Organic Habitat-4
5. General concepts.
Macro systems.
Larger picture.
Projecting trends.
Optimistic view.
Global consensus.
Variants.
Custom designed.
Dream.
5.1. Global community - A.
Nation state.
Travelling.
Ideas and concepts.
Global citizens.
Global intelligence.
Global alliance.
U.N.
U.N. defence force.
G.E.T.
Global ecological resources.
Sustainable harvesting.
Pollution free.
Physical resources.
Global climate.
Extreme natural events.
Space.
Biodiversity.
Expert consultants.
GC.
Digital currency.
Global bank.
Value.
General concepts.
When we conceive of a new design for organic cities,
we need to take care, that we do not project the older realities,
into the new design.
We need to perceive the changes, that are likely to happen,
in all the other factors, in the macro system of society.
A design based on current concepts, would not be appropriate,
for the future organic city.
We need to keep an open mind, on totally new concepts,
that is relevant for future organic cities.
Even though we are primarily discussing the design of organic cities,
it is essential, that we move up and look at the larger picture.
The larger picture strongly influences a narrower topic,
like the design of organic cities.
If we ignore the larger picture, just because it does not seem to be directly relevant,
there is a acquit danger of we conceiving something, which is totally out of context of a future reality.
When we discuss democracy, energy, economics, recycling , etc.
We are essentially developing a new background to paint the proposed design,
of the organic city.
We recognise the strong relationship between the background canvas and the foreground painting.
Projecting trends of relatively abstract concepts can be hazardous.
To start with we are not sure whether it will happen.
If it does happen, to what extent.
Also these trends will not take place uniformly in all regions and countries.
Some countries are likely to be very advanced in the concepts we conceive,
and others may not be.
Some countries may adopt these concepts much earlier,
while others may take longer.
While conceiving these concepts, we need to consciously choose an attitude.
For the last two centuries, we have experienced tremendous economic,
scientific and technological progress.
Unfortunately during this development, we have lost sight of long term implications.
If there is one major flaw in our recent rapid progress,
it is our vision objectives and goals have been myopic.
While we are basking in the glory and euphoria of our success,
is it possible that we will pause, to reflect on the sustainability of our progress?
This is where our attitude comes in.
If we take a positive, an optimistic view, we need to believe,
that humanity will come to realise the inevitable.
We need to believe in the collective wisdom of the people,
achieving a sustainable long term perspective prevailing over short term gratification.
Many of the larger general concepts we discuss, would require a near global consensus .
Some of the policies we discuss, like say recycling, would be difficult,
though not impossible, for a single country to implement in isolation.
For a product to be recycled there needs to be sufficient economic incentive to do so.
Formulating a recycling policy would require to provide sufficient economic incentive to recycling.
This means giving appropriate economic value to raw materials relating to recycled products.
The world is interrelated by trade.
Such policies would be difficult to implement if many countries do not follow similar policies.
Again we consciously take an optimistic way, that our global consensus,
are a near global consensus will emerge.
This is no doubt a big challenge.
But we will still choose to take this positive view.
Will the whole world move towards designing similar organic cities.
This is very unlikely.
It is more likely, that some core concepts involved in designing organic cities is adapted widely.
It would be a good idea to let different models of organic cities develop.
The variants will help to test different design ideas.
The collective experience will help to design even better organic cities.
We are bound to see some interesting successful variants of organic city designs.
Cities will be located in many different geographical areas.
The climate in different areas would be widely different.
Some cities would be located on the seashore.
Some cities would be located near a river.
Some cities would be located in a desert area.
Some cities could be adjacent to dense forest.
Some cities would be located on the hills, or a mountain.
Each of these locations would require a unique design.
The economic policies of different countries could be different.
Culturally also there could be significant differences.
All this means that each city needs to be custom designed.
Even if conditions of the city are similar,
many creative variants of design are likely to emerge.
We need to foster and encourage, customised designs and creative variations.
