Some readers of Cairns are particularly interested in exploring the analogy between the flow of water in a drainage and the flow of money in our culture. Here I mull two intertwining aspects of this analogy.
The first aspect is the wisdom of keeping as much water high in the drainage by helping the rain soak in and by slowing down the rate at which water flows down and converges into more concentrated flows. This is wise for several reasons.
1. Photosynthesis requires water. The more water absorbed into an area, the more of the solar energy touching the area can be photosynthetically absorbed into the cycles of life so that more energy is available for creating possibilities.
2. Water transpiring through plants will return to the sky to settle again as dew or rain or snow somewhere else. Only 11” of our rain comes directly from the sea. All the rest is that gift being recycled again and again, mostly through transpiration. Fresh water “creates” life and life “creates” fresh water – one of the strongest components of the Upward Spiral. This transpiration happens strongest where fresh water has the greatest surface area contact with plants – in the soil of the slopes as groundwater, not in the streams and lakes as surface water. So keeping the water high in the drainage leads to more rain for the entire system.
3. As rain runs off, it converges which allows it to flow ever faster, converging yet faster and faster. This fast flow becomes erosive, carrying away the precious soil which absorbs and detains the gift of fresh water. When rain is slowed and absorbed, the soil is protected.
Second aspect, less mulled over in terms of money, very haunting in terms of my field work, is that the shape of the flow and the shape of its channel co-evolve. They shape each other through a spiral dance of feedback. “Shape of flow” is not only how much water flows through the channel but in what distribution pattern. A one hour rain on a parking lot, for example, will have a flow that reaches a peak in about 5 minutes, stays high until the end of the rain, and then subsides to almost zero five minutes later. Also, about 100% of the rain will have flowed away. On the other hand, only a fraction of such a rain falling on a grassy field will run off and most of that runoff will be in a gradual seeping away over several days. The parking lot flow would graph as a sharp spike. The grassy field’s flow would graph as a long, low sustained curve. That is what I mean by the shape of the flow.
High peak flows generate peak velocities which generate exponentially peak erosive powers. So the parking lot flow, though it flows for only one hour, has enormous erosive power which blasts a gully to carry that energy, a gully which then sits empty and dry, bare earth for all the rest of the time. The grass field runoff, however, has so little erosive power that it will wear away a slightly depressed channel. If the seepage lasts a few days, this channel will probably vegetate. This vegetation will force the flow over a broader surface, slowing it even more. The vegetation will probably trap floating debris, an accumulation that counteracts the slight erosion.
The gully cuts down into the water table, draining the drainage faster. The downcutting gully steepens all the slopes around it, pulling other runoff towards it like a magnet. The shape of the flow and the shape of the channel co-evolve.
So, what does this have to do with the flow of money? Look what happened to banks in the last two decades. Banks used to be a local resource. For those people with the opportunity to save, banks were a place you could “invest” locally and receive interest. For those with a dream needing financing, the bank was the place you can borrow that money. The local community of savers and borrowers enriched each other. But recently banks have become gullies. With their penalties and charges and irresponsible giving of credit, they suck money out of the local economy and chute it to large, convergent, distant financial institutions that spin off paper speculative products. Financial institutions downstream love this inflow. But upstream, more and more people are sliding into debt and stress, getting hammered by overdraft charges and innumerable ways the banks have changed the rules to extract as much of a person’s money flow as possible rather than working with the community to help each person’s flow of money increase.
It’s in our mutual interest to strengthen local economies. Phase out tax mechanisms that give corporations an economic advantage over local business. Income taxes should be progressive with one goal being to recycle money that has flowed further downstream back upstream. This is not done from a point of view of “poor people good, rich people bad.” It is also not done in terms of “income inequality.” It’s done in the spirit of good gardening like composting your kitchen scraps. Keep cycling things as close to the source as possible, slowing down the rate at which the Second Law pulls things downstream. Just as water nourishes photosynthesis on the slopes, so we want to keep wealth high in the drainage. As wealth flows downstream, it loses its potential energy. One of the patterns of history is that as more of a culture’s wealth converges on fewer people, that amassed money tends to go more and more into speculative financial papers. For everyone’s sake, we want to keep the wealth spread out high in the drainage. The more that remains upstream, the more the entire drainage benefits. When we see ourselves working together rather than trying to have more than the other, we see the world with a different spirit that enables possibilities. And as the shape of the flow of money changes, the shape of the channels through which the money flows will also change. They will revegetate. Watching channel shapes inevitably change and revegetate as a result of my Gaia work upstream is one of the pleasures of my work.
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