Pythia Capital explores investment strategies for complex global problems using living sustainable systems as a framework.
Our fundamental goals are to address the root cause of our societies’ complex problems and come up with effective investment and business strategies to address them. In order to accomplish these important goals, it is essential that we are very honest with each other about the dysfunctional, global, socio-economic issues that may be key enablers to the highly uneven income distributions, unhealthy living conditions, and chronic “boom and bust” cycles that keep repeating themselves in our global societies. Though these issues are complex and challenging, one step at a time, one business at a time, one investment at time, we can come together and find solutions that start to change things for the better. At the very least, we can start to organize ourselves differently and engage with each other using more thoughtful and ethical intentions.
More details on the problems with our existing economic frameworks:
- Global central banks have engaged in unprecedented maneuvers to stabilize and stimulate economies around the world the last several years, but despite all these efforts the global economies are still suffering from a large debt overhang as well as extreme income disparities.
- These efforts have had the unfortunate byproduct of exaggerating growing income inequalities by pursuing policies that have inflated global asset prices of all kinds, more directly benefiting the asset-rich ultra wealthy.
- Another unfortunate byproduct of these efforts is the increase in greed, arrogance, as well the increase of herding behavior in investing, business, scientific, and technical areas.
- There are now numerous asset bubbles around the world and an increase in “short-term decision making” as many people rush to capitalize on the upside that is possible during times like these.
- Increased power in big global companies and unlimited lobbying has resulted in crony capitalism increasing the power of the few at the direct expense of the working class, the environment, as well as general health and well being of people and animals.
- Many people feel that it is only with significant cost that we can make necessary changes in society, creating fear in people, that change will result in less and not more. There is inevitable chaos as we shift from one set of systems to another. Some of this chaos is inevitable as we have pushed the limits too far for too long. Some chaos is not necessarily bad if we embrace the creativity that comes with this natural entropy. In our attempt to manage this chaos, many governments, businesses and financial systems are using more linear, command and control processes to force order. We increase fair and despair this way as well as destroy innovation, freedom, individual creativity, and the environment (fake environmental movements are inevitable with linear frameworks). Natural intelligence lays out a path for us to follow that can help us balance order and chaos in a way that is healthier and more congruent for the whole. At the same time, following natural intelligence helps us to find and apply breakthrough technologies and science for complex problems, implementing them in a more organic way that steers us away from the dystopian and Orwellian path we are on now.
- At a time of extreme, income inequality globally and considerable economic strain, these fears further divide people, making changes more difficult.
- The principles of economics and capitalism that we teach in universities and schools are based on linear models and do not reflect the true, complex nature of these systems. This results in the few controlling the many and unintended consequences that destroy our freedom, healthy, vitality, and the environment. Inclusivity and diversity are not built into these linear, command and control frameworks. Adding them like a checklist to these linear frameworks does not solve the problem. It merely creates window dressing and illusions of solving the complex, interconnected problems. Diversity, intrinsic creativity, inclusivity, health, vitality, and balance are only possible in our global societies with economic systems modeled on the natural intelligence of nonlinear, complex adaptive systems. Advanced science and technology are just catching up now to the wisdom of natural complex systems.