Morphological Flows and Sustainable Growth : Evolutionary Philosophy - where we came from and where we might be headed - NAVIGATOR-->Part A-Morphological Flows: -Introduction- Creation of Matter {1-Particles--> 2-Atoms --> 3-Molecules --> 4-Proto-Biota}--> Creation of Life { 5-Biomolecular (Genetic) mechanisms  --> Tree of Life, Fossil Record and Comparative Anatomy { 6.1-Cells to Reptiles --> 6.2-Reptiles To Man --> 7-Nervous System and Brain } --> Creation of Us {8-Behavioral Evolution --> 9-Social/Cultural Evolution} -- 10-Segue: Common (Cascade) Model for Morphological Flows -->Part B- Application of Flow Oriented Analysis: Sustainable Growth {11-Exponential Population Growth -->12- Exponential Demand Growth --> 13-Social Rifts --> 14-Solutions for Sustainability} --> Fun Stuff {15-Attractor sets and Turn-ons List --> 16-Intellectual Attractor Sets} ----------HOME---------- (c) contact Mike Baharmast - MBScientific

ch14 - Action Items - Solutions to the sustainability dilemma

We have applied the discipline of morphological flows to the toughest existential problem of the time: sustainable, optimal, steady state growth. And based on the flow oriented analysis we discovered an outline for a framework for sustainable growth:
1- a dominant, linked, global knowledge worker economy with a common philosophical framework for these knowledge workers, so everybody works off of the same page: Morphological Flows
3- a relatively flat energy consumption based social organizational pyramid for the global knowledge economy with the top at say ~1000-2000 koe.

We also found out that the environments of underdeveloped and developed societies are drastically different. So the applications of the above framework must be tailored for those environments. Lets look at some figures for knowledge worker populations in these environments:

Number of Science and Engineering (S&E) graduates in US (2003) is about 10 million (out of about 40 million graduates in total. source: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06304/). Out of a population of 269 million, that is roughly one in 27 people in the US, one of the most technologically steeped countries at the present.
India has S&E graduates of about 6 million (source: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf00318/c1s3.htm) out of a about a billion in population, that is one in ~167 people.
In the underdeveloped world, though I couldn't find any data, I wouldn't be surprised if the S&E numbers were something like 1 in a thousand, perhaps a lot less.

The numbers state the obvious. For a global knowledge worker economy to take root we need lots and lots of knowledge workers all over the globe. Secondly these knowledge workers need to understand Morphological Flows so they have a common philosophical framework. They need to work off of the same existential page in order to converge on the same pathway for sustainable growth. That part should be a no brainer. It is the actual story of how we got here. It explains why we do what we do. It accommodates all  religions and backgrounds. It is freely available and whatever specialty one is concentrating on, fits in the discipline. And not the least, it is an incredible analytical tool for deconstructing whatever morphology that has emerged as well as forecasting what probable morphologies that are to emerge. In a nutshell, it is an incredible problem solving tool. Oh, and you can get course credit for it (college students, that would be you)!

Back to the subject at hand, lets explore how our general action items can be implemented in both the underdeveloped and the developed societies. Lets start with the developed societies.

Developed Societies

The fact that we need a lot of knowledge workers is an established fact that is well understood by the developed societies and there are a lot of efforts to bolster that front. The main question then becomes: what is your energy demand profile and how  can you get it down to the target, say ~2000 koe? Remember, this number didn't just come out of a hat. In this koe range, renewable energy technologies are in play. At the 8000 koe range, the only energy technologies in play are the massive central technologies of fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro-electric. Here we'll offer you an ENERGY CONSUMPTION (KOE) CALCULATOR, plug in your electricity, oil, gas, etc. values and find out where you are in the consumption spectrum. How far off are you from the ~2000 koe target. 
I'm guessing that for 50% of Americans it is a safe bet to say they are pretty far off, near the ~8000 koe range. So the next question becomes, how do you get down to ~2000 koe target, drop the demand by a factor of 4?

