Facebook No 3. in Series.

If we cannot change the economy we can forget about the rest. None of the eight disasters can be averted, nor can the Ascent be begun unless we can evolve an economy whose dynamic is hundred eighty degrees the opposite from the one we have now. A sprinkling of co-ops, of communities, of greener products, of minimum wages, of basic incomes, of cleaner unions, of sparating garbage are only sleeping pills -- for which we pay the price of waking up too late. (Do not give aspirins to a patient who has Aids.)

One paralyzing problem is that we do not have the ghost of an idea – literally, we do not have even the nebulous shadow of a notion – of what a seriously different economy would look like, and even less an inkling of how it could be attained. We stand face to face with a miles high absolute ice-wall.

You might object: but we could go back to the more natural, more primitive economy we once had, and there are plenty of start-ups that aim in that direction. No and No and No! That way of going back will continue to engage only a marginal, small Sect of convinced and saintly people. It has no appeal for the “desert people” that soon will be 90% of the planets population. (And as it happens, years ago, I ate for two years only what I had myself planted, and learnt that this requires back-breaking and soul-killing work.) It also does not answer the question that is asked with ever greater force in all the countries that are now making revolutions: the question, and what now? Where are we going? Therefore, we must develop a New Economy that will inspire and give hope to everybody – and that means an economy that rises forwards, that advances from the now dying industrial economy upwards to the fully digital economy that could be rising like the sun.

To gain a first impression, of what that future economy will indeed look like, simply walk along one of the assembly lines of our colossal (car-) factories. Is it not obvious that there is something obsolete, even antiquarian about the Indian-file of hundreds of massive robots each of which only locks two parts together, or only turns one minor screw. Why not miniaturize and follow in the footsteps of smart pads and smart phones. We know excellently how to compress an ever greater number of functions into an ever smaller space. So why not do in factories what we do so superbly well in phones. In other words have one single robot (that conceiveably might be called a “fabricator”) where we now have a two mile long chain.

Consider this a first small step towards the conceiving of a radically different, incomparably more efficient New Economy: Factories become much smaller, so small that they could fit into a bedroom.

Now take hold of your imagination with both hands and think for two hours about what the implications of this first re-thinking could turn out to be.

Facebook No 4. in this Series very soon.