Category: Buckminister Fuller

Prophet ahead of his time?

The following subject caused me to feel like a prophet who came before his time.  Some time after the upheavals in Israel started, I tried to interest several people in my economic ideas (links appear below).  I even joined a promising Facebook group of people, who want to preserve the sanity of economics in Israel.

However, it turned out that the leaders of that Facebook group have their own agenda, which is incompatible with discussions of novel economic ideas.  As a consequence, they asked me to stop posting there, and I left the group.  So I decided to just summarize links in a blog article and just refer any comers to it.

The subject of sane economics has been interesting me for several years.  Actually, it was the reason why I started to write this blog on May 2004.  As time passed, I switched to writing about other topics.  However, now, due to the upheavals in countries like Israel, USA, or England, it is necessary to develop a new way of thinking about economics.

I would like to solve problems like the following (in no particular order of importance):

  1. Environmental pollution due to over-consumerism.
  2. Joblessness in USA and several European countries (happily not a serious problem in Israel, at the moment).
  3. Cost of living for the middle and lower classes (a problem in Israel).
  4. Feeling of youths that no matter how much you try, you won’t be able to get ahead in life.

Following are links to relevant articles:

May 13, 2018 update: I published a booklet of short stories illustrating life in an utopia which solves the problems discussed above. The booklet is currently available only in Hebrew: סיפורי עושר מדרגה שלישית (Stories about Third Level Wealth).

Musings About Definition of Wealth and its Practical Consequences

The mercantilistic definition of wealth is that the more gold bullions (or equivalent) you have, you are wealthier. The modern consumerist definition of wealth by possessions is similar.

Buckminister Fuller and Robert Kiyosaki define wealth in terms of the time you can survive without having to work.

A country is wealthier if it has better infrastructure (more capital invested in it), its workforce is more productive, its resources are efficiently allocated (by market forces and where they fail, by well-thought out regulations), and its leaders have the know-how to lead it.

The question about definition of wealth has practical consequences for young people, who have to decide about the moneymaking aspect of their future.  The mercantilistic definition leads to legal and otherwise means of acquiring wealth, lacking considration of other people and of the environment.  Viewing wealth merely as survival time ignores risks which could wipe out part or all wealth, encouraging people to take big economic risks, which eventually ruin several of them.

Once someone has enough wealth to sustain him indefinitely, the useful definition of wealth for him changes from one of accumulation into one of reducing as much as possible the likelihood of losing it due to misfortune or natural disasters.

Thus, once someone has enough wealth to sustain him indefinitely, he had better start working on converting his wealth into environmentally sustainable one.  He should also put some of his wealth towards insuring the rest of it – by taking out insurance, by acquiring an home in another country and investing there, by diversifying his investments – according to their risk profiles – even when this causes reduction of return on his investments.

In his personal life, he can start training in survival skills.

Similarly, a developed (wealthy) country can start protecting its residents against natural disasters.  Its residents can start training in whatever skills required for quick recovery from disasters.  Infrastructures can be upgraded to prepare better for natural disasters, including whatever is required for speedy and relatively painless recovery in the aftermath of such disasters.  Infrastructures, which are vulnerable to natural disasters (such as dams), can gradually be decommissioned.

This is an answer to the question what should someone, who already has all the wealth he needs in the world, do with his “excess” wealth.  It also answers questions about the future economic path a developed country should take to keep its residents gainfully employed.

Buckminister Fuller, Geometric Algebra and Geometric Calculus

I found his Synergetics book (which appears to be as difficult to read as books about solid state physics or differential geometry) at http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/synergetics.html

The home page of R.W. Gray, another fan of Buckminister Fuller, and maintainer of the above, is at http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/
He is interested also in Geometric Algebra. According to his choice of adjectives, it is not silver bullet to Science’s Problems and Woes only because there is no such a thing as a silver bullet (at least one with the relevant magical properties).

He links to someone else’s Web page about Geometric Calculus.