1- Zero Energy Houses and Communities- Net Zero Energy Housing (ZEH) is here. If you don't believe me google it, you'll get tons of hits. These are no pipe dreams, they are actual homes that people live in. As a rule they aren't McMansions. A typical family of  4 should be just fine in a ~1500-2000 square foot home. The key to these houses, especially in southern climates, is the Solar Photovoltaic (PV) power plant installed on the roof of the dwelling. It is this power plant that generates as much power as the dwelling uses. It is tied to the utility grid, sometimes running the meter backwards, sometimes it runs forwards, but the net result should be about zero. Another major component of ZEH, especially in northern climates, is the geothermal HVAC (heating, ventilation and cooling) unit which can drop the heating and cooling energy load (~70% of the total load of the house) by a factor of four. Other components of ZEH include highly insulating construction materials and techniques (load-supply analysis) and energy efficient appliances.
There are added costs for the technology. California is really pushing the concept. With State and Federal tax credits and Utility subsidy programs a typical say 2.5 kw PV power plant runs about $10,000 in California. Given that typical homes start at ~$300,000 and up, based on location, that is nothing (in many locations million dollar homes are typical). Ideal Homes of Norman Oklahoma can build a 1600 square foot zero energy home, priced under $200,000 (source: http://www.housingzone.com/article/CA6332828.html#Vital%20Stats). Or, often folks buy properties and remodel them. Here is a summary of what Asdal Builders did to transform an 1860s 1,500-square-foot wood-frame cottage into a Zero Energy House (http://www.housingzone.com/project-seer/). The Zero Energy House concept is backed by US DOE and EPA, pretty much every state in the US, the building industry as a whole and many developers specifically.
Here are some back of the envelope calculations: say you and your wife are knowledge workers with 2 kids. Say you earn ~120,000/year. And lets say you buy a ZEH for $300,000, with say ~30,000 ZWH cost overhead ($10,000 for the PV plant, $20,000 for energy efficiency, including a geothermal heat pump HVAC). First of all the ZEH investment will appreciate in time as the price of energy goes up over the 30 hear life of the house. So your property value will appreciate that much more. Second, say your energy hog, crap construction house of the same size has a ~$300/month average energy bill. That is ~$3000/year, and ~ $90,000 over the 30 year life of the house (and I'm being totally unrealistic assuming that the price of energy will stay the same over the next 30 years! Yeah Right!?!). So the investment actually pays for itself at least 3 times over, likely a lot more.
In a nutshell, logically, theoretically speaking, there is absolutely no reason consumers shouldn't demand Zero Energy Homes, especially in the southern half of the country where there is ample sunshine to power the home. Further, as demand for these homes grow, the price of the PV plants would fall sharply. So this is by far a win-win situation, for the home owners, developers, states, country and the planet.

So that right there, ZEH will likely shave half of your total koe consumption profile.

2- Getting out of suburban sprawl and use of transportation fuels based on renewable resources- . If you live the life of a car-centric suburban sprawl, your pocket book is in for a world of pain in the years to come. Many older cities, like Washington DC, New York, Chicago, etc. have extensive mass transit systems. If you are in that kind of an environment, USE IT. If you do that you'll likely shave another half off of your total koe profile. 
If you do live in a hopelessly car centric sprawl environment, I have a suggestion: GET OUT. It, believe it or not, is your choice. And a word of advice, the sooner you put yourself in a sustainable situation the more comfortable you'll be. If you do want to get out of your car centric sprawl predicament, look up where communities are located in your area that adhere to New Urbanism principles, where walking and mass transit is the rule of the road. Believe me, you'll be much happier, healthier, you'll get to know your neighbors and community as a whole, and who knows maybe you'll stop to smell the flowers every once in a while, I do (try to do that in your car)!
Right there, between the two, Zero Energy Homes and New Urbanist model, you might be able to drop your koe profile by some 50-70 percent. In fact it isn't hard to imagine a Zero Energy/New Urbanist community with ~2000 koe per capita profile.
Getting out of suburban sprawl renders renewable transportation fuels feasible, living a life of suburban sprawl does not. What good is using renewable fuels if you are wasting 70% of it driving, or worst, idling in some traffic jam. Bio-fuels can supplant gasoline at low, manageable levels. Brazil has already demonstrated that they can generate a significant percentage of their domestic automobile fuels from ethanol converted from sugar cane (70% of new cars sold in Brazil can run on ethanol) and plan to wean off of gasoline altogether. With bio-fuels the amount of carbon released in burning the fuel is comparable to the amount of carbon taken in from the atmosphere to grow the fuel. There is plenty of research and development on the way for converting cellulose waste byproducts from agriculture (and other sources) to automobile fuels. But again the key is a manageable demand structure. In an urban environment that is feasible, in a suburban sprawl situation it is not.

