Cooperative Independence !
It seems we have many problems and opportunities facing us.
One of the biggest problems is the move toward centralisation of all systems and the removal of redundancy that accompanies it. From the perspective of economics this makes a lot of sense. From the perspective of the ability of the resilience of our systems to survive major shocks it is a major danger.
Central coordination is fine, provided the distributed systems retain the ability to operate independently in the case of emergency. We seem to be losing that ability at present, and that needs to change.
Creating political, legal, and technical systems that support every individual in being independent of all others, and then encouraging cooperation between potentially independent individuals, seems to me to be the most powerful and secure way to create our common future.
Two other major problems facing us come from aspects of money.
There is nothing wrong with money as such. As a token of exchange, a means of encouraging trade in goods and services, it does a valuable service to all of us.
It is the chasing of money for its own sake, through things like Foreign Exchange trading, futures trading, share and stock and bond trading, and in the methods we use to create and regulate the money supply; that the real issues exist. These systems are wildly out of control, and are serving little if any utility to society as a whole, and there needs to be major changes to how these things are permitted to operate.
We also, as a society, need to be devoting far more resources into the development of knowledge for its own sake.
Not all economic values are socially valuable {disasters create a lot of economic activity, but little social value} and not everything that is socially valuable has economic value {oxygen is important to us all, yet is free because it is abundant}. Economics needs to be a tool of governance, not a driver.
Governance needs to focus on delivering abundance of those things required by all humans, to all humans; and then leave individuals to exercise their own choice and creativity about what they do with their lives {which may or may not include economic activities}.
If you are interested in joining me in contesting this 2014 election campaign on this basis – then contact me tedhowardnz (at) gmail (dot) com.
