Pensions are the most powerful tool we have today for making prosperous adaptations to life’s constant changes.
We currently have this tool locked up, where we cannot use it.
We unlock this tool, and start using it.
Imagine
an Economy
that circulates wealth robustly, resiliently and regeneratively
driven by a financial system that does not boom, and therefor, also, DOES NOT GO BUST
managing orderly transitions to the new from the old,
by letting older technology choices fade, gracefully,
as new choices evolve and become more popular
Imagine
this as the most powerful financial system, ever
showing us that there is not just one Capitalism,
but actually multiple forms of capitalism, multiple different financial decision-making frameworks, or logic gates, through which society
1. aggregates surpluses saved by individuals, and
2. deploys those aggregations to support enterprise in evolving technologies for making prosperous adaptations to life’s constant changes
giving us a new model of the economy as an expanding universe of new technologies for living well,
in which the primary theme is in two parts: 1. change and 2. evolutionary adaptation to change
Imagine
using this powerful new, multi-capitalisms financial system to build a future history of
income security in retirement
social responsibility in enterprise
climate stability in energy
a society strengthened through engaged learning by teaching
broad public participation in finance as how society chooses which technologies for making a future history of prosperous adaptations to life’s constant changes can, should and will be evolved through enterprise
What?
What do we mean when we say
“Finance is how society chooses which technologies for making a future history of prosperous adaptations to life’s constant changes can, should and will be evolved through enterprise”?
Received wisdom from earlier times – that has become the conventional orthodoxy of our times – teaches that the economy is about the twin goals of “maximizing utility under conditions of scarcity” and “creating abundance through industrial efficiency”.
Where does “prosperous adaptation to life’s constant changes” come from?
It comes from pondering the juxtaposition of pension money inside the Wall Street system, from seeing that Wall Street is built on an expectation for constant growth in future value, and from realizing that this expectation is completely unsupported by the physical experience of history, and the simple existential truth that times change, and people adapt to changing times.
At a certain level of mathematical abstraction there is some truth to the expectation for constant growth, but at the level of the physical enterprise, where work gets done and wealth gets created, the ruling principle is change, and evolutionary adaptation to change. Sometimes change takes the form of growth. Sometimes change takes the form of staying strong. Sometimes change takes the form of letting go.
Which means that this is the real pulse beat of prosperity:
not this
This is the power of pensions as a new form of finance – a new capitalism:
the ability they give us to ride the pulse beat of change,
and evolutionary adaptation to change,
not through boom-and-bust,
but through managed transitions.
We call it