3- Renewable Energy Certificates- Another great idea is the sales and marketing of Renewable Energy Credit (REC) Certificates (http://www.eere.energy.gov/greenpower/markets/certificates.shtml?page=1). The idea is to buy and sell RECs like futures in the futures market. Say you buy a 1000 kwh REC for 10 cent a kwh, or $100. The idea is that as the price of energy goes up, the certificate value goes up, just like futures stock.  And since you are buying these certificates from renewable energy producers (wind, solar, biomass etc.), these power generators defray their costs and make more money, which encourages more renewable power. And you, the certificate holder, make money by having the certificate appreciate. Better yet, if your energy utility is in the REC market, you can pay your bills in RECs. So it is a win-win idea for the producer, consumer, certificate holder and the planet. Having said that the current REC trading structure falls way short of where it needs to be:
- Public Utilities must honor RECs- that way you can buy RECs from renewable energy based producers and pay your bill with it. You will then in effect be buying energy produced from renewable sources. And that will give an economic incentive to your public utility to generate energy from renewable resources, otherwise they will make no money off of you.
- Utility companies that sell RECs must produce the amount of energy that they sold. That means as they sell RECs they must up their capacity to meet the demand.
Right now these two provisions are missing from RECs, rendering them as mere paper products as opposed to tools for generating energy from renewable resources.

4- Policy Direction-  right pricing of fossil fuels to open investment opportunities in renewable energy- As we have seen previously, in the US we consume twice as much energy per capita to achieve the same per capita income as Western Europe and Japan, for example. This is no accident. It has come about because of policies that people, through their elected representatives have chosen to enact. Suburban sprawl is enacted as a matter of national and local policies. It is written into law in local zoning codes, and nationally in the US Highway Bill. 
Further, whereas the policy in Europe is to counter energy consumption by right pricing (taxing) fuel, in the US the policy has been to keep fuel prices as cheap as possible, thereby encouraging energy consumption. But it goes a lot further than that, our foreign policy backed by our military policy is geared towards garnering the cheapest supply of fuel. So everything within the US domestic and foreign policy is geared towards encouraging energy consumption, and waste.
As we have seen, energy needs to be right priced. That is, the waste factor needs to be priced in the calculus of valuation of fuel. Make no mistake about it, we're paying for that waste as we speak. Lets do some back of the envelope calculations:
- US defense budget (2006) - ~ 600 billion $ (I'm rounding the numbers for current purposes)
- supplemental defense budget for fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (2006) 100 billion
- additional defense relation budget, e.g. homeland security, intelligence services (domestic and foreign), law enforcement (domestic and foreign), etc. (2006) - say 100 billion (for the sake of argument, I don't have the exact breakdown)
- FEMA and other expenditures for disasters such as hurricane Katerina, Wilma, etc (2006)- 100 + billion

