 Our environment is changing at an astonishing pace, driven by ever-increasing numbers of people, technology that allows us to transform our environment at a speed previously unimaginable, and (thanks to cheap fuel) unprecedented mobility of humans and products (goods and bads). Meanwhile, people change slowly. We are change-resistant. We change when we have no other real choice. Social change is therefore a complex phenomenon: It occurs only when a large group of people have no other choice. Bomb the hell out of Iraq for four years and you can get four million people to flee the only country they know, the land they love, and try to make another life, somewhere else, anywhere else. The change to ecological consciousness, and the change to a life without the automobile, will have to go through that same slow process, until a very large group of people have no other choice, and finally accept that they must change. Each of that large group of people has to agree to Let-Themselves-Change. In that group, some are likely to be open to doing so, while others will not. Openness to (capacity for) Let-Self-Change is a function of:
If you have the capacity, the next thing you need is a catalyst, a provocation to change:
When we first formulate our position on something, we tend to accept the first information, argument or other determinant of belief that resonates with our prevailing worldview. It’s easiest to ‘get’ to us before we have already ‘made up our mind’. Once we’ve done that, the bar is raised — the catalyst for change must be profounder. Or, to put it another way, the ‘tipping point’ is higher. But when we finally reach that tipping point, we can change remarkably quickly. Today I listened to a presentation (with a great story line) that changed the thinking of a whole room of people (more on it tomorrow). I’ve been through similar sudden, major Self-Changes, for example when I read each of the fifteen critical books on my Save the World Reading List. And I have Let-Myself-Change each time I’ve made a major geographic move or career change in my life. I had no choice. More recently, as I’ve started to pay attention to the world, these changes have come more often, and more easily. The wild creatures in my life have continually provoked profound changes in me, because I am now open to change, and because I learn so much from them. Every day, it seems, brings new revelations and new changes. I think sometimes we crash through this tipping point in a hurry, and astonish ourselves at how quickly and dramatically we’ve Let-Ourselves-Change. And sometimes it is as if we sit just short of the tipping point for a long time, and then some little thing, some final straw, nudges us over it. An exercise: Tell a story about some significant Let-Self-Change in your life. What was the catalyst? Did it happen suddenly or gradually? What did it feel like — was it anAha! or a sense of sheepishness (“how could I ever have believed that?). What does this teach us about how to bring about change in others? (Thanks to Lugon at Fluwikie2 for the inspiration for this post.) Category: Let-Self-Change
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September 18, 2007
How Change Happens
September 17, 2007
Could You Be a Model Natural Entrepreneur?
 When young people tell me they agree with my prognosis for the future of our planet, and ask me what they should do, I ask them to learn how the world works, and learn about better ways to live, and then be a model for others. Essentially I suggest they do the things in the green box above, ‘bottom-up’, and then do some of the things in the yellow and brown boxes above in concert and in community with others. I continue to believe that trying to reform our existing political, economic, social and educational systems is a waste of time and energy. We have to follow Bucky’s advice and create something new that renders these old and dysfunctional systems obsolete. Likewise I don’t believe technologies will save us, because, as James Kunstler points out, they are designed to enable us to continue to live the unsustainable way we do now, a little longer. We have to give up on these ways of living and making a living. We must use new ways of thinking to create something new. To do this we need to experiment, to find out what works in the midst of a society whose systems are stretched to the limit, overextended, hopelessly broken, but so pervasive that they, and the thinking that created them, are monstrously difficult to escape, to work around. It is like planting seeds in a desert, in soils exhausted and poisoned. We need to plant lots of seeds, of lots of different kinds, and nurture them and keep doing so until something catches, takes root, and grows. And then we need to replicate these ‘working models’ of resilience and innovation, so that they’re ready to take over when the old systems finally collapse. Some of these ‘working models’ will be better, responsible, sustainable ways to live: Models of radical simplicity, love and generosity, ‘let-self-change’, self-sufficiency and intentional community. My book on Natural Enterprise tries to provide a roadmap for experimentation with new models for making a living. It takes you through the seven step process that most traditional enterprises fail to follow, to their great detriment:
The book provides a number of case studies of enterprises that do most of these things well, and they are remarkable organizations: responsible, sustainable, joyful places to work. A lot of them have achieved this accomplishment despite the fact they started out as traditional organizations and fell for most of the (wrong) conventional wisdom about how to make a living. This makes them even more remarkable — their principals were smart enough to realize that they weren’t sustainable, and they have changed them. As models go, they’re the best we have. But we don’t yet have any full ‘working models’ of Natural Enterprise. We’ve seen what has happened to lots of enterprises that did most of these things well — they lost direction, lost energy, stopped innovating, sold out their operations or their principles. Even The Body Shop is now in the clutches of the abominable l’Oreal-Nestle conglomerate, unrepentant animal testers and high on any boycott list of socially and environmentally irresponsible, wasteful, profit-at-any-cost corporations. Doing most of these things well is not good enough. We need better models, real ‘working models’ that are truly sustainable. Models that others can follow, to create a new, Natural Economy. It’s up to you. The book won’t be out until the spring, but it’s never too early to start. I’ve already written extensively about the first three steps, and if you start now, just a few hours a week, you can be ready to move on to step 4 when it’s published. If you tell me I need to put more on the blog on the first three steps I will. As long as we think Microsoft and Google are the business models to follow and emulate, we’re toast. Could you be a model natural entrepreneur? Category: Creating Natural Enterprises
