When it comes to our tax systems, we are living in caveman times

In the movie The Day After Tomorrow, survivors stranded in a library are easily persuaded to burn the multi-volume IRS Tax Code to stay warm. In this fictional scenario, the question one might ask before securing a match: Why did we wait until the end of the world?

In 2003, I wrote a paper titled “The Coming Collapse of Income Tax” in which I predicted that our current income tax system would collapse within 10 years. My prediction stands, even as the clock is running out of time. I am still firmly convinced the collapse is near.

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When laws of supply and demand are replaced with scarcity and abundance

Science fiction has long dreamed of a post-scarcity society, and it’s become quite common to hear discussions about transitioning from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. But, for all the good intentions and creative thinking, our limitations, both human and material, will be an ever-present force in society and a very necessary one. The trick is understanding which aspects of society will flow towards abundance and which ones will not.

Abundance as described by James Heskett, a professor emeritus at Harvard writing for Working Knowledge:  “It is a world where everything digital is available at all times. And because of the very low cost of maintaining and distributing inventory, everything is likely to remain available forever. … It is a world of non-zero-sum thinking.”

The basic assumption – that all things scarce can somehow be magically transformed into all things abundant – is nonsense. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unless the laws of physics are rewritten, certain things will never reach the level of what is called abundant.  That said, abundance is now happening in some very unusual ways.

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Radical transformations are brewing in the world’s oldest industry

Can better food create better people? Will a better food supply lead to healthier, stronger, better thinking people?

This is exactly the premise that is driving many of the advances in farming today.

To understand agribusiness in the future, consider a model that conveniently exists right now – in the human-food interface. Metabolism is a term used to describe the various chemical reactions that take place in every cell of the body. Intermediary metabolism is a vast web of interconnected reactions by the constituent parts of the cell.

Every metabolism is different. Gaining an ability to read and monitor a person’s metabolic reaction to the food eaten will cause the agriculture industry to evolve with great precision around the tiny niche demands of consumers.

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