On Making Major Transitions

A few thoughts on the difficulties of making major career transitions.

Many of us are either considering major career transitions or are being forced to undertake the voyage due to layoffs/downsizing, etc. Correspondent Joe G. recently asked me about my own experience in transitioning from one career to another, and it made me ask what, if anything, can be generalized about the process of making major transitions.

Here are some initial observations:

1. Transition is stressful. The key stresses in life are all transitions: death of a loved one; divorce; moving; loss of job. We know this but tend to expect too much of ourselves in terms of making rapid, fluid transitions.

2. Some transitions are extensions of our previous job/location, but this does not mean they're easy. When I became a licensed builder at 27, it appeared to be an extension of my previous 8 years of construction experience working for other contractors. But it was actually a much riskier (and potentially more rewarding) transition that required an entire new suite of skills and a quantum increase of financial, human and social capital. The similarities masked the critical differences and risks of the transition.

3. Other transitions require cutting entirely new pathways, skills and networks. Becoming a free-lance writer and doing public-relations for a non-profit organization in my early 30s had little in common with running a construction business. Some basic skills were transferable--supervisory skills, working in groups, the fundamentals of marketing, for example--but the implementation was entirely new.

In terms of moving, the analogy is moving to a new country, state or equally different environment: from city to rural, from town to urban region, etc.

4. The road ahead is never as clear as the moment of realization that we want out.

5. The path to a successful transition is often circuitous. In many ways, the traits of resilience--low costs of innovation, flexibility, willingness to adapt/try things, ability to accept risk and absorb the lessons learned from failure--help us navigate major transitions.

This essay is excerpted from Musings Report 4. The Musings Reports are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books.

The Musings Report includes an essay and three other sections: Market Musings, on the financial markets and trading, The Best Thing That Happened This Week and From Left Field.

If you'd like to receive the weekly Musings Reports, please subscribe ($5/month) via the links in the right sidebar or send $50 (the annual non-refundable one-payment fee) via the PayPal link. You may cancel a subscription to the Musings at any time using the "unsubscribe" button. 

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Things are falling apart--that is obvious. But why are they falling apart? The reasons are complex and global. Our economy and society have structural problems that cannot be solved by adding debt to debt. We are becoming poorer, not just from financial over-reach, but from fundamental forces that are not easy to identify or understand. We will cover the five core reasons why things are falling apart:

1. Debt and financialization
2. Crony capitalism and the elimination of accountability
3. Diminishing returns
4. Centralization
5. Technological, financial and demographic changes in our economy

Complex systems weakened by diminishing returns collapse under their own weight and are replaced by systems that are simpler, faster and affordable. If we cling to the old ways, our system will disintegrate. If we want sustainable prosperity rather than collapse, we must embrace a new model that is Decentralized, Adaptive, Transparent and Accountable (DATA).

We are not powerless. Not accepting responsibility and being powerless are two sides of the same coin: once we accept responsibility, we become powerful.

Kindle edition: $9.95       print edition: $24 on Amazon.com
To receive a 20% discount on the print edition: $19.20 (retail $24), follow the link, open a Createspace account and enter discount code SJRGPLAB. (This is the only way I can offer a discount.)

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Bernanke "The Only Game in Town": Really?

Of the three games in town, only one isn't doomed: the real economy.

Last year, Senator Schumer (Democrat, N.Y.) famously told Fed chairman Ben Bernanke "You are the only game in town." Really, Senator? What about the real economy? Bernanke and the Fed's machinations are indeed the only game in town for the parasitic financiers, but unnoticed by the Senator, America's real economy is innovating away from the dead hand of the Fed and its toxic spew of free money to the predatory class.

There's actually three games in town: the financier game the Fed is playing that will end in collapse, the Federal government's borrow-and-blow trillions of dollars game that will also end badly, and the real economy, where millions of people don't give a rat's rear-end about Bernanke's latest attempt to placate the financial Monster Id he has created.

Bernanke is irrelevant to millions of people who are building the next economy beneath the rotting soggy mess of the financialized one Bernanke is attempting to resuscitate.

