Welcome to a Knowledge Age Project
Even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction – purpose and dignity – that afflicts us all.
…..Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities…
…..Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile…..
If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in world.
Some people see things as they are and say, ‘why?’ I dream things that never were and say, ‘why not?
– Robert F. Kennedy – 1968

Fertile Obfuscation – Making Money Whilst Eroding Living Capital 

– by Mark Anielski
There are two fundamental flaws of misplaced concreteness in economics. First, is the obfuscation of the Greek root word “oikonomia”, which refers to study of the well-being and stewardship of the household, habitat or natural environment. Instead economics has become more aligned with “chrematistics” (a word almost forgotten in modern dictionaries) which refers to the study of wealth or a particular theory of wealth as measured by money. The second greatest error in economics is the confusion of wealth, which is a magnitude with an irreducible physical dimension, with debt (money), a purely mathematical or imaginary quantity (Daly, 1996). The shortcomings of measures of oikonomia, such as the GDP and national income accounts, have long ago been acknowledged by many. The emergence of new measures of economic, societal and ecological well-being is evidence that some of these shortcomings are finally being addressed.
Yet even these important reforms in national accounting towards a more honest assessment of the oikonomia of the nations will be meaningless without understanding the fundamental root of the economic growth paradox, that is the nature of money and how its creation (and destruction) affects the well-being of nations. Money is the lifeblood of all economies yet few understand how it is created and how this process leads to destruction of living capital (human, social, and natural) and the real wealth of nations. Only fundamental reform of monetary policy and the process of money creation will the chrematistic world of virtual wealth (stock markets, currency markets) become aligned with oikonomia — stewardship of the physical world and human experience of quality of life. This paper challenges both economics and business disciplines to explore not only the reform of national accounting systems to provide a more meaningful barometer of the oikonomia but also the reform of traditional financial and management accounting systems to measure social, environmental and financial performance. Most importantly, the paper calls for a fundamental reform of monetary policy, the elimination of fractional reserve banking, and the alignment of money creation to oikonomia objectives of improving or sustaining the real wealth of nations.

For More See https://www.pembina.org/pub/fertile-obfuscation

NEMO IMS (NEguentropic MOney International Monetary System) 

 Jean-Christophe Duval
NEMO IMS (NEguentropic MONey International Monetary System) is a proposal for an innovative, world-class economic system. This proposal argues that the dominant economic model based on a market order, growth, and debt will not allow us to achieve a balance favorable to the conditions of life on Earth. In contrast, our banking, monetary, and financial systems accelerate growth, extraction, and ecological destruction. On a planet with limited resources, such a system can only lead us to disaster. The failure to achieve decoupling demonstrates that the notion of green growth is illusory. NEMO IMS does not present itself so much as a financial solution for a hypothetical energy transition as for an economy of balance between the criteria of human society and the carrying capacities of the planet (Doughnut Theory).
NEMO IMS offers a unique global monetary architecture that will enable sustainability, social justice, ecosystem balance between people and the environment, peace, and harmony between people, whatever their cultures, beliefs, colors, and origins. Every human being, every living being on our planet must benefit from conditions favorable to their sustainability. The prosperity of some must no longer come at the expense of others. The economy have to shift from devastating competition to constructive cooperation.
It is illusory to expect rentier finance, short-term and with a particular vocation, to finance long-term projects, common goods and with a collective selective growth. This fear comes from the organization of our monetary system for which taxes finance essential public services such as government, education, health, the welfare state, etc. It is a misconception that growth alone drives human progress because financing public domains through taxation requires an economy that is harmful to the environment. For this reason, NEMO IMS envisages a reduction in extractive growth coupled with the establishment of a regenerative economy. With NEMO IMS, economic success will also come from regenerative activities which will be financed by monetary creation ex nihilo and dis-connected from debt.
For more see: https://gjmer.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/NEMO-IMS-English-06-06-2024.pdf.