So that is ~900 billion $ that was spent in 2006 to support our fossil fuel habits that came out of general revenue taxes. To give you a sense of size for this, the entire US individual income tax for 2006 was ~900 billion. So one can argue that we are spending our entire income tax revenue to support our fossil fuel habit, that is not reflected in the price of fossil fuel. Now consider this. Say the taxpaying population in the US is ~200 million people, then the average individual income tax is something like ~500$/month (again I'm rounding the numbers). So a family of 4, with two wage earners may be paying ~600$/month in direct energy bills and ~1000$/month in indirect bills through their general revenue taxes.
Suppose we right priced the cost of fossil fuels, that is we shifted the cost from general revenue to direct expense of the fuels. That can be relatively easily done. In a typical electric bill you pay a baseline up to a certain amount of kwh use, and then the price/kwh goes up. Suppose we shifted the cost of consumption from a general revenue tax to say fossil fuel consumption/pollution tax on top of the electric bill in a progressive manner, the higher your consumption/pollution levels the higher the taxes. You can do the same thing with natural gas supply, heating oil supply, even coal supply (gasoline would be significantly harder to progressively tax because there is no easy way to find out who is consuming how much per month).
That would do two crucial things, one is to stabilize the price of fossil fuels rightly and predictably. You see, say you are a Wall Street type who wants to invest in renewable energy resources or in a ZEH development, you calculate your return on investment based on say $65/barrel oil. But who is to say the price wouldn't tank to say $40 or less, it has before. In the 70, because of energy embargoes, price of energy spiked up, hell at times there was no gas available at any price. That spurred all manners of interests and investments in renewable resources, a brand new Department of Energy went up. Within 10 years gas prices tanked to 99 cents/gallon and practically all investments and interests in renewable energy fizzled out. This uncertainty and risk is critical in investment decisions. Right pricing fossil fuel costs stabilizes the spiky nature of fossil fuels, and takes the uncertainty out of the calculus.
The other crucial thing that this right pricing policy addresses is the progressive nature of consumption. The higher the consumption, the higher the cost. Think about it, if you live in a one or two bedroom condo in a city with mass transit, you maybe already at ~2000 koe target. If you are a family of 4 living in a ~1500-2000 square foot house and use mass transit, you maybe at ~3000 koe.What you are then subsidizing is the cost of energy for the 2 people that live in a 10000 square foot McMansion, that dive 100 miles a day and live a jet set life (with maybe a boat or two), they would be maybe at ~20000 koe level.
So if we take the indirect fossil fuel costs out of our general tax bill, and put it in as the fuel tax bill, where it belongs, then we'll open all manners of investment opportunities in alternative fuels, ZEH projects, etc.

Believe it or not we have done this kind of judo move in the 70's with our industrial pollution problem. Back then industrial dumping was routine, all industries did it, even the government did it. It was just the way of doing business. The problems started to make the front pages. Entire lake systems were dying due to acid rain and people that lived around them and made their living from them were being put out of business. So they started hollering. Entire streams and aquifers were being poisoned. People around them started to get sick, so they started hollering. Eventually a river (Cuyahoga, near Cleveland 1969) caught fire, well there was no way to hide that, the pictures were rather impressive.

Eventually that volume of the yelling reached critical mass and an interesting thing happened. You see prior to the critical mass, law enforcement went after the dumpers, the truckers, otherwise the little guys down the chain. And although some people went to jail, the dumping culture kept right on going (cultural momentum). Then the judo move occurred. The main perpetrators were the big businesses, the oil refiners, manufactures, municipalities, even the government itself. All attempts to fight them directly ran into major lobby interests and got watered down and netted the odd truck driver. Then we did something really smart, probably accidentally. We stopped fighting the big boys. Rather, the legislature said fine we want you to make money but we'll monetize clean operations and expense dirty operations. You see the judo move, we used the cultural momentum of these big businesses who are in the business of making money to pivot them around the pollution issue. The pollution issue became the pivot axis. We wanted them to make as much money as they could, we just rewarded the clean operators and fined the dirty ones. That hit the big boys in the pocket book. And that changed the culture, by enlarge all manners of clean operations got funded and and all manners of clean technologies came on line. Within a decade or so the dumping problem was becoming manageable.  The new culture demanded it.

We can do the same judo move to our entrenched fossil fuel culture. I believe a pivot axis is emerging to make this judo move possible. Actually this axis is a confluence of several issues that are coalescing. Lets start with the two shooting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans are dying and getting injured. That starts a lot of people hollering. Along the same line, foreign oil dependence is emerging as a national security issue, we are funding the people who are funding the Islamic extremists. People are hollering about that. Then there is the ecological impact of burning fossil fuels as in global warming, hurricane Katrina made front page news out of that. Finally the Europeans and Japanese are taking the lead in renewable energies. So you have 4 major issues coalescing to form a pivot around which the current cultural momentum can be redirected. And I'm suggesting to use the same judo strategy that we used in the aforementioned dumping problem. We want people to make money and save money. We'll have a major payroll tax cut of say 500 $B/yr. That'll make the conservatives happy. We'll switch that tax to the direct cost of fossil fuels, so that'll make the deficit hawks happy. Then we'll progressively make the costs more expensive for the folks who progressively use larger amounts of energy, that'll make the environmentalists happy. Even the energy companies and Wall street types would be happy because this will stabilize the spiky nature of energy so they can take the risk of uncertainty out of their return on investment calculus.