Here is Bernanke's game: Bernanke has managed to stretch Phase II into five years; Phase III will finally begin in the 2014-15 as the unintended consequences of Bernanke's save-the-financial-parasites game take the financial markets by the throat:

Serial asset bubbles blown by the Fed that always pop:

Here is the Federal government's game: Rapidly rising debt:

Diminishing returns on centralization and deficit spending:

Bernanke, Schumer, et al. are trying to revive the Financialization machine, but it's disintegrating as a result of its own toxic output. Meanwhile, the parts of the economy that view Bernanke, Schumer et al. as either impediments or as irrelevant are innovating and evolving. 

---

Things are falling apart--that is obvious. But why are they falling apart? The reasons are complex and global. Our economy and society have structural problems that cannot be solved by adding debt to debt. We are becoming poorer, not just from financial over-reach, but from fundamental forces that are not easy to identify or understand. We will cover the five core reasons why things are falling apart:

1. Debt and financialization
2. Crony capitalism and the elimination of accountability
3. Diminishing returns
4. Centralization
5. Technological, financial and demographic changes in our economyComplex systems weakened by diminishing returns collapse under their own weight and are replaced by systems that are simpler, faster and affordable. If we cling to the old ways, our system will disintegrate. If we want sustainable prosperity rather than collapse, we must embrace a new model that is Decentralized, Adaptive, Transparent and Accountable (DATA).
We are not powerless. Not accepting responsibility and being powerless are two sides of the same coin: once we accept responsibility, we become powerful.

Kindle edition: $9.95       print edition: $24 on Amazon.com
To receive a 20% discount on the print edition: $19.20 (retail $24), follow the link, open a Createspace account and enter discount code SJRGPLAB. (This is the only way I can offer a discount.)

Thank you, John M. ($5/month), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Rhonda K. ($5/month), for your much-appreciated generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

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Is America's Social Contract Broken?

As Voltaire observed, "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible." This is precisely how empires collapse.

Correspondent Kenneth D. recently made the case that the Social Contract in America is broken. Kenneth offered two links for context: Social Contract (Wikipedia) and OECD calls time on trickle down theory.

Here is Kenneth's commentary:

Society has been structured for a few centuries now such that we are expected to voluntarily give up some of our wealth to governing bodies, and in return they will “ honestly and prudently” govern for the betterment and cohesiveness of society, so that we can collectively live in peace with each other. That is the theory of the Social Contract. 

As I talk with friends and clients, there is rising anger at how the resources we all “voluntarily” turn over to governments are being squandered, wasted, fraudulently re-allocated, and that a ruling, governing, elitist class is rapidly emerging (Hunger Games) that subsists extravagantly on these taxes, not to mention the entitlement class that also has come to depend on the largesse of the working class. 

The anger rises daily, and I am now constantly hearing from people about how they plan on “beating the system” i.e. dodging taxes, legally or illegally. People are rebelling in rising numbers, and it manifests itself in so many ways--working less or not at all, going to a cash economy, making up deductions that don’t exist, giving less to charity, cashing in on the entitlement culture, etc. etc. 

The trust in government to do the right thing is rapidly being eroded, so the Social Contract unravels more and more. How much longer can a society survive, living side by side, collectively, under such circumstances? I have started to study the concept of the Social Contract, to better understand the theory behind it, and why more and more people feel it is broken.

Thank you, Kenneth, for addressing a critical topic. I do not claim any expertise in social contract theory, but in broad brush we can delineate two implicit contracts: one between the citizenry and the state (government) and another between citizens.

We can distinguish between the two by considering a rural county fair. Most of the labor to stage the fair is volunteered by the citizenry for the good of their community and fellow citizens; they are not coerced to do so by the government, nor does the government levy taxes to pay its employees or contractors to stage the fair.

The social contract between citizens implicitly binds people to obeying traffic laws as a public good all benefit from, not because a police officer is on every street corner enforcing the letter of the law.

The social contract between the citizens and the state binds the government to maintaining civil liberties, social peace, defending the nation, and in the 20th century, providing social welfare for the disadvantaged, disabled and low-income elderly.

The focus of the above article on "trickle down economics" focuses on income inequality as a key metric of the Social Contract: rising income inequality is de facto evidence that the Social Contract is fraying or broken.

I think this misses the key distinction in the Social Contract between citizens and the state, which is the legitimacy of the process of wealth creation and the fairness of the playing field and the referees, i.e. that no one is above the law.

