Tag Archive for wealth creation

Water, Energy, Money, Blood

April 23, 2012 Economics, Energy, Politics, Values, Wealth No comments

Bless me my conscience; it has been seven months since my last post. In that time, we have witnessed the Republican presidential primary process deliver Mitt Romney—as clear an example of the top 1% as you can get.

We need to think about his success and the success of the 1% in general in a different way than Romney would like, or can even get his mind around. In the conservative worldview, which most of us accept without question, Romney is a winner. He played the game of wealth creation well, and is exactly what we all want to be like: rich (not stiff and awkward). Who doesn’t want to be rich?

In this prevailing worldview the accumulation of vast wealth is what all individuals seek. Along the way jobs will be created, investments will be made, and society will benefit. And this is true to a degree. But jobs are only a once-in-while by-product of wealth accumulation; many times the loss of jobs creates wealth for owners.

The unbounded creation of wealth for the top 1% is also sequestering resources that the rest of us need to be healthy. Imagine if one rich farmer had hundreds or thousands of times more water than the other farmers and there was a drought. This farmer sold the water, but if you couldn’t pay, oh well. I hope you don’t starve.

One person controlling all the precious water is a big problem. What would happen? Would the other farmers attack the rich farmer? Would they be justified in doing so? Would the government back the majority of desperate people and send troops to free the water, or be bought off by the rich farmer and send troops to keep the thirsty, starving mob at bay?

In this metaphor, water equals money. But both actually equal energy. No water, no energy for the growth of a crop. No money, no energy for the growth of the economy. By playing the game of individual wealth creation, which we all do, the winner’s jackpot is now detrimental to everyone else. The irrigation system of the economy is dry, not because there isn’t enough money, but because the flow is being restricted and tightly controlled. Money is flowing not to dehydrated everyday people but into the endless reservoirs of the 1%.

Never mind that people are dying or becoming homeless because they can’t pay their medical bills. In the system we’ve bought into Romney wins and we all lose. It’s perfectly fair that he get as much as he can. Concern for the losers is not part of the equation. But since money is the energy needed for growth, look for higher costs in blood when that energy is not forthcoming.

Dynamic Equilibrium vs. More More More

July 26, 2010 Economics, Energy, Politics, Values No comments

In high school I learned that living systems, if they are healthy, achieve a state of dynamic equilibrium. That is they are in balance. There are a lot of processes going on but they act on each other to stay in balance. A simple example is any local ecosystem prior to man’s arrival. There may be too much rain or too many of one kind of species for a while, but the overall ecosystem comes back into balance over time. Without humans, the whole earth would be in a kind of dynamic equilibrium.

Clearly humans have thrown the natural balance of the planet out of whack. We’re using a huge amount of energy and creating a huge amount of waste product. Without a change, the energy required to keep human progress going will run out. More people chasing a better life will need more and more energy—more coal, more oil, more water, more food. More energy for more machines and more energy for more humans.

More energy use means more waste by product—carbon dioxide, methane, toxic chemicals, trash. And this waste is what’s threatening to throw the planet into a new state of dynamic equilibrium that will be extremely detrimental to humans and other life on the planet. Balance will be restored but at the cost of many lives and much hardship. But you probably know this already. The question is can we change?

To change the way we act requires a change in beliefs and values. Right now most people on the planet are operating with a core set of beliefs that is not aligned with our best interests or the true nature of the universe. We believe that the pursuit of happiness equals the pursuit of stuff, of wealth. We think the more stuff we have the happier we’ll be. Our economic systems are set up to encourage this, to promote “wealth creation.”

But it turns out, according to Jeremy Rifkin in The Empathetic Civilization, that “once people have achieved a minimum level of well-being that allows them to adequately survive and prosper, additional accumulations of wealth do not increase their happiness but, rather make them less happy…” [p 497].

The idea that we must accumulate all that we can, that life is a competition, is ingrained in all of us. “I’ve earned this stuff, it’s mine, and the government doesn’t have any right to take it and share it with others who didn’t work for it.” That’s the way the prevailing value system shakes out if you’re a “conservative.” But unless we refocus on creating a dynamic planetary equilibrium for all, rather than wealth creation for a few, we face disaster for all.