Ecomia

Real Estate and Real Values

2012-01-24T14:24:00.000-08:00

On the surface land is the best value.
No , Deep down investing in people and infrastructure is the best value . Look at how our forebears invested in hugely costly and potentially wasteful things like planning, education and health .
One of the biggest wheat farms in Australia got that way ( like people do with the share market )because the owners lived in "a shack" .( Houses don't make money) It's not the name of the investment that counts, but the way the money is spent on development of the asset.
The best investments CAN be, for the time being ,technically unproductive with ONLY long term profit gains. Weber knew this, but does the World Economic Forum.(WEF)
Can we call ourselves worthy if we don't at the economic forum say so again
The growing poor of the world ( who might they be in the big picture? ) need more than tokens and misdirected name calling
Think big and we become richer than we think we are Copyright EA

The new religion isn't very practical

2011-11-23T04:47:00.001-08:00

Greenlabor have saved the world by having a carbon tax. Now they will save our biggest river system with 4 numbers. 2075?
Life is hard enough without someone chanting sacred words and numbers that have no proven practical effect on the ground. If the worriers can't define what they want by flushing and an "environmental flow" they aren't talking big picture and big picture practical.

A most livable place

2009-03-06T13:56:00.000-08:00

It used to be said of Melbourne. Tis true, but what about Melbourne made it so? Was it the level of intellectual activity , the music and the arts?
No , its planning .
Those of us who worked there for decades in times when Our heritage rather than our minors were in charge KNOW how good it was and can still can be .

Planning can make a place really great. Risk ( death , injury failure , greed , lies and corruption, fire )on the other hand is all around us and clearly threatens our sense of well being but
We can live in Ecomia if we choose too . We must however be willing to speak up against incompetence noisy ignoranace and the huge amountof reactionary noise that has invaded our talk fests .
Finding the way forward is as much about looking back ( and seing what we have done wrong ) but even that huge task need not be if we listen to those who trained and served in planning.

How can you make your space a better place? - know, understand and deal with duckshoving

The real value of all those policy reviews !

2007-04-21T00:51:00.000-07:00

Chaney / O'brien raised nothing new in their summary of what works in government - What Chaney failed to address was the ongoing sore of policy preoocupations by managers .
High value Efficiency words hide the stupidity of the management system of the moment. This cloud of righteous intent maintains a largely uneccesary and managerial class in the PS that often discourages those at the precious coalface from " continuing to develop their skills". How can they, when constantly being questioned about "the numbers" . As the statisticans amongst us know - they can be used to say anything - so why do the wannabes let themselves get lost in them ?
What I wish O 'Brien had asked was " what was all the value of all the policy documents he had seen over decades on aboriginal affairs ? "

Ignored Vistas on the road to serfdom

2007-02-25T21:17:00.000-08:00

Copyright . Clearly von Eck made the road to serfdom look too simple - simple enough for polys to think its growth offers , and its condemnation of the bureaucracy, were a gift from heaven itself.
BUT lets be realistic - the only way to run ecomia - the tax and bureaucratic burden HAS NOT diminished since his theory was adopted as gospel!
Market fundamentalism offers governments speed they have been waiting for, but dangers and costs they don't expect . Sure, we'll all moving faster, but maybe we missed seeing the signposts or the fences . Any of us who have lived with communities in a garden of flowers blooming know the western tradition of growth has more to do with eternal vigilance ( signs and fences ) than than the dangerous demon of moving faster and in ever changing directions. As ecologists too, we know when it works to cut supply, and when it is just wasted door shutting.

Like so many adherents to the simple faith of fast driving, boundary challenging market fundamantalism , this "principle" is often more about convenience, rebellion and self justification that it is about a better means of governing real world eco functions - its a quick fix that kills.
I am not against business adopting a business model , but I am against governments using it .
Therefore, while the model works for some govts during the stats test changes , people suffer and economies overheat with the injustice of its irrationality ( since when has ecomia management been simple) and simplicity;
The end is more entrenched greed than at the beginning .The real world has boundaries - eco boundaries; Speedsters often forget this - that all growth has limits - natural limits . and different parts of the body are more sensitive to change than others . Yet while the wannabes wander, the strong get richer and the complex and sensitive economies of production ( like agriculture get squeezed to the point of mental anguish )
As a blind and myopic heresy of good governanace MF creates cancerous growth (too much too quickly)-- not sustained or balanced growth. Its a blunt and blinkered instrument - one that tortures many who might otherwise smile a lot when genuine growth is their lot. And in the long time, there are more casualties than is needed to maintain a sense of balance in a real world with boundaries . More signmakers and fencebuilders can prevent the tragedy and mental anguish of cancer. Hopelessness, needless injury and death that comes with driving beyond the known boundaries of good business and good governance .

As an new operating model of self governance, this highly blinkered sect of the West does not pay for feedback loops ( let alone new instruments to implement them ) so it can and does grow the ambulance service at the expense of the sign service .(see the sketch) Markets only work well when the length and the simplicity of the connection between cooperators is simple and the communication clear - not many of those simple bits of symbosis in the living world outside the glass houses. Such simple wiring looms are mainly the products of our own work and worship.

