an outdated future story

Securities are the primary character in the past paradigm of Capitalism, which is still the most popular paradigm in the world today, for how investment gets done and prosperity is achieved.

This past paradigm of Capitalism is a story of Growth, and Growth is a story that has taken us as far as it can

We start this story with the myth, mystery and magic of Growth as the dominant mechanism for investing. This math of Growth gives us the historical trend line as our future story, our story of how we expect that future will be.

This future story of past trends is supported and perpetuated by a social structure of people, places, processes and frameworks for investment decision-making through securities trading. This structure is designed to deliver instant liquidity by maintaining an always-available market-clearing price.

IF it is true that:

most of the transaction volume in this trading system is driven by individuals passing their holdings on to the next generation (i.e. by cash needs management, and not by speculation on future price movements); and

consumer purchasing in the global economy is always going up, exponentially and indefinitely (i.e., there is an infinitely receding geophysical horizon out of which we can always take more, and into which the consequences of our taking can disappear, without consequence),

THEN this trading system functions progressively to deliver a widely shared prosperity that is uneven, but not unfair, contributing to conditions of peace and the pursuit of happiness.

IF, however, these two conditions are not present, THEN this trading system becomes dysfunctionally extractive, delivering a polarized prosperity of unevenness that is unfair, contributing to conditions of non-peace and obstructing the pursuit of happiness by many, if not most.

We are living today in a time of not,
a time when these conditions are NOT met. 

 Most transaction volume in the trading markets today is being driven by paid professional traders trading professionally with other people’s money to “beat the market” in a zero-sum game of “I win only you lose.”

This would maybe not be problematic if we were nonetheless living in a time of infinitely expanding horizons, out of which we could always take more, and into which the consequences of our taking could disappear, without consequence.

We are not. We are living in a time when the earth is Planet A, when there is no Planet B, and when Planet A is not getting any larger.

So, the old story of Growth is no longer fit to function in these times in which we now live.

We need a new story,  a hope-filled story that is not just the no-hope story of non-growth, a new story that can take us into a future of more that is better, expansively evolving new choices that are more fit to function and more right for their times, as times change, and we, the people, evolve prosperous adaptations to life’s constant changes.