Economics/True Cost – Page 20 – Public Intelligence Blog

Imagine that the year is 1543 and you have just completed reading Copernicus’ newly published book, On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres, that has attempted to convince you that your daily experience of the sun moving around a stationary earth is an illusion. What do you think the chances are that you would have accepted the Copernican argument that violates your direct perceptions?

Thomas Gentry, Nonlinear Dynamicist, 1995

Is Integral Science related to Paul Ray’s work on Cultural Creatives?
Yes, ISI is working toward the same Integral Society identified by Paul Ray (see Cultural Creatives, 2003). We believe Integral Science provides a clearer understanding of why Integral Society is emerging and a more solid foundation for understanding what the Cultural Creatives must do to make it sustainable.

Is Integral Science related to Ken Wilber’s vision of Integralis?
Though there are some overlaps, Integral Science’s empirical foundation leads to some different conclusions from Wilber’s Integral Psychology and Integralis. Both views, for example, integrate spirituality and the evolution of consciousness, Integral Science integrates them into a seamless view of physical reality, using serious work from across disciplines, and taking great care to logically connect the dots from different fields.

Why is Integral Society emerging?
What does Integral Science say about what it will be like? Great changes are driven into being by the failure of the previous system, a breakdown whose root cause is cultural decay and whose main marker is a web of crises popping up in every sphere. Vowing to find a better way, a new cultural thrust then builds itself up around a new noble vision and defining metaphor that it believes will avoid the fiascoes of the old.

Hence, today’s great change, like those of the past, is being propelled by crises felt in every field. Think of education, health care, politics, energy, the economy, community, justice, and the environment. Yet, while these individual calamities grab attention, it is slowly becoming clear that the root problem is cultural decay. Late Modern culture has become a malady and late Modern America epitomizes the result.

Learn more.

Continue reading “Yoda: Integral Science Is the Force — Joining Intelligence with Integrity”

2013/02/182013/02/18

Yoda: Understanding Governance — Without Money, Righteous; With Money Corrupt

03 Economy, 11 Society, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Economics/True Cost, Ethics

Confused, force is.

First the good.

Stigmergic Governance Via the Web

In My piece, The End of Entropy I propose the following:

With a central website, in forum style, to address major issues – divided into local sections, regional sections and global sections, with “votes” at a certain level elevating the problems and solutions to the next level to be voted on by a greater number – we can collectively coordinate to solve the issues of this planet. Social responsibility will be seen as spending 15 minutes a day (or more) reviewing the issues on this site. This seed parameter will see an emergence of human unity as a race and as a planet.

What is there proposed is a stigmergic governance – a way to govern society without a governMENT. In a system with no money or need for exchange, stigmergic governance will work – as long as there are money interests, it is unlikely to, with votes bought, up or down, and other disruptive aspects. This is what I propose in a free energy/robot system where no money is needed (read The End of Entropy for a picture of how this works). If You are unfamiliar with the term, stigmergy, a good place to get a handle on the term is here.

A very good illustration of stigmergy is Linux. In this case, one Individual created a basic program and offered it freely in open source. Others came along and began to improve upon it, create software to run on it, and so on. There was no “leader” in this group – those who wanted to get involved did so – and from the initial basic program, a whole creative “empire” came to be…all entirely free and freely.

Read full post.

and now the bad.

Continue reading “Yoda: Understanding Governance — Without Money, Righteous; With Money Corrupt”

2013/02/152013/02/15

Theophillis Goodyear: Subprime Mortgage — Open Source Could Have Prevented, but Various Information Pathologies (Corruption of Government Being One of Them) Enabled the Fraud

Commerce, Corruption, Economics/True Cost, Government, Law Enforcement, Politics

The Subprime Mortgage Crisis: A Perfect Example of the Potential Benefits of Open-Source Governance in the Real World

The article: The Nature and Origin of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis, (San Jose State University Department of Economics) says,”The guilt for the subprime mortgage financial crisis lies both with the lenders who knowingly put borrowers into booby trapped mortgages and the management of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for making a market for such booby trapped mortgages thus giving the lenders the incentive for writing them.”

The article goes on to say, “It seems that everyone but the dimwits running Fannie Mae (into the ground) understood intuitively that a poor risk for a mortgage cannot be made a better risk by charging a higher interest rate.”

Of course its a complex problem, with many parties to blame (the article goes on to say). But if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had been required to post their data online where the general public could access it, some citizen would have seen the mortgage crisis coming. And if there had been an open-source forum where they could drawn attention to the problem, and an open-source vehicle for proposing a solution, or at least writing up some kind of formal complaint to the government, then the disaster might have been averted before it grew so immense.

