Tag Archives: Adaptability

Livelihoods in a Degrowth Economy, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on May 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

Things are going to get a lot tougher out there. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

The sooner we start preparing for degrowth, the better off we’ll be. A Chinese proverb captures this succinctly: By the time you’re thirsty, it’s too late to dig a well.

Let’s consider livelihood options in an unsustainable economy of extremes that are unraveling, an economy that is being forced to transition to Degrowth.

Nassim Taleb’s book Antifragile explains the differences between fragile systems (systems that cannot survive instability), resilient systems (systems that can survive instability and stay the same) and antifragile systems (systems that adapt and emerge stronger).

The ideal way of life is antifragile: resilient enough to survive adversity and adaptable enough to evolve solutions to whatever comes our way.

The key antifragile traits are adaptability and rapid, flexible evolution. Adversity puts selective pressure on organisms: only those organisms which adapt successfully survive.

The more antifragile our livelihood and way of life, the better prepared we will be to recognize and pursue opportunities.

An unsustainable, unstable economy puts a great deal of pressure on its participants. Only those with the skills and agency to move, adapt and experiment will emerge stronger.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Collapse, Debt, Economics, Economy, Governments, History

Tagged ,

Which Nations Will Crumble and Which Few Will Prosper in the Next 25 Years? by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on March 21, 2019 | Leave a comment

Decentralization runs contrary to the centralizing trend of the last century or so and is steadily gaining strength. The smart money bet is that very few governments will survive it. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

Adaptability and flexibility will be the core survival traits going forward.
What will separate the many nations that will crumble in the next 25 years and those few that will survive and even prosper while the status quo dissolves around them? As I explain in my recent book Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic, the factors that will matter are not necessarily cultural or financial; being hard-working and wealthy won’t be enough to save nations from coming apart at the seams.
Here are the factors that will matter in the next 25 years:
1. The ability to engage and survive non-linear change, which is rapid, unpredictable and systemic, as opposed to linear change which is gradual, predictable and limited in nature.
None of the current political systems are decentralized enough and adaptable enough to survive the non-linear era we’re entering. As I explained in What If Politics Can’t Fix What’s Broken?, the politics of centralized compromise and incremental, top-down adjustments are wholly inadequate to dealing with non-linear disruptions.
2. The nations that cannot jettison their parasitic elites will fall; the few that find the political will to jettison their parasitic elites will have the wherewithal to survive and possibly even prosper as the global status quo collapses around them.
The problem, as we all know, is the parasitic elites rule the centralized hierarchies of wealth and political power, and they will cling to power even as the nation they rule crumbles around them. The hubris, complacency and greed of the ruling parasitic elites is near-infinite; the idea that the political and financial structures that they dominate will not survive simply doesn’t exist in the parasitic elites, with the exception of a few outliers who are constructing remote bugout compounds with landing strips etc.
Unfortunately for these outliers, they can’t escape satellite and drone imagery, or the loose tongues of employees, contractors, etc.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Collapse, Government

Tagged ,