Inspiring Your Authentic Week

Posted: 02 Feb 2009 02:04 AM CST

Swirling commodity and currency prices, banks that won't lend, insurance that does not ensure, imperiled ecology and jobs becoming rare.

But do we actually want these systems to recover?

It seems that our current economic distress was largely caused by a combination of energy price speculation (remember last summer's oil prices) and the over leveraging of already unsafe debts (banks using debts as security for further borrowing).

All of this created a bubble worth more than twice the value of the global economy - according to some estimates. The economy was awash with money based on debt and rising property value. Now the bubble has burst there is far, far less money in the system.

But money is a human invention, created simply to facilitate the exchange of energy between people and organisations. There has been no bubble in available human energy and there is no less human energy available now.

As our industrial age systems have puffed themselves up to their hubristic peak and burst, they have shown us that we have to find another way. We do not want to rebuild these unreliable systems, we want new systems that are more reliable and more in tune with the times.

In the midst of all of the fall out of exploding bubbles the seeds of a new economy are germinating. Some are real innovations, some are a return to more personal ways of doing things.

Here are some examples:

Electric and solar powered cars promise an alternative to reliance on oil. With the grip of the US Motor/Oil lobby now released, I believe that electric cars will happen with amazing speed - within five years. See these video clips for Betterplace, Aptera and Venturi.

Non cash alternatives like Timebanks and Lets schemes which enable people to trade and share without relying on cash.

Community based banking systems like Zopa and Grameen.

Anecdotally I have also heard of people selling houses and offering to loan money to the purchaser to help them buy it.

I have heard of businesses offering the credit (and effectively the credit insurance) to customers to keep trade moving.

True value resides in relationships, ingenuity, innovation and honest hard work. No credit crunch, recession or even depression can diminish true value. For more on this take a look at my free Authentic Wealth e-book.

Our opportunity lies not in waiting for the old systems to recover, but in inventing new systems based on sustainable value, honour, trust and authenticity.

If you would like to have a chat about these ideas and how I might be able to help you or your organisation innovate to the next level - drop me a line - neil@authenticis.com

Please also note that my neil@authenticbusiness.co.uk e-mail address is no longer working. Please be sure to use neil@authenticis.com and to update your spam filters to accept messages from neil@authenticis.com.

With love

nx

Neil Crofts
Inspirer
authenticis
inspiration innovation motivation

+44 (0)7775 658534
neil@authenticis.com
www.authenticis.com