22 November 2010

The shift in mode

The shift from the mode of the P&L to that of the balance sheet, from flow to stock, from income to wealth, is a moment of dangerous instability in the life of an economy and an ecology. The shift feeds on itself and tends to overwhelm the delicate covenantal balance between the two modes of the measurement of value. 
Stable societies have to have developed the social mechanisms able to manage such covenantal shifts when they occur. Stable societies need to be able to recognize the shifts before they begin to take hold, and they need to manage the wrenching shifts in power and interests that accompany alterations in the economic and ecologic social order’s covenantal basis. 

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