Friday, November 20, 2009

Economic books, weak prescriptions


I just finished an other “eco-financial” book about the current crisis and what to do about it (Past Due by Peter S. Goodman.) Well sorry to bring this, but the book with its good summary of what went wrong falls far too short of prescribing a convincing cure. I have said parts of this before, but we can only get out of this crisis by pressing the “innovation pedal” to the metal and making it a national, what am I saying, a global priority.

We will have to survive on far less and therefore introduce some kind of novel alchemy. Making energy out of almost nothing, using available space better, learning faster, creating new ways to cure, all this by changing our quantitative paradigm. This world is bulging at the seams, overcrowded with humans. Our economic model should no longer rely on expending numbers but must growth in quality and no longer in numbers.

I didn't even mentioned that we'll need to get used to much thinner incomes (remember, fellows in India don't earn as much as us and we'll have to share some...) and finally we must embark into bringing up to speed nations that are culturally backward, that means that still cling to hurtful practices (polygamy, too many births, spiritual “stiffness” and killing humans as a last resort.) Call that a civil service in which well-off citizens would go out and spell the gospel about what it will take to save the planet. If we look at missionary zeal in that scope, we might end up saving countless souls too, but in a much more “here and now” fashion...

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