Life Inc Excerpts

I’m beginning to excerpt the book, on BoingBoing and right here on Rushkoff.com

Here’s the first:
INTRODUCTION
Your Money or Your Life
A Lesson on the Front Stoop

I got mugged on Christmas Eve.

I was in front of my Brooklyn apartment house taking out the trash
when a man pulled a gun and told me to empty my pockets. I gave him
my money, wallet, and cell phone. But then—remembering some-
thing I’d seen in a movie about a hostage negotiator—I begged him to
let me keep my medical- insurance card. If I could humanize myself in
his perception, I figured, he’d be less likely to kill me.

He accepted my argument about how hard it would be for me to get
“care” without it, and handed me back the card. Now it was us two
against the establishment, and we made something of a deal: in ex-
change for his mercy, I wasn’t to report him—even though I had
plainly seen his face. I agreed, and he ran off down the street. I fool-
ishly but steadfastly stood by my side of the bargain, however coerced
it may have been, for a few hours. As if I could have actually entered
into a binding contract at gunpoint.

In the meantime, I posted a note about my strange and frightening
experience to the Park Slope Parents list—a rather crunchy Internet
community of moms, food co-op members, and other leftie types ded-
icated to the health and well- being of their families and their decid-
edly progressive, gentrifying neighborhood. It seemed the responsible
thing to do, and I suppose I also expected some expression of sympa-
thy and support.

Amazingly, the very first two emails I received were from people
angrythat I had posted the name of the street on which the crime had
occurred. Didn’t I realize that this publicity could adversely affect all
of our property values? The “sellers’ market” was already difficult
enough! With a famous actor reportedly leaving the area for Manhat-
tan, does Brooklyn’s real- estate market need more bad press? And this
was beforethe real- estate crash.

I was stunned. Had it really come to this? Did people care more
about the market value of their neighborhood than what was actually
taking place within it? Besides, it didn’t even make good business
sense to bury the issue. In the long run, an open and honest conversa-
tion about crime and how to prevent it should make the neighborhood
safer. Property values would go up in the end, not down. So these
homeowners were more concerned about the immediate liquidity of
their town houses than their long- term asset value—not to mention
the actual experience of living in them. And these were among the
wealthiest people in New York, who shouldn’t have to be worrying
about such things. What had happened to make them behave this way?

more…