Section 1.1 – The Big Picture

We live in extraordinary and paradoxical times.

We are told every day that ‘economic growth’ is the solution to all our problems – but what benefit have you had from the past decades of growth?
Housing is becoming more unaffordable year by year.
If you are “lucky” enough to be employed – you are likely stressed out, overworked, and sliding deeper into debt.
Education leaves graduates with a crippling debt burden before they even start on their career, and with less and less certainty that they will even get a job at the end of their studies.
Pensions are turning out to produce a paltry fraction of the promised income.
Mounting levels of pollution are destabilising the planet, yet political leaders only respond with denial or empty gestures.
Armed conflicts inflict horror and suffering on a prodigious scale, while the politicians who instigate them keep themselves well out of harm’s way.
70 years of astounding technical progress have failed to deliver the promised improvements in quality of life – possibly even the reverse.
There’s enough food in the world to feed everyone, yet millions starve.
Billions live in acute deprivation, when we have the technology and the resources to bring comfort and abundance to all.
We have booby-trapped the planet with enough thermonuclear warheads to wipe out life on Earth – many times over.
We could have abundant cheap clean energy, but we can’t break the addiction to fossil fuels.

My conviction is that this is not going to go on much longer, because it can’t. The question then arises: “What comes next?” Will it just collapse into poverty and chaos, as so many civilisations have in the past – although never yet on a global scale? If it does collapse, how far back will that take us – to feudalism? – to the stone age? – to a planet populated by protozoans? And what would be the chances for the human race to rebuild all the positive features of our modern world, after such a collapse? And if not a descent into poverty, what else is possible? And how do we get from here to there?

There’s a powerful tendency for all of us to accept any current situation and circumstances around us as “Normal” – maybe even “inevitable” – even if things had actually been very different in the recent past:

It’s now normal for both partners in a marriage to have to work full-time jobs to pay the basic living expenses, whereas fifty years ago one income was enough.
It’s now normal for a house or flat to sell for four or five times what it costs to build it, whereas fifty years ago, its price was the build cost plus a modest profit margin of 20% or so.
It’s now normal that students graduate with a crippling debt burden before they have even found a job, whereas we used to have our fees paid and get a grant that covered our living expenses.
It’s now normal that workers are expected to do unlimited unpaid overtime, whereas it used to be standard that after forty hours, any extra time was paid at 50% above the basic rate.
40 years ago it was normal that office workers had a 35 hour week, and expected to take an hour for lunch to sit down for a two or three course meal in a restaurant (even the clerks and typists), rather than assuming the only option was to grab a sandwich at their desks.

I’m not denying the benefits that science and technology have brought us, and that we so often take for granted:

a warm comfortable secure place to live, and a soft bed at night,
food on the table without ever being uncertain whether it will arrive,
transport to anywhere we like in the world with speed and comfort that would have amazed kings and emperors at any time in history,
entertainment at the touch of a button,
communication instantly to anywhere on the planet (but the quality of the content that is being communicated is another question entirely).

(Of course, many are not so fortunate to have these things, but I’m guessing that if you are reading this you are among the lucky ones).

Asking questions is an activity that many struggle to find time for in the tempo of modern life – and this suits the global elites just fine.

The project that led to the writing of this book started when I asked the question: “How come – given the widespread understanding in 1971 that the human race was hell-bent on a disastrous course – that nothing has changed, except to become more entrenched?“

Later on I asked another question that seemed completely unrelated: “How come my pension (and just about everyone else’s) is not paying out nearly what was projected?“ It was only as I followed up on both of them that it slowly dawned on me that they were in fact threads in the same complex and fascinating tapestry. I hope you enjoy exploring it with me as much as I have enjoyed investigating it.

And in the background is the question I really want to get to: “What is actually possible? – Could every human being on the planet have their tneeds met for a healthy and fulfilling life, in a system that is sustainable for centuries, even for millenia?”

So I suggest the question to start with is:

Are you being swindled?

– and maybe, not just you, but the entire human race?

Who is doing the swindling, and what can you do about it? Is there some secret cabal with a detailed master plan? Personally I don’t find extreme conspiracy theories very convincing. I think the state of the world is more like a train wreck than a well ordered plan – the unintended consequences of a lot of players pursuing their own short-term ill-conceived goals. On the other hand it’s clearly true that a tiny minority of the human population have been consistently successful in expanding their power and wealth at the expense of everyone else.

If you are lost, the two things you need are a map of the terrain and knowledge of the point on the map that corresponds to your current location. When you’ve completed this book you will have a map of the current state of this world And you will have a perspective on your own position within it, that empowers you to create a future that inspires you.

Whether the concern that brought you to this investigation is the relevance of your education, the security and significance of your employment, the value of your pension, or the challenge of creating a just and harmonious global society, you will discover that all of these issues are interconnected.

