Many years ago, I read some book. I no longer remember the title or plot, just some little snippet from it.
Some group of outsiders arrives in a small town and the town has crazy strict rules about requiring everyone to wear "the latest styles." Of course, these newcomers aren't dressed in accordance with that rule because it's a weird local thing, so they get in trouble with the law.
The reason for the rule was some crazy machine the town couldn't shut down that produced fabric on a continuous basis. The fabric that came out of it changed colors and patterns and so forth on a regular basis, so then everyone in town ran around like crazy trying to keep up with sewing new styles using the latest type of fabric thus awful machine had spit out.
The issue was that if you didn't continuously provide the machine with new material, it began sucking in everything around it. This meant that feeding the machine was a survival issue for locals and they warped all their lives around what this machine was doing.
So one of the newcomers runs the fabric output of the machine over scaffolding and loops it back to the start of the machine. He effectively turned it into a kind of oroboros -- a thing eating its own tail.
The character in question remarked at some point that the locals would occassionally need to add a little new material but this should largely resolve the issue and everyone could go back to having a normal life instead of running around like crazy trying to make use of the latest fabrics as if to justify the existence of this pointless machine.
I think this is the essence of the butterfly economy: There are economic processes from our past still making life really crazy and we no longer have to let that continue.
We can find our way out of it, if we will look for an exit.
Some group of outsiders arrives in a small town and the town has crazy strict rules about requiring everyone to wear "the latest styles." Of course, these newcomers aren't dressed in accordance with that rule because it's a weird local thing, so they get in trouble with the law.
The reason for the rule was some crazy machine the town couldn't shut down that produced fabric on a continuous basis. The fabric that came out of it changed colors and patterns and so forth on a regular basis, so then everyone in town ran around like crazy trying to keep up with sewing new styles using the latest type of fabric thus awful machine had spit out.
The issue was that if you didn't continuously provide the machine with new material, it began sucking in everything around it. This meant that feeding the machine was a survival issue for locals and they warped all their lives around what this machine was doing.
So one of the newcomers runs the fabric output of the machine over scaffolding and loops it back to the start of the machine. He effectively turned it into a kind of oroboros -- a thing eating its own tail.
The character in question remarked at some point that the locals would occassionally need to add a little new material but this should largely resolve the issue and everyone could go back to having a normal life instead of running around like crazy trying to make use of the latest fabrics as if to justify the existence of this pointless machine.
I think this is the essence of the butterfly economy: There are economic processes from our past still making life really crazy and we no longer have to let that continue.
We can find our way out of it, if we will look for an exit.