THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

'The modem crises are, in fact, man-made and differ from many of
their predecessors in that they can be deem with.'
- Second Report to the Club of Rome.
Once upon a time, the very inventive inhabitants of an
extraordinarily lush and beautiful planet created, much to their
surprise, a gigantic machine. Most surprising to them was the
discovery that this machine compacted time. Because of this
remarkable feature, their colossal invention actually forced them to
become aware of some incompatibilities that lay precariously
between their most cherished, well-established habits and their own
survival.
One day, these people realized that four powerful megatrends were
converging like giant pistons towards the same place and time.
Perhaps because they had each been generated by the very inventive
people themselves, these four megatrends were hard for the people
to see, and harder still for them to address. The Time-Compacting
Machine created by these ingenious, yet sadly shortsighted, people is
represented in Figure 1. If you look closely, you may find that these
people, their planet and their Time-Compacting Machine are very
familiar.
This extraordinary Time-Compacting Machine consists of four giant
megatrend pistons moving at varying speeds towards the same
destination. Imagine that two pistons are like icebergs an Age Wave
and Global Climate Change and Species Extinction - both moving at a
glacier-like pace, but with inexorable inertia, towards the same place
and time. The other two giant pistons - Monetary Instability on one
side and the Information Revolution on the other are moving faster and
more erratically, like ships - Titanics - and are also heading towards
the same place and time.