Few people begrudge legitimately earned wealth, for example, the top athlete, the pop star, the tech innovator, the canny entrepreneur, the best-selling author, etc. The source of these individual's wealth is transparent, and any citizen can decline to support this wealth creation by not paying money to see the athlete, not buying the author's books, not shopping at the entrepreneur's shops, etc.

The Social Contract is broken not by wealth inequality per se but by the illegitimate process of wealth acquisition, i.e. the state has tipped the scales in favor of the few behind closed doors and routinely ignores or bypasses the intent of the law even as the state claims to be following the narrower letter of the law.

By this definition, the Social Contract in America has been completely smashed.One sector after another is dominated by cartel-state partnerships that are forged and enforced in obscure legislation written by lobbyists. Once the laws have been riddled with loopholes and the regulators have been corrupted, "no one is above the law" has lost all meaning.

Those who violate the intent of the law while managing to conjure an apparent compliance with the letter of the law are shysters, scammers and thieves who exploit the intricate loopholes of the system, all the while parading their compliance as evidence the system is fair and just. In this way, the judicial system becomes part of the illegitimate process of wealth accumulation.

In America, political and financial Elites are above the intent of the law. Is bribery of politicos illegal? Supposedly it is, but in practice it is entirely and openly legal.

This is the norm in banana republics, whose ledgers are loaded with thousands of codes and regulations that are routinely ignored by those in power. In the Banana Republic of America, financial crimes go uninvestigated, unindicted and unpunished: banks and their management are essentially immune to prosecution because the crimes are complex (tsk, tsk, it's really too much trouble to investigate) and they're "too big to prosecute."

The rot has seeped from the financial-political Aristocracy to the lower reaches of the social order. The fury of those still working legitimate jobs and paying their taxes is grounded in a simple, obvious truth: America is now dominated by scammers, cheaters, grifters and those gaming the system, large and small, to increase their share of the swag.

Formidable armies of scammers and their enablers (attorneys and doctors) are pillaging workers compensation, temporary disability, insurance and Social Security Disability (the lifetime kind, your claim and condition are never monitored after your claim is approved), not to mention Medicare fraud and those gaming the wide array of welfare programs.

The honest taxpayer is a chump, a mark who foolishly ponies up the swag that's looted by the smart operators. Everyone knows that the vast majority of wealth accumulation in America flows not from transparent effort on a level playing field, but from persuading the Central State (the Federal government and the Federal Reserve) to enforce cartels and grant monopolistic favors such as tax shelters designed for a handful of firms and unlimited credit to private banks.

When scammers large and small live better than those creating value in the real economy, the Social Contract has ceased to exist. When the illegitimate process of wealth acquisition--a rigged playing field, a bought-off referee, and an Elite that's above the law by every practical measure--dominates the economy and the political structure, the Social Contract has been shattered, regardless of how much welfare largesse is distributed to buy the complicity of state dependents.

Once the chumps and marks realize there is no way they can ever escape their exploited banana-republic status as neofeudal debt-serfs, the scammers, cheats and grifters large and small will be at risk of losing their perquisites. The fantasy in America is that legitimate wealth creation is still possible despite the visible dominance of a corrupt, venal, self-absorbed, parasitic, predatory Aristocracy. Once that fantasy dies, so will the marks' support of the Aristocracy.

As Voltaire observed, "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible": every claim, every game of the system, every political favor purchased is "fair and legal," of course. This is precisely how empires collapse.

Kenneth D. also suggested that we are experiencing a Hegelian dialectic, an era where the wheel turns and opposing forces generate a new synthesis.

In broad brush, we can trace the dialectic from feudalism to capitalism to the present financialized cartel-state neofeudalism and next, to a synthesis built on the opposite of neofeudalism, which is decentralization, transparency, accountability, legitimacy and liberty. 

---

Things are falling apart--that is obvious. But why are they falling apart? The reasons are complex and global. Our economy and society have structural problems that cannot be solved by adding debt to debt. We are becoming poorer, not just from financial over-reach, but from fundamental forces that are not easy to identify or understand. We will cover the five core reasons why things are falling apart:

1. Debt and financialization
2. Crony capitalism and the elimination of accountability
3. Diminishing returns
4. Centralization
5. Technological, financial and demographic changes in our economyComplex systems weakened by diminishing returns collapse under their own weight and are replaced by systems that are simpler, faster and affordable. If we cling to the old ways, our system will disintegrate. If we want sustainable prosperity rather than collapse, we must embrace a new model that is Decentralized, Adaptive, Transparent and Accountable (DATA).
We are not powerless. Not accepting responsibility and being powerless are two sides of the same coin: once we accept responsibility, we become powerful.