There are some core general concepts, which will be applicable,
to the design of most of future organic cities.
We will discuss some of them, which are likely to influence the design of organic cities.
The ideas expressed may be just a wish, a dream, which one hopes will come true.
Global community.
The concept of a nation state is as old as civilisation itself.
People organised themselves into nations that governed themselves,
typically with a king.
As civilisation evolved the concept of the nation state also evolved.
A citizen has a sense of belonging to his nation, and old loyalty to his nation.
Although some boundaries of nations changed,
the concept of a nation state grew stronger and stronger.
Today the whole world is organised as nation states.
Nation's cooperate and compete with each other.
In times of conflict nations fight, battles and wars with each other.
History of civilisation is bookmarked with the battles fought by nations.
People fought battles and gave their life for their country.
There was a strong emotional bond, which bound a person to his nation.
During this time contact between common people of different nations was very limited or non existent.
Common people grew up and lived their whole lives, in or close to the place they were born.
They developed common behaviour, customs, thinking and culture.
People tended to be categorised according to their nation.
Since the industrial revolution travelling became easier.
Starting with steam engines and later with cars and steamships,
travelling became easier and more common place.
This trend was further accelerated with the arrival of aircraft.
Nations became more interconnected, with goods and people moving more freely,
between nations.
The invention of printing led to another major revolution.
Newspaper, magazines and books, could now travel more easily from nation to nation.
News, information, ideas and concepts now spread faster across nation states.
Some common ideas developed across national boundaries.
Powerful concepts like democracy broke national barriers,
and was more universally accepted and adopted.
Social models like capitalism, communism, socialism, etc., was adopted across nations.
Science permeated national boundaries and cross fertilised fresh ideas.
New inventions spread across the globe.
Art and literature also had a wider following.
This led to a stronger integration of nations states.
Nations were now stitched together with common ideas and concepts.
Civilisation witnessed the birth of the nation state.
People evolved to acquire a national identity.
The recent trends discussed, we are witnessing a higher level in this evolution.
People now apart from having a national identity,
are also perceiving themselves as members of the global community.
This concept is bound to deepen and strengthen.
This is like having a relationship within a family, and with the extended family.
There is a certain level of loyalty, to both.
Similarly people now perceive themselves as also a global citizen.
The global citizen has a local view, and also a global view.
He has a shared vision with other global citizens.
This is a paradigm shift in the evolution of humanity.
Now people think about and support global causes, which transcends national concerns.
This is bound to have phenomenal effect on the direction of development of humanity.
Concerns like environment, climate, biodiversity, etc., are now everybody's concern.
It would be much easier to address global concerns, when there is participation from global citizens.
The information revolution followed the industrial revolution.
Computers and communication technology gave rise to instant awareness.
People had the ability to immediately know the events and developments,
across the globe.
The internet, interconnects the minds of billions of people.
We are not only witnessing the birth of the global citizen,
but also a world that strongly interconnected global citizens.
In an evolutionary sense this is a great leap forward.
We can perceive an analogy with the biological development of the homo sapiens.
The brain was the most significant biological development of the homo sapiens.
The brain is a complex organism which interconnects billions of neurons.
The turning point in the evolution of the brain of human beings, was the development of the neocortex.
This truly differentiated human beings from hundreds of thousands of other living beings.
We developed the capability to think.
The evolution of the network of global citizen is analogous to the development of the neocortex.
We are witnessing the development of some kind of super brain,
whose capacity and capability far exceeds, indeed incomparable to the mind of the individual.
This is the collective minds of billions of people.
We can say that the global community has a mind of its own.
It is still evolving, but we can already see a global intelligence developing.
This is bound to direct the future course of humanity.
We already have a global alliance of nations.
At the apex we have the united nations,
or U.N. which is an alliance of almost all nations states of the world.
There are numerous other alliances, like ASEAN, European union, NATO, NAFTA, BRICS, etc,.
