Archive for January, 2009
Want Clarity on Our Financial Situation and the Solution?
I just received an article (see below) from David Neenan as part of Live Capital LLC. This is an extraordinary document that, hopefully, will soon be published in the New York Times. Because of this possibility please do not send it to other newspapers.
This article makes sense; please take the time to read and digest it. When you have, and if you agree with the contents, I would like you to forward it to as many influential people as you know for their assessment and ask them to get it to as manyinfluential people as they know (network science at its best).
Your action in doing this is democracy at its best; you can be part of improving our and the global financial situation; you can help by being part of a ground swell demanding this action. In most cases, politicians don’t lead; they follow the will of the people. Let them hear your voice and those of your friends.
If our Politicians follow this course of action the economic pain will be dramatically shortened. You can clearly make a difference by doing this.
This is the first time I have ever written a request like this. Please do your part.
With gratitude,
Marshall Thurber
IT’S ABOUT PAPER NOT BUBBLES: Stopping the Meltdown
By Hernando de Soto©
The meltdown of the global economy is due not to failing markets but to a violation of the rule of law. In recent years aggressive financiers have gutted the rule of law by taking out several essential inner mechanisms replacing them with an immense financial shadow economy, manufacturing hundreds of trillions of dollars of derivative paper so unruly, poorly recorded and untethered to real value that it has become increasingly worthless and difficult to trace. No one knows precisely how much there is or who holds it. Fear that potential borrowers could be burdened with so much of this toxic paper that they will be unable to repay their loans has initiated an inevitable chain reaction to a meltdown: as trust in legal paper breaks down, it paralyzes credit, which shrinks transactions, leading to a catastrophicdrop in employment and in the value of everyone’s property.
A Story of Punished God
This god-like being had committed a great transgression and was punished by his fellow gods, condemned to live imprisoned in a mortal human body.
At his birth, he was trapped inside an infant body with only an infant’s ability to move and speak. As he grew, every outward aspect of his life seemed ordinary, except that he knew inside he was a god. He knew that in
spite of his appearance, his family and his upbringing, there was nothing ordinary about him.
Happy New Year – and What’s Coming
(no votes)
Happy New Year 2009 to all of you!
As the founders of RCG, we have gone a long way, and sometimes,
looking back, it is hard to recognize the people we were just over two
years ago. And yet, as we look forward, we see that the journey has
but just begun.
In the coming year, we have a whole bunch of podcasts already lined up
for you as gifts from the Radical Change Group, and from the people
and practitioners who are working with us, and through us, in bringing
this to you.
The coming year will see some exciting topics that the three of us
cover – the original trio of the three friends.
In addition, we’ll be introducing some new conversations. Some
highlights of the topics include:
It’s The Mutants That Make It
Having been a long-time scientist myself, I’ve observed time and time again one very persistent approach by most of my fellow scientists to innovation: take what’s been done, and improve it. Not a single project that I’ve participated in could skip this important step – look what’s already been done, study the literature, talk to those who walked there before, learn what their approaches do well and where they have weaknesses, and see if you can keep the "good stuff" and somehow avoid the pitfalls, generally by tweaking things here and there. Granted, most of the technology comes from such an approach of learning more and more about the specific methods, and polishing them to perfection, until hardly anything can be improved, at which point the science proudly declares it to be "the state of the art" and "the best it can ever be", mathematicians formulate theorems proving that nothing better can be done with this technology – no matter how hard you try, and the method enters the classical textbooks as "the way to go". Until someone invents a new technology that totally outperforms the "old and tried" ways, making everyone wonder what has just happened…
You make it obsolete by introducing a superior methodology."
(Buckminster Fuller)
Remember the vacuum tubes? Neither do I. Perhaps, the only surviving vacuum tubes these days are the CRT TVs and computer monitors – but even those are becoming increasingly obsolete. With the invent of a transistor, electronics suddenly became cheaper, more energy-efficient, and much more compact. I remember playing with transistors as a kid – soldering simple radios and amplifiers for my home fun projects.
Did you say connect Bruce Lee, Joseph Cambell, Buckminster Fuller, Frank Herbert and Osho??
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.- Robert Frost I did not see that roundhouse kick coming in, and the next second I was bleeding on the floor, and the shape of my face was to be changed forever. This [...]