Entitlement is The Guilt Trip of Extraction

EXTRACTION: THE ACTION OF TAKING SOMETHING

Humans have spent the past 200,000 years building an existence upon extraction. There are those who extracted things from the planet just to survive - need, and there are those who extracted things from the planet and from other humans for greed.

A term that is often used with Extraction is "Stranded Assets" i.e. reserves of "things" (normally hydrocarbons) that due to advances in technology will never be used. However, the real stranded assets of extraction are people.

Extraction does not begin and end with things from the ground as through the centuries we have also extracted:

• Land from indigenous peoples
• Free labor and the souls of entire segments of our communities
• Money and assets from marginalized community segments
• Hope from hundreds of millions of people
• Personal information from billions of people to sell ads
• Clean air from our atmosphere
• Purity from our waters

Plus more.

When modern humans first stood upright, they used what they needed, and 100% of the commons was owned by 100% of the people. Today, we extract way more of some things than we need, plus, 100% of what was the commons is now owned by .1% of the people.

We are at the very tip of the pyramid and there is not really anywhere left to go. The diagram attached was produced 6 years ago so you can decide for yourself how accurate the pyramid is. The future is of course yet to be decided.

It is time to change the shape of humanity and to stop extracting every ounce we can from our planet and segments of our society. Many conservatives will have already stopped reading by now thinking the solution is some kind of "bleeding heart liberal" effort to give more stuff away. They could not be more wrong.

Entitlement has not worked, and by the way, I am yet to meet a person in the classes I teach who wants it. It is time to stop extracting and time to start inserting so that we can provide every person with at least the opportunity to empower themselves, to become self-sufficient, and proud. I know numerous young, brilliant, and weathly people who are directing their intellectual capital to design ways in which to deploy their financial capital for the direct benefit of humanity by empowering those that need an opportunity.

When you teach the classes I teach, you very quickly learn that the people who live the problems have the solutions, they just need to be given the knowledge, information, tools, contacts, context, and yes capital to bring them to life.

To me, entitlement is the guilt trip result of extraction and it is time both were stopped. Change the latter to insertion and the former will take care of itself. Here is some work that we have done that proves our belief https://www.inplaceimpact.com/impact-economics.

Ps I have also added a diagram as to why the shape of global finance is a pyramid. We are all taught higher risk, higher reward, but are we being taught that by those who live by opposite standards? You decide where most of the risk and rewards fall.