Love-Pain Economics

It has been said that real economics begins with love expressed in the Principle of the General Welfare as the foundational economic principle. To the degree to which it is developed, civilization prospers, or is lost and, inversely, disintegrates. But what is love, to have this effect? The story deals with the question in a Kaleidoscopic fashion that offers surprising new vistas at every turn. The story is situated in Leipzig, Germany. The protagonist is an American diplomat, who rather than being in control of things finds himself bewildered by the course of a love affair that unfolded more brilliantly than he has dared to hope for, but ended with a somewhat 'empty' tone. Here the world-critical story of economics begins that he knows nothing about, and much less has experienced. The story may be classified as social science fiction, but it really belongs into a class of its own for which no classification yet exists. It begins in the setting of a pub where many a question about love has been pondered over the centuries, and perhaps so even in political contexts. The cover image for the book is of historic political significance, perhaps even of world-historic significance. Behind the entrance shown, to a small pub on a small street, a private meeting had taken place, as I was told recently, between Mikhail Gorbachev and a high-level official of the DDR government, perhaps with party chief Eric Honecker during the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Republic in October 1989. No one knows what love 'pains' may have driven the agenda, as both had likely seen the writing on the wall, that without love for the general welfare, economies disintegrate, and that without economies, political regimes cannot stand. On November 9, that year, the Berlin Wall was breached that had imprisoned the nation. On December 1, the state essentially voted itself out of existence. A year and a half later, on December 25, 1991, then as President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned. For all practical purposes, right of wrong, the Soviet Union had lost the heart of the people. Gorbachev resigned from an 'empty' seat. The economics story in this book was not written with the political collapse in the East in mind. The story is situated a long time earlier when it appeared that the Communist regime would last a thousand years. The story was created to explore the economic principles, especially their root in love, and their reflection in civilization; and how the much-more devastating economic collapse of the West might be avoided by these principles. The Kaleidoscope Project became a subsequent feature for me. I had started to write books that I would love, that are filled with a kaleidoscope of superlatives that define the riches of our humanity. My writing project began with two small novels, Flight Without Limits - a science fiction experiment to open the portal to the human superlatives - and a larger novel, Brighter than the Sun - a fictional project to explore the human dimension of the greatest intentional catastrophe that humanity has prepared against itself, termed "thermonuclear war" that is still on the agenda. The larger novel explores against the background of catastrophe, the superlatives of the inner and enduring riches of our humanity. But the work didn't stop there. It just began. It became apparent that the human superlatives are so rich that they are best explored simply by themselves, for their own merit, so that a super-imposed context would tend to dilute them. The result became a series of twelve novels that I have named, The Lodging for the Rose. The work became a kaleidoscope-experience of superlatives, where new vistas of our inner riches come into view with every turn. The story in this book, is from Book 1 of the series.