Humanity faces several crises at once —
economic, environmental and social.
They are interlinked and seem intractable.
Our future can appear dark and hopeless.
I offer a new analysis of our deepest issues
giving practical solutions for a calmer future.
This is a concrete proposal: partly focussed
on urbanisation and physical infrastructure.
It must also be social, cultural and historical
to create truly sustainable, holistic, solutions.
We need to create a clear vision
of a calmer future for ourselves.
We face several immediate challenges
but this vision is a practical necessity.
At a time
when we feel stuck —
it shows us new solutions.
At a time
when we are divided —
it gives us shared goals.
At a time
when we are fearful —
it energises us with hope.
A detailed vision of the future we want is now vital.
Lacking one paralyses us with uncertainty and anxiety.
Fear and anger then draws us to superficial scapegoats.
This creates a defensive, zero-sum view of problems,
which loses sight of our shared humanity and goals.
Fear also stifles curiousity, and the creative thinking
we need to identify and solve our deeper problems.
Business as usual only adds to critical problems
as it is limited by simplistic engineering thinking.
We urgently need to change tracks in several areas —
and be guided by a more holistic and inclusive vision.
A clear vision of our goals highlights deep-rooted knots,
then find new creative, sustainable, structural solutions.
This project is nearly complete - Anand - August 2024
I have imagined sustainable and inclusive visions of the future
after working in different sectors and across several continents.
This process has led to these new insights and practical solutions
which focus on urbanisation, infrastructure and market failures:
Congealed Transport overcrowds us into a few superstar cities.
A new infrastructure paradigm will relieve the resulting pressures.
Desperate Economics results when these infrastructural problems
collide with modern abundance in complex, counter-intuitive ways.
Broken Values confuse us by normalising competition and scarcity.
Cultures are dynamic, and will heal as the pressures above reduce.
1. the calmer future of transport
Congealed transport overcrowds us into a few superstar cities.
This is caused by both technological and market failures.
We can't afford to build infrastructure where we actually need it,
so people move to where it already exists, overwhelming that too.
Scarce infrastructure breaks housing markets in superstar cities
which increases the cost of living for everyone, wherever they live.
We compete with one another to live in these overheating cities,
inflating the cost of living, which limits which jobs are sustainable.
Essential services, vital to healthy communities, become unviable,
undermining people-centred careers in teaching, nursing, etc.
You never change things
by fighting the existing reality.
To change something,
build a new model
that makes the existing model
obsolete.
Buckminster Fuller
Heavy expensive vehicles and infrastructure congeal transport
by largely limiting us to ground level, and in two dimensions.
In dense urban areas we constantly get in one another's way.
Every single junction at ground level creates a subtle conflict.
It is expensive to build enough fast connections for rural areas,
leaving vast populations underserved and effectively isolated.
Rural populations then migrate to already crowded urban areas
which overwhelms any infrastructure they manage to improve.
Flowing transport needs light-weight vehicles and infrastructure
so it is cheap to build new networks, and upgrade existing ones
to add an extra dimension, and reduce conflicts between users.
A new practical cost-effective transport model will combine
the convenience of cars, capacity of trains, and range of planes:
updated 30 July 2024
2. the calmer future of economics
Desperate economics is the result as these infrastructure shortages
collide with modern abundance in complex, counter-intuitive ways.
Global economies of scale are now drowning markets in abundance.
Low margin commoditisation forces companies to act unsustainably,
as does competing for investment with increasing urban land prices.
Such dynamics leave us desperate, and are the deeper reasons
we seem insatiable for resources, yet utterly wasteful as well —
beyond total population size, and underpinning greedy actions.
These unseen economic pressures limit development and growth
subtly driving both intergenerational and global inequalities.
Governments everywhere struggle to bring down the cost of living
but land empties as everyone crowds into the big same cities.
Desperate companies avoid taxes, exploit and reduce workforces,
and lobby politicians to raise trade barriers and slash regulations.
Politicians worldwide face rising costs and shrinking tax revenues
but have proved largely unable to create jobs, even when they try to.
In weak economies corruption becomes blatant and paralysing
as government is the biggest money-making activity around.
Large economies subsidise arms industries and huge agriculture
as politically acceptable Keynesian spending, fuelled by lobbyists.
Analysis of rich and poor country economies tends to be separate
but hyper-urbanisation and job creation problems are the same.
This has led to massive migration, within and between countries
which in turn has created a populist and far-right backlash.
The economics of permanence
implies a profound reorientation
of science and technology,
which have to open their doors
to wisdom and, in fact,
have to incorporate wisdom
into their very structure...
Small Is Beautiful
Economics as if People Mattered
E. F. Schumacher
Changing our transport paradigm will reduce the cost of living
as the housing crisis is fundamentally a transport crisis.
A better transport paradigm won't just widen commuter belts
but reduce the complex pressures to crowd into superstar cities.
In the future, most of us will live in smaller convenient cities
with much lower costs of living, far more time — and freedom.
Our living costs reduce once we stop competing in superstar cities
which will increase the variety of livelihoods which are viable.
This in turn will reduce economic, social and political pressures
across our societies, enabling us all to live more sustainably.
video 2 - in preparation
3. imagining a calmer future
Broken values confuse us by normalising competition and scarcity.
Western values frame issues as trade-offs between public vs private
but our underlying problems are now more complex and structural.
Tired debates between right- and left-wing positions obscures this.
Conflict is so central to cultural narratives and personal experiences,
we find it hard to imagine a different, better, future for ourselves.
Economics assumes scarcity and trade-offs, which has left it
completely unprepared for the problems of extreme abundance.
Axiomatic, almost theological, assumptions that markets clear,
and that people moving to cities forms key engines of growth,
have created blind-spots around urbanisation, inequality,
and market failures caused by straining technology paradigms.
Our infrastructure model was designed for such a different context
(cheap labour, small densely populated countries, imperial wealth)
and has dominated for so long, we've stopped thinking creatively.
The richer industrialised world also has largely forgotten
it's own traumas of urbanisation leading to mass emigration
that it lacks empathy for the similar migration crises of today.
Unconscious religious beliefs about human evil and fallibility,
apocalyptic fears, and nervousness of relative cultural decline,
all distract from deeper issues we need to solve in new ways.
When everything is seen as a battle between good and evil,
this makes key nuances and details difficult to navigate
and halts the urgent search for deeper structural causes.
To change our future we need hope, imagination and creativity,
but personal spiritual growth is an entitled strategy on its own
distorting the real struggles of hard-working desperate, people.
The cultural change we need must be supported and preceded
and by practical changes to reduce structural economic issues
which go far beyond tweaking taxation and investment policies.
Together,
let us reject the clamour of fear
and listen to the whisperings of hope.
Statement on Peace
New Zealand Quakers, 1987
video 3 - in preparation
demonstration model
This interactive model shows how a new wheelset can work.
It can move comfortably on the ground, on surface roads,
and fasten onto, then transfer between, elevated rails.
Three such wheelsets linked together could form a vehicle
for the new flowing paradigm of transport outlined above.
A life-sized passenger or cargo vehicle would of course
use different materials and more elegant mechanisms,
but this small model shows the basic idea is workable.
I'll share designs for you to build and improve this model.
Mine uses N20 metal gear motors and an Arduino controller.
For tracks I've used cheap standard metal curtain railings.
Someone with more technical expertise can improve on it...
This is a much older video which needs to be updated,
but may give you a sense of the themes I want to explore
in the second and third videos I am preparing.