I've been swimming 2-3 times per week, trying to get back in shape. I love exercising but it doesn't happen unless I have an easy to maintain routine and for the moment I've found it. Lunchtime lap swim at the community pool. It takes me about an hour to go, swim and come back and I love swimming, I grew up swimming. One of the other joys is listening to NPR there and on the way back, even though I plan to someday ride my bike (it's about two miles). I was thinking last week about what an exciting time we're living in. For better or worse, this is truly an exciting millennium so far. It's easy to get dismayed by the widening gap in ideology, lifestyle and economic status between Americans, but at the same time, these are the conditions from which great change can come.
Every day, driving to the pool, there's someone on the radio talking about the current economic situation. Every single person has a different piece of the puzzle. There is honest-to-god debate going on. The war in Iraq has been reduced, over the years, to a couple of soundbites and a position of either being for the war, okay with torture and willing to forgo civil liberties or being against the war, not okay with torture and unwilling to forgo civil liberties. But this current crisis is fresh and this time people and are not falling for the alarm bells and just handing over the keys to the store. This morning in the New York Times, there was a graphic of the Dow falling and a headline about yet another big bank consolidation. Then, this afternoon, the Dow falls even more and is blamed on the house not passing the bailout bill.
Now I understand that the banks want this to sound confusing so that we don't really understand what's happening. It's funny because I've been watching episodes of Hercule Poirot (from BBC) every day since landing at my mom's house and I now figure out the mysteries in the first few minutes. Let's look at the facts the way Poirot would:
1) The current disaster was predicted by many people over the last several years which means that the stage was being set for a certain disaster and we can only assume, either intentionally set or intentionally not averted.
2) Several big banks fail because of years of high-risk practices that have made many people in the industry very wealthy, leaving homeowners and taxpayers, high and dry.
3) The former CEO of one of the failed banks works with the Federal Reserve (a central bank created with precisely this kind of situation in mind) to devise a plan in which the federal government bails out these failed banks. They predict a massive collapse if that does not happen.
4) Nothing is done to help or protect homeowners that are losing their homes.
4) Republicans vote against the bill and the stock market crashes at precisely that moment.
There are a couple of things about this situation that are very suspicious. Hercule Poirot, a fictional character, could himself arrive from the 1930's and ask these questions:
First, if the current disaster was predicted, why was nothing done about it? The Republicans favor deregulation and do not support government run businesses. This explains why they are voting against the bail out bill and it explains why no regulations were put in place. Their policy is to allow business to operate in a free market which means if a business fails - and that includes banks - it is not the government's job to bail them out. Poirot might speculate that nothing was done to allow certain people to get very rich. In his world, almost all crime is motivated by money.
Second, the fact that it is big banks failing – banks that indulged in risky practices – instead of an overall economic collapse seems to indicate that in fact the economy is not failing, it is just these banks that are failing. But what has their demise produced? A massive consolidation of banks, increasing their financial power. The bail out plan would further empower these banks by wiping out their bad debt and giving them a superior advantage over all the other banks that acted responsibly. And who devised this plan? The former CEO of one of these failed banks. Poirot would definitely be interviewing Henry Paulson right now.
Third, the government already bailed out several institutions, promising each time that it would stop the bleeding, but it didn't. So what are the chances that Wall Street would hang on, even performing well last week and wait until this day to crash, perfectly coinciding with the rejection of the bill? It would be easy to wonder if perhaps there are people who can pull strings to make things happen, kind of like how the gas prices rise and fall to perfectly coincide with certain political movements in this country. And if that is the case, then who is to say that this entire event isn't the product of certain strings being pulled so that it will happen this way? We all know that Bush's Iraq invasion was planned and on the table shortly after he took office. He only needed an inciting incident to put the plan in place. Couldn't it be argued that this collapse is merely an inciting incident to allow a massive consolidation of power by the banking industry?
Someone commented on the article about the Citigroup acquisition that bigger, fewer banks would be easier to regulate. Is that why it was so easy to regulate them to avoid this disaster? Let me repeat a story of how I was robbed by Bank of America. Although only $1,300, it perfectly illustrates how powerless the "little man" becomes against a big bank. In a nutshell, the money was taken from my account and BofA claimed no responsibility for it, nor did they show any interest in figuring out how it was stolen. I relentlessly campaigned to get it back and eventually did, immediately moving my account to a small credit union. In the end, it really isn't about regulation, it's about power. These banks are already incredibly powerful and have more power over our money than we do. A friend of mine wrote a very interesting blog post looking at the situation not from an economic standpoint but for what it is really is, a power grab. What do you think?
