Yes. For many years, I have imagined different types of living environments, such as “Tunnel Under.” Tunnel Under living has to do with living underground. It would be a last resort to escape from environmental threats. As a child, I did imagine these events would occur in my life time. Sorry to say, most scientists, the EPA and many other governments believe human induced environmental threats are of eminent danger. (see Global Warming: Biggest Health Threat and EPA: Greenhouse Gases Pose Threat to Public Health)

Over the last several years, I’ve considered many designs and expressions of these ideas. First, I started planing to move into the basement. The more I thought about it, the more I dreaded it. Right now, my office is on the top floor. I look out over the tree tops. It is sort-of like being in a tree house. The view is beautiful. The feeling is uplifting. How could I move into the basement? Waaa! The reality of an increasing temperature in my working area has forced me to take action — forcing me to turn my dreams into reality.

Ah ha! That is when another brighter vision occurred. I had to think of a way to prolong my stay in the loft. Imagine your dream house. Instead of tunneling down into a dark hole, why not utilize being exposed to the elements. I could use my roof for light and water to help solve the problem of human induced climate change. — living in a waterfall. Now, that would be a beautiful thing. However, I couldn’t figure out how that would ever be real (at least not for the masses.)

The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of living in a waterfall. Were there is a will, there is a way! The Waterfall House

Based on The Economics Of Y2K

Abstract: The Tunnel Under Thesis

Planning and control are two traditional functions of management. Once a plan has been determined, it must be carried out. The cost involved in controlling the plan is dependent on the quality of the plan. The quality of the planning function depends largely on the ability to forecast events and trends with accuracy and precision.

Forecasting methodologies, such as qualitative analyses, time series analysis & projection, and econometric models, are widely used throughout U.S. businesses and governmental agencies.

The chaotic relationship of three key factors is likely to make traditional forecasting tools and methods increasingly unreliable:

* control of digital distribution
* security
* pollution

Tunneling & Veiling
The result of these three ingredients in the stew will likely result in a figurative, as well as literal tunneling underground. Another term for this type of activity is decentralization.
Control Of Digital Distribution
The forecast for digital distribution suggests that existing systems for controlling data communications and digital distribution are failing. As the owners of the traditional systems attempt to maintain control, they will actually be the driving force in developing underground technologies.

Examples include peer-to-peer networks and music swapping websites.
Security
When a government wages a war against drugs, or terror, or any other globally organized illicit activity, there is often a significant amount of collateral damage to their own citizens, to their infrastructure and even their system of governance.

The Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Department are examples of the U.S. Federal Government’s attempt to control based on their forecasting methods. However, the side-effects actually force all people, both good and bad, to decentralize their activities. The result is encrypted data tunnels and underground communication networks.

State governments are experiencing more difficulty controlling their tax receipts (in large part due to digital distribution of goods and services). As states try to control taxes based on your location, they will encourage the development of decentralized business systems.

This complicates the already inadequate and convoluted accounting systems in use by municipal government for over a century. For example, until 1985, many municipal governments did not have a fixed asset accounting system, nor did they have even an accurate inventory of all their assets. Therefore, the taxing authorities had no factual basis on which to tax their constituents.

Pollution
Pollution (greenhouse gases being a large threat) is causing irreversible climatic change. Some people consider the clearing of land to be a form of pollution. Whether you call it pollution or not, deforestation certainly compounds the global warming problem. Again, chaos theory suggests that meteorological forecasting will be affected in much the same way as economic forecasting. And, since the weather is so closely tied to the economy, the intensity in volatility is likely to be felt in both areas. [Note: although the Earth's average temperature may be rising slightly, the volatility for any given location is rising dramatically.]

Global warming, insect borne viri, nuclear fallout, reforms to flood insurance, and other weather related phenomena suggests a more literal tunneling under.

Though the public did not feel much of an impact the day of the new millennium, in fact, the Y2K problem was real. In hindsight, the reason the public did not notice was because the problem had been fixed prior to the rollover date. Governments and businesses spent more time and money correcting the problem than any other instance in history. It was the U.S. governments biggest financial outlay since the Vietnam War.

Our interest was not so much about the technical problem being corrected, rather, how the problem was being corrected. How would spending all the money correcting the problem impact society? How could we forecast the economy?

The conclusion we came to:
though spending all the money would help solve the short term problem, it would cause larger longer term problems.

In large part, we had observed that massive amount of funds were either being misallocated or being allocated toward inferior substitutes. Often, consultants were being paid for inaccurate information which is not a productive allocation of resources. Often, computers with reliable operating systems were being replaced with computers running on less reliable operating systems. (i.e. DOS being replaced with Microsoft) This type of “throwing good money at bad” inevitably caused an exponential “snowball” effect. Thus, our economic forecast was for deteriorating conditions.

One of the main reasons we conducted this study was to apply the results to what we considered a larger problem — forecasting the economics of global warming. As it turned out, the forecast was/is deadly accurate.

The Economics Of Y2K
(a cost and benefits study of the year 2000 computer problem)

Abstract.
Pursuant to the work of Wonnacott and Wonnacott (An Introduction To Microeconomics, McGraw-Hill) in the area of technology, growth and employment, how does economic theory explain Y2K?

Once an economy puts it’s unemployed back to work, there is a limit to what growth can occur without severe consequences. One of the only known methods to grow an economy past this limit, is to improve technology. When technology is improved, workers may be able to become more productive.

However, improvements in technology may result in a lower demand for workers. “For example, when new weaving machinery was introduced during the industrial revolution, some textile workers lost their jobs.”

The Costs and Benefits of Y2k

* Benefits
Some older computer systems and networks have been replaced with more productive technologies.

* Costs
1. Multi-billions of U.S. Dollars have been spent on fixing the Y2K problems.
2. There has been a huge opportunity cost in human resources (that were focused on Y2K issues instead of productivity.)
3. Security and computer security are an on-going concerns. (Too many companies are increasing the cost of security by being reactive instead of proactive. Many new computer installations are not secure and offer easy exploits that are more disruptive than their predecessors.)
4. The convergence of the Y2K computer problem with other high impact events, such as acts of terrorism, will cause a chaotic chain of events with long lasting affects on society.
5. Tough some older systems are being improved, many older systems are being replaced with inferior goods (such as, proprietary software that requires frequent and expensive updates.