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September 16, 2007
Sunday Open Thread — September 16, 2007
 Artwork by the amazing hyperrealist sculptor Run Mueck. Thanks to my neighbour Franca Caruso for the link What I’m thinking about, and planning on writing (and podcasting) about soon: Why We Have No Time For Making the World Better: Three of my recent articles, taken together, have an important message, I think. Joyless Responsibility made the point that, for many of us, life had become unnatural — burdensome, tedious, thankless, exhausting — because we have taken on responsibility (either voluntarily, only to discover it was not what we thought it was, or, more often, voluntarily, because we were the only one who could or would take on responsibility for people who needed us or duties no one else could or would shoulder) that is joyless. Need Less made the point that our industrial economy depends on us needing and wanting more and more, to the point much of the work we do has, as its primary purpose, allowing us to continue buying what we have come to need, to the point we are addicted to consumption and debt. And I have said that it is our (and all creatures’) nature to do what we must, and then to do what’s easy, and then to do what’s fun. Those with joyless responsibility (an increasing number of us) must spend most of their lives doing what is neither easy nor fun. Those addicted to their needs (and despite my best efforts I am still among this large group) spend most of their waking hours doing what we must to afford those needs, and then we’re so exhausted we do what’s easy and, occasionally, what’s fun. Neither group has time left to do what is needed to make this world a better place. So while many of us are now informed about the need for change, and some of us have started to let ourselves change, very few of us are ready to be activists, to dedicate ourselves to actions that will make a difference. And until we can somehow free up time from joyless responsibility and paying for our needs, that situation is not likely to improve. This will be a very personal post, but it will be more upbeat than it may sound. Becoming a Model: Lately I’ve been getting more communications from younger readers asking what they should be doing to make the world a better place. My reply has been to encourage them to become models that others can follow. Increasingly, I think we need models of natural, sustainable enterprise, and I’m encouraging them to start their own community-based, responsible business, so that others can see that there are better models to follow than the Microsoft/Google “guilty philanthropist” model, without self-sacrifice. Blog-Hosted Conversations: Delayed a couple of weeks due to technical problems with Skype and with Pamela, the software I was using to record the conversations. So starting this week, this blog will feature 30-minute conversations, initially on the subject of “What is your model of a better way to live, and what capacities do we need to develop or re-learn to live that way?” Open Thread Question: How can we encourage truly independent filmmakers to produce, at low cost, well-written, professional films that can bypass the theatres andreplace the dreck that Hollywood now puts out? |
September 15, 2007
Saturday Links for the Week: September 15, 2007
 What, Me Worry?: Survey Shows Fortune 1000 Corporate Executives’ Heads in the Sand This week’s important news is, alas, all sad, annoying, grim or scary. Anglo-American Bloc Only Opponents to UN Statement on Indigenous Peoples’ Rights: Showing their true imperialist colours, only the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand voted against the UN’s statement this week affirming the rights of indigenous peoples to self-determination and control over their lands and resources. Shameful, but then it would be a mistake to label this as racism. It’s really all about money, and the ‘right’ of thieves to keep what they have stolen. India, China and Russia Win ‘Prize’ for Most Toxic Cities on Earth: Six of the ten most polluted cities are in these three countries, which are rapidly choking to death on their own poisoned air and sewage. Olympics Athletes Likely to Use Steroid Inhalers – ‘Legally’: As Malcolm Gladwell has reported, the Olympics are already a sham — dominated by countries that have the wherewithal to develop performance-enhancing drugs that can’t yet be detected, and to bribe judges and anyone who might blow the whistle. The freakshow will be even worse when the event is held next year, for strictly political reasons, in that nation of endless atrocities, China. According to a CBC radio report (not yet online) athletes in the US have discovered that they can get advance exemptions from the prohibition on using bronchial dilating and steroid inhalers, since nearly half of them can argue that they have asthma. The puffer drugs will give them a huge competitive advantage in the toxic soup that is Beijing’s air, so look for huge numbers of US medals, and records to fall, next year. Then look for more drug-addled athletes to die young from the abuses their sports push them to. Please, don’t go to China to see the Olympics. Greenspan Admits Iraq War Was About Access to Oil: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.”, he writes in his new memoir. And also: “‘Deficits don’t matter,’ to my chagrin, became part of Republicans’ rhetoric.” He goes on to warn that current debt levels threaten the US and global economies. Too late. Save us from the deathbed confessions of perpetrators of economically ruinous policy. George Carlin on Why We Have No Choice: “It’s Called the American Dream Because You Have To Be Asleep to Believe It“, he says. Always entertaining, and brutally honest, but (vintage Carlin) short on suggestions for making it better. Thanks to Jon Husband for the link. Most Interesting Conspiracy Theory of the Year: What makes these theories fascinating is that the lack of credible contrary information, and