https://evonomics.com/how-theres-more-to-economics-than-the-science-of-scarcity/
The title of the article linked above is “How There’s More to Economics Than the Science of Scarcity/Economic life as experienced was increasingly pushed out of view to make the chosen methods work.”
This is from an online magazine called Evonomics (www.evonomics.com). The founders believe that changing economic thinking can change the world for the better.
I could not agree more.
The belief of scarcity affects all our important systems in society. It affects our world view completely. It changes all our policies, shapes our financial world and business world. It shapes our education system. It shapes our scientific and technological world. It shapes how we deal with crises like the pandemic. It changes how we deal with all complex crises.
Except that the belief of scarcity is incorrect. It is scientifically flawed. We know that now without a shadow of a doubt. This is essential to understand as the whole concept of truth such as articulated by social media, the governments around the world, or Nobel prize winning scientists is not the truth if it is framed around the Newtonian Laws of Physics, based on a linear view of reality where scarcity is a fact of life. However, we are not linear beings. We do not live in a linear world. All of our serious, complex problems are nonlinear and interrelated, but we use linear flawed models to design solutions, to build and finance companies. It creates a zero-sum global economy based on scarcity, with unintended trade-offs inevitable. We are quantum, complex multi-dimensional beings that are interlinked with each other and the environment. While I am on a roll, I will throw in that we are linked to other dimensions, other versions of ourselves, and to the universe in general. Even if we do not understand the equations or all the ramifications, it is so. Even scientists studying complexity science with all their fancy computers will come to incorrect conclusions studying complex systems without this understanding. We live in a quantum world, governed by perceptions and probabilities. We need to get more comfortable with uncertainty in general. This can get heavy and complicated, and people tend not to want to probe further hearing these things as it is not “practical” or “too complex.” However, when you look all around the world and see all the chaos and so many societal systems breaking down, you can see from a bird’s eye view that something big is happening. We can continue to move on this destructive path of trying to manage this chaos by controlling everyone in increasingly Orwellian ways (where we eventually destroy everything that we hold dear), or we can move onto a living systems path where the guidelines to rebuild our important systems in regenerative ways are right in front of us. Advanced technological and scientific research is pointing in this direction anyway, so there is validation for this living systems path. My personal preference is to join or form bottoms up, self-organizing groups to work on different complex problems in different ways. The predominant way we organize business and finance is linear and mechanistic, so that is a problem as the unintended trade-offs are extensive and we are reaching a tipping point for many complex, interrelated problems. Based on existing understanding of economics, we view these trade-offs as normal and expected, but are they really normal? Since we are finally seeing signs of the dam breaking such as the stock market volatility and extensive corruption becoming more widely known, people do not have the luxury of burying their heads in the sand anymore. It is why we are using permaculture as a guide for how to regenerate business development and investment frameworks. Rebuilding the capitalistic model is harder to accomplish in big think tanks, though many good people are trying. There are so many entrenched interests in these high-level groups representing the old ways of doing and perceiving things. We do need this high-level guidance and I am optimistic more honest, integral, and wise groups are coming together using systems-based design principles. We have to allow the dis-creation of the old to enable the new and the new has to be done very differently. As Einstein said, “You can’t solve a problem at the same level of thinking that created the problem.”
Having a framework like permaculture to understand living complex systems is a framework that incorporates all this understanding in very easy to understand practical ways. Whether you believe in shamanism or metaphysics, it is still in this framework. Whether you understand chaos theory, complexity science, or quantum science, it is still incorporated into this framework. Whether you are a shaman or an astrophysicist, the cosmic web is part of your vocabulary, a cosmic web that somehow mysteriously connects all of reality. You see permaculture in the design of our constitution in the US. You see it everywhere you look if you look consciously. Every new entrepreneurial ecosystem that comes together to support entrepreneurs to create new essential products and services uses these principles even if it is not conscious. You might as well make it conscious. It certainly will make things easier during these chaotic times and it will work better. Natural intelligence is the path forward for all the phoenixes to rise from the ashes. The entrepreneurs and the investors that want to do well by doing good in the future need to understand this natural intelligence. Looking at the past to predict the future right now is very dangerous. Even fancy AI computer models will fail if they are using old linear understandings for their predictions. The predominant sustainable and high impact business and investment strategies also need to migrate to a systems based model. Most of these strategies are still using linear economic models based on scarcity.