Ever increasing investment in ever more competitive replacements took them.
Productive people get that way by actively learning how to be ever more productive… a process of feedback. Feedbacks start by accelerating… till they run into problems that slow them down.
Those who keep learning fast a little longer can then undermine everyone and everything else.
After getting the two research papers (1) that came from it through peer review, I updated the research notes page they came from, How to understand your Dollarshadow
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The reality is that every dollar is, on average, responsible for 1 equal share of the wealth and consequences of the whole world economy. So earning or spending a dollar earns you a share of all the accumulating consequences for the earth that use of the economy causes.
That turns out to be much less “hyperbole” and more an “accurate measurement”, than we are normally aware of. There are some very simple statistical reasons, having to do with world GDP/person being the world average consumption of all people.
The data and calculations are quite clearly illustrated on the Dollarshadow page now. You might find it a little extreme, that every $8 glass of wine or other consumption, unexpectedly, also buys you an added 8 pounds of CO2, to stay in the atmosphere for a couple hundred years. It would be a quite natural reaction.
Read my site (& your world…) with some of these questions in mind
it could help
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People get into trouble with believing the stories we make up for ourselves. It’s so easy because consciousness presents them to us as fact. If we then get attached to our stories we find it hard to change them as new facts have to be added.
To change that we’d need to stop being embarrassed about asking the “dumb questions” about things left unexplained. That hesitancy to question “the story” seems to be what allows them to diverge ever further from the truth.
It seems to be why in a world of interesting and caring people, as individuals, we develop ideologies that so sharply conflict with each other and with the nature of the world we live in. It’s quite hard to get to the truth when people are embarrassed to mention it, and we become socially committed to lots of conflicting stories. Continue reading In a nut shell, what’s wrong with our world
Finance starts with someone’s savings, and “makes” money by money managers giving some to other people with the understanding they will give more back. The borrower is left to find a way to use the earth to make more back from it, by any practical means available to them. Continue reading Why finance has a bigger appetite than the earth
And to repeat, here’s my little tale of unexpected bounty, that takes on new colors and meanings every year, as our world rapidly changes. Peak Zucchini
My favorite zucchini recipe at the moment is to split them lengthwise, grill and then turn them over to cover them with stuff… chopped sundried tomatoes, pesto, strong cheese, oregano, onion and garlic salt..shredded fresh basil or whatever you have time fix, and put them back in till it combines… WoW!
pfh
I’ve been adding a introductory notes to my 4/1/10 post on Keynes’ “Widow’s Cruse” that seems to have grown into something I should post on its own too.
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The corresponding natural phenomenon he described is much more aptly termed “the youthful novice challenge” than by “the widow’s cup”.
It’s really not a “bitter pill” for growth systems finding themselves in unexpected unfamiliar environments, to discover their own objectives at that point, and a way to mature and thrive as part of a stable world. Every youthful novice goes through that basic life challenge in some way, and a great many live up to it. Continue reading Or is the end of growth a great “Right of Passage”?
There’s a nice report out of the NY Federal Reserve on Shadow Banking. That’s the ability of the great sloshing global pool of money to act as a world bank, without any safety net. I wrote an apparently effective note, got a nice response from the author.
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Dear NY Fed
A comment on your July 2010 report. Shadow banking is an emergent natural system. I’m a natural systems scientist who studies the difference between scientific theories and complex natural systems.
Equations can’t have independently learning parts, for example, but economies and other natural systems rely heavily on the adaptive processes of their parts. So, that adds to the long list of reasons for why abstract theories tend to have a short “shelf life”, you could say. Continue reading Shadow Banking, out of the shadow
Helmut Lubbers – Ecoglobe.com – circulated a description of the ITCSDclimate.orggrowth promotion efforts that are helping prevent the world’s critical response to climate change.
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Helmut,
I think the problem is better defined as a disease of believing our own myths, several separate ones at once. How our minds do that is less important than realizing that every mind seems capable of it, and a regular way to go back and forth between observation and belief is needed. Otherwise we can’t make sure our own myths are resting on something solid. Continue reading Climate and The “powers that be”
It’s the organization of the whole that results in new and greater value from the parts of a system.
Investors like that, because putting money (energy use credits) in, to help get organized helps create more profits in terms of producing surplus energy credits. Continue reading Where does profit come from?
Robin Smith posted Where Are My Wages Going on his blog and What Exactly is the Wealth Divide on the Finance Lab. He offers the following simple image and statement, worth considering and questioning.
He says: There is no mystery as to the root cause of poverty. Both the Private State and the Welfare State are robbing us. And giving it all away to landowners and banks.
Robin,
I’d be interested in what else you’ve done. I think the valid point you’re making is that there is indeed a long term systemic trend of more and more future income being paid to people who saved past income. I’ve made what I think are definitive models of why that arises, and what to do about it since the early 80’s. Continue reading What exactly is the wealth divide II
