A regenerative economy for a regenerative world.

We live in a regenerative world — it adapts to change, to challenge, and even to attack: it has systems that are anti-fragile if they are allowed to run their preset genetic programs. Life begets life, spreading and supporting the creation of more life. And isn’t that the ideal economy, one that continuously grows and provides exponential benefit to the earth, its peoples, and the future care of all?

We ALL want to live in a world where making money helps other people and the planet by DESIGN — Shouldn’t it be NATURAL yet we all have this stigma against earning a lot of money because we ALL KNOW How the degenerative economy works: it enslaves, appropriates, exploits, and destroys in order to create new wealth. You have to liquidate natural resources and human capital into products and labor to to get out of the rat race… or that’s the story we’ve been told, but do we have to drink their Koolaid?

Economies are just social contracts & History has shown time and time again that the social agreements CHANGE dramatically, quickly, and irrevocably CONSTANTLY, and we live in EXPONENTIAL TIMES. It holds truer today than it ever has before & it is daunting — especially as a parent.

Where will the jobs be for them in 10 years?

They are expecting 20–50% of the jobs to be GONE in the coming decades while populations are expected to continue to rise and wealth to shift outside the reach of our children. We can no longer rely upon the traditional educational, collegiate, generalized educational, liberal arts pathway — our kids and frankly ourselves no matter who we are RIGHT NOW need skills appropriate for the times and the ability to generate their own wealth independent of the established business and government tracks. They also need work with real meaning, purpose, & freedom — they’ve been suffocated by decades of meaningless education & busywork, depression & loneliness is high & rising, suicide rates are high & rising, and drug usage is taking more and more lives — we have to say NO MORE. This STOPS HERE. Many places where I grew up are too dangerous to go to now — entire towns and malls I once went to when I was a young parent now stand abandoned and derelict.

All those areas can come back — all that abandoned land, infrastructure, and space can be stewarded, productive, and profitable. Market gardeners, mycologists, herbalists, naturopathic doctors, fibershed businesses, and cannabis growers are flipping farming on its head and showing how much good can be done while making exponentially more money than traditional farmers in a small space through regenerative means, starting small, & scaling into a full-time business — some with a full team of employees. 100k in market vegetables to millions in mycology & cannabis. Those communities can be reborn regeneratively.

Imagine this…

It’s 10 years from today — you still remember this talk and where you are right now because you took the initiative and invested in the regenerative economy by investing in yourself. You made a plan. Quit your dead end degenerative job & you started small & built your dream from the soil up, doing the right thing every step of the way, zero waste & benefiting all — you see it all as part of the journey, part of your integrity, part of who you are, and today is the day you can step back and CHOOSE whether to run your businesses yourself or take time to do WHATEVER ELSE YOU WANT TO DO: Vacationing, maybe visiting Spas & health retreats, perhaps quality Time with Family & Others, or for you it’s Investing in Others. You look out upon your life as a testament to your dedication to showing care for people, the planet, and the future, and it is FULL of Possibility, Freedom, & Choice because you chose join early & help create the Regenerative Economy.

But if we don’t step into the regenerative economy we will witness the total loss of the Nature as we know it. All the animals we knew and learned their names and sounds as babbling babies will be GONE — how will we FEEL? Looking out from our homes at a world barren and empty of life, a green world gone harsh and cruel. We’ve done it before: the Fertile Crescent, the Loess Plateau, the Sahara, Australia… but the whole world is at stake now — and it’s not just nature, it’s the soil, our own food source and hope for the next generation. We may witness the end of all life as we know it if we do not return to a regenerative relationship with nature.

Now is the time for an economy that not only serves people but serves the planet on into the future exponentially spreading meaning, purpose, wealth, and anti-fragility holistically. Our current economy is falling apart, our culture and society are collapsing, our education system largely leads to nowhere, and in decomposition, in composting the old ingredients that are now dead or dying, we can create something new, we can use that experience, that understanding of what we DON’T Want to guide us to a New Way, a Regenerative Way, where we can make money meaningfully, ethically, regeneratively.