Lile Mo is building a book at Substack, deriving lessons for civilization by telling how each Chinese city used its own resources and skills to monopolize an area of commerce.
From her latest note:
The highest value land is not found; it is made.
This transformation is not accidental; it is the result of the systematic application of the Barren to Bounty Principle, a strategy of turning absolute constraint into an economic engine through targeted technological and ecological intervention.
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We used to know and apply those principles. Starting with Nixon’s envirobomb in 1975, Wall Street wiped out our cultural and political memory while it bombed our cities and farms down to bedrock.
The New Deal, of course, understood and applied the principles rediscovered by China. David Lilienthal, head of TVA, wrote a book using the same method of focusing on one city or region at a time.
Here he discusses Barren to Bounty:
Responsible industries were transforming their pollution into energy or new products LONG before EPA forced them to stop all production. Modern corporations love EPA because it forces them to move all production to China, eliminating those pesky jobs and products and workers. No negative externalities, just pure abstract Share Value.
Polistra's Mill 