Plum Local IV ::: Part VI
To Do
== chapters 86 - 92 ==
=== look to right column for direct links to chapters ===
86. Derive Economics from Life Science.
Bob Komives
::
...
The rules of wealth are written in the biosphere, by the biosphere. We are privileged to discover those rules slowly and to use them consciously. We can look beyond the apparent scarcity of the moment to the ubiquitous abundance that has nurtured evolution of our biosphere. Until the next cosmic disaster sets life back or extinguishes it, evolution builds ever more plentiful life from a once inanimate universe. Economics must better connect itself to life science to understand abundance.
Economics usually deals only with humankind —as do some other sciences such as sociology. That limitation is legitimate since all sciences are really arbitrary sub-sciences of one whole, science. If intellectual boundaries are understood to be convenient rather than absolute, we let one science flow naturally into another. Economic analysis should work at species level, national level, regional level, group or family level, or at the level of any life system we choose. Why? Because wealth develops at all levels. Choosing any one level for analysis, we must look inward to sub-systems, but also outward to the systems of which the chosen level is a working part.
A community fosters its economic development when it captures wealth, distributes it, and recirculates it through community organs —neighborhoods, schools, families, businesses, associations. In the process of economic development new subgroups may form, and old ones may reorganize. As in nature, the successful process is at once complex and elegant.
This same community should look outward to try to understand the larger governments, cultures, ecosystems, and ultimately the biosphere and universe of which it is an organ. Economics, the life science, will tell us how, while capturing wealth from these higher-level organisms, we should foster their wealth —recognizing that they too develop and change. Economics, the life science, will explain to us why, if we organize ourselves to foul or stagnate our planet, we organize for failure.
Oil is dirty water
to anyone who has no knowledge of how to use it.
Water is death
to many who do not know how to swim or fish.
Fish may be angels or devils
to people who know no use for them.
Knowing that many fish are edible and tasty
has little value to a hungry quadriplegic
whose arms no longer know how to grasp a fish.
Knowing how to grasp a fish
has little value if it destroys all the fish—
eliminating the knowledge they carry within them.
Knowledge Of Dirty Water
Our wealth is complex. It includes art, safety and clean air, as well as more tangible goods and services. A resource is a resource because life has knowledge to leverage it. Knowledge is wealth and has no inherent limitations except the limits of the universe. We must measure knowledge, track it, and understand how life organizes it if we are to understand abundance. The biosphere is rich in knowledge bound into energy forms that know how to organize themselves to convert more and more of the inanimate universe into life. Humankind's wealth is its share of that knowledge. Today, other life sciences know more about this wealth than does economics. Economics usually deals only with humankind —as do some other sciences such as sociology. That limitation is legitimate since all sciences are really arbitrary sub-sciences of one whole, science. If intellectual boundaries are understood to be convenient rather than absolute, we let one science flow naturally into another. Economic analysis should work at species level, national level, regional level, group or family level, or at the level of any life system we choose. Why? Because wealth develops at all levels. Choosing any one level for analysis, we must look inward to sub-systems, but also outward to the systems of which the chosen level is a working part.
A community fosters its economic development when it captures wealth, distributes it, and recirculates it through community organs —neighborhoods, schools, families, businesses, associations. In the process of economic development new subgroups may form, and old ones may reorganize. As in nature, the successful process is at once complex and elegant.
This same community should look outward to try to understand the larger governments, cultures, ecosystems, and ultimately the biosphere and universe of which it is an organ. Economics, the life science, will tell us how, while capturing wealth from these higher-level organisms, we should foster their wealth —recognizing that they too develop and change. Economics, the life science, will explain to us why, if we organize ourselves to foul or stagnate our planet, we organize for failure.
:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 86. Derive Economics from Life Science ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent
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