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by ATinNM Fri Feb 20th, 2015 at 12:06:02 PM EST
Paper: Is Our Monetary Structure a Systemic Cause for Financial Instability? Evidence and Remedies from Nature
(Directly linking is beyond my power, have to Google it.)
Abstract:
"Fundamental laws govern all complex flow systems, including natural ecosystems, economic and financial systems. Natural ecosystems are practical exemplars of sustainability: enduring, vital, adaptive. The sustainability of any complex flow system can be measured with a single metric as an emergent property of its structural diversity and interconnectivity; it requires a balance in emphasis between efficiency and resilience. The urgent message for economics from nature is that the monoculture of national currencies, justified on the basis of market efficiency, generates structural instability in our global financial system. Economic sustainability therefore requires diversification in types of currencies, specifically through complementary currencies."
[Emphasis added]
Teaser quote:
It is critical to understand that the findings described in natural ecosystems arise from the very structure of a complex flow system, and therefore that they remain valid for any complex flow network with a similar structure, regardless of what is being processed in the system: it can be biomass in an ecosystem, information in a biological system, electrons in an electrical power network, or money in an economic system. This is precisely one of the strong points of using a web-like network approach instead of machine-like metaphor.
[Emphasis original]
Economic sustainability therefore requires diversification in types of currencies, specifically through complementary currencies."
So lots of little regional currencies then? What's the happy medium here? 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
Money is an extension of the political system, and cannot be separated from it. Studying money without considering the political system which creates it is almost completely analogous to a cargo cult building a landing strip and control tower out of bamboo and expecting it to attract supply planes.
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
The argument can be extended (and in my opinion should be) to a political perspective.
Abandoning "political monoculture" is what normal people call "civil war."
Ancient greek city/states. Switzerland in the present. These are example of the absence of political monoculture that works.
Ah, and Western Europe after WWII until the 70s.
You could pay your local taxes in city currency, regional in regional currency, state in krona and European taxes (should they be introduced) in euros. It would be a bit messy though. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
That is not, however, a plurality of political systems operating in the same jurisdiction. That is a dominant political system which pools or devolves policy areas to a junior policy level. It is rare, very volatile, and normally extremely unpleasant to live in a society where different levels of administration can effectively contest power as equals.
Nature surely developed smarter structures than hierarchy -- and pathway diversity is definitely is an important factor. Though that does not mean that hierarchy (or "monocultural" utilization if resources) does not occur often in nature.
It's like saying that geology is an exemplar of sustainability. Not on "geological" time scales it is not. A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
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