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The Early Roots of a Modern Crisis
The Early Roots of a Modern Crisis
The question is how to explore social evolution in order to give insight appropriate to the historical moment. Engage for a moment in an exercise to reveal the complexity of social evolution. Begin with what we know about exponential growth—that it starts out slowly and finishes very rapidly. We are on the upper neck of an exponential flight but the structure and dynamic of this trajectory were in place long before the twentieth century and even long before the present world system (capitalism) took hold. We have to ask ourselves where we mark the inflection point where we entered this present phase of our social evolution. It is important to go beyond the Capitalocene if we are to understand how we ultimately landed where we are.
Let me offer two stylized economic systems in order to highlight something about the complexity of our social evolution as it pertains to this matter. The first is a hunting-and-gathering economic system where homo sapiens lived as minimalists, surplus did not exist, feedback loops prevented expansion, and humans were mostly independent and self-reliant (most could quite literally fend for themselves). Each human had an expansive knowledge of the more-than-human world, and they used that knowledge to garner their material necessities (food, shelter, clothing). One can argue that it was an economic system embedded in the rhythm and dynamic of the more-than-human world and did not have feedback loops of expansion.
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Lisi Krall, anthropocene, great transition initiative, economic systems, hunting-and-gathering, complex systems, feedback loops, exponential growth, evolution, social evolution
We Ignore Unintended Consequences At Our Peril
We Ignore Unintended Consequences At Our Peril
Early in my business career, I was faced with a challenge that gave me an appreciation for a critical lesson about life and business. It’s that oftentimes, even with the best of intentions, our actions create consequences completely different from what we intend.
It’s that insight that makes me so concerned about the grand central banking experiment being conducted around the globe right now. With little more than a lever to ham-fistedly move interest rates, the central planners are trying to keep the world’s debt-addiction well-fed while simultaneously kick-starting economic growth and managing the price levels of everything from stocks to housing to fine art.
As with an earlier article I wrote focusing on the Bullwhip Effect phenomenon: the complexity of the system, the questionable credentials of the decision-makers, and the universe’s proclivity towards unintended consequences all combine to give great confidence that things will NOT play out in the way the Fed and its brethren are counting on.
A Puzzle To Solve
Two years after graduating business school, I joined the team at Yahoo! Finance as its Marketing lead. It was a crazy time there; the tech bubble was in mid-burst and advertiser dollars — the main source of revenue for the business unit — were fast drying up. We went through several general managers within my first year there as the leadership scrambled for a sound course to chart.
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A new theory of energy and the economy – Part 1 – Generating economic growth
A new theory of energy and the economy – Part 1 – Generating economic growth
How does the economy really work? In my view, there are many erroneous theories in published literature. I have been investigating this topic and have come to the conclusion that both energy and debt play an extremely important role in an economic system. Once energy supply and other aspects of the economy start hitting diminishing returns, there is a serious chance that a debt implosion will bring the whole system down. In this post, I will look at the first piece of this story, relating to how the economy is tied to energy, and how the leveraging impact of cheap energy creates economic growth.
Trying to tackle this topic is a daunting task. The subject crosses many fields of study, including anthropology, ecology, systems analysis, economics, and physics of a thermodynamically open system. It also involves reaching limits in a finite world. Most researchers have tackled the subject without understanding the many issues involved. I hope my analysis can shed some light on the subject.
I plan to add related posts later.
An Overview of a Networked Economy
The economy is a networked system of customers, businesses, and governments. It is tied together by a financial system and by many laws and customs that have grown up over the years. I represent the economic network as a child’s toy made of sticks that connect together, but that can, if disturbed in the wrong way, collapse.
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