Kindle edition: $9.95       print edition: $24 on Amazon.com
To receive a 20% discount on the print edition: $19.20 (retail $24), follow the link, open a Createspace account and enter discount code SJRGPLAB. (This is the only way I can offer a discount.)

Thank you, Michael Z. ($50), for your supremely generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Rodney W. ($5/month), for your most excellently generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

The Problem with Social Security and Medicare

Projections based on high rates of endless growth are delusional. Those who embrace these projections are equally delusional.

I regularly receive rants that accuse me of a "blind spot" regarding Social Security and Medicare. The j'accuse trots out projections that the program is solvent until 2037 (or whatever, i.e. the distant future). Then they accuse me of ignoring the real cause of our national bankruptcy, defense spending (every "progressive's" single-agenda cause of all our problems).

The ranters clearly count themselves among the "progressive true defenders of the poor and the working class" and critics like me as "enemies of the people," heartless Libertarians or worse.

Meanwhile, the latest Summary Report of the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees concludes with this warning:

The drawdown of Social Security and HI Trust Fund reserves and the general revenue transfers into SMI will result in mounting pressure on the Federal budget. In fact, pressure is already evident. For the seventh consecutive year, the Social Security Act requires that the Trustees issue a “Medicare funding warning” because projected non-dedicated sources of revenues primarily general revenues are expected to continue to account for more than 45 percent of Medicare’s outlays in 2013, a threshold breached for the first time in fiscal year 2010.Lawmakers should address the financial challenges facing Social Security and Medicare as soon as possible. Taking action sooner rather than later will leave more options and more time available to phase in changes so that the public has adequate time to prepare.

Allow me to take the ranters' points one at a time.

1. I reject all ideological labels and boxes. My views do not align with any ideology. I am regularly accused of being right-wing, liberal, Marxist, Libertarian, all in the same week. I know this is frustrating to everyone with a desperate need to label others in order to dismiss them, but your labels mis-state my views.

2. There are few fiercer critics of unproductive defense spending on such programs as the F-35 or the Imperial Project than me. Here are a few of the dozens of entries I've written on these topics:

Are Empire and Democracy Compatible? (August 21, 2009)

The United States of Delusion (January 4, 2013)

If You Want Solutions, First Pin Down Where the Money Is Going (May 23, 2011)

Did The Roman Empire Have Corporations? (August 27, 2010)

How Empires Fall (April 17, 2013)

3. I do not object to social spending programs; what I object to is bogus accounting, delusion being fobbed off as reality, waste, fraud, embezzlement, profiteering, saddling future generations with unpayable debts and misleading projections that ignore real-world trends. There is a difference between blindly accepting what amounts to officially sanctioned lies about social programs' sustainability and supporting sustainable social spending.

Ironically, perhaps, I am just the sort of low-lifetime-income worker Social Security is designed to benefit. If there is anyone who supports a sustainable Social Security program, it's me.

The problem with Social Security is three-fold:

1. The so-called Trust Fund is an accounting illusion. The "safe, guaranteed" non-marketable bonds are merely markers for actual Treasury bonds which must be sold, and interest must be paid on. Social Security is as totally dependent on Federal borrowing as the Pentagon or any other program.

The brutal truth is the system is facing flat or declining revenues while its vast army of beneficiaries will rise from an already monumental 53 million. That's significantly larger than the entire population of Spain (46.5 million) and will soon equal that of Italy (60 million) or Great Britain (62 million).

Social Security is entirely dependent on the Treasury's sale of new bonds for its solvency. If interest rates spike and/or global buyers become wary of Treasury bonds, costs for borrowing will skyrocket, crowding out all other Federal spending.

Being dependent on Treasury borrowing, Social Security will be as impacted as any other program.

2. The demographics of the Baby Boom retiring and the skyrocketing cost of those getting lifetime disability payments from Social Security.

3. The projections of solvency are pie-in-the-sky fantasies in the End of Work. Government projections never predict a recession, much less a depression, and they always project growth rates from the last bubble into infinity, as if a bubble economy can expand forever.

