06/03/09 - Video Keynote: Jeffrey Sachs

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Comment by Brett Barndt on June 5, 2009 at 12:14am

Always great to hear the challenges we face. Why ask how this can happen, when our traditional econ philosophy ignores external costs and unintended consequences? How can markets save us when price signals don't include all the unintended cost info relevant to every stakeholder? And, so many intelligent educated people have been indoctrinated into that simplistic philosophy for decades which leads to intolerance of diversity o ideas.

Yes, fundamentally change the way our economy works , energy systems, etc, but how do you do the corporate players invested in the old technologies buy the Congress and stop competitive markets from emerging? Of course Congress isn't ready. They know what hand feeds them.

True the whole-system is largely a mystery to most people, including many professors.

Wish I could have been there for the Appreciative Inquiry on this topic. Bringing many new viewpoints and experiences together is what is needed to break through and figure out the attractor factors that can bring on the most change.

Certainly we can't rely on people tied so closely to the corporatist system that blocks change through lobbying and buying influence in our legislative process, or WTO (or sponsoring all the research in our universities) writing the rules to advantage themselves to be honest about solutions.

This corporatist system created and lives off the vulnerable hub and spoke food system and the green revolution with all its unintended consequences. In addition to the usual degradation of ecology through monocultures, dependence on pesticides, fertilizers, and hormones, consequences include widespread urban poverty all over the developing world caused by the green revolution itself, as well as diabetes, obesity, cancer pathologies in our own flesh caused by saturated fats, simple carbohydrates, corn syrup etc. etc.

Hopefully, the AI 4-D cycle with new viewpoints can get deeper into real solutions and hit upon some possible leverage points to get to the whole-system change we need (and most of us really want despite the simplistic ideas we have in our heads from our out-of-date schooling so well described by Roger Martin).