These are the first signs of the emergence of global governments.
We can expect that these kind of unions would have more power,
and exert a stronger and stronger influence, on their member states.
This would mean the emergence of global policies.
These policies would be adhered to in different degrees by member states.
The evolving global policy on environment and climate change,
is being embraced by most of the nation states of the world.
The U.N. is emerging as a powerful policy making body.
It is located in an archipelago, and is independent of any nation or group of nations.
Its policies emerge from the consensus that evolve from the discussion of all the nations.
The consensus may take sometime to emerge, but once it is arrived at,
it has powerful influence on all its member nations.
Thanks to digital voting of global citizens, global views and opinions,
become more and more transparent.
Global views in turn influence nations, in reaching a consensus.
For example, as individual citizens around the globe become more and more eco-sensitive,
the policies of the U.N. can also be expected to become eco-friendly.
Increasingly the U.N. starts to reflect global opinion.
The U.N. has a policy making wing, and a functional management wing.
The policy making wing have nations discussing and formulating global policies.
The functional management wing, is professionally managed ,
and charged with achieving global objectives and missions.
Though the U.N. shoulders a impressively large amount of responsibility,
in practice it is a very lean and mean organisation.
It has a very limited stuff to work on a more permanent basis.
It acts as a aggregator and integrator, drawing upon the resources of member countries.
Most of its human resources are drawn from member nations.
They work on a contract basis.
It is common practice to assemble a team, as a task force to achieve objectives and missions.
The teams dissolve once the objective is met.
Moreover many of them work only part time for the U.N..
The U.N. has the large number of talented consultants, who are called upon to contribute,
when the need arises.
U.N. is truly a dynamic organisation.
There is no bureaucracy in its design.
The efficiency and effectiveness of the U.N. organisation,
is comparable to the best of private institutions.
We can dare to project this trend with a positive outlook.
We can imagine that most of the nations delegate the defence of their country,
to the united nations.
Today a large portion of a nations budget is spent on defence.
When this responsibility is delegated to the U.N., member states need to make,
only a relatively a small contribution in funds and resources.
Today, countries collectively spend trillions of dollars annually in future.
In the proposed concept each country would maintain a small defence force,
proportional to its population.
This would be made available to the U.N. as and when needed.
In this case, maybe 90% of the current defence expenditure could be saved,
and used for other productive purposes.
The U.N. defence force would be responsible for the security of each member state.
If it potentially threatened, it can call upon the defence resources of member states.
In this way the U.N. would have the largest and best army,
navy, airforce and allied defence services of the world.
No nation can afford to violate the security of another nation,
when faced with the mighty collective power of the U.N..
This hopefully would lead to a peaceful world.
Threats to global security need not necessarily emerge from a single nation.
Loosely coordinated terrorist groups, do not belong to any nation.
Members belonging to the terrorist group are spread out across many nations.
It is not possible for a single nation to counter such groups.
It requires a collaborative effort of many nations to handle the threat of loosely associated terrorist groups.
The U.N. defence system is ideally suited for this, since its a collaborative organisations of many member countries.
It is possible that many future threats will emerge from groups with extreme views.
This groups will be dispersed throughout the globe.
The members may be ordinary working class people.
The fundings may be done by different organisations in different countries.
Modern communication techniques enable the group to coordinate with each other,
without formal institutions.
For example, there is no headquarters for the group.
The leadership emerges on a need basis.
If one leader is eliminated, another emerges, from somewhere in the group.
The main strength of the group is that it has no tangible identity.
New strategies need to be formulated to contain these threats.
These strategies would include intelligence, finance, and related support systems of the extremist groups.
The collaborative effort of the U.N. defence force, is able to more effectively deal with these potential threats.
Remarkably large amount of global wealth previously spent on defence,
is now channelised towards the welfare of the citizens of member nations.
The most important common cause, of all nations, is global ecology.
