The REAL Economic Tsunami - Part I

I've been threatening to write about his for over a year now, so finally here goes:
the question really is - What the hell is going on? Why all this chaos in the economy, in world affairs is, well, everything?

Change, friends, change - and it ain't gonna be pretty. Here is the view from from low Earth orbit:

1. Root economic change
2. What is a job?
3. The death of US manufacturing
4. The death of traditional media (newspapers, etc.)
5. Monetizing manufacturing/media's replacement (in the US at least) - Web 2.0 and higher.

Now these are topics of biblical scale, so I'll probably end of tackling them one post at a time, but bear with me. You may realize a few things overtly, and maybe learn a few things you haven't thought of (or only in a tangential way).

Root causes/real outcomes -
The implosion of the US, and subsequently European, then Asian economies has been blamed on a variety of processes, from the toxicity of mortgage backed securities, derivative instruments values at 500% or more of actual asset value, to the self-immolation of the US auto industry - I could go on and on. But, as usual, there is a deeper meaning here, a deeper and more pivotal reason (or rather, set of reasons) that point to a more fundamental change in our world, how we work, interact, communicate and entertain ourselves. what's really going on here? Why are all these things happening now and all at once?

Many years ago, when I was working on my M.B.A., I tried to show a demonstrably more efficient way to use capital to replace labor, via the massive use of Information Technology at all levels of production: a radical idea at the time. Seemed like a slam-dunk at the time, I mean after all, there must be a solid reason why all corporations and even small businesses used PC's and networks to conduct the tasks that business required right? There must be demonstrable economic advantage to the use of IT, right? Or we wouldn't be doing it at such a massive level...right?

WRONG! Or at least my preliminary analysis showed that, by using GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Procedures), you could not show any advantage in the use of IT over a pencil and legal pad, to run a company. What? This can't be... or can it? Like Professor Bob Solow (1987 Nobel Prize, Economics) says, "You can see computers everywhere but in the productivity statistics." So does my old professor, Paul Strassmann (former CIO of the Department of Defense and Xerox). The debates about the productivity paradox range from strongly held biases and self-serving claims, to misused statistics, to facts. My own work, which is based entirely on verified, validated, and audited corporate data, has been involved in such discussions. Therefore, the credibility of my work depends entirely on the reliability and trustworthiness of that data and the analytical methods. And that's what I found - That GAAP cannot measure these kind of productivity numbers, so I turned to IFRP (International Financial Reporting Processes), and voila, the productivity numbers fell out. IFRP was more recent at the time, so what was really being measured here?

Indications are (as my pals at CIA like to say) that the world might be in the early stages of a major paradigm shift in global economic development. It is the root cause of most (if not ALL)social, political and economic instability and insecurity.

Eight points-
Root causes of the socio-economic crisis must/should be addressed simultaneously. Below is an eight-point list-in-progress of root causes.

• Anthropocentrism, the assumption of human superiority over nature.

• Unlimited, linear economic growth in a world dependent on nonrenewable resources and closed loop production cycles.

• Technology worship, the prevailing paradigm that technological evolution is invariably good and that problems caused by technology can be solved by more technology.

•Modern chemistry, the invention of substances that cannot be returned productively into the planet’s natural cycles. For many modern chemicals, such as DDT or PCBs, there are no organic counterparts capable of biologically degrading these substances.

• Domination of mass media (particularly TV and advertising) by viewpoints that serve the interests of the "smokestack" industrial world and suppress alternate views.

• The concentration of power amongst corporate executives and owners, and the consequent loss of democratic empowerment that has been profoundly detrimental to human beings.

• The absence of long-term time perspectives: actions based on the desire for short-term gratification can degrade the conditions for life and reduce options for subsequent generations.

• Lack of education in industrial cultures in general systems theory or whole-systems thinking leading to ignorance in the "quantum connectivity" or impacts of one set of actions upon another, on a global basis.

Now, don't mistake this for a hippy-dippy, "one world is enough" clarion call. It's practical. My contention is that these eight conditions are contributing to the real economic tsunami that is about to hit us. And like the Industrial Revolution before (the so-called "information revolution" is just a prelimenary ripple), it will affect everyone on the planet, with the attendany "law of unforseen consequences" vaporizing our current world view of the nature of work.

More on my next post----> stay tuned, talk amongst yourself and discus!