Showing posts with label power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label power. Show all posts
Monday, September 29, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
I have sprouts!
I just planted my garden on Tuesday and I already have sprouts! Nothing is more exciting than growing plants, especially from seed. Putting something in the ground that grows to make food? This is the stuff that civilizations are built on. Literally. I finally finished reading the 400+ page book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. It's really dense, that's why it took me six months to read it. He's an academic and a scientist so he goes to great lengths to explain and provide evidence to support his theories but most of it can be summarized in a few sentences.
Basically he asks the question “Why do some civilizations grow to conquer other civilizations or groups of people and not the other way around?” The answer, he says is in dense populations. Dense populations require food production. Out of the 200,000 plant species in the world, a mere dozen, he says, account for 80% of our current crops and not a single major food plant has been domesticated in thousands of years. That some groups of people happened to live where these plants grew gave them an enormous leg up. Same story for domesticable animals which were much more prevalent in Eurasia. Out of those domesticated herds living in close proximity with people came most of the communicable diseases that became accidental weapons of mass destruction for civilizations conquered by Europeans. Actual weapons came from innovation and technology, a result of competition for land that again is borne of dense populations requiring land for food growing. In the sparsely populated Americas, traversed by hunter-gatherers, there was little need for technology.
Diamond describes food production as an autocatalytic process meaning that it "catalyzes into a positive feedback cycle" that goes faster and faster. I've heard that once you plant vegetable plants that they produce more year, especially if you continue to cultivate them. So last Friday, I went to the nursery and bought vegetable seeds, herbs and soil - peat moss, manure and planting mix. First, I blocked off my area (about 10x4') with cinder blocks to hold the soil (I ran out and used some stiff cardboard for the rest). Then I laid cardboard boxes over the soil (after removing the packing tape) and soaked them. I layered and layered the soil but had only covered about a half of an inch so I went back to the nursery. In the end, I built up the garden about two or three inches, and then watered it again. I tracked the sun to make sure I was getting at least five hours of sunlight before I planted.
I started to get a little freaked out. I haven't used a book and I'm pretty much making this up as I go. What if birds come and eat all my seeds? Or some little animals come and chew off the plants as they sprout? What if I can't find a job and have to move out before any veggies grow? A sign at the nursery about checking the PH balance of my soil made it sound like my seeds might be sizzling in acid in the ground right now instead of germinating. I also saw a lot of spiders in the garden and an army of ants, but a little Internet research informed me that both are very garden friendly.
I took a deep breath and planted my seeds. I put tomatoes with the parsley, basil and mint plants, a row of green onions and marigolds for bug protection for the entire garden, lettuces with radishes here and there to protect from critters, an assorted mix of summer squash and bordered the whole thing with cosmos, which are pretty and also keep bugs away. In the cinder blocks, I planted arugula, which apparently does well in containers. In the areas outside the garden, I planted a hummingbird flower mix and sweetpeas to climb the fence. The seed packages say they it 45-90 days to produce vegetables but I should have sprouts for everything by 5-15 days. I spent $140 total and if it provides four weeks' worth of vegetables, it will have paid for itself but I anticipate that it will produce much more than that and enough to give away to friends. I still have most of the seeds I bought so I can keep planting as long as the weather is nice.
An article in the New York Times said seed and food plant sales are up all over the country and not since the 1970's when inflation was high, have nurseries seen this kind of interest in fruit and vegetable gardening. A desire to eat better quality food and rising food prices are cited as responsible for the surge. The latest salmonella scare in tomatoes, they think caused by contamination upstream from another farm, makes me think that my city garden is potentially safer than an organic farm in a more rural area. And if food production really is the catalyst for civilization, then who ever controls food production will have power over us all. How cool would it be if we asserted our independence and expressed our liberty by starting a food growing revolution?
Basically he asks the question “Why do some civilizations grow to conquer other civilizations or groups of people and not the other way around?” The answer, he says is in dense populations. Dense populations require food production. Out of the 200,000 plant species in the world, a mere dozen, he says, account for 80% of our current crops and not a single major food plant has been domesticated in thousands of years. That some groups of people happened to live where these plants grew gave them an enormous leg up. Same story for domesticable animals which were much more prevalent in Eurasia. Out of those domesticated herds living in close proximity with people came most of the communicable diseases that became accidental weapons of mass destruction for civilizations conquered by Europeans. Actual weapons came from innovation and technology, a result of competition for land that again is borne of dense populations requiring land for food growing. In the sparsely populated Americas, traversed by hunter-gatherers, there was little need for technology.