Either way, we need to right price energy if we have a snow ball's chance in hell to reach the ~2000 koe target.

5- Optimal Energy Utilization Requirement For Design (of everything)- This really feeds from the last point, policy (re)direction, as we have learned from recent US history. After reeling from energy shortages of 1970s, cars got smaller, housing insulation became vogue, solar energy became hip, a brand new US Department of Energy got established. Then in the 1980s and 90s the price of oil bottomed out again, SUVs became popular, McMansions started going up like mushrooms, new roads and highways sprung up everywhere to feed the new neighborhoods. Now we consume more fossil fuels than ever before, along with billions of people that can't wait to guzzle up just like us. Now a realization is beginning to set in, that optimal energy utilization should be a criteria in designing anything and everything. Did you notice that energy star logo on the sticker  on your computer, washing machine, toaster oven, refrigerator, vacuum cleaner, and pretty much everything else around the store. That is the US Government's seal of energy efficiency.
But believe it or not, there is no national or international policy in having optimal energy utilization as a design requirement anywhere. The big hogs, the industrial plants, the office buildings, the housing tracts, the car plants, and what they produce are  left to the manufacturers and marketers to design any which way they wish. And you can bet that cost and profitability are the main design criteria. In as much as energy efficiency becomes an added cost to the consumer so that it may impact the buy/don't buy decision, then it creeps in the design process. But as a rule, energy efficiency is not a criteria. Logically, it should be. But again, unless energy prices shoot up to the point that efficiency is forced in the design process as a requirement, I doubt if anything would change. But, should that happen as is predicted within the next couple of decades, then the schools that teach energy efficient design, the builders that practice energy efficient design and the consumers that buy energy efficient design, will have a leg up on everyone else. If you are already on the path of sustainability, then when the big squeeze or crash or whatever is predicted comes, then you should come out fine, hopefully..
 
Barriers to reaching the 2000 koe target- So having said all of that, how come non of these ideas are taking off? Do you live in a zero energy house? Do you live in a New Urbanist community? Do you own RECs? Do you vote against energy hog policies? Probably not? This might even be the first time you've heard of these ideas. Don't be ashamed, almost everybody else is in the same boat as you. Why is that? Why is it that these great, readily doable, economically beneficial ideas receive little more than lip service, if that? Why? It is that God-damned cultural momentum thing, again! We just keep doing things the way we have and are resistant to change unless nature, or economics puts a gun to our head (or wallet). And when we are forced to change, we bitch and moan and blame everybody other than ourselves. The above arguments are highly cerebral and, as we have seen, lower order circuits in our brains trump them every time. Lets look at some US examples.
Say a typical person's light bulb burns out and he goes to the store. There is a crap light bulb for say 1 dollar, and a fluorescent light bulb for $10. Is he going to think, oh my here's an idea, I'll change all of my 20 light bulbs in the house for $200 because it lasts 10 times longer and uses a third less energy? Not likely, he'll pay a dollar and be done with it, or at best he'll buy a $10 bulb to say he's gone green. Or say "Joe Hollywood" has achieved wealth and status, lives in a 15,000 square foot mansion. Is he going to trade down to a 1,500 square foot ZEH house? Unlikely! He'll buy a hybrid car and say he's gone green. So what if he pays $1000 a month in energy bills, he makes $80,000 a month. Or say, some guy lives in a 3,000 square foot house with a $500/month energy bill. Is he going to spend $50,000 and move out for 2 months to retrofit the house to a ZEH. Not likely, he makes $8,000 a month, so what's $500/month down the drain. Or, say a guy commutes an hour each way to work so his family can have a big house, his kids can have their own rooms, with a yard to play in, and a pool to swim in, and a wife to reign as the queen of the castle. Is he going to trade down to an over-priced townhouse in a congested city neighborhood with questionable schools, and get a permanently pissed-off wife in the bargain? Not likely. Or, is a politician going to campaign on high energy prices, disruption of routines, alienation of constituents? Not likely, he'll kiss a few babies, shake a lot of hands, give some lip service about lowering gas prices, and salute the flag.
You see, cultural momentum isn't  an abstract notion in a vacuum. It encompasses normal routines that have very deep traction, a way of life. As a rule it will resist any change until it is shocked, mortally. That is the nature of us, that is the way we are wired. So going from a ~8000 koe energy hog to a slim ~2000 koe sanity is quite doable theoretically and very difficult practically. Like I said before, when energy prices get high enough to mortally shock cultural momentum, or when global warming comes out of the text books and movie theaters to drown it, then things will change. That is projected to happen within the next couple of decades. In that time frame expect a huge push for coal and nuclear energy of the fission variety, because those are the only central/mass energy producing technologies on the table that can compete with oil and gas (in fact it is already happening).  