The world has realised that we can no longer take ecology for granted.
It needs to be protected, conserved and nurtured.
This is critical for the long term well being, of human beings, and the web of life,
of the planet.
All the nations of the world collaborate, to form an institution, which will hold custody of the global ecological resources.
The institution is called, the Global Ecology Trust, or G.E.T..
The institution is represented by the ecology agencies of member nations.
G.E.T. has a number of important shared visions, objectives and goals for the global community.
There are many resources in the planet which do not belong to any particular country.
They belong to the global community.
This awareness has now becoming widely prevalent.
A good example of a global resource is the oceans.
70% of the planets surface is comprised of oceans.
The Global Ecology Trust, or G.E.T. acts as a custodian of global ecological resources.
The oceans come under the purview of G.E.T..
The Artic and Antarctic also comes in its purview.
There are other natural resources in the planet, which are critical to the health of the planets ecosystem.
A good example, is the amazon forest, which is spread across many south american nations,
Brazil, Peru, Colombia, etc..
The amazon represents more than half of the rainforest, still remaining on the planet.
It is the most biodiverse tract of tropical forest.
It is host to about 390 billion trees, and 16000 species of life.
The wealth of such a resource is immense.
Nations now voluntarily give custody of such resources to the G.E.T..
The resources still belongs to its owners nations.
It is eligible for payment from the global community for conserving and maintaining it.
The G.E.T. collaborates with the owner nations to conserve and maintain the invaluable resource.
It compensates the owner nations for holding custody.
The payments are contributed by member nations, who are well aware of the precious nature of these planetary resource.
Many countries are offering voluntary custody of their precious natural resources, to the G.E.T..
The Himalayas, most of Siberia, Alaska, Greenland, and rich forest area of many nations,
are some examples of global wealth, in the stewardship of the G.E.T..
The global community pools in funds to conserve and maintain, the cherished resources of the planet.
These funds compensate and motivate the owner nations to maintain its natural resources.
The G.E.T. is concerned with the ecological health of the entire planet.
G.E.T. is also given responsibility of sustainably harvesting ecological resources.
This results in revenue for G.E.T. which in turn is used for conservation efforts.
For example, ships using the ocean pay a passage fee to G.E.T. .
G.E.T. also awards limited fishing rights to nations for a fee.
Fishing is limited to small scale fishermen.
Large scale mechanised fishing is banned.
Similar exercises are done by G.E.T. for sustainable harvesting of forest resources.
On the whole nations in G.E.T. work together for sustainable use of ecological resources of the planet.
G.E.T. is responsible for keeping global ecological resources, pollution free.
No nation is allowed to pollute the precious natural resources.
For example, waste cannot be dumped into oceans .
Nations agree to impose punitive fines on those who pollute.
Maintaining a clean atmosphere, is one of the most important shared vision of G.E.T..
It is now understood and accepted by all nations that atmospheric pollution is a global threat.
Industries can no longer emit polluting gases and materials into the atmosphere.
Individual vehicles and machinery are also designed to be pollution free.
G.E.T. monitors the pollution levels of all major cities in the world.
This like weather information, is made available to all citizens.
Cities compete with each other to keep their atmosphere clean and pollution free.
The value of a city now listed in stock exchanges, typically goes up, if it has a pollution free clean atmosphere.
Citizens exhibit a strong preference to live in clean cities.
This incentives all nations to strive for a pollution free clean atmosphere.
Many of the physical resources like metals and minerals are limited.
It is widely known that fossil fuels are limited.
We are on the verge of exhausting this resource.
The world is aware of this limitation, and is moving away from the dependence on fossil fuels for energy.
What is less well known, is that the raw materials for many of the commonly used minerals and metals,
are also getting exhausted.
At the current rate of exploitation, we will run out of many of them in this century.
The world is now thinking beyond the present, and planning for future generations.
In this context many of the limited metals and minerals, are also considered as a global physical resource.
