My Tao - Unsustainable Sustainability

To find out what's naturally sustainable by default, and what isn't, imagine a world with no central bank and no government. Immediately, we see that only gold and silver can be money, credit becomes personal, and the family becomes the basic political unit, on top of which we include friends and neighbours. Projects that don't turn a profit are abandoned, and our efforts are redirected towards things that add value to ourselves and our families.

All of this is ignored by almost all politicians. They have a very different view of the world. To them, sustainability is about things matching their personal opinion on what is of benefit and what isn't. It makes no difference if what they wish for is profitable or not. What matters is the overall sense of sustainability. Individuals and families are not considered important, except as resources in their scheme of things.

From this we get a command economy in which politicians codify economic incentives and disincentives into law. Projects that please the political establishment receive subsidies while projects that they find dangerous or undesirable are burdened with taxes and regulations, or right out banned.

Sustainable energy is the political code word for energy that pleases the political establishment. There's nothing sustainable about this type of energy, because they only exist due to subsidies. Without the coercion of taxes, and investment mandates laid upon pension funds, green energy would be impossible. No-one would build wind turbines if it wasn't for the command economy we currently live under.

When politicians get scared, or want to scare their subjects, they produce all sorts of laws and regulations. They sometimes even shut down the economy, as we have seen happening this year.

To support this kind of unsustainable economic interference politicians turn to their central banks. They command them to print whatever amount of currency that is required to cover the most glaring holes created by their irresponsible and immoral edicts.

A curious side-effect of this is that a whole flora of industries pop up in order to profit from the dictates of politicians. Not only do we have unnatural activity in the wind turbine industry and other subsidised industries, we have all sorts of consultants and think-tanks that profit directly from this too. My own brother is currently makings his living from advising corporations on how to be more sustainable and inclusive.

Corporations hire the likes of my brother because the command economy rewards those that tag along with the wishes of the politicians. This is initially done for purely pragmatic reasons. However, those involved are quickly inclined to believe that whatever they are doing is both sustainable and intelligent, because it's far easier to do something believing it makes sense than to do it in the full knowledge that it's merely done for the subsidies that can be had. Independent though is thus abandoned. Instead, the edicts of politicians are taken as gospel.

This has the effect of corrupting the minds of even the most intelligent. My brother managed to state in private that the climate and the flue has made our times dangerous and uncertain. He, of all people, should have seen through this scam. But he has internalized his parroting of political correct thought so much that he even in private is unable to see the nonsense in it.

This means that a lot of intelligent people are completely blind to the ultimate consequence of this. There is a disaster approaching where pension funds will be found to be empty, where governments are bankrupt, and anyone depending on government subsidies will find themselves abandoned. Only those with a safe distance from the state will fare relatively well. Those dependent directly or indirectly on the command economy and its associated central banks will face hard times.

Unsustainable sustainability 

By © Hans Hillewaert, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link