Changing a culture is a large-scale undertaking, and eventually all of the organizational tools for changing minds will need to be put in play. However the order in which they deployed has a critical impact on the likelihood of success.
In general, the most fruitful success strategy is to begin with leadership tools, including a vision or story of the future, cement the change in place with management tools, such as role definitions, measurement and control systems, and use the pure power tools of coercion and punishments as a last resort, when all else fails.
Phi Beta Iota: Missing from this depiction is education, and the 21st Century role of leaders in eliciting and facilitating bottom-up co-creation.
Phi Beta Iota: Anyone educated in the 1960's and 1970's will remember Pervcival and Paul Goodman's Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life. The strategy devised by the Earth Intelligence Network celebrates this concept.
Reslient, local production can reach amazing levels of capacity and efficiency by obsessively closing loops. How do you close loops? Simply:
Turn the waste of one production process into the fuel/input required to operate another.
Do that again and again and again until there is nothing left to reuse.
All along the way, find ways to take the good parts out of each process. It could be food in one. Heating/cooling in another. Fresh water in a third.
For example. Let's say you want to produce vegitables and fish. If you did it in a disconnected way, you would be hit with expenses (both monetary and time) at each step in the process. You would need to fertilize the plants. Feed the fish. Clean the water. It gets expensive early.
If you connected the production systems together, by closing the loops, you would have an aquaponics system. In an aquaponics system, the fish waste feeds bacteria which in turn produces fertilizer for the plants and fresh water for the fish. The food the plants produce generate excess that feeds the fish. With a tiny bit of automation and design, the entire thing operates seemlessly. Loop closed! The biggest chore is collecting the bounty.
Closing loops can turn problems into opportunties. Waste into bounty.
“This essay shows how a total of $14000 billion up front and at least another $2085 billion per year can be made available for creative investment in the USA by adopting a post-scarcity worldview. This money can help further fund a virtuous cycle of more creative and more cost saving efforts, as well as better education. It calls for the non-profit sector to help shape a new mythology of wealth and to take the lead in getting the average person as well as decision makers to make the shift in worldview to their own long term benefit. … Let us consider ways to free up money for the non-profit sector (or
reducing working hours) by cutting wasteful government and consumer
spending in these areas with (annual estimate of easy savings):
It’s October 2010, and I’m reclined in an all expenses paid seat in business class on a flight to Berlin. I’m going there for two weeks to collaborate on a video project with a couple of artists I met online, then flying to Amsterdam to present the video to a room full of bankers at the largest financial services conference on the planet. I’m not a media producer, nor do I work in the financial industry. All I can think to myself is “How the hell did I get here?”
. . . . . . .
Now I see this life as an Epic Adventure, with each of us in control of being the hero of our own personal mission. Here are three big insights I’ve had these past few years that make me confident in this belief:
Your community already exists, and is waiting for you.
Your vision already exists – it is a shared one.
The tools of empowerment already exist, and are ready to be wielded.
The pieces you need really are there, they’re just often hard to recognize. I went through a long phase of utter despair and hopelessness, and had no idea how to move forward. Only after putting myself out there with authenticity and a beginner’s mind did I see I was surrounded by a community of change agents with the heart, the vision, and the capacity to act.
As we all move forward in building the kind of society we want to see and the lives we want to lead, we realize more and more that everything is interconnected and we can go further by connecting, collaborating, and amplifying each other’s efforts than by stubbornly trying to reinvent the wheel.
We’re all in this together. Find your tribe and go change the world.
Regardless of any decay in the legal system, business will still be conducted. Small disputes will be resolved through the existing system, with graft tipping the scales or speeding the outcome. Large disputes involving substantial wealth transfer will be something else entirely. These disputes will be resolved through the ability of one party or the other to apply the threat of (or actual) violence to the negotiation process.
These pressures won't only be the result of counterparties that have access or control the large mafias/gangs/militias (or corporate militaries) that will spring up during economic collapse (far larger than we've seen the US to date). Threats will also be mounted by government/defense/security officials that use their government sanctioned command of violence (police, SWAT, military units, etc.) as a means to personal enrichement.
This has pretty intersting implications for those GG readers that have large amounts of wealth in the current system. You might not be able to retain it or move it or transact with it in a collapse scenario w/o putting your life (and those around you) at mortal risk.
NOTE: We've already seen a taste of what's to come with the financial crisis of 2008. In sum: it was the biggest financial crisis to date, full of fraud and deception across the board, and almost nobody was punished for it. In fact, most were rewarded for their malfeasence with generous government bailouts and huge bonuses.