Some nations are endowed with these resources.
They now plan along with G.E.T. on the best way to use these resources,
so as to extend the time frame of their availability.
When something is considered as precious, it is conserved and recycled.
It is never wasted.
Gold is a good example.
Though it has very few practical uses, it has always been considered throughout history,
as a precious form of wealth.
This induced people to conserve it.
Gold was never wasted, it was always recycled and preserved.
Once we realise that many other physical resources are limited,
the value of these resources changes.
These resources are much more valuable than what we thought it was.
When it is cheaper to mine new raw materials, the incentive to recycle is not there.
If the valuation is high like gold, there is a strong incentive to recycle.
This requires a global concerns to revalue physical resources.
This is bound to come about.
Recycling will become a major part of the global strategy for conservation of physical resources.
G.E.T. works on recycling strategies for all limited resources.
Nations volunteer to put a cap on the amount of mining done of raw materials,
of limited metals and minerals.
Many nations endowed with physical resources, hold it in trust with G.E.T..
They get income from the reserves of raw material that they have.
This incomes comes from the global economy, which pays for not over exploiting the limited resource.
Nations agree on how much to mine and the pricing mechanisms, which incentivises recycling,
and disincentives mining.
Human beings have successfully colonised the planet Earth.
By the sheer size of our population, and the leverage of the technological prowess, we posses.
We are in a position to degrade the global climate.
This could potentially damage the balance in the climate ecosystem.
The consequences could be dangerous to life threaten, for the whole of humanity.
Fortunately this realisation has come about.
Now the nations are striving to mitigate, and if possible reverse the damage done to the environment.
G.E.T. has been entrusted with a responsibility of protecting global climate.
All member nations collectively formulate policies to enable this.
Prominent among these policies, is the agreement to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions.
G.E.T. monitors climate of the globe at the macro level.
Any potential threat is identified, and steps are taken to avoid problems.
For example, the ozone layer, which protects us from harmful radiation, can be damaged by emission of CFC gases.
Nations have a policy of restricting or avoiding such emissions.
The eyes present in the Artic and Antarctic strongly influences global climate.
Human induced global warming is causing this ice to melt.
This can lead to many damaging consequences.
The more obvious of them is the rise in sea levels.
This can submerge many island states, and flood most of the coastal areas of the world.
The indirect consequences of ice melting, is not yet fully understood.
But it is broadly agreed that it will be deleterious to global climate.
Global climate is a resultant of complex interaction of many interrelated factors.
Scientists are only beginning to understand this complex relationship.
For example, ocean currents have an influence on global climate.
Global warming and melting of ice, can influence the pattern of ocean currents.
This in turn will induce new disturbed weather events.
Large scale drought, are excessive precipitation through storms is possible.
G.E.T. monitors all contributing factors to climate, and formulates policies.
to ensure the ecosystem of the planet is not disturbed.
Scientist consultants to G.E.T. monitor all these factors.
For example, some of them monitor the health of glaciers in the planet.
Different scientists specialise in different factors, related to climate change.
The role played by forest and trees to climate is also well known.
There is a shared global vision to increase tree to human ratio.
Most cities now plan to integrate trees into the architecture of cities.
The value of the city goes up, when the tree to human ratio goes up.
People prefer to live in green cities.
G.E.T. plays an important role, in many ways, in steering the world towards a more harmonious climate.
There are many extreme natural events, which could be a potential threat.
For example, earthquakes happen almost daily.
Most of this goes unnoticed, either because they are too weak, or they occur under the oceans,
or unpopulated areas.
Earthquake occur due to movement of tectonic plates of the earth.
The science of earthquake predication has still not matured.
G.E.T. sponsors research on this subject.
Also, with the existing technology it forecasts where possible potential threats could occur.
A strong earthquake under the sea can trigger a Tsunami which can be a serious threat to life and property.
G.E.T. sponsored research stations issue early warnings of such events.
