Chapter 10 The Ride Home
The thoughts and opinions are from my point of view. There are so many points of view and only by considering different points of view can change occur. When our country began the leaders of that time had such a diverse way thinking about the future and this young country had to come together to be successful.
After getting our ride to the car rental we drove back to Jane’s house, loaded up the bikes and finally headed north to Vermont. Initially we were on smaller roads and highways until we reached Ashville, NC where we picked up rte. 81. On our drive there was plenty of time to think about our journey and try to condense these thoughts into a coherent image. The concepts of Throughput, Law of Diminishing Returns, Jevons’ Paradox, the Netherlands Fallacy and Paradigm Shift when taken into account give the image a theme, a structure with the particulars to fill in the landscape. When we consider throughput, it is hard to imagine ever really eliminating poverty especially when adding the Jevons Paradox. As time goes by the Law of Diminishing Returns accelerates giving us less and less while needing more and more just to run the system. The access to resources is stressed by a decrease in reserves, war, hacking, aging infrastructure, climate change, pollution, economy (including tariffs, sanctions and embargoes), etc. As these stresses increase it may be time to totally rethink our future. It isn’t mathematically possible to share the world’s resources and keep our cultures intact. The global decision really comes down to our willingness to share resources by drastically reducing our throughput per person or, we could decide to have resource access for only a small percentage of people while many others perish. The present day paradigm has roots that go back in time; for example, take Adam Smith’s view of selfishness. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.” Also, John Locke’s view of nature, “Land that is left wholly to nature…is called, as indeed it is, waste”. Both Adam Smith and John Locke have many ideas that could help to shape a new paradigm, but always in paradigm shifts some old ideas remain and others have to be discarded. Can we start shaping something new objectively?
Depending on what data is being examined the distribution of wealth can seem to change. Recently the data indicates that poverty in our country has decreased. The data mostly considers money as the indicator of whether one is poor or not, however, it is really the access to resources to fill needed requirements. For example, if a person does not qualify as poor because they earn just over the monetary poverty line and then food and rent increases to the point where the needs are not met the person is still poor. Studies have shown that the middle class is being economically squeezed while the wealthy have increased their wealth. If this scenario is true, looking at this through resource allocation, the access to resources may have shifted more to the rich and the poor. In the article, The 10 Most Expensive Places to Raise a Family in the U.S. by Catey Hill of Market Watch – March 8, 2017: the squeezing of the middle class is examined by the Economic Policy Institute. They looked at 618 metro areas and calculated the cost of living based on common expenditures. The minimum amount of money needed is between $50,000 to over $100,000 for a family of 4. This is from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) a nonprofit, nonpartisan think-tank. Elise Gould from the EPI states, “This does not mean a middle-class lifestyle, this is just living, no savings”. Extreme throughput is sopping up their wealth without them having any awareness of where their wealth going.
We left Ashville and pushed on to the Poconos where we spent the night with old friends, Chris and Pat. Pat’s Uncle Earl and Aunt Bev from Biloxi, Mississippi that had hosted us earlier in the trip. We had a great visit; however Mary and I were just itching to get home.
Many people are concerned with climate change and are looking to alternative energy to power our society and I feel we need to consider not only the throughput of the alternative energy infrastructure but also the entire throughput of all the stuff that has to be made to use all this energy due to obsolescence. Paradigm shifts occur when there is flexibility of thinking so; can we hear what others are actually saying? Judgement of others should be kept at a minimum for we are all in this together. For example, is climate change really that important when there is little food on the table? Many of us have all benefited from this paradigm but now it’s time to change things for the next generation. According to Jim Merkle in Radical Simplicity, resource use is in most cases tied to the income of the person. I was at an informational meeting on creating a Vermont State Bank and I sat next to a woman named Marcie who inspires me since she is highly educated on today’s issues and she is able to live a rich and full life on $5000 a year. Many people in the new generation of young adults are on this path, the path of the future, a low cost, low impact, and loving, educated lifestyle. If we want to inspire a new low cost, low impact society through education and experiential learning opportunities, we could work towards reducing climate change, poverty, war, soil degradation, political corruption, and a host of other issues. The more familiar individuals become with environmental concepts the greater chance we have of making change. For more information please visit the other articles on the website.
We pulled into our driveway and there some snow on the ground and more on the way, springtime in Vermont. Thank you for your time.