The fragmentation of knowledge into different subjects is an obstacle to reaching real understanding. Most books on Economics and Finance don’t connect with the activities of real enterprises which create real wealth by doing real work. Many contributions to the debates about sustainable living are made without a firm understanding of the underlying physical and engineering basis on which our needs and desires are met. It is impossible to understand why so little progress has been made towards a fair and just global society living in harmony with Nature, without gaining an insight into the processes of Government and the behind-the-scenes manipulation by special interest groups. In this exploration we will draw on insights from economics, history, archaeology, mathematics, physics, biology, engineering, philosophy and many other disciplines. These will provide complementary perspectives on the one underlying unified reality. Even if your knowledge of some of these areas is zero, I’ll make them accessible to you. The notes and bibliography will provide a resource for you to investigate any of these topics in greater detail if you want a deeper understanding.

This is like a giant jigsaw puzzle: as you read the book you will build up different parts of the image, which will eventually fit together to form the overall picture.

The first theme will explore the world of Finance. It will open by revealing the slowly dawning scandal of our vanishing pensions – a re-run of the endowment mortgage fiasco a couple of decades ago.

I will cut through the confusion around the bogus science of economics. I’ll tease out the few core concepts that do have some validity, and explore the myths and conceits, the delusions and the disconnections from reality. I’ll demonstrate why the economic statistics we are fed are fraudulent; and show why GDP is hopeless as a measure of human well-being.

I will describe how banking and stockbroking would work in a sane world – indeed how they actually did work in the recent past, before they degenerated into being the operation of a gigantic casino.

We will look at the inflation of the currency – how it invalidates two of the three fundamental functions of money; how it is caused, and who are the winners and who the losers. I’ll give you a brief history of money and a revelation of its rampant debasement in the past few decades.

I’ll give you a quick explanation of how to interpret financial statements, whether for an enterprise that you operate or one that you consider investing in, or even for you as an individual to exercise control over your own personal finances. We will look at the root mechanism behind booms and busts in stock markets and property.

You will see how the financial system was manipulated to dispossess millions of family farmers in the United States, and transfer their land to a handful of vast agricultural corporations.

And I’ll reveal how the central banks have strayed from their core mission of preserving the integrity of the currency – to rig the system in favour of themselves and their collaborators; and I will unmask the cover story propagated by their cronies in the media.

The second theme will bring you up to speed with handling Numbers and Patterns. If you have ever felt confused by calculations or statistics, this section will be hugely liberating for you. This will give you the tools you need to appreciate fully the presentations in the other threads.

I will start by showing you how to make sense of big numbers in the millions, billions and trillions.

You will find out how to grasp the significance of ratios, proportions and percentages without needing to reach for a calculator.

I will demystify the dynamics of exponential growth.

The third theme will investigate is the phenomenon of Wealth – what it is, how it is created, how it is destroyed, and the ways it is moved around. We will look at the various forms that Capitalism has taken at different times, and address the question of whether there is any viable alternative. We will investigate what it means to be wealthy; what it takes to become wealthy in half a lifetime or less. We will look into some case studies of dramatic examples of wealth creation, such as Steve Jobs going from penniless to $217,000,000 in four and a half years. We will establish that money is not the same thing as wealth. We will clarify what is meant by the specific form of wealth known as Capital.

The fourth theme will examine the notions of Work, Energy, Wealth and Power – how these are involved in the process of wealth creation, and how they are constrained by the two Laws of Heat and Movement, and by the finite stock of resources on the planet. We will see why it is impossible to build a perpetual motion machine, and consider the implications of that. We will investigate what is physically possible for the standard of living for every person on the planet.

The fifth theme will examine the operation of human societies. We will distinguish the institution of Government from its inception 6,000 years ago with the founding of the City States to the present day, and show how all the various forms serve to enrich the insiders at the expense of the rest of us. We will uncover the political, economic and cultural obstacles that stand in the way of the provision of a decent standard of living for everyone on the planet.

The sixth theme will outline The System of the World – the interconnections between energy, ecology and economics; the processes that determine population, prosperity, pollution and conflict.

The seventh theme – Making Sense of it All – will explore our search for meaning, and how the resurgence of interest in the higher aspects of human nature over the past few decades may impact our approach to the challenges described in the previous sections.

The concluding chapter will outline the possible scenarios which could unfold as the epoch of the last six thousand years reaches its point of exhaustion.

Section 1.2 will open the Finance thread by examining the disastrous results that most people’s pension plans are returning.

If you haven’t already done so, you can register to receive a free review copy of The World in 2100: What might be Possible for Humanity? just before it goes on general sale later this summer, and to get regular extracts as they become available. Do make sure to click the link in the confirmation email, as this completes the registration process.

Section 1.1 – The Big Picture