Permanence

Towards A Permanent Society

Under God’s leadership, society realizes a long-term future. Planning horizons increase, life expectancy rises, problems subside, the labor burden lightens, discretionary time increases. Societies that posture against God become entangled in debt, crime, factionalism, war, pain, disease, disability, and premature death. Take one fork in the moral road, and the timeline extends forever. Take the nother fork, and time rolls up, mankind mires in a pit, and doom beckons. God is a Spirit, maker of all things, yet invisible to man, His most precious creation. During these latter days (when the Earth has been populated, built up, and civilized), it is possible to lose sight of the Invisible Almighty and drift away from His prudent guidance. Things of Earth have become beautified to the point of distracting souls from their moral and Spiritual roots. But there remains signals of misfit when humanity courses very far into dangerous waters. Such signs are God’s way of pricking the conscience, issuing a wake-up call for remedial action.

On such warning signal of need for positive change concerns permanence of the infrastructure with which we are decorating God’s Green Earth. In the U.S.A., the total value of infrastructure has been estimated at $37 trillion. As pre-eminent builders among nations, we like to think that our facilitation is a lasting work of pinnacle expertise, skill, and permanence. From this national assembly of Plant & Equipment we are churning out Gross Domestic Product of $19 trillion annually (50% of in-place generative assets).

If we contemplate the nation as a corporation, extant GDP can be interpreted as a rather high reinvestment flow or extreme maintenance rate. Typically, businesses bear maintenance costs around 10% of their Cost of Goods Sold. Plowing GDP back into Corporation America every year at the 50% rate of augmentation implies excess. Possible diagnoses are (1) the U.S.A. is functioning as a growth society, even though it is in a mature life-cycle stage, (2) existing infrastructure characterized as Plant & Equipment lacks permanence and has to be being replaced too frequently, (3) the U.S.A. is living indulgently and expensively (over-consuming), or the monetary systems in being mismanaged towards inflation.

We might alternatively contemplate the U.S. as a Nation House with the mortgage “paid-off.” Progressive home ownership entails mortgaging instruments enfolding escrow payments for insurance and taxes amounting to about 20% of total monthly mortgage payments. The escrow might be interpreted as the steady-state cost of a paid-up residence (i.e., 20% of what was borne during the structure’s cost-absorption phase). Exercising the business or home mortgage metaphor leads us to anticipate mature societies sustaining on 10%-20% of period cost for navigating the growth stage.

Embracing long-range planning towards distant time horizons as prudent societal management conditions “choice” or “public policy” upon the steady state and compels dedication to structural permanence. Among things thereby disqualified from national agenda would be (1) dependency upon sure-to-expire repository energy, (2) dependenccy on high-maintenance non-permanent transportation platforms and arteries (e.g., steel or plastic cars, over-paving the landscape, over-bridging), (3) super-cities that leave residents helplessly boxed into dependent living within small, landless spaces, with increasing vulnerability to debt, crime, drugs, gangsters, energy shortage, food shortage, etc.).

The time has come to refine and reform societal policy towards sustainable equilibrium. This includes fitness to a large mass of mankind, eschewing war, maintaining universal quality of life, and coordinating globally fair and efficient distribution of Earth resources. God believers know that the Living God resides in every human being. Those receiving earlier promotion to meaningful living standards by the grace of God incur an obligation to lift up all underdeveloped nations and peoples to a comparable standard of living. Equilibration cannot tolerate emergence of elitist economies, racism, indifference to the plight of distressed nations, destructive foreign policy, etc. In the context of the Information Age, Christian nations like the U.S.A. compose a “Parent Node” of info superiority that beckons info dissemination to “Child Nodes” on behalf of their enhancement and maturation. With modern marvels of communication like the Internet, the downhill flow of life-enhancing information is nearly costless. We could teach the world to sing (a popular 1968 Ray Conniff song and Coca-Cola commercial, lyric reproduced below), by first teaching the world to fitly live . . . with self-sufficient permanence.

I'd like to build the world a home And furnish it with love Grow apple trees and honey bees And snow-white turtle doves

I'd like to teach the world to sing In perfect harmony I'd like to hold it in my arms And keep it company

It's the real thing What the world wants today That's the way it will stay With the real thing

It's the real thing Won't you hear what I say? What the world needs today Is the real thing

I'd like to see the world for once All standing hand in hand And hear them echo through the hills For peace throughout the land

It's the real thing

I'd like to teach the world to sing In perfect harmony A song of peace that echoes on And never goes away

Songwriters: William M Backer / Roger F. Cook / Roquel Davis / Roger Greenaway

#Permanence #SteadyState