So what morphologies are likely to emerge? We've seen two tracks in this case. One is the current cultural momentum track and we can predict that most people (especially in the US) will stick with that. The other track is that of demand moderation. That leads to Zero Energy Houses, New Urbanist communities, responsible policies, that of knowledge workers with a good understanding of morphological flows, of themselves; they'll make a lot of money with relatively little energy overhead. It's already happening, there are people (mostly in Europe) pushing the low energy trend. In time, as price of energy rises and environmental calamities worsen, cultural momentum will weaken. Again, precedent predicts that cultural momentum doesn't just fade away, it likely will catastrophically crash. Then a new mindset will emerge. Meanwhile the action item that logic dictates is to switch tracks before catastrophes hit.

So in a nutshell, I don't expect a drastic push towards sane policies and practices. But, if we can muster a global movement that practices sustainable living and demonstrates that you can make a lot of money in the bargain, then memetic evolution sets in. People will look over their shoulders, see the Smiths next door, or in the next community, living the sustainable life: pay less for energy, live in a community with a sense of community, don't sit in traffic for hours on end, make as much money or more as they do, and are happier generally, then they start to think hey why not me? That maybe a reasonable outcome to hope for.

Underdeveloped Societies

The main challenge here is to create an infrastructure for producing massive numbers knowledge workers in short order. Presumably the immediate needs would be for the immediate necessities, clean water, food and shelter, security and education. The next level of priority would be to create the kinds of knowledge workers that would be of immediate relevance in impacting the local economy. The highest tier of importance would be the kind of workers that could participate in the global knowledge economy. And the goal is to do all of that while remaining below the ~2000 koe per capita target.

Lets face the facts, the primary responsibility for this kind of investment effort falls to the local governments themselves. And unless they are willing to step up to the plate there is not much anyone can do from the outside. Having said that, there are plenty of things that the developed world can do to help, once the locals do step up. A very promising initiative along those lines is the One Laptop Per Child initiative (www.laptop.org). It is aiming at building and distributing $100 internet connected laptops to the school children in underdeveloped societies.
And there are many global institutions, governmental and non governmental organizations that can and do help. These are as big and top level as the World Bank and as small and down to earth as Doctors Without Borders and Peace Core.

But the beautiful thing here is that we know how to do this. We have done it plenty of times, in the Pacific Rim Nations, in eastern Europe, now in China and India. There are sure-fire models of how this can be done because this has been done, over and over. All a given country has to do to set up a nascent knowledge worker economy is to emulate any one or more of the models implemented in South Korea, or Singapore, or Ireland, or Chile, the list goes on, take your pick. And the beautiful thing about that knowledge economy is that it grows like wild-fire, it has no theoretical bounds. All you have to do is to set up its nascent stages, set up an environment where it can evolve and just watch it blossom. We've already seen this done in half of the world, and the rest of the world can do it too by emulating the other half. So why isn't it being done?

Why is Africa in a permanent state of bloody misery? Why is Nigeria with all of it's natural resources stuck in permanent  poverty? Why is South America so underdeveloped? Is it that dreaded cultural momentum thing again? Sure! Is there more to it? You bet. Rifts! You'll find all of the social rifts we covered in the rifts section in all of these countries, racial rifts, tribal rifts, clan rifts, cultural rifts, economic rifts, political rifts, you name it, you'll find it. And you can bet your bottom dollar, not a damned thing will change until these rifts are closed. How do you do that? You build up the middle. And as we have seen, that is easy to say and really really hard to do. The stalwarts of the rifts will resist it, usually to the death, because these rifts are the basis of their very identity and livelihood. Look at Somalia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Guatemala, Columbia, Cuba, and the pathetic, bloody list goes on and on. It is the who is who list of misery. Can anything be done about this? Absolutely. But it is very very hard, because of the stalwarts of the rifts and their supporters.

