World society has become addicted to economic growth.

Every age and every civilization has their story tellers. It doesn't matter if you have a culture based on oral traditions where the stories are passed down generationally, or if you have the written word and it's preserved for posterity--every culture in every age has a story to tell, whether that story is political, economic, or religious in nature.

But what if one of those stories is based on false assumptions? What if one of those stories is based on fallacy and not actual reality? If your culture is listening to that siren song and basing its entire existence on it, then you have an illusion and paradigm that is going to run head on into the brick wall of the real world. What do you do then?

Well, for our guest on Off the Grid Radio today, you confront that bogus story, you replace it with fact, and you meet the challenges head on. Dr. Chris Martenson joins Bill Heid today on Off the Grid Radio to discuss the fallacies in the economic story of our age.

World society has become addicted to economic growth. We base our entire economies on the need of exponential economic growth and when that stagnates, the wheels fall off the wagon, the wagon burns to the ground, the banks go under, and we're left with one big mess. We base our wealth building on tertiary wealth (intangibles such as stock and paper money) that has no real value unless the systems of primary and secondary wealth exist (the resources and marketability of what the earth provides).

Unfortunately, those resources are limited and finite.

We are a throw-away society living in a world that increasingly demands conservation and management of assets in order to sustain existence. According to Dr. Martenson, our industrial economy is hitting the limits of sustainability or extraction rates. Those communities that are going to fare well in this new economic paradigm are those that are prepared and organized, those who have realistically looked at the way things are and will be in the future, and are willing to adjust and prepare for the systems that will be most impacted by the new economic realities--those systems being food and fuel.

We have long swung away from a skills-based workforce for a service-based one. The pendulum is beginning to swing the other way, and those people who cultivate skills for a sustainable lifestyle are the ones that will survive the best in the new world that is just around the corner.

Please join us on Off the Grid Radio for a fascinating hour with our guest, Dr. Chris Martenson.

http://www.offthegridnews.com/2011/12/16/are-we-addicted-to-economic-growth-episode-080/

Regards,
The Off the Grid Radio Team