Meanwhile, back in reality, the number of fulltime jobs is stagnant and almost 40 million workers earn less than $10,000 a year. Recent trends suggest that fulltime jobs are being axed in favor of part-time positions and flex-time contract labor. At least some of this dynamic relates to the soaring cost of sickcare, a.k.a. ObamaCare.

No government agency ever forecasts a recession or a systemic decline in fulltime jobs. How accurate have the Trustees' projections been?

In 2010, the SSA Trustees had estimated $41 billion deficit (excluding interest income) and reality turned out to be $76 billion--almost double their guesstimate. Their estimate of total revenues was too rich by $50 billion as well.

If the SSA blew the estimate for the fiscal year ending in October this badly in August of the same year, what faith can we plausibly place in their estimates of what will happen in 2025 and 2037? The SSA numbers published in the August 2010 report estimated that outlays would not exceed revenues (excluding interest income) until 2015--yet outlays already exceeded income by a staggering $76 billion in 2010.

The projections are ungrounded in reality, and this cripples our collective ability to deal with brewing crises in some non-ad hoc fashion.

I have explained all this is great detail many times:

Where There Is Ruin II: Social Security (July 25, 2006)

The Fraud at the Heart of Social Security (January 17, 2011)

To Fix Social Security, First Ask Why It Is Deep in the Red (January 18, 2011)

How To Fix Social Security: A 4-Point Plan That Faces the Brutal Realities (January 19, 2011)

4. I do not object to social spending on healthcare. What I object to is a system that fails to provide health while squandering 40% of expenditures on paper-shuffling, profiteering and fraud, and a government program (Medicare) of which an estimated 40% of expenditures are squandered on outright fraudulent claims, counterproductive tests, drugs and procedures, unproductive defensive medicine and blatant profiteering.

Sickcare Will Bankrupt the Nation--And Soon (March 21, 2011)

To cite another example of the distortions which end up costing the nation twice as much for health care (as a percentage of GDP) as competing developed countries such as Australia and Japan: Pittsburgh has almost as many MRI machines as the nation of Canada. 

According to local media reports, Western Pennsylvania has about 140 MRI machines, while the 32 million residents of Canada share 151 MRI machines. And the machines are getting a lot of use: the number of CT and MRI scans (scans other than old-fashioned X rays) tripled from 85 to 234 per thousand insured people since 1999.
While proponents are quick to note that scans are cheaper than the alternative diagnostic procedures, one firm's research found that a doctor who owns his own machine is four times as likely to order a scan as a doctor who doesn't. 

As if that wasn't enough to highlight the self-serving nature of "fee for service" cartels, MRI scanner manufacturer General Electric waged a two-year lobbying campaign to roll back cuts in Medicare reimbursements for scans. While the effort proved unsuccessful due to the intense political pressure to reduce soaring Medicare costs, some critics claim that providers simply made up the reduced reimbursements by increasing the number of tests administered. 

The only solution that actually addresses the systemic problem is to get rid of the entire fee-for-service structure and break up the cartels. Healthcare must be reconnected to diet, nutrition, fitness, lifestyle and community, and to education and emotional well-being. 

The odds of any of this happening are essentially zero, and so we can safely predict that sickcare will bankrupt the nation (with a helping hand from the Pentagon) within a few years.

While healthcare costs are rising around the developed world due to the demographics of aging and more treatment options, the U.S. sickcare system costs twice as much as our competitors' systems. In other words, we know that 50% of our sickcare costs are inefficiency, waste and fraud because other nations provide universal healthcare for half of what the U.S. spends per person.

That Which is Unsustainable Will Go Away: Medicare (May 16, 2012)

Healthcare: A Large-Scale Solution (January 4, 2011)

A Sustainable National Healthcare System: Prevention Only (August 20, 2012)

Why "Healthcare Reform" Is Not Reform, Part I (December 28, 2009)

Why "Healthcare Reform" Is Not Reform, Part II (December 29, 2009)

Attacking critics who have taken the time to study the data and trends is not going to magically make these programs sustainable or fix what's broken. Placing one's faith in government projections that always forecast high rates of endless growth (because "growth" fixes everything) is embracing delusion.

Reality trumps accounting trickery and delusional projections every time. Let's see how accurate all the government agency projections (including the SSA Trustees) turn out in September 2015, at the end of fiscal year 2015. 

