I was hoping you’d comment on the AIG buyout; thanks. I agree with you that this may be the best hope for a distributed, robust new system (painful- for *everyone*- as it may be). We saw how the neocons were able to foist their vision on the world in the last 10 years or so. I think a big part of their success was that they had a plan ready to go, and when the opportunity to get their plan in motion arose, they seized it.

So who, in your opinion, has the plans that can help us build a new way of doing business, one that is on a human scale? And what do we need to do to get that plan in motion?

Hi Doug,

Nice explanation of the voodoo they love so well. I wish the party could let go of these miserably failed economic policies. But that is half of Saint Ronald’s Legacy. I wish they could let go of the foreign policies and social policies they love so well. But those give us the wonderful Jihads and hypocrisies that angrily reflexive thinking thrives in. I’m bemused that the Party has found a fresh new Maverick to stand up in these tired, old and (now more dangerous than ever) costume jewels.

Yes, this is a great opportunity for personal and community change. And even Republican voters participate in the ethical global order when they shop and sometimes (even) work Local and/or green.

Whether one believes in or practices top down thinking/acting or bottom up thinking/acting as a country we have to decide who can lead, inspire and get government responsive to the successful examples of both.

I’d like to see one of the debates disengage from politics completely and see the candidates debate collaboratively on creative ways of mainstreaming the best of sustainable & responsible growth that actually expands the economy.

Without that in place, it is just more secret signs to and back room deals with the same old interests that have benefited, lobbied and maintained policy as it is.

It is one thing to call oneself a maverick, another to organise other mavericks.

-mason

i’m happy that your blog is on my feedreader. i think you get it right. eagerly awaiting more of you. it’s easy to lose this perspective when you are constantly bombarded by the “news-media” point of view. even here in germany, where the fear is growing that the situation in the u.s. will affect our economy massively.
i believe that it will indeed affect our large financial corporations, but what you said about “bottom-up”-economics holds true for us as well.

Really am trying not to print a “told you so” T-shirt. Wouldn’t help too much really. The whole system was too precarious, too fragile, not robust enough to withstand shocks and far too complex for any person to really understand. Seemed no one really cared that they didn’t understand how things worked as long as they did. Well, now they don’t and people are at a loss.

As for alternatives and who plans them I say nobody. Let the follow-up system emerge. The complexity will then take care of itself. Don’t try to impose a human design on something not at all human; it won’t work. Sure, adopt an alternative ethos but don’t go around saying ‘mine’s better than yours’. The more variety the better, not the worse. Creates robustness.

So, to sum, keep your nose out of others’ business, look after number one first but second realise we’re a species that needs to work together which means appreciating our rich diversity not imposing foreign notions of misplaced idealism on others. Let people do what they want and learn to tolerate each other.

My Great Grandmother Rose used to say “A blessing in disguise”

Interesting philosophy Tim…

I have heard this a few times before, but not put quite so well. From a personal and individual standpoint, i could not agree more. Tolerance is also a sweet thing on an individual level. On the other hand, your over-all logic suggests, encouraging tolerance is no more worthwhile than discouraging intolerance.

How about a T shirt that says: “They told me this would happen!” or “I was told this would happen!”

Tell you what, i’ll have it carved out (CHK) from a figleaf and walk thru town!

When i apprenticed, he came into the shop one morning and said, “Have you been told today?” I replied any number of things, actually i can’t remember what. He went on, “Well, consider yourself told” and thus we commenced upon a satisfactory and productive day.

When you do market a T shirt, just mention it and i’ll come to your shop.

mason

“real druggists have been crushed by Wal-Mart”: And Wal-Mart also offers generic drugs at $4 a script. Even their employees can afford that. This coin isn’t one-sided.

Yes, but to some extent, the wealth has trickled down. Now, I tend to think that stems largely from technological innovation–while incomes have stagnated, people have more stuff now. Your iPod is now thinner than your wallet, holds your entire music collection, makes phone calls and tells you what street you are one, all for a few hundred dollars, so that even welfare moms can scrip a bit and get them. That’s better distribution of wealth, full stop–not banking, but there’s some indication that CMOs and other derivatives drove interest rates down “permanently”–meaning more people could spend on credit. Essentially, this would have been “demand-side economics”: make money cheaper. Now, that would have been a good thing if we spent more on credit while maintaining our savings, but instead, the business cycle turned down–something the optimists tend to ignore. Because let’s admit that we aren’t going to adopt local or negative-interest currency any time soon (people flew into gold yesterday, not Ithaca Hours and co-op credits), there are too many moneyed interests.

Which points to something else: this credit crisis could be deflationary, and that would not surprise me. That’s “painful” for banks but will have an actual impact on real humans, who will necessarily start spending more to service and pay down debts.

I do agree, this is possibly a good thing, though at times I wonder if it isn’t part of some shadowy cabal’s plan, but that would suggest that Alan Greenspan knew what was going on. A few more bank failures and we’ll have a real economy again. As one bearish financial commentator wrote, “Bullish for America: Get a Real Job”.

after thinking about the whole thing for a bit, one thing crosses my mind. i’ll keep it simple and low down with just one example, the example of my former workplace: i used to work for a small company (web, IT). their largest (in fact only) customer is one huge, huge company in germany, which is also active in the financial sector. these companies are the only ones who are able and willing to pay the prices for the services we provided.
sorry, i can’t get more specific here (NDC), but let me assure you, it wasn’t something nasty. it was just something many companies do: they have larger companies as customers. so the money *does* trickle down to some extend. so if these large companies, which are entangled in the global financial systems, go down, many of these “contractor companies” will go down as well. so i *do* believe, that the current crisis will have a huge impact on the global economy.
still, in the long run, you are right. but it will hurt.
the transition (if it will hapen), won’t be easy.

