44-5) According to capitalist theory, Douglas concluded, the value of anything useful is enhanced by its scarcity. It follows that values are being created "through the agency of scarcity" i.e. "by creating a