Basically, for any complex to be sustainable needs to have a balance between two factors: resilience and efficiency. These two factors can be calculated from the structure of the network that is involved in a complex system. A resilient, efficient system needs to be diverse and interconnected. On the other hand, diversity and interconnectivity decrease efficiency. Therefore, the key is an appropriate balance between efficiency and resilience.

The Future of Money: Creating New Wealth, Work, and a Wiser World

When the banks create the money, they don't create the interest. They send you into the world to compete with everybody else to get the second $100,000 that never was created and bring it back to them. So if we're in a world with zero-growth population, goods, services, and money, the problem would be obvious.

Our [American] money system is structurally brittle. It doesn't matter if you put a very clever guy or a stupid guy at the wheel. The clever guy will take a half hour to have an accident, and the stupid guy will take ten minutes.

Basically, for any complex to be sustainable needs to have a balance between two factors: resilience and efficiency. These two factors can be calculated from the structure of the network that is involved in a complex system. A resilient, efficient system needs to be diverse and interconnected. On the other hand, diversity and interconnectivity decrease efficiency. Therefore, the key is an appropriate balance between efficiency and resilience.

Money is created through bank debt. When you go for a mortgage through a bank, they give you $100,000 to buy a house and basically send you out into the world to bring back $200,000 in the next twenty years. The first $100,000 is principal, and the second is interest.

Look at any financial institution, at any bank. They're all photocopies of each other. There's no diversity of institutions and even less diversity of currency. Therefore, just as you say its very logical that an ecosystem like this will collapse, it's very predictable a monetary system like this will collapse, too. And it hasn't finished collapsing, by the way.