Experimental Economic Theories: An Energy Theory of Wealth, Technocracy, Social Credit, Stable Money and Barter Systems by Shamcher Bryn Beorse (Brynjolf Bjorset) Now, almost 100 years since some of these theories were first drafted, we can look with fresh eyes at the ideas that were emerging in those tumultuous times after the first World War. Rapidly increasing production power, expanding industrial output and the revolution in electric power met both left- and right-wing political ideologies in an arena of war debt and post-war shock. The Great Depression caused economists the world over to re-examine the economic cycles of the century past. New fermenting ideas were everywhere. Combining the work of various "heretical" economists into one accessible volume, this book by Brynjolf Bjorset (aka Bryn Beorse) leads up to a tested Scandinavian economic experiment: Nordic Clearing, which was established during the Depression as a bridge to a new applied economy. Behind it was a radical overview dedicated to rethinking the nature of money, particularly in the climate after WWI. When asked to outline the basic work of the best known new economists of the day who offered an assessment of the situation of poverty in the midst of plenty, Beorse produced Efter Oss Kommer Overfloden (After Us the Glut), his world economic survey (published by Aschehoug in Norway in 1934.) It was immediately translated into English, and released in Britain and the US as Distribute or Destroy, subtitled A Survey of the World's Glut of Goods with a Description of Various Proposals and Practical Experiments for its Distribution. This is the book that brought the young civil engineer, Brynjolf Bjorset, on to the world stage as a firebrand economic thinker who applied radical theories for the greater good.
About the Author: Bryn Beorse (Shamcher) (1896-1980) authored many non-fiction books, novels and articles, covering topics of energy, economics, full employment, and global awareness as well as yoga and Sufism. His early books were written under his original name, Brynjolf Bjorset. He worked and travelled in over 65 countries from Norway to Borneo. Sent on a UN economic mis- sion to Tunisia in the 1960's, helping to rebuild the Norwegian economy after WWII, Beorse also spent time in exploration, travelling to the Kumbha Mela in India, living on the beach in the dunes of Oceano, and going to China at the time of the revolution. A spy in WWII, he was part of the plot to kidnap Hitler. He was an advocate of the giro-credit economic system, and he often spoke out against the stagnation of hierarchical organization. In the 1920s, Shamcher became a pupil of the great Sufi teacher, Inayat Khan, and was in- strumental in developing Sufi centres throughout the world. He devoted the last years of his life to promoting OTEC, Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, the source of benign solar power from the sea.