Man is not a Too Big To Fail

There is only one economy that truly endures. This economy never falters, and it doesn’t chase growth at any cost. It has functioned for billions of years, long before the emergence of humankind. It is Earth. Its components—its “agents,” to borrow a trendy term—are the oceans and the forests. Its currency is oxygen and sunlight. Its stock exchange is fundamentally based on the balanced allocation and responsible use of resources, creating a perfect equilibrium that fosters the production of ecosystems and sustains life for 8 million species. All these shareholders contribute to the planet’s economic system, each adding their own value.

In this authentic economy, there is no inflation, no vicious cycles of booms inevitably followed by the bursting of bubbles. Apart from the rare events of species extinction, its performance is stable, with a record that is overwhelmingly positive in the short, medium, and long term. Its air, its trees, its water may lack price tags, but their value remains immutable across millennia. Entirely based on sharing and recycling, this economy thrives because its inhabitants use only what they need and return any surplus. No bankers, no ATMs, no greed—it was designed to be immortal, unshakeable.

That is, until humanity tapped into all the reserves of Earth’s Central Bank, grafting onto it a dysfunctional economy, living well beyond its means through endless borrowing. Ignoring the very etymology of the word “economy,” we established the reign of limitless growth, as far as the eye can see, and the empire of taking without giving back. Unlike other species, which sometimes borrow resources when necessary but always repay, humanity offers nothing to the system except an excess of leverage, securitization, and clever inventions like quantitative monetary easing. Humanity has turned into an enormous open-air business where we are all compelled to accelerate, optimize, exploit, and grow without end. Our creed is to turn everything into merchandise stamped with an expiration date. The foundation of our system is depletion and replacement, including ourselves, as we have become commodities too. Except our accounts are in the red, our financial statement deeply and indisputably in deficit. The reason? We only take, and the balance of our debt to the real economy far exceeds our Gross Domestic Product.

After fostering inflationary crises, deflationary collapses, credit crunches, sovereign debt crises, speculative bubbles, and real estate booms—resorting even to devastating wars to self-regulate—we find ourselves unable to draw from Earth’s Central Bank, as its reserves are nearly depleted.

Due to massive debts accumulated over generations—especially the most recent ones—our sole and ultimate creditor is on the brink of bankruptcy. With Earth’s Central Bank no longer able to fund our leveraged growth at any level, our Ponzi-like mechanism teeters on the edge of collapse because exponential growth is a myth—or a nightmare.

I once read that if the Earth’s timeline were condensed into a single year, humanity would have appeared in the last half-hour of December 31, after 11:30 PM. It seems to me that only a catastrophic act of terrorism could inflict as much damage in such a short time.