Friday, April 2, 2010

The Collapse of Complex Business Models � Clay Shirky

The Collapse of Complex Business Models Clay Shirky: "Tainter’s thesis is that when society’s elite members add one layer of bureaucracy or demand one tribute too many, they end up extracting all the value from their environment it is possible to extract and then some."

This is a very good post about something completely different but is very, very important to us right now.

All you have to do is replace business with government.

Government is getting bigger and bigger and demanding more and more money to fulfill bigger and bigger entitlements. This never ends well.

Not to say they won't milk it. The big push for Cap-and -Trade which would create a new global currency (carbon credits) out of nothing that gets you nothing is going to be their next big trick. That will create a new derivates market, which will inflate in a bubble as everyone tries to make their money back from the losses from the real estate crash.

And because it too is a bubble and not even backed by anything real like real estate, there will be a "need" to create a North American Union like the EU, and probably others around the world like an Asian Union, and when that blows up they'll call for a global union, which they've already started laying the groundwork for.

And when that bubble pops, where can they go? They can't push it up another level, unless space aliens comes and they buy into the Ponzi scheme, too.

This scenario would take maybe 20-30 years to play out, maybe less but not less then 10 years. That is plenty of time to build a nice little self-sustaining homestead, teaching our children and building community.