Diamond describes food production as an autocatalytic process meaning that it "catalyzes into a positive feedback cycle" that goes faster and faster. I've heard that once you plant vegetable plants that they produce more year, especially if you continue to cultivate them. So last Friday, I went to the nursery and bought vegetable seeds, herbs and soil - peat moss, manure and planting mix. First, I blocked off my area (about 10x4') with cinder blocks to hold the soil (I ran out and used some stiff cardboard for the rest). Then I laid cardboard boxes over the soil (after removing the packing tape) and soaked them. I layered and layered the soil but had only covered about a half of an inch so I went back to the nursery. In the end, I built up the garden about two or three inches, and then watered it again. I tracked the sun to make sure I was getting at least five hours of sunlight before I planted.
I started to get a little freaked out. I haven't used a book and I'm pretty much making this up as I go. What if birds come and eat all my seeds? Or some little animals come and chew off the plants as they sprout? What if I can't find a job and have to move out before any veggies grow? A sign at the nursery about checking the PH balance of my soil made it sound like my seeds might be sizzling in acid in the ground right now instead of germinating. I also saw a lot of spiders in the garden and an army of ants, but a little Internet research informed me that both are very garden friendly.
I took a deep breath and planted my seeds. I put tomatoes with the parsley, basil and mint plants, a row of green onions and marigolds for bug protection for the entire garden, lettuces with radishes here and there to protect from critters, an assorted mix of summer squash and bordered the whole thing with cosmos, which are pretty and also keep bugs away. In the cinder blocks, I planted arugula, which apparently does well in containers. In the areas outside the garden, I planted a hummingbird flower mix and sweetpeas to climb the fence. The seed packages say they it 45-90 days to produce vegetables but I should have sprouts for everything by 5-15 days. I spent $140 total and if it provides four weeks' worth of vegetables, it will have paid for itself but I anticipate that it will produce much more than that and enough to give away to friends. I still have most of the seeds I bought so I can keep planting as long as the weather is nice.
An article in the New York Times said seed and food plant sales are up all over the country and not since the 1970's when inflation was high, have nurseries seen this kind of interest in fruit and vegetable gardening. A desire to eat better quality food and rising food prices are cited as responsible for the surge. The latest salmonella scare in tomatoes, they think caused by contamination upstream from another farm, makes me think that my city garden is potentially safer than an organic farm in a more rural area. And if food production really is the catalyst for civilization, then who ever controls food production will have power over us all. How cool would it be if we asserted our independence and expressed our liberty by starting a food growing revolution?
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Lasagna garden
I've decided to plant a garden. I've lived in this apartment almost nine months, I'm not sure why it's taken me so long. My neighbor said the soil in our small patch of yard was shit but then I remembered it doesn't matter. Last year, I helped a friend of mine create a lasagna garden in her backyard. The idea is simple: You put layers of wet newspaper on top of any ground surface - grass, weeds, rocks, it doesn't matter - and layer peat moss and any organic material you can find like compost, manure, clippings, etc. Then you plant your garden! My mom always says that vegetables are the easiest plants to grow. People always complaining that they kill plants in their house don't have to worry. As long as you have light and water, veggies will grow. Fruits too!
The best thing about this method, other than the obvious ease of it, is that you leave the soil undisturbed. That means earthworms and other bugs that till the soil will find their way into your garden and keep it growing. I remember reading an article about a guy who turns lawns into food gardens. In the article, his company was rototilling this front yard and broke their machine on the grass roots and rocks. It was totally silly, renting that expensive machine and going through all that work, and killing all the sweet little earthworms! All you have to do is layer on top. The lack of light kills grass roots and anything else much easier than any chemicals or forceful extraction, the newspaper eventually gets eaten by worms and dissolves into the earth.
I've been mulling over this idea for some time. I can't see the garden from my apartment so it's easy to forget that there is a patch of land down there. Then yesterday, walking around, I saw that someone in San Francisco was growing vegetables in pots on the sidewalk! It really is that easy and I have no excuses. Here's how to do it.
Without getting into this too much, I believe that water and food are going to become serious battle grounds as people start to realize that mass production of food has driven it into very unhealthy directions. Big agribusiness is not likely to give up huge profits to make our food healthier and treat the earth better but we DO have control over our food - we can all plant vegetables. Power to the people!
