Category Archives: What to do

Mail & Comment, Natural Economy, Natural systems, Policy discussion, Popular, Transformation, What to do

Adopt natural system principles to keep economies profitable at their limits

Leave a comment

The collection of “Hacks” for the Long Term Capitalism Challenge offered byHarvard Business Review, McKinsey and MIX, for the M-Prize for Management Innovation now has this proposal from me…

Please leave comments for reviewers on The official competition entry at the MIX site (here too is fine for conversation).  If you request information I’ll respond as I did for Bill Rees, and post it if it’s OK with you.

It’s a nice new version of the long series of proposals for using natural economies as models for better ways to organize ours, a kind of systems biomimicry.

General References: (added proposal references at the end)

  1. For closely related world system biomimicry see “News of the Commons“
  2. To introduce systems ecology “Self-organization as “niche making”
  3. I got very good detailed questions on the MIX proposal from Bill Rees, and posted my responses as Questions from Bill Rees.
  4. For an introduction to the physics and general systems theory of natural open systems, see Natural Systems Thinking

_______

The Summary

A good goal for growth would be to end at a stable peak of vitality providing a sound capital endowment for life on earth.  That would be better than ending at a peak of exhaustion, like other “tower of Babel” societies of the past such as Rome and the Mayans.

It can also be thought of as a change of “ism’s”.

It would also represent a change in form for our economic system, while still being the very same economy with the same people and rights, and reliance on creative innovation funded by investors.   By giving profits an end purpose, of caring for things rather than just for multiplying profits, it woud give the whole economy a very different purpose.    So, it can also be thought of as a change of “ism’s”. Continue reading Adopt natural system principles to keep economies profitable at their limits →

among best, Natural Economy, Natural systems, Transformation, What to do

Why real economic ‘feedbacks’ are investment choices, and Keynes knew

Leave a comment

A pair of systems thinking posts on how why the natural way to reform capitalism and bring about its stable and healthy climax. is to turn the world’s accumulated investment funds (the savings of individuals) endowments for their owners purposes other than piling up more money.   JLH

Posted by Ferenc Kovacs

@Helen, My systems thinking aptitude is simple minded. Follow the medical practice that cannot fully undersatnd what is going on in a living organism, has no clue of the causation chain of all diseases, but they heavily rely on the self-corrcting and healing nautre of organisms and time as the only cure without telling us how it works. Therefore I see humanity as the disease, but as we are successulf as parasites and society is built on parasitism, it is is difficult to get the message accross: stop being a parasite and acccept that you need to work to get rewarded. Go bakc to the Garden of Eden, check out what the knowledge of good and bad is really about and accept that life on earth is not optimised for the life span of individuals, not veent a happy life, but on the growth of species and offsrpings in a growing variety which was halted by hmans presence and growth in number. Surely, that will not go on like that, Nature will teach you by taking sanity away from us first. the rest will be easy. We are already insane in pursuing excitement, show and appearances and covering up knowledge and giving up common sense.

Jessie Henshaw • @Ferenc – You said to Helene, “Therefore I see humanity as the disease, but as we are successful as parasites and society is built on parasitism, it is difficult to get the message across: stop being a parasite and accept that you need to work to get rewarded.”

Why it’s “difficult to get the message across” is partly the difference between “feedbacks” as “ratios” and “feedbacks” as “investment choices”. That’s what I had mentioned, to which William Ross said “You have succeeded in expressing it well and succinctly.” as “one of the more fundamental differences between how models of systems and real physical systems actually operate. Particularly for growth systems that represent complex construction processes.” Continue reading Why real economic ‘feedbacks’ are investment choices, and Keynes knew →

Mail & Comment, What to do

Resilience… for the most wrong things

Leave a comment

John Fullerton in “The Double-Edged Sword of Resilience” on the Capital Institute blog, reported on separate research by Bill Rees and Donella Meadows, on immune resistant disease as examples of how resilience can be a mortal threat.  My comment was:

__________

These are good examples, but they aren’t the ones that first popped into mind.  The post didn’t mention some of the more obvious direct threats of that kind to modern society and the earth, the great resilience of humanity’s worst bad habits.

Some are as bad, and take as much effort to maintain, as a virulent addiction to pain killers, even masquerading behind the very best of intentions.  Those may be the most dangerous cases, where people are actively protecting the resilience of completely the wrong things.

