Engineers are the critical component in Global finance. They are needed to keep the electricity on, the Internet running, to fight wars, to provide food, shelter, warmth, and transportation to all mankind.
However, economies are segmented by political boundaries, not necessarily engineering boundaries. The political laws vary, but the physical laws do not. It is precisely the ability to sequester engineering behind political, corporate boundaries, and ontological boundaries that gives unfettered prioritization and control of our Planet’s resources to non-engineers and non-scientists. To control engineering is to control the world.
As we saw earlier, V=F(Q,q) relation did not hold for NAFTA engineers but it flew right through for financial services. Pretty much every trade agreement after NAFTA copied NAFTA and passed along this flaw. Today, there is no such thing as a Global Engineering system anywhere near comparable to the Global Financial System.
Money Must Represent human productivity otherwise nobody would work in exchange for it. Productivity can include factory production, but also social production like kindness, empathy, parenthood – the things that people normally are by definition part of an economy.
Unfortunately, Money has been largely divorced human productivity through the intricacies of financial exotica and the great speed at which money can travel which productivity cannot. There is a precarious situation where money no longer represent the underlying human productivity asset that underwrites it. This is dangerous because people will refuse to work in exchange for it, unless forced. Forced liquidity has been known by many names over the course of history.
Money is a social agreement, As soon as a viable alternative currency arises which truly represents the essence of their productivity, they will switch over to use it.
Until then, we must endure non-engineers/scientists making decisions on what is best for our planet. Non-engineers decide if and when electric cars will replace fossil fuels. Non-engineers decide what neighborhood gets the best schools or how much desert property is worth 100 yards across the US border. Non-engineers set technical priorities and allocate engineering – in doing so, they are in fact performing engineering for which they are unqualified. This is simply another form of forced liquidity.
The laws of physics tell us that the greatest electrical “potential” is defined as the difference between two nodes. The greater the distance, the greater the potential and the brighter the spark that can jump the node. By analogy, less developed countries would therefore have the greatest economic “Potential” precisely because the gap is so wide. Poverty ridden cities would have a greater economic potential than exclusive gated neighborhoods. Impoverished peoples would have the greatest potential due to the distance between the rich and the poor. All of this potential is lost due to a tiny flaw that can be easily corrected.
Technological change must precede economic growth. We are going about the process of Globalization as if economic growth can precede technological change.
In short – we got it backwards. The tragedy is that we got is backwards. The opportunity is that it can be so easily corrected.
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