A BEAUTIFUL WORLD OF ABUNDANCE
Scarcity is one of the defining features of modern life. Around the world, one in five children suffers from hunger. We fight wars over scarce resources such as oil. We have depleted the oceans of fish, and the ground of clean water. Worldwide, people and governments are cutting back, making do with less, because of a scarcity of money. Few would deny that we live in an era of scarce resources; many would say it is dangerous to imagine otherwise.
Yet it is not hard to see that most of this scarcity is artificial. Consider food scarcity: huge amounts, as much as 50% of production by some estimates, are wasted in the Western world. Vast areas of land are devoted to producing ethanol; vaster areas still are devoted to America’s number one irrigated crop: lawn grass. Meanwhile, land that is devoted to food production is typically farmed by chemical-intensive, machine-dependent methods that may actually be less productive (per hectare, not per unit of labour) than labour-intensive organic agriculture and permaculture.
Similarly, scarcity of natural resources is also an artefact of our system. Not only are our production methods wasteful, but also much of what is produced does little to further human wellbeing. Technologies of conservation, recycling and renewables languish undeveloped. Without any real sacrifice, we could live in a world of abundance.
Perhaps nowhere is the artificiality of scarcity so obvious as it is with money. As the example of food illustrates, most of the material want in this world is due to lack not of anything tangible, but of money. Ironically, money is the one thing we can produce in unlimited quantities: it is mere bits in computers. Yet we create it in a way that renders it inherently scarce, and that drives a tendency towards the concentration of wealth, which means over-abundance for some and scarcity for the rest.
Even wealth offers no escape from the perception of scarcity. A 2011 study of the super-wealthy at Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy surveyed attitudes towards wealth among households with a net worth of US$25 million or more (some much more – the average was US$78 million). Amazingly, when asked whether they experienced financial security, most of the respondents said no. How much would it take to achieve financial security? They named figures, on average, 25% higher than their current assets.
If someone with US$78 million in assets can experience scarcity, it obviously has much deeper roots than economic inequality. The roots lie nowhere else than in our ‘Story of the World’. Scarcity starts in our very ontology, our self-conception and our cosmology. From there it infiltrates our social institutions, systems and experience of life. A culture of scarcity so immerses us that we mistake it for reality.
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The scarcity of love, intimacy and connection is also inherent in our cosmology, which sees the universe as composed of generic building blocks that are just things, devoid of sentience, purpose or intelligence. It is also a result of patriarchy and its attendant possessiveness and jealousy. If one thing is abundant in the human world, it should be love and intimacy, whether sexual or otherwise. There are so many of us! Here, like nowhere else, the artificiality of scarcity is plain. We could be living in paradise.
Abundance? There is an abundance of terrorism, an abundance of prejudice, an abundance of bias, an abundance of crime, an abundance of suffering, an abundance of disease, an abundance of greed, an abundance of avarice, an abundance of hatred, an abundance of ignorance, an abundance of selfishness.......
All you need is Love.... An Abundance of love.
So you see the glass as half empty.
Sadly, the article hits the nail on the head.
Remember when I was asking you a while back about demurrage kavika? This author is the one who prompted my investigations. His ideals about a future money system based on demurrage rather than interest are not only intriguing, they imo, are prognostic.
Currency [ edit ]
In complementary currencies field, demurrage is a cost associated with owning or holding currency . It is sometimes referred to as a carrying cost of money. The term was used by Silvio Gesell . It is regarded by some as having a number of advantages over interest : while interest on deposits lead to discount the future and to place immediate gains ahead of long-term concerns, demurrage does the opposite, creating an incentive to invest in assets which lead to longer-term sustainable growth. If the currency is backed by a basket of commodities, demurrage is the holding cost of the basket of commodities, providing monetary stimulation when there is an excess commodities and a restricting the quantity of the currency when there is a shortage in the basket of commodities. In this way it automatically prevents unsustainable economic bubbles before changes in retail sales or GDP can occur. If production of the basket of commodities increases in efficiency, the quantity of the money available for non-commodity production economic activity increases, using up the excess commodities and raising the standard of living in addition to any other technological advances that make more efficient use of the commodities (which does not expand the monetary base). Conversely, if resource constraints begin to reduce the efficiency in the production of the basket of commodities, the monetary base begins to shrink without increasing the purchasing value of the currency, causing economic contraction before a collapse occurs. There is no incentive to hold or spend the currency, but it encourages long term investment and discourages short term investment when compared to a currency that extracts interest payments from the economy over and beyond the increase in the efficient production and transformation of commodities into products and services, which exhibits itself as price inflation.
~WIKI~
I do remember that Larry, and it seems that he has a real grasp on the future.
Capitalism has its drawbacks.
Capitalism is an ultimate consequence of societies' basing their money system on usury.
Not really . There is a difference between usury & merely charging interest for a loan .
True.
I would reword that as Capitalism is an ultimate consequence of interests based economies.
We could always return to the standards of the middle ages . Charging interest was illegal [immoral ?] and there was almost no international trade ...
We could always return to the standards of the middle ages . Charging interest was illegal [immoral ?] and there was almost no international trade ...
Valid points.
There will be no choice in a change of monetary systems, and interest based economies. The present models are unsustainable, and tweaking them will make no appreciable or ultimate difference. So to answer your question more specifically Petey, A return to Middle Age standards would indeed not be a good answer. Our own isn't either though. We are not going to be able to fix scarcity as long as truly needed commodities are represented and bought with paper and digital currency. There are just too many needs, and too much destruction and waste for the status quo to remain on its present course unobstructed. The entire thing will collapse just like dominos when it goes.
Personally I think that trade with China has proved to be more of a problem for the US than a benefit .
The Pacific Rim is a very complex issue. I'm not sure how long the US can sustain trade gaps and convey dominance in it's traditional manner. How long can the Middle Class here hang on and drive the economy? I dunno; but, I'm thinking' there is enough freedom of speech as well as a seemingly unlimited reserves of violence, to keep the Middle class from falling too far before the system itself unravels.
China seems in some regards to be in even more dire straights. I am unversed in how the common person on the streets of Beijing may feel; it seems though that freedom, somehow, eventually finds a path. They will eventually have to resolve issues that are equally challenging, and that are not going to be resolved by traditional means.
The same thing is going on in Europe, Africa,...you name it. Things are becoming dire as our populations explode and violence and oppression gain ground...
There will be revolution or the species will become another in a long list of other species on planet Earth that failed to adapt and survive. The other creatures on the planet have learned to adapt and coexist.
Not us. Yet.
Excellent article! Thanks for posting it!
Maybe the key to abundance is being grateful for what we have...
Gratefulness is key, a natural byproduct of living and sharing, life as a gift.
Yes!
Whatever car I have driven, I've had basic requirements: automatic transmission, radio, and it had to run. As my health has failed, I've added air conditioning, electric windows, because I can't reach over and roll a window down, and automatic door locks, because I can't reach over to lock the doors, either. But basically, anything beyond that is a luxury, to me! My car now is so 'luxurious' I feel like I'm a queen! I drive a Subaru Outback... Such a step up from Nellie, my 65 Mercury Comet...
We have a roof over our heads, food to eat, television-- we're living high on the hog! Maybe having an abundance is just a matter of being grateful for what one has...
It's like Marley said. In the abundance of water the fool is thirsty.
Great quote Dean!