The thoughts and opinions are from my point of view. There are so many points of view and only by considering different points of view can change occur. When our country began the leaders of that time had such a diverse way thinking about the future and this young country had to come together to be successful.
After getting our ride to the car rental we drove back to Jane’s house, loaded up the bikes and finally headed north to Vermont. Initially we were on smaller roads and highways until we reached Ashville, NC where we picked up rte. 81. On our drive there was plenty of time to think about our journey and try to condense these thoughts into a coherent image. The concepts of Throughput, Law of Diminishing Returns, Jevons’ Paradox, the Netherlands Fallacy and Paradigm Shift when taken into account give the image a theme, a structure with the particulars to fill in the landscape. When we consider throughput, it is hard to imagine ever really eliminating poverty especially when adding the Jevons Paradox. As time goes by the Law of Diminishing Returns accelerates giving us less and less while needing more and more just to run the system. The access to resources is stressed by a decrease in reserves, war, hacking, aging infrastructure, climate change, pollution, economy (including tariffs, sanctions and embargoes), etc. As these stresses increase it may be time to totally rethink our future. It isn’t mathematically possible to share the world’s resources and keep our cultures intact. The global decision really comes down to our willingness to share resources by drastically reducing our throughput per person or, we could decide to have resource access for only a small percentage of people while many others perish. The present day paradigm has roots that go back in time; for example, take Adam Smith’s view of selfishness. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.” Also, John Locke’s view of nature, “Land that is left wholly to nature…is called, as indeed it is, waste”. Both Adam Smith and John Locke have many ideas that could help to shape a new paradigm, but always in paradigm shifts some old ideas remain and others have to be discarded. Can we start shaping something new objectively?
Depending on what data is being examined the distribution of wealth can seem to change. Recently the data indicates that poverty in our country has decreased. The data mostly considers money as the indicator of whether one is poor or not, however, it is really the access to resources to fill needed requirements. For example, if a person does not qualify as poor because they earn just over the monetary poverty line and then food and rent increases to the point where the needs are not met the person is still poor. Studies have shown that the middle class is being economically squeezed while the wealthy have increased their wealth. If this scenario is true, looking at this through resource allocation, the access to resources may have shifted more to the rich and the poor. In the article, The 10 Most Expensive Places to Raise a Family in the U.S. by Catey Hill of Market Watch – March 8, 2017: the squeezing of the middle class is examined by the Economic Policy Institute. They looked at 618 metro areas and calculated the cost of living based on common expenditures. The minimum amount of money needed is between $50,000 to over $100,000 for a family of 4. This is from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) a nonprofit, nonpartisan think-tank. Elise Gould from the EPI states, “This does not mean a middle-class lifestyle, this is just living, no savings”. Extreme throughput is sopping up their wealth without them having any awareness of where their wealth going.
We left Ashville and pushed on to the Poconos where we spent the night with old friends, Chris and Pat. Pat’s Uncle Earl and Aunt Bev from Biloxi, Mississippi that had hosted us earlier in the trip. We had a great visit; however Mary and I were just itching to get home.
Many people are concerned with climate change and are looking to alternative energy to power our society and I feel we need to consider not only the throughput of the alternative energy infrastructure but also the entire throughput of all the stuff that has to be made to use all this energy due to obsolescence. Paradigm shifts occur when there is flexibility of thinking so; can we hear what others are actually saying? Judgement of others should be kept at a minimum for we are all in this together. For example, is climate change really that important when there is little food on the table? Many of us have all benefited from this paradigm but now it’s time to change things for the next generation. According to Jim Merkle in Radical Simplicity, resource use is in most cases tied to the income of the person. I was at an informational meeting on creating a Vermont State Bank and I sat next to a woman named Marcie who inspires me since she is highly educated on today’s issues and she is able to live a rich and full life on $5000 a year. Many people in the new generation of young adults are on this path, the path of the future, a low cost, low impact, and loving, educated lifestyle. If we want to inspire a new low cost, low impact society through education and experiential learning opportunities, we could work towards reducing climate change, poverty, war, soil degradation, political corruption, and a host of other issues. The more familiar individuals become with environmental concepts the greater chance we have of making change. For more information please visit the other articles on the website.
We pulled into our driveway and there some snow on the ground and more on the way, springtime in Vermont. Thank you for your time.
It's a far cry from Florida
|
We didn't miss winter after all
|