If you live in a glass house and are tempted to throw stones - remember how fragile rural economies and its peoples are ( by their very nature) Don't impose your way of doing business on everybody). If the walls of your world are square step out and help those who do not want patronage but indipendance, custodianship and endeavour with understanding Balance and diversity of ecomia principle Copyright Sage at Emperor's Academy .

He's a good man mr brown-he does his homework

2006-03-06T18:15:00.000-08:00

From Grist I thought its so good read more on grist or
You discuss nuclear energy very little in the book. What are your thoughts on it?

I've tried to love nuclear, but I haven't been very successful. I don't think it can get beyond the economics. If we insist that utilities bear the full cost of nuclear power -- and that's something we need to do -- they have to set aside money for decommissioning and include that in the rates. That would cost as much or more than construction. They have to deal with the waste issue. And they have to find an insurance company that will insure them.

There are other questions as well. If we decide to go nuclear, do we mean all countries can have nuclear power? Do we have an A-list and a B-list? If so, who makes that list? Who enforces it? Looking at Iran and North Korea right now, I'm not sure we're very good at that.

Do you consider biofuels a permanent solution or a bridge?

I think we're going to need almost all agricultural resources to produce food. We keep forgetting the water issue, which is a sleeper. Half the world's people live in countries where water tables are falling. We may wake up one morning and there won't be enough grain to go around, and not enough water to produce enough grain.

We've always been concerned about the effect of high oil prices on food-production costs, and those are very real, given the oil intensity of world agriculture today. But more important is the effect of high oil prices on the demand for agriculture commodities. Once oil gets up to $60 a barrel, it becomes profitable to convert agricultural commodities into automotive fuels. In effect, the price of oil becomes a support price for agricultural commodities, and therefore food prices. If at any point the food value of the commodity drops below the fuel value, the market will move that commodity into the energy economy.

I don't think we yet quite grasp the effect of $60-a-barrel oil on food prices, because the capacity to distill ethanol and produce biodiesel is not yet large enough to really have an impact. But it's exploding all over the world. Up until a year or two ago, all the government programs here [in the U.S.], in Europe, and in Brazil were driven by government subsidies. In Brazil there are no more subsidies. Ethanol investment is just exploding; it's entirely a market-based operation.

In The Same Vein
Corn at the Right Time
Ethanol is suddenly all the rage in D.C. and DetroitThere's enormous investment in this country in ethanol distilleries and biodiesel refineries. Most people aren't even aware that on Jan. 1 a year ago, we adopted a $1-a-gallon subsidy for biodiesel. But we're setting up competition between supermarkets and service stations for the same commodities.

There is a very attractive alternative automotive-fuel model: gas-electric hybrids with a plug-in and wind energy.

Is it scaleable quickly enough?

Oh yeah. There's a lot of momentum building behind plug-in hybrids. There was a conference organized [a month] ago in Washington on plug-ins. It was organized by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, the NGO that organizes these things for Congress. [Sen.] Orrin Hatch [R-Utah] left the Alito hearings to come and make a statement.

The interesting thing about the plug-in effort is that the neocons and the environmentalists are both supporting it, and that's a unique combination. There were more neocons speaking at the conference than environmentalists; they want to break dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

What are your thoughts on this idea of breaking our dependence on Middle East oil?

Middle East oil accounts for 15, at most 20 percent [PDF] of our oil. But it's far more important to other parts of the world, and we're all in this together. We have to think about it broadly.

One of the attractive features of moving toward gas-electric hybrids and wind power is that we have the infrastructure already in place. In Plan B, the original, I talk about a hydrogen fuel-cell automotive-energy economy. And that may come, but it's a generation down the road. With the gas-electric hybrids, you need gasoline service stations and you need an electrical grid. We have both.

It's relatively easy to increase wind-generating capacity tenfold. The companies are there, the technologies are there -- it's just a matter of incentives. We might not even need many of those now. We could start doubling each year.

One of the neat things about the gas-electric hybrid plug-in is that the batteries in the vehicle fleet become a storage facility for wind energy. And there's a tank of gasoline as additional backup. So it's really an ideal marriage, a great way of rapidly exploiting wind. And wind is such a huge resource.

Is there a reason that you seem so much more enthusiastic about wind than solar?

It's mostly timing. If you look at the cost curves, wind is roughly a decade ahead of solar. It's just a matter of time.

Chresmatics and all that

2005-12-01T16:12:00.000-08:00

Cobb et al 1994 started something. We dare to continue it here; so join us . email mreforce@telstra.com

The concept is that while both ecology and economy share much very important common ground, the modern industrial estate ( how's that for weaving important authors into your work !)is, in Bertrand Russells frame about specialisation, often undermining the integration of both .

This is seen most clearly in Australia in the new professions of so called conservation practice.