by
Adam Taggart
prosperity
by
Adam Taggart
by
charleshughsmith
Executive Summary
- What are the big systemic trends that will impact our personal prosperity?
- Realizing why the future will have less of everything
- Strategies for thriving with less
- The importance of owning & managing capital
If you have not yet read Part 1: If Everything's Doing So Great, How Come I’m Not? available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
In Part 1, we asked 30 questions as a means of assessing whether individuals and households are doing better or worse than they were 10 years ago (2007) and 16 years ago (in 2000)—before the dot-com meltdown recession and the Global Financial Meltdown recession of 2008-09.
Identifying Systemic Trends
These questions attempt to sort out generalized decay that affects everyone—declines in purchasing power, quality of goods and services, etc.—from declines in individual/household health, well-being and financial security.
The questions also attempt to sharpen our awareness of systemic trends: are our prospects brightening or dimming? Are government services improving or declining as our taxes increase?
General trends manifest in different ways in each community/region. For example, the city and county of San Francisco is booming, with strong growth of population (866,000 residents), jobs, rents, housing valuations and tax revenues. Yet even as the city and county of San Francisco’s annual budget swells to an incomprehensible $9.6 billion—larger than the budgets of many U.S. state governments, and four times the annual budget of the city and county of Honolulu, with 998,000 residents—the homeless problem in San Francisco becomes ever more intractable, intrusive and disruptive, despite tens of millions of dollars devoted specifically to improving the options available to the homeless.
This is an example of larger trends that manifest in one way or another in the majority of communities: increasing costs and complexity, diminishing returns on money spent, frustration by taxpayers receiving unsatisfactory services as tax revenues increase, and problems that continue to worsen regardless of how much money is thrown at them.
There are many causal factors driving these trends of decay, rising costs and diminishing returns: a state-cartel system of regulatory capture that enforces cartels and limits competition; rising complexity of regulations that result in reduced productivity and higher costs; a “vetocracy” (Francis Fukuyama’s term) in which special interests can veto any measure with their political clout that impinges on their wealth and power; central bank monetary policies that enrich the wealthy and strip interest income from everyone else; and government manipulation of statistics and markets to manage perceptions—in effect, ignore your lying eyes and believe us: everything’s going great!
Then there's the shadowy monster in the room…
The Keys To Prosperity
PREVIEW by charleshughsmithExecutive Summary
- What are the big systemic trends that will impact our personal prosperity?
- Realizing why the future will have less of everything
- Strategies for thriving with less
- The importance of owning & managing capital
If you have not yet read Part 1: If Everything's Doing So Great, How Come I’m Not? available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
In Part 1, we asked 30 questions as a means of assessing whether individuals and households are doing better or worse than they were 10 years ago (2007) and 16 years ago (in 2000)—before the dot-com meltdown recession and the Global Financial Meltdown recession of 2008-09.
Identifying Systemic Trends
These questions attempt to sort out generalized decay that affects everyone—declines in purchasing power, quality of goods and services, etc.—from declines in individual/household health, well-being and financial security.
The questions also attempt to sharpen our awareness of systemic trends: are our prospects brightening or dimming? Are government services improving or declining as our taxes increase?
General trends manifest in different ways in each community/region. For example, the city and county of San Francisco is booming, with strong growth of population (866,000 residents), jobs, rents, housing valuations and tax revenues. Yet even as the city and county of San Francisco’s annual budget swells to an incomprehensible $9.6 billion—larger than the budgets of many U.S. state governments, and four times the annual budget of the city and county of Honolulu, with 998,000 residents—the homeless problem in San Francisco becomes ever more intractable, intrusive and disruptive, despite tens of millions of dollars devoted specifically to improving the options available to the homeless.
This is an example of larger trends that manifest in one way or another in the majority of communities: increasing costs and complexity, diminishing returns on money spent, frustration by taxpayers receiving unsatisfactory services as tax revenues increase, and problems that continue to worsen regardless of how much money is thrown at them.
