Resilience Judo. There are growing signs -- from a black swan in savings/debt reduction to massive debt loads to quarterly trillion dollar losses in personal wealth to stagnant/falling consumer purchases to persistently low consumer confidence -- that the parasite ridden American "consumer" is finally dead. If this is true, the economic model of the latter half of the last Century is likely dead too, and that will mean wrenching change.
It's my belief that the dominant solution is to prepare for a local future to ride out this storm. Here are some of my random (more random than I would like) thoughts on what you should do to prepare: Ruthlessly reduce debt. This change doesn't require cute and crunchy notions about "lifestyle" environmentalism. Check Grammar, spelling and citation quickly and easily with Grammarly. Friction a non Socratic dialogue | Angry Bear. Robert Waldmann John Q. Policymaker is driving a minivan. Maynard Keynes is in the passenger seat, Ed Prescott and Robert Lucas are in the second row of seats and Eugene Fama and John Cochrane are in the back seats. John Q: We are heading for a cliff ! Maynard: slam on the brakes. Prescott: I don’t see how brakes work. Maynard: Don’t listen to him. John C: Yes this is a stressful situation and in stressful situations it is tempting to turn to the fairy tales of our childhood.
Maynard: It’s not a fairy tale. John C and Eugene in unison: Brakes are supposed to work because the disk spins under the brake shoes. John Q: You guys in the back seats, don’t just tell me Maynard is wrong. Robert L: Serious analysis is a difficult process and requires a step by step approach, starting with simple frictionless models. Robert W: If you think I’m exaggerating explain exactly what is overstated in the above dialogue.
Resilient Consulting Group Inc. The Most Crucial Event Since The Industrial Revolution - Robert Lenzner - StreetTalk. Brittle efficiency and shallow triumphalism. Thresholds and abrupt social change. Post by Lee Worden How does large-scale social change sometimes happen abruptly without a clear cause? One day thousands of people take over the streets and refuse to leave until their demands are met. 20th century leadership-based models for social movements appear to be inadequate to explain how people are doing it this year. One way to look at this is using a threshold model. Suppose everyone has a threshold for participation – one person will join in if 60 percent of the people do, while another person is ready to go once only 10 percent are willing.
Some people are willing no matter what ‚Äì we can say their threshold is zero or less ‚Äì and some people will probably never do it, and we can say their threshold is larger than 100%. In the first figure here, we imagine a hypothetical community where people are generally favorable toward participating. Figure: (Left side) Thresholds for participation: average 45%, standard deviation 35%. 1. 2. 3. Social Management of Risk. “ As we know, there are known knowns: there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns.” Donald Rumsfeld U.S. Secretary of Defence, 2001-2006 Abstract In this article, we discuss a conceptual framework on the social management of risk and highlight the role of the community sector in that process. Introduction Risk is endemic in our world and forms a powerful influence, both constructive (as an enticement to positive gains) and destructive (as adverse events beyond our control undermine our well-being).
While the last century saw unprecedented improvements in our collective ability to deal with many of the adverse risks encountered over the course of our lives, it also saw the emergence of new risks that we continue to grapple with. Risk Versus Uncertainty Much of the finance literature on risk management rests on a technical distinction between "risk" and "uncertainty" that can be difficult to make in practice. Objective Versus Subjective Assessments of Risk. Complex Adaptive Systems at Macroeconomic Resilience. Archive for the ‘Complex Adaptive Systems’ Category Minsky and Hayek: Connections As Tyler Cowen argues, there are many similarities between Hayek’s and Minsky’s views on business cycles.
Fundamentally, they both describe the “fundamental impossibility in maintaining orderly credit relations over time”. Minsky saw Keynes’ theory as an ‘investment theory of the business cycle’ and his contribution as being a ‘financial theory of investment’. Schumpeter viewed the ability of banks to create money ex nihilo as the differentia specifica of capitalism. Where Hayek and Minsky differed was that Minsky favoured a comprehensive stabilisation of the financial and monetary system through fiscal and monetary intervention after the Minsky moment. I disagree with Minsky on two fundamental points – I believe that a capitalist economy with sufficient low-level instability is resilient. But although I disagree with Minsky his ideas are coherent. What about Hayek’s views on credit elasticity? Mervyn King: Kitchen Soap — Thoughts on capacity planning and web operations. Elevator Speech #5--Believing in magic and the new dark ages.
The real economy cannot operate on magic. My grandfather had a colorfully weird bachelor-farmer brother who loved to entertain us kids with his collection of aphorisms that passed for wisdom in his life. "Everything comes to him who waits--especially poverty," he once told my sister in all seriousness. His big advice to me was, "There is only one thing you really must know in life and that is this: if you want a harvest in the fall, you must plant in the spring. " It is absolutely impossible to overstate the importance of that basic Producer truth. In a world where the Predators have elevated the "market" to iconic status, it is important that SOMEONE still understands all the steps it takes to actually get something to that market.
Within that simple and blindingly obvious Producer truth are the seeds of civilization itself. Unfortunately, the Leisure Classes reject this Producer truth--starting with the rejection of the possibility or even the existence of Producer truth. Man and Nature, Parts I-IV (Complete) « The Charnel-House. For those who would like to read my series of articles on Man and Nature, here they are, presented as a continuous text. Also, for a detailed response to the fourth installment of my series on Man and Nature, please visit the Oroborous Self-Sufficient Community.
Its founder, the scientist Allister Cucksey, is a Robert Owens of sorts, and his counter-critique is welcome. Caspar David Friedrich, "Sunset" (1835) Man and Nature, Part I: The Shifting Historical Conceptions of Nature in Society History proves again and again How Nature points out the folly of man… — Blue Oyster Cult, “Godzilla” With recent events in Japan and images of Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 tsunami still fresh in our minds, it seems appropriate to revisit the old issue of humanity’s relationship to nature.
So perhaps it might be useful to begin with an overview, a genealogy of sorts, so that these different conceptions and their relation to one another can be clarified. And so, to begin at the beginning: [5] Hegel, G.W.F.