Economic activity gravitates toward the easy payoff, toward the highest return on investment.
We love to get maximal returns on minimal investment. We get involved in ventures designed to enhance us and our group—those we love “more”. We tend to exploit all else. For example, when people are chronically ill we profit from the medicine, the health insurance, the clinics, the surgeries, as well as from the processed food, sugar, tobacco and alcohol that make them sick. Teachers may teach about peace and climate change in school while their retirement fund is invested in oil and war. Company executives may deny climate change at work, but worry about it for their own investments or their own children. All are looking for the greatest return on their investment.
Over time mechanisms of law, conventions and culture develop that acquire resources human and not human. For example: if oil, uranium, zirconium, workers, human ingenuity, people with chronic illness, clean air or clean water lead to return on investment, then they will be acquired, controlled, commoditized, traded and used.
These mechanisms, to acquire and use all resources, human and not human, displace human individuals from necessities and then charge a price for them back. As time progresses individuals find systems in place that default toward loss of land and instead landlords, toward loss of health and instead healthcare, toward loss of community and instead insurance, toward loss of gardens and instead grocers, toward loss of knowledge and instead job training, toward loss of locality and instead transportation, toward loss of wisdom and instead entertainment, toward loss of friends and instead counselors, toward loss of education and instead mechanization, toward loss of love and instead hungry ghosts.
Return on Investment
Economic activity gravitates toward the easy payoff, toward the highest return on investment.
We love to get maximal returns on minimal investment. We get involved in ventures designed to enhance us and our group—those we love “more”. We tend to exploit all else. For example, when people are chronically ill we profit from the medicine, the health insurance, the clinics, the surgeries, as well as from the processed food, sugar, tobacco and alcohol that make them sick. Teachers may teach about peace and climate change in school while their retirement fund is invested in oil and war. Company executives may deny climate change at work, but worry about it for their own investments or their own children. All are looking for the greatest return on their investment.
Over time mechanisms of law, conventions and culture develop that acquire resources human and not human. For example: if oil, uranium, zirconium, workers, human ingenuity, people with chronic illness, clean air or clean water lead to return on investment, then they will be acquired, controlled, commoditized, traded and used.
These mechanisms, to acquire and use all resources, human and not human, displace human individuals from necessities and then charge a price for them back. As time progresses individuals find systems in place that default toward loss of land and instead landlords, toward loss of health and instead healthcare, toward loss of community and instead insurance, toward loss of gardens and instead grocers, toward loss of knowledge and instead job training, toward loss of locality and instead transportation, toward loss of wisdom and instead entertainment, toward loss of friends and instead counselors, toward loss of education and instead mechanization, toward loss of love and instead hungry ghosts.