Addiction – one of many kinds of misplaced resillience Continue reading Resilience… for the most wrong things →

among best, For teachers, Natural Economy, Natural systems, Policy discussion, Popular, Research & Measures, Scientific theory, Stories & Experiences, Transformation, What to do

All time Top 22

Leave a comment

Top page Requests for:

 Reading  Nature’s  Signals   &    Synapse9.com

All time Top:    1. 22 of May/11,    2. 30 of Aug/11,    3. 39 of Jan/12

___________________
also

Top 85 Jun 2013 Top Blog Posts & Top Archive Pages
Top 67 Dec 2012 Top Blog Posts & Top Archive Pages

 

_________________________________________________________

 

# Reads                   Page/Post Title

3. Top 39  in Jan 2012

557           2007/08/18    Whether successfully averted for the moment or not/

328           2011/07/18    My most disturbing finding/

322                                 Phpub.htm (publications list)

302                                 Systems Energy Assessment (SEA)/

186           2011/07/27    Urges arousal and keynes animal spirits/

162                                 Design/dollarshadow.htm ($’s = btu’s)

118                                 Cartoons/ (mostly New Yorker’s)

115           2011/08/05    Its the leeches that make us strong/

101                                 Pub/EffMultiplies.htm (natural effects of efficiency)

100                                 Chapters.htm (“S” curve reading templates) Continue reading All time Top 22 →

Natural Economy, What to do

Prick or Bleed, drain the bubble or burst?

Leave a comment

The problem is not exactly with the banks.

It has to do with society asking the banks to permanently stabilize a system for multiplying financial returns.

So when the economy can’t generate growing earnings the banks multiply its debt instead, creating “a debt bubble” and promises that won’t be fulfilled.   The promises that won’t be fulfilled grow without limit until there’s a collapse of confidence (‘pricking the bubble’), unless 1) the economy finds totally new ways to expand ever more rapidly, 2) a “Jubilee” is declared to write down the debt, or 3) investors start spending their profits to create earnings rather than lending them to create debt (‘bleeding the bubble’) to relieve the pressure so the economy can return to health.

The Jubilee idea, to write down all the debt (something like a global bankruptcy) is much more disruptive than needed, and is just a temporary fix.  How natural economies solve the same problem, so they can smoothly pause their growth when needed, will also cure the problem for all time and give us a healthy free market economy in the end.

……

I responded to Joachim Sturmberg on the NECSI Linkedin Forum regarding  The Eurozone as a complex network: New analysis shows connectivity as a problem and a solution.

JS 11/20/11 – All of this is really interesting.  However, isn’t there another fundamental point being lost, the core attractor of the whole system? It is all well and true to understand the interconnectedness, if the core aim of the game is all about making ever more money by whatever means, the system network will exactly do that. It may be dumb to have an exponential growth attractor, but if you have one a necessary outcome of the workings of systems is unsustainable exponential growth with all its consequences. 11/20/1

The solution is a change of attractor, and “common sense” would suggest that sustainable economic development would be a better attractor than greed – thinks a non-economist.

Let the bubble inflate till something pricks it, or relieve the pressure??

PH 11/20/11 – Well, yes of course.  That’s why I termed my first paper on the subject “The Infinite Society, growth induced collapse”.   I don’t think that’s an “attractor” you’re talking about though, but a “procedure”.  Procedures can be changed. Keynes and Boulding also came to the same conclusion, that at the limits of productive investment it was necessary to have investors stop adding as much of their earnings to their savings, to spend more of them instead. Continue reading Prick or Bleed, drain the bubble or burst? →

Natural Economy, Natural systems, What to do

As Physical Growth Slows, Finance Demands Don’t

2 Comments

The elementary problem of our economic system’s design

The problem arises because finance operates by a cultural belief system of multiplying forever,…  That once seemed to be how the physical economy worked.   Now it’s become obvious to most people that it was an illusion and never corresponded to the physical reality, and doesn’t allow the real economy to operate with its real resouces.

In a way it’s a very natural confusion, because people for thousands of years have thought of nature as their cultural belief system, run by Gods, theories of the future being like the past, or “Urban myths”, whatever.     It’s an “easy” way to look at a natural world, that has too many independently working parts to quite fathom.  So in our minds we get in the habit of substituting an imaginary world that pleases us… and confuse the world we invent that “we see” for the world we don’t invent that “we’re looking at”.