Continue reading “Theophillis Goodyear: Subprime Mortgage — Open Source Could Have Prevented, but Various Information Pathologies (Corruption of Government Being One of Them) Enabled the Fraud”

2013/02/15

Owl: Why the Elite Would Lose a Civil War

Crowd-Sourcing, Economics/True Cost, P2P / Panarchy, Politics, Resilience

Why The Elite Would Lose a Civil War

“Despite the fact that the banking elite wants to generate riots and stir social disorder in order to collapse the U.S. economy so they can buy up real assets on the cheap, if such chaos was to spill over into a full blown civil war, the consequences for the technocrats would be disastrous… In reality, even if a tiny minority of armed Americans chose to resist government oppression – the odds would be stacked hugely in their favor. Consider the fact that there are almost 100 million gun owners in the United States, who in total own over 300 million firearms and rising. There are only around 1.4 million active duty personnel in the entire US military – that includes the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard. Even if you include national guard reserves, the total figure is less than 2.3 million. Even if just five per cent of American gun owners actively resisted in a civil war, that would be five million Americans – more than double the entire US military and national guard, many of whom are already engaged overseas. So even if the government used the military to fire upon U.S. citizens, the troops would be easily outnumbered.”

This part of the article reminds one of John Robb's super-empowered global guerilla*:

Continue reading “Owl: Why the Elite Would Lose a Civil War”

2013/02/12

Michel Bauwens: The Inevitable Localization of Globalization

Economics/True Cost

Essay of the Day: Why Localization is Inevitable in a Resource-Scarce World

* Article: The New Geography of Trade: Globalization’s Decline May Stimulate Local Recovery. By Fred Curtis, David Ehrenfeld. Solutions Journal, Volume 3 | Issue 1 | Page 35-40 | Jan 2012

Introductory Citation

“It is an article of faith that global trade will be an ever-growing presence in the world. Yet this belief rests on shaky foundations. Global trade depends on cheap, long-distance freight transportation. Freight costs will rise with climate change, the end of cheap oil, and policies to mitigate these two challenges. At first, the increase in freight costs will be bad news for developed and developing nations alike but, as adjustments in the patterns of trade occur, the result is likely to be decreased outsourcing with more manufacturing and food production jobs in North America and the European Union. The pattern of trade will change as increasing transportation costs outweigh traditional sources of comparative advantage, such as lower wages. The new geography of trade will not result from policy or treaties but from the impact of changing environmental conditions due to the growth of the human economy. … Many goods will be manufactured closer to where they are consumed, as supply chains become more regional and local.”

Excerpts from Fred Curtis, David Ehrenfeld:

Continue reading “Michel Bauwens: The Inevitable Localization of Globalization”

2013/02/042013/02/04

Event 14 Feb 1000-1200 GWU Getting Complex Projects to Work — Transaction Cost Economics

Economics/True Cost

Getting Complex Projects to Work: Short, Medium and Long-Term

By Neil E. Boyle

The George Washington University
University Seminar on Reflexive Systems
Thursday, February 14, 2013 from 10am – 12pm
Funger Hall, Room 620
2201 G Street NW

Abstract

Continue reading “Event 14 Feb 1000-1200 GWU Getting Complex Projects to Work — Transaction Cost Economics”

2013/01/05

Michel Bauwens: Brazilian Alternative Economic Models Going Global

Economics/True Cost

Community-Based Co-op Economy vs. the “A-Moral Capital Economy”

Dave Pollard explains the difference between the two models:

Most people have been brought up to believe that the competitive, grow-or-die, absentee-shareholder-owned, “free”-trade “market” economy is the only one that works, the only alternative to a socialist, government-run economy. This myth is perpetrated in business and other schools, by the media, by accountants and lawyers and bankers and, of course, in the business world. This amoral-capitalist economic model has “succeeded” in the same hostile way our species has “succeeded” — by brutally suppressing, starving for resources, using power to steal from, and, when all else fails, killing off anything deemed a “competitor” or threat to its monopoly on power and resources. It relies on massive subsidies and near-zero interest rates thanks to well-rewarded political cronies, on political graft and corruption worldwide, on oligopoly and restraint of competition, on wage slavery and worker ignorance, on phony money and unrepayable debt, and on advertising, human insecurity, ego and greed to create an artificial demand for its shoddy, overpriced crap. And, on top of all that, it’s utterly unsustainable.

For an alternative, natural economy to work, we either have to wait for this amoral-capitalist economy to collapse (which it will, but probably not for a few decades), or we have to plant the seeds for this alternative economy in the cracks where the current one is already failing most badly — at the community level where the economy is most obviously failing to produce meaningful work, sucking resources, wealth and opportunity out, and dumping mass-produced and imported crap that ends up in the landfill, and pollutants in our air, water, soil and food that make us sick and contribute to climate change. But before we can plant these seeds we need to unlearn the nonsense we’re taught and told about economics, and learn how a healthy economy actually works.

Read full article.

Michel Bauwens,3rd January 2013

Fora do Eixo is becoming a huge and growing Brazilian network of musicians and cultural producers that is based on explicit p2p-oriented business models. In my modest opinion, they will likely expand on a global scale. We have documented their activities here.

But below is a well readable essay that describes their origin, history, governance and business and financing models:

The Brazilian System for the Solidarity Culture – Fora Do Eixo Card