And that’s only one of the kinds of distressed communities unable to keep up with the competition ans the most profitable invest their profits in becoming more profitable and more and more people can’t keep up.<\/p>\n These all actively leave whole societies of suffering people behind in a way that is not reversible. \u00a0 It’s the real predictability <\/strong>of ever escalating competition causing all these uncounted impacts of how we invest money in growth for the wealthy, that undermining the\u00a0sustainability traditional economies. \u00a0 That’s the real quandary here, it so very predictable. \u00a0 \u00a0What DO development planners think about, not to ask who the latest innovation will put out of business. \u00a0 Well, to do real sustainable design, we’d need to add that question to the list, what will our “killer app” put out of business? \u00a0 \u00a0It’s always a\u00a0trade-off\u00a0when you “create jobs” of any kind, that there will be jobs lost elsewhere with a very high\u00a0probability.<\/p>\n Conceptually the lasting profitability option is fairly simple, gradual stabilizing of the whole system profit as the profitability of growth stops growing as fast, leading to a steady state creative living.<\/p>\n ________________<\/p>\n The economic impacts we don\u2019t count turn out to be the great majority of disruptive earth and societal impacts\u00a0we experience (seeImpactsUncounted<\/a> ). \u00a0They even have a name, the “externalities” incurred as liabilities of obtaining services by paying someone else to deliver the goods. \u00a0 So those are actually internal to the operating necessities for running a business, only external to the accounting we’ve been doing. \u00a0 Counting them is actually just ruled out for SD accounting, by a \u201cstroke of a pen\u201d, as effects that decision makers don\u2019t feel responsible for, and have no direct control over. \u00a0 Those include impacts of financial decisions, for investing in disruptive innovations, also excluded from the discussion of impacts by the stroke of a pen.<\/p>\n Some impacts of finance are easily measured and some not, so to fully understand the problem takes sorting through what is\u00a0accountable and what is not, develop different ways of assigning shares of responsibility. \u00a0 \u00a0Certainly the ones that are measurable should be counted. \u00a0They’re mostly counted globally, like soil and water depletion and lots of other things.\u00a0 \u00a0They\u2019re just not at present assigned to anyone’s responsibility. \u00a0Doing so proportional to share of world GDP would be both scientifically correct and perfectly fair. \u00a0 So a study group would pick one or two such questions at a time to see what can be learned.<\/p>\n Another\u00a0concern is how the continual compounding of profits forces everyone in the economy struggle to keep up with financial demands for ever increasing productivity and competition\u2026\u00a0 what the phrase \u201cthe rat race\u201d technically refers to. \u00a0 It’s why we all seem forced to to run ever faster to stay in one place.\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s of course not really sustainable, but very hard to know how to measure.\u00a0\u00a0 Still, it\u2019s a very real kind of suffering and accumulative culture change, and connected to the escalating competition in the economy that leaves ever more people and communities behind, a kind of \u201cdestructive creation\u201d.<\/p>\n In figures 1 & 2 illustrate how regions are left behind, using the\u00a0example of how once thriving agricultural communities of New York State collapsed, leaving long term economic damage behind. \u00a0 The question is where did the money go that once invested in productive farming in the region. \u00a0 The costs were left behind as the money fled to create the extractive industrial farming of the mid-west and elsewhere, mining water and fossil fuel resources very unsustainably, to grow corn, wheat and soy where it wouldn\u2019t thrive naturally. \u00a0Of course, much of this is only observable in hind sight and not really manageable, but the costs to society clearly also do escalate. \u00a0 That makes it imperative we take responsibility and do what’s right. \u00a0 \u00a0The driver is making more profits, for investing in even more competitive businesses, using \u201cdisruptive innovation\u201d that also leavea ever more others behind somewhere too.<\/p>\n For many decades people have more often called that effect of disruptive innovations \u201ccreative destruction\u201d, accepting that to make more money and increase the economy\u2019s products, you have to destroy the economy\u2019s old ways of making products. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The hard question is when<\/em><\/strong> to change from calling that \u00a0\u201ccreative destruction\u201d to calling it \u201cdestructive creation\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0The programming of the economy to always grow that process seems to assure ever stiffer competition for everyone, all the time.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s so constant we might just take it for granted,\u2026 but as a continual culture change for pushing everyone to face ever stiffer competition for how they live, it\u2019s certainly not sustainable.\u00a0 \u00a0As you push the limits then\u2026 it seems to naturally leave more and more people and environments behind, and be really more destructive than productive.<\/p>\n How that escalates is illustrated below, alongside the map of New York State, roughly showing the area of Central NY farming communities that vanished in the 50\u2019s to 70\u2019s, giving in to the competition from industrial farming.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0We could count the region\u2019s lasting economic and cultural damages, perhaps.\u00a0\u00a0 We can also see that the global corollary is of larger scale and seeming leaving more and more behind around the globe all the time.\u00a0\u00a0 We can see it was no one\u2019s political decision, nor is there anyone else at direct fault.\u00a0 We can see that kind of change is quite irreversible once it has happened. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We\u2019d only know if we counted it, and attributed the costs to our financial decisions to profit that way.\u00a0\u00a0 As societal collapses are not reversible, we\u2019d really need a more holistic way of measuring our impacts, to understand the costs of how we make money for our future.<\/p>\n The discussion of the UN’s \u00a0Sustainable development Goals (SDG’s) focuses on the poor, and “Leaving No One Behind”. \u00a0 That overlooks that it’s most often the growth of the world economy that made older parts of the economy outmoded, and leaving whole\u00a0communities behind as the world economy moves on to what’s more profitable. \u00a0This discussion … Continue reading Regions Left Behind<\/span> <\/a>
![\"The](\"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/issues\/CreativeLastingSpiral.jpg\")
<\/a>For the big picture of how we got the math wrong…<\/h3>\n
Its SO predictable!<\/h3>\n
What would make people care??<\/h3>\n
What would let them notice??<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"