In my last post I asked all of you for questions. With more than 30,000 subscribers to this blog I figured I would get some interesting ideas to pursue. Imagine my surprise when my email (richardjurin@outlook.com) box was quiet?! Then I got one that asked how we can redistribute the wealth on this planet for better equity. After sitting quietly trying to fathom that despite my 8 years of blogging, my message of sustainable living seemed to be hitting deaf ears. The following is my answer. We don’t redistribute wealth. We build a whole new kind of economic experience from the ground-up ignoring the current global economic system. A quote I used recently: “Don’t Be Scared About the End of Capitalism [as we currently experience it] – Be Excited to Build What Comes Next. Instead of fixating on a fight between capitalism and socialism, imagine innovating a future economy that transcends old binaries” Jason Hickel and Martin Kirk. We build a new world where honesty, integrity and transparency are the new expectations within our communities.
Economics correspondence writer Noel Johnson puts it bluntly: “This is where your brain starts to hurt. The numbers are so big they stop making sense.
U.S. national debt: $33 trillion (now already $38 trillion). Global debt: $324 trillion. Global GDP: around $85 trillion. The math doesn’t work. It has never worked. The entire global economy is running on borrowed time, borrowed money, and the shared delusion that infinite growth is possible on a finite planet.
But here’s the kicker: the ultra-rich don’t need it to work. They just need it to work long enough for them to convert their paper wealth into real assets before the music stops.
They’re not trying to fix the system. They’re trying to own whatever replaces it.
Let me break this down in terms that don’t require an economics PhD to understand. Global debt is three times larger than the entire world’s economic output. Imagine if your household debt was three times your annual income, and every year you had to borrow more just to pay the interest on what you already owed. How long before the bank comes calling?
Now multiply that by every government, every corporation, every household on the planet. That’s where we are. That’s the starting point.
The polite economic term for this is “unsustainable.” The accurate term is “mathematically impossible.” We’ve built a global financial system that requires infinite growth to service debts that can never be repaid in real terms. This is not a flaw, it’s by design.
Here’s what the textbooks don’t tell you: the entire global economy is structured like a Ponzi scheme. We pay old debts with new borrowing, finance current consumption with future promises, and pretend that compound interest can grow faster than physical reality forever. It’s an Addiction That Can’t Be Broken.
We’re not addicted to growth — we’re addicted to debt financed growth. The entire modern economy runs on the ability to borrow from the future to pay for today. But what happens when the future stops looking prosperous enough to justify the borrowing?
A solution: Learn skills that can’t be outsourced: plumbing, electrical work, mechanical repair, medical care. Build relationships with people who have complementary skills. Accumulate tools, supplies, and knowledge that will have value when supply chains break down and institutions fail.” Noel Johnson. In a nutshell, it’s about building new kinds of community from the ground up.
If you want a fairer, equitable, and sustainable world, then WE must do it. Stop thinking that the mythical ‘THEY’ will somehow get moral and start to make it happen. THEY don’t care. THEY never have. We have given our power away for so long – literally millennia – that the notion we start making the decisions seems to scare the living shit out of so many people. The idea that most people recognize is that the current system is about Profit at all costs, especially Profit before People. We know we don’t like it.
So many times, we have had bloody revolutions to overthrow tyrants, but what never changed was the basic economic system – we kept it hoping we could make it fairer. We can’t and we never will. Instead, we need a peaceful sustainability revolution and to start afresh – our reset. No fanfare, no trying to figure out how to make it work. I (and many others) have laid out the principles and framework. As noel Johnson alluded to above, the system is about to start crashing. It doesn’t matter what level you have reached on this current trajectory. So for all the gamers out there, the probability is that this reset means we are all starting a new game. We cannot somehow tweak success out of this current game, WE have to create our own game – the real sustainability game. Anything else just means we will continue to playout the real-end-time of a global game of MONOPOLY where we are all losing and the one banker dominates.
One person who has been trying to tweak the global system for most of his life is Britain’s King Charles. And while his Kings Foundation has had some admirable successes stories all over the planet, the simple reality is that the dominating global economic system will always be an impenetrable impediment. If you haven’t seen his recently released documentary ‘Finding Harmony – The Kings Vision,’ it’s on Prime video at this time. I recommend it for its vision of living harmoniously with the natural world. The basic principles of sustainability are there. The success stories are there. People globally are making a difference, but usually outside the existing economic framework. Harmony is really at the root of my Item 1 for sustainable change. If we are to thrive in the new world to come, we must put human and natural welfare as the bottom line and the focal point of all our actions.
So rather than me preaching more, let me ask YOU, the readership of this blog, to send me YOUR success stories, however small, from where you live. Let me share the positive workable principles you have.
I’ll start the ball rolling. If you live in an area that is complacent about the need for these major changes to be made then I suspect it will take a major local natural crisis that kicks people in the ass to get then to think. In the Colorado town that I live in, we have a phenomenal waste stream management program and the town council Tries to tweak the system to keep a higher standard of living, always with the assumption that a high quality of life somehow comes out of it. Unfortunately, it all works to a point as long as costs can be controlled, but it is not resilient enough to deal with any of the coming shocks and changes. I have always predicted that in Colorado, the worst-case scenario is that we have a warm winter with little snow fall in the mountains, as is occurring. Indeed, this scenario would be just as dire even if it rained continuously. It is the water captured as snow that melts slowly over the Spring and Summer that permits consistent runoff that gives us the ability to live in this area as though we lived in a wet climate. At this time, it actually looks like a localized natural drought crisis is coming that should promote a sustainable focus here in the state and ‘downstream’ from the State.
Unless we get incredible snowstorms in the next three months, the waters that feed the 22 main rivers originating in the Colorado region of the US (i.e., Rio Grande River, Arkansas River, Colorado River, Canadian River, Green River, North & South Platte Rivers, etc.) will be dry come Summer. The consequences are extreme. These rivers depend on the winter snowpack. They supply essential water to more than a dozen states and portions of northern Mexico. This is more than people wanting keep their green lawns (it’s amazing how many of my neighbors have bright-green natural grass in an arid-very hot summer), collectively the water travels thousands of miles across the USA (especially the Desert Southwest States and the Great Plains) to maintain billions of dollars of agriculture, shipping, and recreation from California to the Mississippi River.
Climate patterns globally are changing for a multitude of reasons – I’ll avoid that rabbit hole discussion for now. I suspect in the weeks and months ahead I will be able to share positive actions that truly support a sustainable lifestyle in Colorado. It is interesting that artificial grass turf, once banned from most Colorado lawns is now being touted as a solution to keep gardens looking green. A small change to be sure, but signs of a break in the dam of cognitive resistance by entitled-minded still middle-class people oblivious to what is coming.
So rather than me simply being a talking head, lets see if this can be a forum to share what is happening with sustainable ideas and beliefs that can be adapted for sustainable living in our neighborhoods. There is so much grassroots action happening worldwide that we never hear about in the mainstream media. Let me know what is happening with sustainability in YOUR area so I can share positive actions and how they are being managed.
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