G.E.T. monitors active volcanoes and issues early warnings of potential eruptions.
Our planet is a small part of the solar system.
It is a minuscule part of a vast universe.
We need to be sensitive to various factors that can impact the Earth.
G.E.T. is broadly given responsibility for space weather related matters.
For example, solar flares in the sun, causes spurts in radiation which reaches the Earth.
A constant stream of solar wind, is streaming past the planet continuously.
Any change of pattern in space weather, can disrupt events on Earth.
Satellite communications, power grids, astronauts, and airline flights,
are impacted by this.
G.E.T. monitors such phenomena and issues early warnings.
Radiations from the universe are continuously reaching earth.
Most of them are harmless.
G.E.T. monitors these radiations to detect potential consequences.
Due to accelerated space exploration, the upper atmosphere of the planet,
has accumulated a significant amount of space debris.
These debris keep orbiting the earth, and can be potential threat to satellites,
and space flight.
G.E.T. meticulously monitors all space debris.
G.E.T. is sponsoring a global initiative to cleanup space debris.
G.E.T. is also entrusted with a responsibility of allocating space slots for satellites.
There are many meteoroids and asteroids in the solar system.
Some of them come close to earth.
G.E.T. monitors even the remote possibility of some of the larger ones, impacting the earth.
G.E.T. is also responsible for nurturing the biodiversity of the planet.
It collaborates with owner nations to foster this.
There are many aspects of global ecology which needs to be viewed and addressed at a planetary level.
Global warming is the most obvious example.
This belief helps to appreciate a value of other species in the web of life.
The G.E.T. monitors the health and biodiversity of the entire web of life.
The actual work is executed by consultants drawn from member nations.
It tracks, for example, the migration and breeding of marine life, birds, and other wildlife.
The Siberian crane, for example, travels from Russia to China and back every year.
Whales circumnavigate around the planet.
Animals, birds, fish and insects do not have any national boundaries.
The G.E.T. with the help of hundreds of thousands of citizen scientists, track the wellbeing of many forms of life.
This has led to many conservation efforts, which is now bearing fruit.
Ecology is a vast and varied subject.
No one person can master all aspects of ecology.
Scientists specialise in different areas of ecology.
G.E.T. employs a large number of expert consultants, to perform its function.
Qualified persons get accredited with G.E.T. and provide their services when required.
These persons are drawn from member nations.
When a nation needs a particular type of expert consultant, it approaches G.E.T..
The consultants can be drawn from the large pool of experts accredited with G.E.T..
These consultants share the expertise with many other nations,
who are in need of it.
For example, an expert in cultivating in arid lands, using advanced irrigation techniques,
can consult to other nations with similar conditions.
An expert in a new type of easily recyclable packaging material, would be much wanted person in most countries.
This way knowledge gets rapidly disseminated.
Global organisations like G.E.T. are large employers of experts.
Nations encourage their qualified citizens to get accredited with global organisations like G.E.T..
The income the consultants earn contributes to the national income.
Overall this creates a win-win situation for everyone.
The world economy is driven and measured by a large number of national currencies.
In a interconnected world most currencies are instantly inter changeable.
Global trade is driven by movement of goods and services across nations.
Currently currencies get converted to enable these transactions.
We can foresee the emergence of a single global currency.
Individual nations fully or partially would adopt this currency.
We will simply call this currency as GC.
No single nation can own this currency.
GC is sponsored and administered by the world bank.
It is a virtual currency.
Individual nations subscribe to it, depending on various economic parameters,
specific to that country.
GC helps the flow of global transactions.
It is reflective of the fact that the world economy is strongly interrelated.
GC would reflect the purchasing power parity of each nation.
This way goods and services would have a global value.
GC is a digital currency, that uses the advanced versions of block chain and distributed ledger technology.
It could be anchored to many real world assets.
GC satisfies the need for international trust, and efficient trade systems.
