Compared to a plan, which may be thought of as a string of actions, subject to complete failure if it breaks, a strategy is better thought of as a web of actions.

choices that maximize personal utility

If the only means of repayment is a job, this means that working must also last at least 30 years. This way, a single decision just after leaving school turns into a lifelong commitment that can be very hard to escape, given that the borrowed money has been spent on increasing consumption rather than increasing production.

It's much easier to say that something can't work than it is to find a way to make it work.

A group of people or a single person get a bright idea which is completely different from all other ideas. If the idea has merit, other people pick up the idea and create their own personal variations on the idea, perhaps giving different names to the same object, or perhaps using different methods to arrive at the same conclusion. These people com

For instance, in my experience one towel will last four years if it's the only one in use. Consequently, a set of four towels in rotation will last a good 16 years. Similarly, if t-shirts can be washed 100 times,61 are only worn once between washings, one is worn every day, and you have 15 of them--which shouldn't be a problem if you participate in

For our modern purposes, the fields can perhaps be grouped into seven generic fields--physiological, economical, intellectual, emotional, social, technical, and ecological.

Barriers represent a cost which must be paid. The willingness to pay depends on a combination of dissatisfaction with the present situation, vision of the future situation, and the practicality of changing from the present situation to the future situation. This will to change can be represented by the volume of the pyramid in the figure.

In many ways, modern society seems to be using a slightly more complicated version of a Keynesian economic stimulus scheme where the economy is stimulated by having some people dig a hole, then having others fill it back in the next day. We create problems, spend the next day solving them, and then claim we have made progress. We're even following