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Hans, can you select the front you use at Substack? In gmail it is not so readable so I tend to revert to the linkedin update version..

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“the 'age of destruction' is entrenched in our economic frameworks,”

The “age of destruction” can also be described as the transition strategy of Growth through Creative Destruction.

This transition strategy that monopolizes our common sense today is the special pleading for the special interests of professionals expert in the capital markets, which depend on volatility and growth in share prices to deliver liquidity that market participants demand as a condition of their participation, a condition that market professionals must honor if the want to make money making markets for shares. Which they do.

The more liquidity in the markets, the more fees and profits for market professionals.

Growth in share prices comes ultimately from increases in transaction volume, measured in prices paid in money from one period of measurement to the next, without any consideration of the nature of those transactions, or their consequences.

Instead we are assured that more will always be better. Axiomatically.

So the formula for a good economy is Growth in GDP to drive Growth in NPV to drive Growth in NAV to drive Growth in AUM to drive Growth in fees and profits for market professionals which, we are promised (without evidence and in defiance of lived experience) will always be better for everyone.

Underneath simple numerical growth in transaction volumes, however, are qualitative changes in the circumstances and possibilities for doing the work of learning about ourselves and the world about us, and putting that learning into action through enterprise and technology to offer choices to everyday people for living our best lives under the circumstances by using technology to solve the everyday problems of everyday living everyday: the flourish and fade of popular choice from among competing technologies as times change and humanity evolves prosperous adaptations to life’s constant changes.

In the capital markets this flourish and fade shows up as the boom and bust of Creative Destruction.

In his recently released 2024 Annual Letter, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, tells us, “in Finance, there are basically two choices”: banks (debt) and the capital markets (equity, and also debt).

If Larry Fink is right, we are doomed to bust our way destructively into a new reality of being human at a planetary scale in the 21st Century, and beyond. The capital markets are in charge, and what way the capital markets finance transition is through Growth and Creative Destruction.

There is nothing central banks can do to change that.

There is nothing governmental policymakers can do about that.

There is something pensions can do.

Pensions can stop financing Growth through Creative Destruction in the Capital Markets, and start financing Prudent Stewardship of the Flourish and Fade of learning and technology in the real, physical commercial economy of enterprise and exchange for sharing an abundance of technology solutions to the everyday problems of everyday people living our best lives under the circumstances as circumstances change, every day, to innovate a safe and dignified house for humanity within built environments of Urban, Rural, Curated and Left-Alone landscapes along the creative edge of a constantly changing Human partnership with Nature, choosing new beginnings from time to time, and over time, as times change, to fit the changing times, shaping the right enterprises for shaping the right technologies for shaping the right choices for shaping the right economy for shaping a cohesive society and keeping it ongoing in shared hope for a dignified future quality of life for all.

There is something central banks can do about that.

There is something governmental policymakers can do about that.

There is something we each can all do about that.

We can convene and contribute to a new globally curated conversation about the purpose of the pension promise, the powers of pension fiduciaries, the possibilities for supplying pension money to enterprise and the accountabilities of pension fiduciaries for supplying money to the right enterprises in the right way to shape the right technologies for shaping the right choices for shaping the right economy for shaping a cohesive society and keeping it ongoing in shared hope for a dignified future quality of life for some, directly, that must also be, of necessity, hope for a dignified future quality of life for us all, consequently.

Because right now, they are not doing that.

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Your best to date !

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