jacob wrote:There are two solutions.
The third solution would be to take off the other three legs.
The funny thing is that I was actually thinking about sex, more than money or water on a permaculture project, in terms of "solved problems", because the fact that there is a shortage of young women out by Axel's project came up in the podcast, and I was musing that even though Axel and I would both objectively rate our sex lives at the moment as towards bleak for very different reasons (no shortage of old guys in my locale), both of us would also likely largely regard the realm of sexuality as generally being a "solved problem" in our lives. So, then I started thinking about how this might or might not prove analogous in terms of other stocks/flows, such as money and water.
Anyways, this got me thinking about how most needs/wants are cyclical, and in that sense "unsolvable." Water isn't a problem, it's a solution to the cyclical problem of thirst or irrigation. Money isn't a problem, it's a solution to the cyclical problem of "head tax" or "stuff I want/need to buy." Reasonably attractive men with some old school moves aren't a problem....etc.
When I was 16 in the big '80s, hair care was a cyclical problem which required 40 minutes of my life energy to solve every morning. Theseadays, I spend maybe 5 minutes/day of my life energy on hair care, so relatively a "solved problem." If my only need for the solution of money was "head tax", I would similarly regard it as a "solved problem", because it would require so little of my life energy to "solve again" through the method of "doing work other people want me to do" on a cyclical basis. I don't have to go to the extreme of shaving my head for hair care to be a "solved problem." Obviously, like a member of the leisure class in previous eras, I could even use money as a solution to hair care and pay somebody else to do it for me. Or I could use money to have water shipped in to my desert permaculture project or to meet my sexual needs, etc. But, I also don't have to go to the extreme of having enough money invested to pay somebody to brush my hair for me in the eventuality I lose the use of my arms, or to provide me with a gigolo in the eventuality that I completely lose my charms. IOW, there's also a level on which money provides too universal of a solution (pay some other human to do it for me) to be regarded as a solved problem or solution independent of other problems and solutions. For example, the challenge of solving problems through frugality still remains even if/when funds are adequate to solve the problems by paying another human(s), and pretty much any problem can be reframed as either an intriguing challenge and/or something I'm not rating as a huge concern at this juncture. "How can I creatively redesign/repurpose this 3 legged table?!" or "Huh, guess I'm eating on the floor now. Gotta get back to that interesting math problem and/or return text from reasonably attractive old guy #3."