the presence of conflicting information, makes them plausible. Here’s how this one goes: Last week’s ‘error’ of sending loaded nukes between two US military airbases was not an error, because security protocols are such that this couldn’t happen in ‘error’. And, one of the nukes is now missing and unaccounted for. And, several airmen from one of the bases have recently ‘committed suicide’ or otherwise dies of mysterious circumstances. The theory is that CheneyBush was either planning an attack inside the US to blame on Iran, or planning to use the nukes on Iran. If you have lots of time, it makes an interesting tale. The UK Telegraph, speaking of plans for cross-border raids into Iran as a deliberate provocation, and the UK Guardian both give it some additional credibility. Thanks to Dale Asberry for the link. Hope next week is better. Thought for the week, from the late Anita Roddick, whose extraordinary entrepreneurial business The Body Shop became a model, then lost its way (when it ceased to innovate) and then lost its heart (when it went public and was sold): [I always believed] if you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just… The hard thing when it grows larger is that you lose intimacy. At The Body Shop we had always been measured by how many jobs we had created. But the minute we went public on the stock market, it was no longer how many people you employed, it was how much you were worth and how much your companywas worth. The market controls everything, but the market has no heart… On the whole, businesses do not listen to the consumer.
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September 13, 2007
Joyless Responsibility
 I‘ve written recently about the importance of each of us accepting personal responsibility for our actions, for our inactions, and for knowing their consequences. It is natural to accept responsibility, because in nature it is almost always joyful. It entails raising offspring, together, as community, and looking out for each other. It entails taking only what we need and knowing that by living simply we are preserving and sustaining a rich diversity of life that reciprocates our taking responsibility, and provides for us, so that our lives can continue to be joyful, astonishing, easy.
But sometimes we have to take responsibility that is joyless, a burden, a thankless chore. For a few weeks each year when the fledglings are young, the adult birds in our yard look disheveled, exhausted. They know, I suppose, that it will pass, so they labour on, but they look tragic, unnatural. For many humans, too, responsibility is thrust on us unasked, even unfairly, and in our modern fractured nuclear society it is rarely shared. In civilized human society, these burdens may not be so short-lived. We can suddenly find ourselves facing a lengthy term of joyless responsibility for:
The work that comes with this responsibility, in addition to being protracted, perhaps even interminable, is also often arduous, unappreciated, and not terribly successful at making anything better. No surprise, then, that we see so much stress and unhappiness in the extraordinarily affluent nations of our world. No surprise, either, that escape, if only for a week, or a day, or the length of time the next substance-induced ‘high’ lasts, is the fondest dream of so many. Some of this responsibility is thrust on people unwillingly, in which case the sufferer often feels the world is treating them unfairly. Some of it is, at least initially, accepted willingly, even embraced with excitement, but later, as frustration, failure and disillusionment set in, becomes loathsome, unbearable, and then there is the additional torment of feeling that it was their fault, that they have only themselves to blame. How do we cope when this happens to us? If there were an easy answer it wouldn’t be such a prevalent and intractable problem for so many. In some cases it may be possible to:
I’ve written before about another form of grief, regret for what happened in the past, or what might have been but never was, and how pointless but tempting it is to let that grief eat you up forever. The grief of putting up with unbearable stress, responsibility and self-deprivation in the hope that it is really making a difference, that, in the end, it will all have been worthwhile, is the mirror image of this, another self-constructed and endlessly agonizing fiction. But suppose we do not live today with such responsibility. What then is our responsibility to the billions of others who are living lives of endless, lonely, joyless responsibility? What if anything do we owe them? The prevailing ethos of our time is that ‘we are not our brother’s keeper’, but that we are responsible for family members in need. As well-entrenched as this ethos is in most modern religions, its logic is unfathomable to me. We are either responsible for others or we are not. And if we are, and if by accepting responsibility we are merely exchanging someone else’s unbearable anguish and burden for our own, what do we accomplish? I have no answers to these questions. The problem of our responsibility in a world of so much suffering is an intractable one, and it has no simple answers, if it has any answer at all. Perhaps that realization is what inspired Eliot to write the Four Quartets, and especially these three excerpts on global human suffering and how we cope with it: The wounded surgeon plies the steel Our only health is the disease The whole earth is our hospital Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children, The only wisdom we can hope to acquire (Sigh.) I still have so much to learn. Category: Being Human
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September 12, 2007
Need Less
 The essence of radical simplicity, of the gift/generosity economy, of natural community, and of natural entrepreneurship, I think, is needing less. Needing less makes us, as individuals, members of enterprises, communities and societies, more self-sufficient, and more resilient, and allows us to give more with the ‘excess’ time, energy and money that we have by virtue of needing less. Meanwhile, the industrial economy is utterly dependent on consumers needing (or thinking they need) more and more. Need creates scarcity, and scarcity increases neediness. Without ever-increasing need there can be no growth, and without continuous growth, the industrial economy collapses. By contrast, the natural economy is sustainable indefinitely requiring only generosity, resilience and innovation.
