Transcend (and include) The Financial Crisis
Well, it took me a while. I came off my game for almost two weeks.
But on a drive home from an inspiring meeting with Kevin (Johansen, my Business Catapult business partner and long time co-consipirator), I fully and completely transcended (and included, as the integral school teaches) the financial crisis. That is to say, the crisis is a moment in time, and will be over sometime soon. The future will have to include the history and (future) present of the impact of the crisis, but we will move beyond it. So I am THERE.
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!
What am I talking about?
Whether rich or poor, dark or fair, northern or southern, we humans are facing some incredible challenges in regards to how our economy, society, and even our geography and climate are changing. As big a deal as this financial crisis is (and it is, as Husserel’s phenomenological reduction explains), I fear that it’s just the latest crisis that is taking our eye off the real ball. Without sounding like a conspiracy theorist, it’s the latest in the long line of seemingly (and actually) urgent realities that distract us from the truly important.
At Business Catapult, we’re helping shift more angel investments into entrepreneurs (and social entrepreneurs, specifically), who will, collectively, innovate our way to a more balanced and sustainable world. At AWhere, we’re using geo-analytics and location intelligence to help harness information for better decision making in global health. And those are the projects mature enough to talk about. Much more transformative work is being done behind the scenes, which just can’t be announced yet.
It’s a great time to be an entrepreneur. During periods of great change, great opportunities present themselves. We’re all on the knife edge now, by choice or by circumstance, like it or not. Transcend (and include) the fear, and take the huge step across the chasm.
Darn straight skippy.
This is the time to ground ourselves in what we know WILL work. This is not hyperbole. This is a once in a lifetime event, and it is predicted, many years of slow economic activity especially in Europe and the U.S.
Game on!! We have been talking about this seriously for at least the last 15 years. Genuine Progress Indicator - Bernard Lietar’s work - Annette Rigg’s - to name a few.
Simply we need to redirect privately held cash into necessary local enterprenuerial infrastructure and basic services. Create investment structures for locally provided energy and transportation systems.
Local energy, food, transportation and utilities are the new economic recovery story!
Make enterprenuerial investment in what WILL work our new patriotic call to arms.
Get the debate hopping - which is our true and only hope - the collective generation of serious answers that are plausible and implementable - only this will quiet the fear mongering rapacious fiscal guard.
And we better speak out today!
Most probably preserving one shred of democracy for us to rebuild upon.
here is an off pieste idea that should get the sabers clashing…
forget politics forget polemic posturing…
study how the system works - pragmaticly - unravel the gordian knot and execute some slight powerful moves to stop the concentration of wealth and get some of the cash flowing into the main street system not the hands of belt way bandits.
open your mouth and mind at least even if it is to only to say NO!
from http://www.themoneymasters.com/mra.htm
This proposed law would require banks to increase their reserves on deposits from the current 10%, to 100%, over a one-year period. This would abolish fractional reserve banking (i.e., money creation by private banks) which depends upon fractional (i.e., partial) reserve lending. To provide the funds for this reserve increase, the US Treasury Department would be authorized to issue new United States Notes (and/or US Note accounts) sufficient in quantity to pay off the entire national debt (and replace all Federal Reserve Notes).
The funds required to pay off the national debt are always closely equivalent to the amount of money the banks have created by engaging in fractional lending because the Fed creates 10% of the money the government needs to finance deficit spending (and uses that newly created money to buy US bonds on the open market), then the banks create the other 90% as loans (as is explained on our FAQ page). Thus the national debt closely tracks the combined total of US Treasury debt held by the Fed (10%) and the amount of money created by private banks (90%).
Because this two-part action (increasing bank reserves to 100% and paying off the entire national debt) adds no net increase to the money supply (the two actions cancel each other in net effect on the money supply), it would cause neither inflation nor deflation, but would result in monetary stability and the end of the boom-bust pattern of US economic activity caused by our current, inherently unstable system.
Thus our entire national debt would be extinguished – thereby dramatically reducing or entirely eliminating the US budget deficit and the need for taxes to pay the $400+ billion interest per year on the national debt - and our economic system would be stabilized, while ending the terrible injustice of private banks being allowed to create over 90% of our money as loans on which they charge us interest. Wealth would cease to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands as a result of private bank money creation. Thereafter, apart from a regular 3% annual increase (roughly matching population growth), only Congress would have the power to authorize changes in the US money supply - for public use -not private banks increasing only private bankers’ wealth.
October 2nd, 2008 at 2:43 pm(A potential remedy for the bad science fiction this current economic situation appears to be may sometimes be found in good science fiction…)
“When it must be done, a man shoots his own dog. He doesn’t wait around for the sheriff to do it.” - Robert Heinlein
The world’s economic system is now officially out of balance. We did this. We humans. The smoking gun lies at our collective feet. We elected and hired those who pulled it askew, and we ignored them while they did it. We’ve now a responsibility to fulfill.
Like most systems, this one will eventually find a way to correct itself and regain equilibrium - or it will die. I’ve a cautious hope for the resurrection of our democracy in this process, but it will come at a price that we must figure out how to - and be willing to - pay. Whether we actually want to pay this price is as of yet undecided. Were this more clearly known, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in today.
This cautious hope is bounded by how we talk to each other - how progressives talk to conservatives, how conservatives talk to progressives. We have plenty of reasons for this conversation. If it is civil, democracy has a chance. Evolution is knocking. We need to answer. We need to choose.
Me? I vote YES to the democratization of the management of change, even at the cost of free markets. We can rebuild them later when we need them again. In the mean time, we’ve a job to do. We are the sheriff, and it’s our dog.
But know that there’s a price to pay for us to evolve. There’s always a price…
“A sophisticated human can become primitive. What this really means is that the human’s way of life changes. Old values change, become linked to the landscape with its plants and animals. This new existence requires a working knowledge of those multiplex and cross-linked events usually referred to as nature. It requires a measure of respect for the inertial power within such natural systems. When a human gains this working knowledge and respect, that is called “being primitive”. The converse, of course, is equally true: the primitive can become sophisticated, but not without accepting dreadful psychological damage.”
- Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
Courage.
October 4th, 2008 at 7:27 amWOW. Thanks for the comments, guys.
Neither of those were the point I was making, but, well, we’re in some pretty new space, so I think we’re all going to have our own perspectives on it.
Keep ‘em coming — this is hereby a freewheeling discussion.
October 4th, 2008 at 9:45 am[…] wrote last week about transcending (and including) the current financial crisis. The inspiration for that piece was partially grounded in a column I had written for Colorado Biz […]
October 7th, 2008 at 10:59 am