“But the money is itself crap. It’s based on a centralized lending scheme and has no intrinsic value.”

Uh, no. Federal Reserve Notes have value because the U.S. Federal government accepts them as payment for taxes. If the IRS some day refuses FRN’s and checks denominated in FRN’s for tax payments, then their value will disappear.

In fact, I don’t understand the cognitive dissonance in people who denounce FRN’s as a some kind worthless fraud, then complain around tax time about handing some of them over to the state.

thanks mason, I guess its easy to print a ‘told you so’ t-shirt post-hoc, the trick is to create the market before everyone else catches on perhaps? maybe I missed the boat. but then you have to wait until it gets warm enough for ppl to wear t’s? maybe what we really need is something totally different from t-shirts (short of bill boards) like dynamic tattoos that can be reprogrammed with different slogans (a human billboard?) particularly as this mess continues to unfurl at quite a pace…hmm…wouldn’t it help to get back outside the box now doug? cheers. Tim

Watching Blinder & Reagan’s chief voodoo priest on the news hour. Wondering: Who says not enough time to let the market take care of itself, not enough time to have the congress cut the check, but that the Fed should cut the check when a scheming executive has let a situation of this magnitude develop over more than a year?

Folks might be interested in what McCain and Obama said a year ago when Bush and Paulson et al were still jerking off.

But no, we are getting “journalism” about reactions to an executive fait accompli that smacks of national socialism.

-mason

Rushkoff wrote: “Your wealth is … what you can do. It’s your value to other people.”

Yes, and it seems to me that’s how our social species operated for most of our 200,000 years on this planet.

Thanks for this refreshing reminder that localized, personalized relationships have been our foundation all along, and remain so.

Cheers

yeah, that’s really interesting from over here (UK) that the ‘free-market’ shite has been tainted now by a massive u-turn to something akin to state-owned enterprises we had not so long ago (pre-Thatcherm for us). its happening here too. can’t help but think the reaganite/thatcher experiment finally failed as a core of us have been predicting for some time…and again I agree mason that plenty of much more learned ppl than myself have been talking about this meltdown for a year or two now, including a nobel laureate. the juggernaut just couldn’t stop I guessed.

there’s off the grid. and then there’s totally off the wall.

“Don’t try to impose a human design on something not at all human.” wha…?

forgive me, but i’ve read graffiti on outhouse walls at a montana militia gathering that made more sense.

Rushkoff wrote: “Your wealth is … what you can do. It’s your value to other people.”

of course, you all here are entitled to your opinion, and you might even be right, but mine is that this strikes me as retrogressive, reactionary, fear-driven and utterly delusional.

what? you wanna go back to a barter society?

to me all these “loca-”-this and “loca-’”-that movements reflect an utter lack of nerve and imagination and vision on the “what next” scale of human evolution.

Hi doug,
I’ve been following your posts on BoingBoing and have enjoyed what you had to say. Hopped on over to rushkoff.com and found that this post captures much of my current thought on the impending financial meltdown. I’ve been working on and off for years, reading and thinking about the best way to create a safety net based on sane economics. I registered the domain name architektons.org at one point, intending to build a community based on innovative solutions to social problems. I’d like to suggest we create a seperate website to deal with the issues you raised on boingboing. In particular, I think using slashcode would be the best way to facilitate an intelligent discussion. The key, of course, is building a community of intelligent commenters. I’d love to help you in any way with such projects. Feel free to email me or even better, give me a call if you have a chance: 404-492-9512.
Cheers,
Jonathan

thanks bill for your constructive comments.

1st. this is a blog, I don’t take them so seriously
2nd. glad you appreciate ‘free speech’
3rd. (in my opinion) a little devolution would be a good thing, yes, i.e. don’t try to re-design a successful global economic system, its too complex for us to understand. this doesn’t mean one has to go all the way back to ‘bartering’ (although it strikes me as a good system) but yeah, you got it, do things a bit more locally. there’s a whole ‘movement’ dedicated to this, think Seattle, etc. which is where the ‘told you so’ T comes in…this is what my peculiar (to you) comment meant. hope that helps?

thanks again.

“So who, in your opinion, has the plans that can help us build a new way of doing business, one that is on a human scale? And what do we need to do to get that plan in motion?”

You do. We all do. Talk to one another. Unplug the ipods. Cease eye-fucking your personal digital assistant and make contact with others similarly predisposed humans. There are a score of us right here.

I’ve written a blog post recommending http://rushkoff.com/
You have an amazingly insightful data here.

[...] Financial Melt Up [...]

“You do. We all do.”

Indeed. It’s easy, when the shit hits the fan, to start looking for someone, anyone, who has the answers. I think that’s the trap I fell into when posting the comment upthread.

Perhaps a better question is, “How do I start?” …because “starting” involves changing the way I think about money and commerce. For me, starting has been about changing my spending habits, and taking time to barter and build relationships instead of only buying from impersonal/corporate sources. A small thing for sure, but one has to start somewhere.