https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/our-economy-is-a-degenerative-system/2018/03/21 Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Sat, 24 Mar 2018 13:35:16 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.15 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/our-economy-is-a-degenerative-system/2018/03/21/comment-page-1#comment-1588106 Sat, 24 Mar 2018 13:35:16 +0000 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=70204#comment-1588106 “… the continued degradation of ecosystems everywhere leads to a drop in planetary bioproductivity every year…”
An obvious example of the Law of Diminishing Returns. As archaeologist Joseph Tainter has argued, complex societies tend to ‘collapse’ due to this law as our problem-solving societies take greater and greater amounts of energy and other resources to solve the various problems of society (i.e. reduce volatility/control complex systems). Our proclivity to use the easy and cheap solutions to solve our problems eventually results in later solutions being much more difficult and costly until we reach a point where the costs outweigh the benefits and more and more people abandon complexity as a means of problem-solving. Our ‘greatest’ accomplishments may, in fact, be keeping us on a path to eventual global ‘collapse’ as our ‘carbon bubble’ eventually pops…only time will tell.

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