So if you where a young person interested in world affairs, where would you start. Well, the are myriads of organizations large and small that focus on everything from high level economic development country wide, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, to issue-specific non-governmental organizations focusing is AIDS or malaria, or agriculture and education. But there are all over the place, there is no cohesive framework the ties all of these efforts together. It is as if fate gave an emotional tug at the heart of knowledge economies, springing out all manners of emotionally driven efforts in every which direction. Our analysis forgoes that and looks at patterns in knowledge economies that are consistent and work. There are two:
1- A System and Culture of Learning- The system includes schools and universities and post graduate programs. The culture of learning instills that learning is a constant, specially once one is in the work force. It is then that true learning and expansion of knowledge and its application in building products comes to fruition.
2- Economic Freedom- It is the economic freedom that creates the plethora of economic flow channels. The ones that are stable perpetuate, the ones that aren't disappear.

Even if a knowledge economy is nascent, if you have these two morphological markers consistently, systematically within the nascent sector, it will grow like wild fire. If we look at say South Korea and Ireland over the past thirty years, we will see the two morphological markers in action. The system and culture of learning has been established producing a vast cadre of knowledge workers and the economic freedom has generated a variety of economic flow channels that have created vast amounts of wealth. Subsequently in that time frame these two countries have gone from backwaters of Asia and Europe to fully fledged knowledge economies. And once that happens you naturally obtain a population that is mature enough to enact political democracies from the ground up.

As a counter example, all of the countries in the Horn of Africa have headlined in the disaster news reels as long as I can remember. They have been targets of relief efforts ever since, just to headline in brand new disaster news reels. The point is that if a society can establish even a nascent nucleus of a knowledge economy, it can grow like wild fire. If it doesn't then it is destined to remain in the bonds of its circumstances regardless of how much assistance is given to remedy its symptoms of misery. The lesson here is that all of the funds that are pored into emotional issues, as heart tugging as they may be, like watching starving children, or AIDS patients, or war torn mothers, will likely just keep people alive long enough to face another year of misery, unless the core causes can be remedied. Those core causes, in a nutshell, are backwards societies that are steeped in a culture of ignorance and are shackled by a system of poverty. And the remedies for those core causes are the core attributes of a knowledge worker economy, a system and culture of learning and economic freedom. We have seen over and over again that if those core attributes can be implemented, even at nascent scales, the ball can start to roll, and given time, and a lot of patience, knowledge worker economies can flourish.

And that appears to be the key in establishing knowledge economies in underdeveloped societies, time and patience. The hope is that if we are patient, in time these societies will come around, because it is a matter of social physics, memetic evolution. If the countries around them have burgeoning knowledge economies, sooner or later the people of the dysfunctional  economy will get the message. Sure the stalwarts of the rifts in the government don't want to have anything to do with it. But they will get more and more isolated over time, and eventually they die of old age, naturally. Economic pressure will be applied naturally. Knowledge of the outside world will permeate naturally. Meanwhile what can we do to accelerate that natural infusion? As a rule, what you want to do is to open as many channels as you can so that the evidence of the global knowledge economy permeates the dysfunctional country. That means increasing contact, not decreasing it. Increasing trade not decreasing it. Increasing people exchange, student exchange, information exchange. In short we should use every tool in our arsenal to create and widen the channels through which information about the workings and benefits of knowledge economy can permeate a dysfunctional society. Then patiently wait for it to take root, it will, it has to, it effects the reptile brain circuits of survival, the emotional circuits of economic happiness. It does work, we have seen it work in the dictatorial countries of the Pacific Rim, in the communist block, in South American dictatorships of both the right and left varieties. The key is patience. The local soil has to be ready to have the seeds of the knowledge economy take root. Even if it is just a nascent one, once you start the two morphological features of the knowledge economy, a System and Culture of learning and Economic Freedom, it will take hold, it is in our brain circuitry, we have seen it do so over and over. Then in time, once a culture of economic freedom has set in, once the culture of learning has set in, people will naturally adopt political freedom.