There are many causal factors driving these trends of decay, rising costs and diminishing returns: a state-cartel system of regulatory capture that enforces cartels and limits competition; rising complexity of regulations that result in reduced productivity and higher costs; a “vetocracy” (Francis Fukuyama’s term) in which special interests can veto any measure with their political clout that impinges on their wealth and power; central bank monetary policies that enrich the wealthy and strip interest income from everyone else; and government manipulation of statistics and markets to manage perceptions—in effect, ignore your lying eyes and believe us: everything’s going great!
Then there's the shadowy monster in the room…
by
Adam Taggart
by
Adam Taggart
by
charleshughsmith
Executive Summary
- Why buying into the Status Quo undermines personal empowerment
- Echew debt and consumerism. Instead, focus on cultivating resilience and social capital
- The importance of differentiating hedonia vs eudaimonia
- The key roles of Expectation, Narrative, and Challenge
- The foundations of happiness
If you have not yet read Part I: The Pursuit of Happiness, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
In Part I, we challenged the assumption that the successful pursuit of happiness is based on material prosperity and what we might call the psychology of the atomized individual.
If material prosperity is necessary but insufficient, and our social and financial order is sociopathological, what does an authentic pursuit of happiness entail?
For answers, we can survey recent research into human happiness, and consider “powering down” participation in a deranging social and financial order.
Pondering Power
The primacy of power in human society is omnipresent. Humans scramble for power in all its forms to improve social status and the odds of mating, living a long life, and acquiring comforts. What is remarkable about the current American social order is the powerlessness of the vast majority of people who have “bought into” the Status Quo.
When the public vehemently disapproves of a policy, such as bailing out the “too big to fail” banks, they are routinely ignored, and for good reason: They keep re-electing incumbents. Most have little control over their employment status, workflow, or income, and most devote the majority of their productive effort servicing private debt and paying taxes that service public debt.
The one “power” they are encouraged to flex is the momentary empowerment offered by purchasing something; i.e., consuming. The corporate marketing machine glorifies acquisition as not just empowering but as the renewal of identity and the staking of a claim to higher social status – everything that is otherwise out of the control of the average person.
The dominant social control myth of our consumerist Status Quo is that wealth is power because you can buy more things with it. But the power of consumption is one-dimensional and therefore illusory. The only meaningful power is not what you can buy – a good, service, or experience – but what you control – your health, choice of work, income, surroundings, level of risk, and your circle of colleagues and friends.
The “wealthy” who own an abundance of things but who are trapped in debt are not powerful. Their choices in life are limited by the need to service the debt, and their pursuit of happiness is equally constrained.
The kind of wealth that enriches the pursuit of happiness is control over the meaningful aspects of life. It is no coincidence that studies of workplace stress have found that those jobs in which the worker has almost no control over their work or surroundings generate far more stress than jobs that allow the worker some autonomy and control.
Financial and material wealth beyond the basics of creature comfort is only meaningful if it “buys” autonomy and choice.
We all want power over our own lives. Once we free ourselves from social control myths, we find that becoming powerful and “wealthy” in terms of control does not require a financial fortune. It does, however, require sustained effort and a coherent long-term plan…
Finding Authentic Happiness
PREVIEW by charleshughsmithExecutive Summary
- Why buying into the Status Quo undermines personal empowerment
- Echew debt and consumerism. Instead, focus on cultivating resilience and social capital
- The importance of differentiating hedonia vs eudaimonia
- The key roles of Expectation, Narrative, and Challenge
- The foundations of happiness
If you have not yet read Part I: The Pursuit of Happiness, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
In Part I, we challenged the assumption that the successful pursuit of happiness is based on material prosperity and what we might call the psychology of the atomized individual.
If material prosperity is necessary but insufficient, and our social and financial order is sociopathological, what does an authentic pursuit of happiness entail?
For answers, we can survey recent research into human happiness, and consider “powering down” participation in a deranging social and financial order.
Pondering Power
The primacy of power in human society is omnipresent. Humans scramble for power in all its forms to improve social status and the odds of mating, living a long life, and acquiring comforts. What is remarkable about the current American social order is the powerlessness of the vast majority of people who have “bought into” the Status Quo.