The simplest idea of what needs to change is to stop finance from continuing to grow its claims on the resources of the physical world economy.   The real economy has already begun to converge toward the natural limits that will allow it to continue.  Conceptually the task is:

— now that we’ve hit the tree, first take our foot off the gas —

That means that investing needs to change purposes, to stop being for multiplying investment, to being for the purpose of having money to spend.    Spending from savings reduces financial capital.  The right amount of spending from keeps the demands of finance on the economy and the earth at a stable sustainable level.  At least, finance needs to restrain its demands on the economy to match how the economy is naturally responding to its limits.   It might mean finance has to “give back” half or more of the economy’s wealth.

Otherwise the resources the physical system functionally needs to operate will continue to be increasingly claimed to serve the continual growth of finance, undermining the physical system.

Physical growth slows, Debt doesn't
among best, Natural Economy, Natural systems, Popular, Scientific theory, What to do

Can we shut down the system for repairs?

Leave a comment

My response to George Mobus’ last reply to me, got a little long, so I only posted the first few paragraphs as a comment on his discussion of “The Goal – Episode I: The Basic Requirements”
++++++++++

Can we shut down the system for repairs?

The first learning steps beyond the impasse, on a new path.

Well, shutting down the world for repairs would be conceptually neat, but does not seem to use the path finding mechanisms that nature typically uses.   She offers myriad examples of how run-away growth systems can change by maturing to become stable self-managing ecologies.  That’s what we need to do, and learn how to mimic, that our culture knows little about, importantly because science has avoided studying the opportunistic learning of natural systems all but entirely.

I know this approach is problematic for someone accustomed to representing systems with equations.    Real ecosystems are niche making learning and development processes, though, largely involved in “rule making” not “rule following” .    The far better conceptual models for them are of collective learning and environmental development.   Collective learning and development systems can cling to one systematic behavior while it is useful, and the break from it to find and cling to another model, when that is opportune, because the parts are actively learning as they go. Continue reading Can we shut down the system for repairs? →

Mail & Comment, What to do

The economic “crazies” all around

Leave a comment

the alternative journal Yes! published “Building a Resilient Economy“, a fairly well informed discussion of alternative economic approaches… except for being just like “business as usual” in one critical regard.

It's that false promise we love too much

The economic “crazies” all around..    comment by Phil Henshaw Aug 15, 2011

Of course the most glaring group of “economic crazies” are the business as usual crowd, but I’ve also looked equally closely at the alternative economics literature. There’s no question but that the alternative schemes are differently crazy, but just as unworkable in a physical world as BAU.

Continue reading The economic “crazies” all around →

Mail & Comment, Natural Economy, Popular, What to do

It’s the leeches that make us strong!!

Leave a comment

I say it in that ironic way to emphasize the changing role of putting money into the economy to take more out.   It does make the economy grow stronger at first.   Standing outside the struggle of its creative struggle, letting your idle money milk it for more money, first has a stimulus effect on growth, but in real terms is always being being a leech on the system too.

While the system is discovering ever more opportunity to expand the more it expands, then “being a leech” at first does indeed make it bigger and stronger.   That corresponded to the period roughly from 1600 to 1950.

From then on it has successively weakened and foreshortened the future for economic system as a whole.    It’s the continuing use of money to demand ever growing earnings from one’s idle savings from the past, past the point in time when it starts accelerating the depletion of economic resources and opportunity, is the

“Mr Hyde” that automatically follows the “Dr Jekyll”

of magic productivity that being a financial leech begins with.

Continue reading It’s the leeches that make us strong!! →

For teachers, Mail & Comment, Natural Economy, Natural systems, What to do

2nd Global Heart Attack, …lifestyle change needed

Leave a comment

We’re driving an underperforming asset to return ever more

Excessive demands on ANY relationship naturally produce systemic collapses, like we’re now experiencing.   I’ve been pointing to the root causes, in considerable detail, for many years.  Ignoring them hasn’t made them go away.

It’s like compelling a runner to run faster when their body needs a rest.  At natural limits you need to pace yourself, in response to the responses of the world around you.

It’s hard to grasp how we could have developed a world of expert designed systems that ignore that most obvious principle of survival, but it never the less is clearly evident. Our cultural belief is that driving the economy to produce multiplying returns is the ideal of economic stability.

Pushing too hard naturally leads to collapse

Continue reading 2nd Global Heart Attack, …lifestyle change needed →