---

Things are falling apart--that is obvious. But why are they falling apart? The reasons are complex and global. Our economy and society have structural problems that cannot be solved by adding debt to debt. We are becoming poorer, not just from financial over-reach, but from fundamental forces that are not easy to identify or understand. We will cover the five core reasons why things are falling apart:

1. Debt and financialization
2. Crony capitalism and the elimination of accountability
3. Diminishing returns
4. Centralization
5. Technological, financial and demographic changes in our economy

Complex systems weakened by diminishing returns collapse under their own weight and are replaced by systems that are simpler, faster and affordable. If we cling to the old ways, our system will disintegrate. If we want sustainable prosperity rather than collapse, we must embrace a new model that is Decentralized, Adaptive, Transparent and Accountable (DATA).

We are not powerless. Not accepting responsibility and being powerless are two sides of the same coin: once we accept responsibility, we become powerful.

Kindle edition: $9.95       print edition: $24 on Amazon.com
To receive a 20% discount on the print edition: $19.20 (retail $24), follow the link, open a Createspace account and enter discount code SJRGPLAB. (This is the only way I can offer a discount.)

Thank you, William M. ($50), for your superbly generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Dog's Health ($5), for your most generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

About That "Incomes Are Rising" Claim...

This is how State-corporate media propaganda works in our era.

The mainstream media is claiming that "The aggregate amount of money in paychecks is increasing about twice as fast as GDP." (Source) This story points to Bureau of Labor Statistics data to support this claim.

Rising aggregate household income doesn't tell the real story, which is:

1. Most of the income gains flow to the top 10%

2. Thanks to rising taxes, healthcare and other costs, household net income for the bottom 90% is declining.

The mainstream media's parroting of aggregate household income increases is used to suggest the economy is improving. But the truth is the economy is only improving for a thin slice of households.

According to articles such as this one, Income Inequality May Take Toll on Growth, the top 1 percent of earners took fully 93% of the income gains in the first full year of the recovery, and the top 10% take home 50% of all household income.

This is not a new trend. The trend started in the early 1980s, with the advent of financialization.

Rising aggregate household income doesn't account for higher taxes and soaring healthcare insurance. Let's say a dual-income household with an income of $80,000 has managed a 5% gain in gross income over the past few years. They now make $84,000, and the data reflects a healthy gain in income.

But let's say the household's healthcare insurance costs have risen by $5,000 over the same period (a realistic number, as anyone who pays 100% of their healthcare insurance costs knows) and incremental tax increases (property tax, income tax, etc.) have siphoned off another $3,000 a year.

The household's net discretionary income actually declined by 5%. Apologists will claim that the government statistics account for inflation, but this claim is specious, as healthcare costs alone have risen faster than income for many of us. Our own healthcare insurance costs now exceed $13,000 a year, a 50% increase in a few years, and we are not alone.

Even if we accept the government's calculation of inflation as accurate, income for most households has declined:

Aggregating income purposefully ignores the distribution of that income and the real-world expense side of the household ledger. This is how State-corporate media propaganda works in our era. 

---

Things are falling apart--that is obvious. But why are they falling apart? The reasons are complex and global. Our economy and society have structural problems that cannot be solved by adding debt to debt. We are becoming poorer, not just from financial over-reach, but from fundamental forces that are not easy to identify or understand. We will cover the five core reasons why things are falling apart:

1. Debt and financialization
2. Crony capitalism and the elimination of accountability
3. Diminishing returns
4. Centralization
5. Technological, financial and demographic changes in our economyComplex systems weakened by diminishing returns collapse under their own weight and are replaced by systems that are simpler, faster and affordable. If we cling to the old ways, our system will disintegrate. If we want sustainable prosperity rather than collapse, we must embrace a new model that is Decentralized, Adaptive, Transparent and Accountable (DATA).
We are not powerless. Not accepting responsibility and being powerless are two sides of the same coin: once we accept responsibility, we become powerful.

Kindle edition: $9.95       print edition: $24 on Amazon.com
To receive a 20% discount on the print edition: $19.20 (retail $24), follow the link, open a Createspace account and enter discount code SJRGPLAB. (This is the only way I can offer a discount.)

Thank you, Mitch S. ($75), for your outrageously generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Thank you, Sarah M. ($50), for your wondrously generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

Read more...