I commented yesterday on a Brian Lehrer radio show with Francis Fukuyama, discussing his recent book on The origins of political order. You may recall Fukuyama’s previous book from 2006,”The end of History”, which caused some stir. though history continued in any case.
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Francis Fukuyama seems to do a good job of tracing the implications of modern social science theory back toward the origins of society. He represents the natural process of human cultural evolution as a cultural historian naturally might, in terms of the history of cultural explanations.
That describes the evolution of “the explanatory world” of our attempts to represent history in terms of our cultural values. It doesn’t seem to reflect any consideration how the “the natural world” would have evolved to create the features we then attempt to explain. Continue reading Is our “explanation world” how the “natural world” works by itself?→
Herman Daly offers his view of what a “steady state economy” is and how to use the term in a guest blog post on the Capital Institute website. I agree that understanding the meaning is more important than exactly what name you use, but there are important types if “steady states” not yet being discussed.
My comment, posted there and below, is for helping distinguish between the “lively” and “lifeless” forms of steady states that are possible for economies in nature. Of course, I raise the curiously overlooked concise meaning that Keynes would have given the type of lively and conflict free stable state of healthy economies too, as he discussed in “The General Theory…” but was misunderstood.
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Finding the Fitting Name
I’d agree with Daly that ultimately what you call the ideal kind of steady state for an economy matters less than whether what you achieve is something close to an ideal steady state. I study the physics of “open systems”, a.k.a. natural economies, and there are clearly discernible “ideal” steady states one might seek to achieve.
There are the ecosystems that while relatively stable and full of competing populations also display such deep and diverse complementary relationships between populations that the whole system operates with a relatively low level of internal conflict. Continue reading The economic meaning of “steady state”→
All natural systems start with growth like economies, using a “seeding mechanism” for planting seeds to multiply the “start-up” system. That mechanism, which for money is the use of investment to grow investments, has to change form to become a “steering mechanism” [switching from being a “Crash Cow to a Cash Cow” so the “end-up” system can transition from growth to becoming sustainable, if it is to survive beyond its start-up period.
The world seems to be at a particularly decisive moment, not quite being recognized. There’s a strong and creative professional sustainable investment advise community, emerging and being given paid positions and increasing influence, throughout the finance, business and government economic decision making communities. Continue reading Nurturing “cash cows” or “crash cows”?→
Our oil addiction, like all addictions, became a physical trap, and shaped our ways of life to fit its temporary needs.
Needing to consume ever more of the remaining affordable oil supplies also has pollution effects that will permanently disrupt the earth’s climate.
We do it to achieve an evidently false image of “economic stability”.
The design of our environment, our spaces and uses, will change adaptively as some parts of what we built find new lasting uses and others don’t. Christopher Alexander is an architect whose “Pattern Language” explores how the natural processes of reshaping the spaces we live in over time has created urban spaces perfectly fitting their use as a form of natural environmental design.
The patterns of space as an image of their uses
One can discover how we fell into the trap of dependence on an ever growing use of oil with no future. That won’t quickly change the world we built around it though. As we respond, the natural forces and our responsive thinking will reshape our space, likely leading us to follow nature’s paths to finding opportunity and harmony. Continue reading The fit with Alexander – and clearer escape from our traps→
Dan Ariely gave a recent talk on some of his new “Predictably Irrational” research. It stimulated my thinking to ask, using his approach, “What beliefs do people not dare check?”.
Oops... my mistake!
The example below suggests that is a problem for the green movement, regarding why it has been ineffective in slowing the growth of economic impacts. Dan replied “force yourself to do a systematic analysis and listen to the analysis”.
That’s good advice, to “listen to the analysis”. Aren’t we ALWAYS supposed to listen to your own analysis?? There seem to be regularly reoccurring ways in which we don’t, making a big difference in our impacts on the earth. Continue reading Simple facts… and hard memes, why greening doesn’t work→
Leland, Thanks for forwarding Christine Harper’s (Bloomberg Jan 31) notes on “The lonliest man in Davos…” reporting from the meeting of the World Economic Forum.
It all sounds like the very same script pulled from the drawer at every stage of history, as the next greater ecological or financial bubble emerges,
people running about madly trying to patch the weak points in the containment,
…hoping against hope that each greater failure isn’t leading to the inevitable for financial systems designed to ‘stabilize’ growing expectations for results from physical systems not providing them.
When I first noticed that problem long ago I quickly narrowed it down to that deep error of intent, and then to how our accounting system keeps records of it on the faint hope that the impossible will someday be fulfilled. It treats the physical world as a “black box” of unknowns, relied on to multiply returns that can’t be confirmed or contested. So I say, why not “look in the box”, see what you really have! Continue reading The very same script pulled from the drawer→
Brian Lehrer on WNYC radio asked that question “What happens after the revolution?” to discuss the experience of people that might apply to the amazing events in Egypt and the Arab world, and what follows.
I’m a scientist who studies the revolutions in natural systems that nature uses to create everything. You discover causes later, and discover revolutions happening from the explosion of new relationships emerging.
Generally there is a kind of “calm before a storm” that becomes a “viral event” which then goes through a succession of stages. The emerging system seems to “graduate” from one level of organization to another as much as people move through a succession of graduations in life, experiencing a “disrupting and remaking” its environmental relations.
The Egyptian revolution today is at the stage of “immature new culture” needing to mature to find what to refine as their new national culture. A similar challenge faced followed the dramatic collapse of the Soviet Union, now seemingly approaching the end of its second experiment with self-government.
The ideal investment …. for people think of investment only for the money is one that assures that putting money in will let you take more out, and let you add that gain to your investments over and over and over. One can only imagine that to be sustainable, though, when considering nature as a concept rather than an environment. Continue reading Why finance has a bigger appetite than the earth→
Designing a “dashboard” of “Outcomes and Metrics” for guiding worldwide efforts for our pulling back from the brink of of environmental catastrophe, to begin healing our relationship with the earth, is of some considerable importance, and a fascinating task. Below is one email exchange and links.
Applying the transformational vision of Four Years Go a work group developed a draft plan and resources for a comprehensive transformational approach you can find linked to our draft 4YG Dashboard (image below). We wanted to use a wiki to develop key indicators of essential changes in direction, of material, political and spiritual transformation, within 4 years.
Our starting points had been other models, like the Ursula Project’s metrics of sustainability and the European Commission’s MDG Goals Dashboard. We also looked at different PES (Payment for Environmental Services) approaches, and found them objectionable, and CSR (comprehensive sustainability reporting) models, but found them nebulous for our purpose, of defining concrete achievement goals. We ended up having difficulty deciding what to include, not understanding each other’s definitions, and with other 4YG work groups getting more attention. We seem to have accomplished a lot in terms of the conceptual design, though.
The draft 4YG World Transformational Dashboard
Mark,
You’re right, there still is a need for a more ethical ‘dashboard’ than the approach the financial community seems to be taking with “Payment for Environmental Services” (PES) instruments, and “Sustainable Performance Indicators” seemingly for monetizing all of nature for trading in new commodities markets, like repackaged mortgages are!
The Ursula Project model does show considerable effort in constructing a holistic measurement system. Their metrics are interesting too. They seem to rely on consensus value judgments, though, and not to identify physical boundaries or thresholds.