The best thing about this method, other than the obvious ease of it, is that you leave the soil undisturbed. That means earthworms and other bugs that till the soil will find their way into your garden and keep it growing. I remember reading an article about a guy who turns lawns into food gardens. In the article, his company was rototilling this front yard and broke their machine on the grass roots and rocks. It was totally silly, renting that expensive machine and going through all that work, and killing all the sweet little earthworms! All you have to do is layer on top. The lack of light kills grass roots and anything else much easier than any chemicals or forceful extraction, the newspaper eventually gets eaten by worms and dissolves into the earth.
I've been mulling over this idea for some time. I can't see the garden from my apartment so it's easy to forget that there is a patch of land down there. Then yesterday, walking around, I saw that someone in San Francisco was growing vegetables in pots on the sidewalk! It really is that easy and I have no excuses. Here's how to do it.
Without getting into this too much, I believe that water and food are going to become serious battle grounds as people start to realize that mass production of food has driven it into very unhealthy directions. Big agribusiness is not likely to give up huge profits to make our food healthier and treat the earth better but we DO have control over our food - we can all plant vegetables. Power to the people!
Monday, December 3, 2007
Drinking the Kool-Aid
I just watched "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room," which is just a remarkable story of a group of guys that we're all supposed to want to be like - charming, smart, ambitious and fun - who, in the pursuit of success, blew up a company like a balloon and when it popped took 20,000 employees and their futures with them. The consequent folding of Arthur Andersen, the financial company that destroyed accounting evidence of the Enron dealings, folded and took with it the jobs of 85,000 more people!
My dad says that he doesn't believe in conspiracies. That there are too many people involved and he just finds it implausible that people can be that organized. Technically, though, it only takes two to make a conspiracy which is the most plausible thing in the world and in this case there was Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. But this is a perfect example of something that looks and feels like a much bigger conspiracy than it is. They may never have sat in a room and said we're going to do this thing. Instead, it demonstrates how power and money can corrupt so completely and so thoroughly that no one ever HAS to conspire. People see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe when huge amounts of money (or power) are at stake.
The biggest banks in the world, politicians, traders and financial analysts lined up to drink the Kool-Aid and take their check. If these guys at the top said something was true then it must be. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, the bigger the lies, the bigger the liars and the bigger the accomplices. This is how modern terrorism works. One or two people at the top know what's really going on and everyone else is just buying into the vision, seeing what they want to see. They believe what they're told and by the time they know otherwise, it's too late. So it's easy to claim ignorance, just like the banks did when they said they had no reason to believe what they were doing was wrong, because technically they didn't know. One guy in the movie says he knew things were amiss but he didn't ask because he was afraid of the answer.
It's really an excellent movie, worth watching because it makes you realize that every corruption is a version of this story. Think about the war in Iraq. Every lie begets another lie and the lies get bigger and with more at risk. There's no other way to play that game. Everyone who buys it has to keep buying into it, otherwise they have to face themselves and their mistakes. You can't just turn around and say you were wrong and go back, there's no going back. At Enron, they just kept hoping each new lie would pay off and fix all the previous ones.
The big theme of the movie is "ask why," which ironically, was Enron's advertising tagline. Too much of what happened is a result of no one asking why, which, again is reminiscent of too many tragedies in human history. It's easy in these instances to look back and wonder why people didn't ask what was happening, why people didn't demand the truth, why they believed the lies. Yet in the present, we're all drinking the Kool-Aid somewhere when we should be asking why.
My dad says that he doesn't believe in conspiracies. That there are too many people involved and he just finds it implausible that people can be that organized. Technically, though, it only takes two to make a conspiracy which is the most plausible thing in the world and in this case there was Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. But this is a perfect example of something that looks and feels like a much bigger conspiracy than it is. They may never have sat in a room and said we're going to do this thing. Instead, it demonstrates how power and money can corrupt so completely and so thoroughly that no one ever HAS to conspire. People see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe when huge amounts of money (or power) are at stake.
The biggest banks in the world, politicians, traders and financial analysts lined up to drink the Kool-Aid and take their check. If these guys at the top said something was true then it must be. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, the bigger the lies, the bigger the liars and the bigger the accomplices. This is how modern terrorism works. One or two people at the top know what's really going on and everyone else is just buying into the vision, seeing what they want to see. They believe what they're told and by the time they know otherwise, it's too late. So it's easy to claim ignorance, just like the banks did when they said they had no reason to believe what they were doing was wrong, because technically they didn't know. One guy in the movie says he knew things were amiss but he didn't ask because he was afraid of the answer.
