Will our Economic Models Consume us?
Thursday, March 26th, 2009
My last post discussed Clay Shirky’s essay on Newspapers and the Unthinkable where he had brought up the newspaper industry’s failure to adequately address the revolution at hand that threatens their existence. I guess we could call it the evolution of denial process, or the osterich philosophy. If we ignore the truth for long enough, if we say it’s not happening often enough, then it will all go away and everything will be peachy.
When people within that industry looked out the window and saw what was really happening they were marginalised, labeled extremist or eccentric or just ignored as bothersome. The industry wanted so badly to believe in it’s perpetual right to exist that the mere thought of not existing posed a threat. It was much easier to buy into a fable that the newspaper will live forever in it’s current form than to face a world so dramatically different, regardless of the world outside.
Which brings me to the world of economics that governs the way practically every country operates. The free market is one based on greed where by chance our individual greed makes the most efficient amount of everything at the most efficient price – market equilibrium. My point is that within that premise there is an obvious floor, it’s a greed based paradigm. And we have to ask ourselves how much money is enough money? How much resources are enough resources? Because currently, if you look outside there is another revolution happening. Our world has a water crisis, an ageing crisis, a population crisis, a mass extinction – I mean the economy is a tiny issue in the face of not having edible fish species by 2050.
