i have read that various products and sectors at differnt times have increased and decreased. walmart canned veggies are significantly cheaper than delmonte…as is their canned pasta. i havet seen much of an increase at all. in fact, nv energy says my electric rate decreased. urnaium from heaven i guess.

if some types of productivity methods have come to maturity in broad sectors that may lead to unemployment as fewer people are need for a given task, reducing manufacturing costs and some costs staying low due to decreased sales.

and thats sad. unless the remote area of the world where the uranium lies underground decide to stop allowing mining for energy i cantt see any economic collapse occurring. whatever means the central banks use to poof currency into existence will continue until they dont….a billion here to keep somethign going a billion there to do somethign else, etc.

unless a gold/solver commodity money that is lauded about on other sites can be shown to be more effective and facilitating trade and long term wealth building i dont see a change or collapse happening.

In biology, once the integreity of a system is threatened by the viral nature of information, it tends toward speciation. That process can create an enlargment of the species if necessary for survival, or it may tend toward creating a sub-species more adapted to specific territorial limitations, based on new rituals of reproduction.

Today, simply by looking around, an information based culture that operates at the speed of light can only form immunities from reproductive threats by breaking apart and developing specific strategies at a community level.

Terrorist “cells” strangely enough, are actually an adaptive process that more effectively uses that strategy by embodying all necessary information within a small segment and coordinating it as necessary.

Terrorism is merely an imitation of biological adaptation.

My girlfriend have a kind of joke between us. She wrote me a check to cover a loan I made her, but I never cashed it. If I should need something for which I’m short of cash, I hand her the check. When she needs me to buy something, she gives me the check back.

The question is, do we need a third party to enforce the “money” involved in the check? It’s negotiable to anyone, but we simply exchange it among ourselves. In essence, we’ve printed our own money.

In the mechanical age of specialization, we’re still tied down to concepts of what is “real”. If people accept a virtual currency as a form of exchange that can be recognized by the “real” world, it’s money.

It’s a version of the Turing Test. If something is exactly that which it represents, so that there is no essential difference, is it the same? Of course it is, by every possible human definition.