It's really an excellent movie, worth watching because it makes you realize that every corruption is a version of this story. Think about the war in Iraq. Every lie begets another lie and the lies get bigger and with more at risk. There's no other way to play that game. Everyone who buys it has to keep buying into it, otherwise they have to face themselves and their mistakes. You can't just turn around and say you were wrong and go back, there's no going back. At Enron, they just kept hoping each new lie would pay off and fix all the previous ones.
The big theme of the movie is "ask why," which ironically, was Enron's advertising tagline. Too much of what happened is a result of no one asking why, which, again is reminiscent of too many tragedies in human history. It's easy in these instances to look back and wonder why people didn't ask what was happening, why people didn't demand the truth, why they believed the lies. Yet in the present, we're all drinking the Kool-Aid somewhere when we should be asking why.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
The power of one
Sitting on the bus this morning, I was listening to music, sipping my coffee, and watching other people. There were a handful of people on the bus who were doing a bunch of things at once - reading the newspaper, drinking coffee, checking their Blackberry's, talking on the phone, playing with their hair (girls play with their hair a lot I've noticed). There was a sense that they just couldn't take in enough information, but not information in the observation sense - take my co-worker who was surprised to see a dead deer on the road. In the six months that she's been taking the bus down the 280 she's never noticed a) other dead deer b) the signs that say watch for deer and c) the DEER that are eating grass on the side of the highway. She doesn't miss a day reading the paper but isn't even taking in the information around her.
So I start thinking about how bizarre it is that humans are so interested in what other humans are doing, and how I observe humans but not any more than I observe anything - plants, animals, weather, stars. There's not much in the news about what animals are doing unless it relates somehow to what humans are doing with animals. Same with plants and space and weather. It reminds me of the hilarious comment from a lecture on environmental sustainability that a natural disaster is only considered a disaster if it kills humans. A million cows killed by Mad Cow (a disease we potentially caused) isn't a tragedy but 10,000 people killed in a mudslide is.
I was feeling like someone from Heroes who has seen the future and knows that what everyone is madly doing at this moment is so inconsequential to the big picture and so soon to be obsolete. I haven't seen the future and I don't know what it is but I'm pretty sure that the industrial age is about to come to an end. The age in which we set up factories and machines to exploit natural resources and human labor to create goods. The age in which we work in these factories to make money to buy the stuff that's made in them. It's mostly coming to an end because we're going to run out of resources to exploit but also, I think, because the kind of change that we need to make in the coming years for our species and civilization to survive will need to happen quickly and be motivated by much more than profit.
The age that's going to replace it is the age of the individual - but not everyone will be an individual. In this age, individuals, not corporations, are in charge. Companies still exist but they work for us instead of the other way around. A people-powered world where we don't have to demand change and yet suffer the constraints of an old system, we'll just collective make the change. Individuals are much quicker to adapt than companies. Think about it. How long did it take people to buy into the iPhone? Something that was literally revolutionary six months ago is now commonplace. Did people have to be cajoled into using it? No. Now think about wi-fi and the fact that if it were up to PEOPLE, all cities would be wi-fi enabled. I'd be happy to pay a monthly fee to access public wi-fi, or pay it in taxes, or not at all. But we don't have it because the communication companies spent a billion dollars laying fiber optic cable so they keep us in the dark ages (while people in developing nations access wi-fi on tiny handheld computers run that on solar power!) because they need to make money off of their investment.
Individuals are more innovative than think tanks, better benefactors than governments, better employers than corporations, better organizers than unions, and better reporters than newspapers. One could make an argument that certain things need infrastructure, like communication, but in the wi-fi scenario, that just isn't the case. Transportation, maybe, but again if individuals were in control, we'd be putting our money into railroads instead of airplanes. Big business runs the world but they're losing their grip. More people are using sites like Craigslist, eBay and Amazon to buy and sell from each other instead of companies. Etsy lets individuals sell things they've made to other people, things that are more interesting and cheaper than a lot of "made in China" crap from Target. Celebrities and philanthropists like Bill Gates and Richard Branson are doing more to change the world than our president.
