" Paradigm " is a word that refers to the grand unifying ideas that underpin our understanding of a phenomenon - perhaps all phenomena. Paradigms shift slowly as the old "believers" die and a new generation is open to new ways of thinking. "Understanding" in this case is mostly about language: about how we talk to each other. If two people  subscribe to the same paradigm what they say to each other is intelligible - it "makes sense". Challenges to the paradigm always come in the form of impertinent questions. Why impertinent? Because the question comes out of left field. It makes no sense. A successful challenge to the paradigm expands and revises language itself, so that it becomes possible to speak in new ways that "make sense". In the new paradigm, the old language is no longer intelligible. For example, we don't expect to see references to " phlogiston " or the " luminous aether " in modern scientific journa...

My thoughts about the four economies have emerged from thinking about money and debt. Some writers, especially Graeber  do a great job of sketching what money is (debt) and prying the concept away from "value". Graeber makes dire predictions about the fate of the world based solely on the nature of money. Graeber seems to think that, by the very nature of money, debt expands to choke the "real" economy - a phenomenon he calls "debt deflation". I think that Graeber's misunderstands the way that money works and its relationship to the other economies we live in, most obviously value (which is constantly being created and destroyed) and information (which mostly grows at an exponential rate, contributing to a growing percentage of the value of everything we buy). However, Graeber's analysis is helpful in pointing out that many transactions involving money and the creation of debt take place entirely in the "money universe" without inc...