economicmultipliers_154

Economic Multipliers (154)

Do you know what these are?

They help CREATE wealth in systems.

People who make ‘big and positive differences’ are an economic multiplier for everyone.

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Local and national news is routinely full of death, dying and all sorts of people who alter other people’s lives in negative ways.

Imagine how great it would be if all the refugees from Syria had homes, businesses and jobs they could go back to in an environment and nation where they and future generations could live in peace.

I wish I had a ‘solution’ to the refugee problem. Past generations in my family were immigrants to the United States. They came for greater opportunities for themselves and their children. At the time they came, the lands they settled were mostly unsettled. Their immigration had a great impact on the landscape as forests became houses and furniture and fuel to heat and cook by and land became pasture and crops for a nation’s food supply. In comparison to today’s political refugees fleeing to settled nations, their immigration had a lesser direct impact on the nation’s masses.

Many people worry about global warming. Wildfires today could be a greater source of global warming than the burning of fossil fuels. A lack of beavers and wetlands (particularly, in the United States, at elevation) coupled with changing rainfall patterns have changed many landscapes. In the absence of humans and buildings, charred lands and failed slopes ultimately find their own equilibrium and ‘rebalance’ themselves. Mankind is an ‘impatient’ master. Ready to ‘harvest’ any of nature’s bounties, he balks when nature takes things away.

Amidst all the problems in the world, Nicholas Locke in Brazil was recently featured describing how to build a rainforest in 8 years (How to Build a Rainforest / Bindu Mathur): He and others did. The land originally had non-native grasses and was being used for pastureland.

Just like Valer and Josiah Austin (featured in No. 88) who built over 20,000 rock dams to slow water down so it would have time to infiltrate and slow sediment down so it would have time to settle out, Nicholas Locke and his friends are showing us a path back.

The world is full of all kinds of people. Some force people to flee their homelands. Others work to make their homelands great places to live … for everyone.

We are ‘lucky’ that so many people in the world help make ‘big and positive differences’ on our behalf.

We are luckier still when we can find ways to help.