Inescapable logic

To achieve sustainable, survivable prosperity it is going to be necessary to enable a rich fabric of micro enterprises, to devolve decisions down to a local level, to reduce corruption, to enhance the personal security of everyone and to leverage technology to make all of that possible. These changes simply will not, cannot, happen without substantially enhancing our democracies.

In order to enhance our democracies we need to increase our freedom, and this will inevitably lead to a widespread demand for social equality and the end of poverty. A new economic system is the inescapable outcome of enhanced democracy.

Let's just say, for a minute, that it would take around 40 years to make the transition from where we are to sustainable, survivable economies and societies. For the first 10 years we wouldn't be able to reduce or change our environmental impact or footprint very much because we are developing the groundwork necessary to make those changes. Over the following 30 years we would make gradual progress to where we reach the point of ceasing to damage our environment further. That puts us at 2050, with very significant challenges from the climate change we were unable to avoid: migration, weather, water supply and biodiversity all at crisis levels.
What kind of a society will we have to have to be able to cope with that, without widespread chaos and conflict?
A highly cohesive, mutually supportive, very effective and highly efficient society is the answer. Exactly the same kind of society that we need to make the changes that are necessary to even reach that point!

At some point were going to realize that what we're doing today isn't working. My teenage sons can see it. If it takes another decade for enough people who can effect change to realize that things need to change, what will be the status then? Another decade in the wrong direction doesn't just add a decade's delay to the time scale, it adds a decade to the reversal process too. Another decade means 2070, not 2050. By 2070 all the people whose decisions between 2010 and 2020 caused the problems will be dead.

Do you believe that it will take less than 40 years to reverse the trends and establish a new economy and a new society?

No? (I agree.)

Do you believe that in another 10 years from now, in 2020, we will not all be saying in unison that dramatic changes are needed to the whole structure of our society and our economy? That we will be urgently looking for ways to power down our lives, our industries, our transport and our economies?

Yes? (I agree.)

Do you believe that we can power down our lives and our economies without also powering down our societies and our democracies? That without disseminating the power of decisions down to communities and regions that we will find and implement the solutions that will allow us to power down our economies in the most humanly acceptable ways?

No? (I agree.)

So big change is inevitable. It is described by powering down our economies and our democracies to create highly cohesive and mutually supportive societies. And we have to start on all of that now.