In the age of the individual, reputation is everything, and these people who aren't working for the common good can no longer hide in a corporation or the White House. Microfinance is taking banks out of the equation by letting people lend money to each other. And people are starting to see that health care as something employers need to provide just isn't viable. Too many people now don't have an employer. More and more people are working from home, creating their own jobs, their own businesses and deciding how and when they want to work. We're deconstructing the power structure that was royalty, religion, government and business and increasingly breaking the world down in smaller bits that connect in new, random and spontaneous ways. We're starting to look like the internet - a place where literally anything can happen. This change adds more checks and balances to every interaction and ultimately makes us all much more accountable to each other.
There were three articles in Rolling Stone this month about big recording acts not renewing their record contracts and either going straight to the people with their music (Radiohead), working directly with a promoter and cutting out the middle-man (Madonna) or just simply letting their contract expire (Nine Inch Nails). It's an exciting time, and this trend is something that gives me hope. If corporations are in charge of turning this planet around, it will never happen in time, but if the right individuals take charge, it just might.
So I start thinking about how bizarre it is that humans are so interested in what other humans are doing, and how I observe humans but not any more than I observe anything - plants, animals, weather, stars. There's not much in the news about what animals are doing unless it relates somehow to what humans are doing with animals. Same with plants and space and weather. It reminds me of the hilarious comment from a lecture on environmental sustainability that a natural disaster is only considered a disaster if it kills humans. A million cows killed by Mad Cow (a disease we potentially caused) isn't a tragedy but 10,000 people killed in a mudslide is.
I was feeling like someone from Heroes who has seen the future and knows that what everyone is madly doing at this moment is so inconsequential to the big picture and so soon to be obsolete. I haven't seen the future and I don't know what it is but I'm pretty sure that the industrial age is about to come to an end. The age in which we set up factories and machines to exploit natural resources and human labor to create goods. The age in which we work in these factories to make money to buy the stuff that's made in them. It's mostly coming to an end because we're going to run out of resources to exploit but also, I think, because the kind of change that we need to make in the coming years for our species and civilization to survive will need to happen quickly and be motivated by much more than profit.
The age that's going to replace it is the age of the individual - but not everyone will be an individual. In this age, individuals, not corporations, are in charge. Companies still exist but they work for us instead of the other way around. A people-powered world where we don't have to demand change and yet suffer the constraints of an old system, we'll just collective make the change. Individuals are much quicker to adapt than companies. Think about it. How long did it take people to buy into the iPhone? Something that was literally revolutionary six months ago is now commonplace. Did people have to be cajoled into using it? No. Now think about wi-fi and the fact that if it were up to PEOPLE, all cities would be wi-fi enabled. I'd be happy to pay a monthly fee to access public wi-fi, or pay it in taxes, or not at all. But we don't have it because the communication companies spent a billion dollars laying fiber optic cable so they keep us in the dark ages (while people in developing nations access wi-fi on tiny handheld computers run that on solar power!) because they need to make money off of their investment.
Individuals are more innovative than think tanks, better benefactors than governments, better employers than corporations, better organizers than unions, and better reporters than newspapers. One could make an argument that certain things need infrastructure, like communication, but in the wi-fi scenario, that just isn't the case. Transportation, maybe, but again if individuals were in control, we'd be putting our money into railroads instead of airplanes. Big business runs the world but they're losing their grip. More people are using sites like Craigslist, eBay and Amazon to buy and sell from each other instead of companies. Etsy lets individuals sell things they've made to other people, things that are more interesting and cheaper than a lot of "made in China" crap from Target. Celebrities and philanthropists like Bill Gates and Richard Branson are doing more to change the world than our president.
In the age of the individual, reputation is everything, and these people who aren't working for the common good can no longer hide in a corporation or the White House. Microfinance is taking banks out of the equation by letting people lend money to each other. And people are starting to see that health care as something employers need to provide just isn't viable. Too many people now don't have an employer. More and more people are working from home, creating their own jobs, their own businesses and deciding how and when they want to work. We're deconstructing the power structure that was royalty, religion, government and business and increasingly breaking the world down in smaller bits that connect in new, random and spontaneous ways. We're starting to look like the internet - a place where literally anything can happen. This change adds more checks and balances to every interaction and ultimately makes us all much more accountable to each other.
There were three articles in Rolling Stone this month about big recording acts not renewing their record contracts and either going straight to the people with their music (Radiohead), working directly with a promoter and cutting out the middle-man (Madonna) or just simply letting their contract expire (Nine Inch Nails). It's an exciting time, and this trend is something that gives me hope. If corporations are in charge of turning this planet around, it will never happen in time, but if the right individuals take charge, it just might.
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