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the Story of Broke – Part II (the end of broke)

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The authors of “The Story of Stuff” published a nice little update called “The Story of Broke”, about the vast sums of money the government spends on subsidizing private business….   This sequel “Part II (the end of broke)” was first posted in a comment, on how the still bigger story of broke, debt piling on top of debt, both was missing from the list of now overwhelming government costs, and has a … very natural end. Government debt provides guaranteed growing returns, whether the economy grows or not. Lenders take government interest payments and add them to what they lend back, multiplying their lending and returns.   It builds up, slowly at first then explosively, as the world’s debt burden

grows on little but the good faith and credit of government guarantees.

You’ve heard of government debt called a “safe haven”. It’s where investors put money to be “safely assured of ever multiplying returns” when they can’t find even better growing returns elsewhere. Where that debt spiral comes from and goes to has been a subject of many have tried to explain.  The view Keynes came to, that I think is the most clear headed of all, outlines the necessities for surviving a debt spiral for a market economy.  Nature would surely not shape her facts of life on earth for our approval, but most people react to the facts of life for surviving debt spirals as if to reject nature’s requirements as “socially unacceptable”, … apparently not seeing Keynes’ elegantly clear logic.   So this is written in the story telling style of Free Range Studio in their Story of Stuff. —

The End of Broke, the True Whole Story of Debt!

The BIGGER “Story of Broke” is one that starts quite small, but is designed to actually keep growing ever bigger.   As it does so it also casts its own vote in the story of business influence in government and demand for subsidies and preferential services, persuading government that’s the way to get money to pay its ever growing debt!   It’s the story of how a small amount of debt naturally grows relentlessly big, with no natural end other than either creditors spending it or both government finance and economic collapse.

the spiral of dreams
Drowning in the spiral of dreams

The whole story of debt is a very very simple little thing.   It’s that some of us earn by $units and others by $%’s… and by providing guaranteed returns to lenders, in an economy you can actually earn by $%’s till the economy collapses.  What seems like a totally innocent “little difference” in measurement, between units and ratios, makes AN INFINITE DIFFERENCE over time in life. Some people have called it “our misunderstanding of the exponential curve”, others simply call it “greed”.   The problem with this kind of greed is how very addictive it is and that it grows explosively, making a “little greed” become SO.. GREEDY, with its promise to multiply the rewards of greed forever. Continue reading the Story of Broke – Part II (the end of broke) →

Mail & Comment, Natural Economy, Natural systems

Ethics for Economics in the Anthropocene, life on a world changed by man

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(this is a concept for a part of a longer collaborative work)

The human quest for love, improving our lives and finding understanding, pursue human values that are not inherent in nature.  Their pursuit requires reliable knowledge of nature, though, and the kind of values exhibited in her designs of natural systems.    So ethics for using the earth is partly a matter of learning to notice the way nature makes complex relationships that work beautifully.   It’s also a matter of observing how our having changed the earth alters our own ability to live by our own values.

A world of ecologies converted to monocultures

Nature offers myriad examples of how complex communities can live together, demonstrating many kinds of competition, collaboration, conflict and tolerance, etc., that do or don’t work.   They offer something like a set of natural ethical principles for “what works”.   In nature all living systems need to produce a profit of surplus energy, for example. Continue reading Ethics for Economics in the Anthropocene, life on a world changed by man →

Natural Economy, Natural systems, What to do

As Physical Growth Slows, Finance Demands Don’t

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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
For teachers, Natural Economy, Scientific theory

Keynes saw through his fears… by facing them.

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An OP-Ed in today’s Sunday Review section of the NY Times, by Sylvia Nasar, Keynes: The Sunny Economist missed the real source of Keynes ability to see silver linings where most others saw failure.   Keynes faced economic failures having studied how nature uses the end of one thing to begin another.

He saw sunshine by seeing through the darkness,

not by denying it.

Sylvia,

It’s fun to play up myths, but yours would be spoiled by the reality of a strange intellect like J M Keynes.    In order to see the “sunny side” of things Keynes unabashedly faced the deepest darkness behind what ailed the economy.   He smashed or poked holes in the darkness he saw, as a way to find the light, rather than by clinging blindly to some faith in optimism, as you suggest, a kind of sunny silliness.