The alliance of nations have worked out a common currency GC,
based on distributed ledger and cryptographic technologies.
Transactions would be made directly between users, and publicly recorded in a block chain.
Block chain is the underline data structure, which holds the transactions in sequentially encrypted blocks.
GC avoids the energy intensive process of mining of earlier cryptocurrencies.
GC is managed by a network of diverse and trusted validators.
These validators are elected by member nations, and periodically refreshed.
This is designed in such a way that no could influence the majority of the validators,
at the same time.
The result is a fast fully scaleable, reliable, and environment friendly financial instrument.
GC is more reliable than national currencies, since it is designed to make the details of the monetary circuit,
more visible for supervision.
Over sight is provided by appointed validators.
GC allows for distributed accounting, which means we can more reliably model and predict risks.
It allows for recording and playback of contracts and transactions among parties in member nations,
without exposing proprietary data are violating privacy.
A worldwide digital currency like GC, is immune to policies, of any one central bank of a member nation.
It frees member nations from the dominance of specific national currencies.
Since GC is backed by and convertible traditional assets, it is not prone to speculative attacks.
It is also resistant to political manipulation.
GC dramatically reduces friction in global trade and facilitates fast and reliable international transactions.
The global bank becomes the bank for the whole world.
It is funded by individual nations, and managed by the U.N..
It draws its global currency and human resources from member nations.
It is a repository and custodian of a nation's wealth and resource.
It is like the bank account of a nation.
Nation still own their wealth, just like before.
The global bank has missions and objectives, which are global in nature.
Reducing carbon emissions, conserving forest, eradicating major disease,
are examples of global missions.
These missions are funded by the global bank.
Global bank also emerges as a platform for economic policies.
Individual nations would be free to formulate their own economic policies,
which are customised to their individual nations,
but they tend to be influenced by some degree by global economic policies.
Economic policies have been evolving for centuries.
Economic policies have a strong influence on which direction a nation, develops.
It is no longer possible or sensible for developing nations to pursue the same path of development,
as the so called developed nations.
Economics has a need to find fresh ideas, which are more evolved.
Economics is based on the concept of "value".
There is no fundamental definition of "value".
It has been evolving overtime and with circumstances.
What was once thought to have high value, - like salt -, has no longer high value.
What was once thought to have little or no value, - like fresh air and water -,
now has high value.
It is possible to redefine value according to current global views.
For example, it is possible to assign negative value to pollution,
and positive value to conservation and nurturing of forests.
It is possible to attribute positive value to a more equitable distribution of wealth.
There are several such positive and negative factors,
which can be built into the concept of value.
In some cases value might be determined by a goldilocks zone.
For example, nutrition is highly desirable, up to a certain level, for healthy living,
and has a positive value.
After a point, excessive nutrition has negative influence on health,
and has a negative value.
Consumption in general for a comfortable quality of life would be desirable,
for excessive consumption would have a negative effect on the planet.
Exploiting renewable resources needs to have negative value,
compared to recycling which should have positive value.
There are several such factors which can influence the concept of value.
Redefining value is a complex process.
This does not mean, we need to shy away from the desirable need to redefine it.
We need to have faith in the collective wisdom of people,
supported by augmented intelligence to define economics,
with a new and evolving concept of value.
The aspirations and efforts of individuals and nations, are driven by economic value.
We need to recognise this fact.
Hopefully this should motivate the global community, to invest in arriving,
new definitions of value.
This would change the basic principles of economic thinking.
There is no doubt that individual nations would have their own economic model of progress.
Such differences would be understandable and even desirable to test new economic models.
What is hoped that all or most of them would incorporate a new and evolving concept of value.
Once this is done, a nation's progress is measured by this new value added.
In this concept, for example, a nation which pollutes the environment,
and indulges in excessive consumption, would have less value.
Nations with a clean environment and high recycling would have high value.
These are only examples of the many factors that would influence the value added of a nation.