When the public vehemently disapproves of a policy, such as bailing out the “too big to fail” banks, they are routinely ignored, and for good reason: They keep re-electing incumbents. Most have little control over their employment status, workflow, or income, and most devote the majority of their productive effort servicing private debt and paying taxes that service public debt.
The one “power” they are encouraged to flex is the momentary empowerment offered by purchasing something; i.e., consuming. The corporate marketing machine glorifies acquisition as not just empowering but as the renewal of identity and the staking of a claim to higher social status – everything that is otherwise out of the control of the average person.
The dominant social control myth of our consumerist Status Quo is that wealth is power because you can buy more things with it. But the power of consumption is one-dimensional and therefore illusory. The only meaningful power is not what you can buy – a good, service, or experience – but what you control – your health, choice of work, income, surroundings, level of risk, and your circle of colleagues and friends.
The “wealthy” who own an abundance of things but who are trapped in debt are not powerful. Their choices in life are limited by the need to service the debt, and their pursuit of happiness is equally constrained.
The kind of wealth that enriches the pursuit of happiness is control over the meaningful aspects of life. It is no coincidence that studies of workplace stress have found that those jobs in which the worker has almost no control over their work or surroundings generate far more stress than jobs that allow the worker some autonomy and control.
Financial and material wealth beyond the basics of creature comfort is only meaningful if it “buys” autonomy and choice.
We all want power over our own lives. Once we free ourselves from social control myths, we find that becoming powerful and “wealthy” in terms of control does not require a financial fortune. It does, however, require sustained effort and a coherent long-term plan…
by
Chris Martenson
With a new site and a number of new irons in the fire, Adam and I thought it a good time to revisit and renew the mission behind this movement.
Simply put, our mission is to create a world worth inheriting. By this we mean a clean, healthy living environment, a durable economy, and prosperous opportunities for all who participate with us. That's our big, lofty aim.
At heart, our view is that our policies, uses, and practices in all of the Three “E”s are unsustainable. One cannot forever grow non-renewable resource use in a finite world. The exponential nature of that growth just hastens things along.
Because of hard constraints, our exponential money and debt systems are on a collision course with reality. We will first and most immediately — and personally — experience the deleterious effects of this in what we call 'the economy' in the form of stagnant growth, rising unemployment, and various ills and maladies within the financial markets.
This is just another way of saying that very big changes are coming our way. In fact, they are here already.
The simple conclusion is that we must either change our habits and ways on our own terms — or on Nature's. We face a future that will be shaped either by disaster or design.
Here at Peak Prosperity, we are solidly behind the idea of positive change made on our own terms and that we are each responsible for whatever future is created.
There are a number of things that we absolutely have to do in order to achieve our mission. And at the top of the list is reaching and influencing a lot of people (millions upon millions) and doing so effectively.
Creating a World Worth Inheriting
by Chris MartensonWith a new site and a number of new irons in the fire, Adam and I thought it a good time to revisit and renew the mission behind this movement.
Simply put, our mission is to create a world worth inheriting. By this we mean a clean, healthy living environment, a durable economy, and prosperous opportunities for all who participate with us. That's our big, lofty aim.
At heart, our view is that our policies, uses, and practices in all of the Three “E”s are unsustainable. One cannot forever grow non-renewable resource use in a finite world. The exponential nature of that growth just hastens things along.
Because of hard constraints, our exponential money and debt systems are on a collision course with reality. We will first and most immediately — and personally — experience the deleterious effects of this in what we call 'the economy' in the form of stagnant growth, rising unemployment, and various ills and maladies within the financial markets.
This is just another way of saying that very big changes are coming our way. In fact, they are here already.
The simple conclusion is that we must either change our habits and ways on our own terms — or on Nature's. We face a future that will be shaped either by disaster or design.
Here at Peak Prosperity, we are solidly behind the idea of positive change made on our own terms and that we are each responsible for whatever future is created.
There are a number of things that we absolutely have to do in order to achieve our mission. And at the top of the list is reaching and influencing a lot of people (millions upon millions) and doing so effectively.
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