Starry Night
To be alive in nature is itself, a world of bright light in a vast darkness

You have not read Chapter 16 of The General Theory.    It’s quite obvious.   You’re in good company, of course, as virtually no one has.    In Chapter 16 Keynes steps right into and through the deepest darkness, the end of the road for his own growth theory.    Of course, there is also an extremely sunny side too, but if you don’t face the “darkness” of the natural facts at hand, you won’t see it. Continue reading Keynes saw through his fears… by facing them. →

among best, Natural Economy, Natural systems, Popular, Scientific theory, What to do

Can we shut down the system for repairs?

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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, Natural Economy

Sustainability by design

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John Ehrenfeld’s nice blog post on the ethics of sustainability, “On the Merits of Fishing“,  prompted this short response.  It leads to a good way to describe economic sustainability by design, as Keynes envisioned:

“this more favorable possibility comes to the rescue”.

It’s curious that the metaphor of growth has yet to be connected with nature’s general process of making things that reliably work by themselves. Her process invariably involves systems become comfortable with themselves at the end of growth, something like the fisherman’s ethic described here. Continue reading Sustainability by design →

For teachers, Natural systems

Waves of immigration, at growth’s beginning and end

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A 1995 article in the Wall Street Journal offered this vivid image and a good discussion of the waves of immigration to the US from various other parts of the world during the past two centuries.    They coincide with the great period of economic growth, and the radical changes in the economic environment as we went from the beginning of growth to its end.

Growth has changed from creating limitless opportunity for all, to creating unmanageable conflicts with the environment and within a society no longer upwardly mobile, perhaps in decline.    That’s a very different world for immigrants to come into.

It’s no reflection on their different cultures, necessarily, as each wave of immigration seems to represent an old culture becoming adventurous.    It may well also not benefit a society to accept waves of immigrants as it is no longer creating expanding opportunity for itself.  That seems likely to have little to do with the immigrants themselves, though.    Still, the wave of the 1900’s came to build a great society, and the wave of today is picking up scraps in a society losing its way and coming into great conflict with its own success.

One of the great stories of modern economic growth and its tragedy

The sad story of modern economic growth is that its formula for great success became its formula for tragic failure, all by itself, almost overnight, caused only by our neglecting to read nature’s signal to respond to our limits.    That formula for success during growth is the self-investment or “seed” principle.  You plant your seed to get more seed to plant.  You use your profits to multiply your projects.      Continue reading Waves of immigration, at growth’s beginning and end →

For teachers, Natural Economy, Natural systems, Scientific theory

How natural system bankruptcy works.

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Bankruptcy occurs…

when a system becomes unable to supply its own needs, and gets cut off from former supplies.    So, it’s a system that may seem to be working fine, but drifts over the line of profitability, and is abruptly rejected by its environment.

…when systems can’t generate “net-energy”

resource productivity * societal productivity < 1.0

From beginning to end environmental systems need to produce some minimal margin of excess resources as profit, to maintain cushions for everything.  Otherwise their parts will not have time to respond to shortages and their environmental connections break down.

Becoming both more costly to supply and more costly to run, to the limits of profitability, causes system bankruptcy, as it did for Rome.   Rome wasted resources on making its high society richer throughout its decline, as if that would reverse its resource depletion.

… disillusionment occurs and systems break into parts, to end their lives.

Continue reading How natural system bankruptcy works. →

For teachers, Mail & Comment, Natural Economy

Disaster Hidden by the Weather, a Larger Toll

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Katharine Q. Seelye’s “Year Packed With Weather Disasters Has Brought Economic Toll to Match“ by was in the NY Times yesterday.  This is my letter to her.

———–

I’m an economic systems physicist, and one of my favorite gold mines for hidden information about events is checking out what’s happening behind the news when more than one natural system of change is involved.  How nature’s systems work tends not to be reported, actually hidden from view *within the internal organization of the systems doing the work*, so you need to discover them.

There are two or three different long term trends behind the recent flurry of news about weather related disasters.   There are the long term trends of climate change and development in hazardous places.   There’s also a faster changing trend that began recently, also associated with severe weather in the minds of many people.

Disasters hit like lightning, like our emerging resource disaster too.

Continue reading Disaster Hidden by the Weather, a Larger Toll →

Mail & Comment, What to do

The economic “crazies” all around

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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 →

New systems science, how to care for natural uncontrolled systems in context