It is increasingly obvious that our world can no longer afford the industrial economy, and the manufactured needs that perpetuate it. As co-dependents of the ruinous corpocracy desolating the Earth to fill these needs, we have become addicts to the endless satisfaction of these needs — by virtue of how we work and what we work at, our helplessness, and our boredom, borne from poverty of imagination. In order to need less, we do not have to become ascetics or martyrs, nor do we have to sacrifice. What we do have to do:
So much for most of our financial and physical needs. What about our emotional neediness — the need for the other stuff in Maslow’s hierarchy — security, love and attention and appreciation, self-esteem and meaning and self-actualization? I would argue that (3) and (4) above would also increase the amount of security and attention and appreciation we get, and (2) and (4) above would increase our self-esteem, by increasing our competencies and self-sufficiency. But how else can we reduce our emotional neediness? I think one way is through generosity — by looking out for others, loving them, paying attention to them, appreciating them, genuinely complimenting them, showing and teaching and helping them, we reduce their emotional neediness. We turn scarcity of love, attention, appreciation and self-esteem into abundance. How do we know this generosity will be repaid in kind? We don’t. But it might. And it doesn’t cost us anything, except a bit of time and effort (which (1)-(4) above can give us more of) to begenerous with these gifts. Give more… Need less. Category: Let-Self-Change
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September 11, 2007
Vignette #5: The Cat Who Was Never Let Out and the Bird Who Was Never Let In (A Fable)
Once upon a time, in a condominium in the centre of a big city, there lived a slightly plump cat who was never let out. Every day, she would stare out the screen window of the condominium at the traffic and the people rushing by and the dogs being walked and the bicycles tinkling their bells and, of course, at the birds. One of those birds, which was also slightly plump, perched on the streetlight outside the condominium window every day. And every day the cat who was never let out would crouch down and stare at the bird who was never let in, and the bird who was never let in would stare back.
I imagine the cat who was never let out envied the bird who was never let in. I imagine she imagined chasing and catching and eating the bird, and imagined it tasted delicious. I imagine she wondered what it would be like to be outside. I wonder if the cat could ever remember being outside. I imagine the bird who was never let in wondered what it would be like to be inside. The cat who was never let out seemed very content and well-fed and perhaps a little lazy. What would it be like to never have to do anything, to get food and warmth for nothing? One day, the cat who was never let out got a special treat: Her breakfast was served on the window sill where she watched the world and the bird who was never let in. This was too much for the bird who was never let in. He flew down onto the cement awning (over the first floor shops below) outside the second-story window where the cat who was never let out was eating and staring. He walked right up to the window and pecked at the screen where the breakfast bowl was sitting. The cat who was never let out lunged and the screen gave way, falling onto the cement awning, with the cat tumbling on top of it. The bird who was never let in retreated to the streetlight. For a moment the cat who was never let out (who was now out) froze. Then cautiously she crept to the edge of the awning and peered over the edge. Suddenly the bird who was never let in made a beeline for the cat’s food on the window sill. The bird who was never let in was now in. The cat who was never let out, who was out, charged back in in pursuit. After much noise and feathers flying the bird who was never let in emerged and retreated towards the streetlight again. The cat who was never let out came back out and lunged after the bird who was never let in (who was out, on the edge of the cement awning) and toppled over the edge, twelve feet to the sidewalk below. Slightly dazed but not hurt, the cat who was never let out, who was now really out, panicked at the shouts of a cyclist whizzing by, and she darted into the traffic. Horns honked as cars screeched to a halt, but she made it safely across and cowered in a basement window grating, mewing piteously. Meanwhile, the bird who was never let in, was back in, eating the food of the cat who was never let out, who was out. Screams ensued as two women appeared at the window in panic. One of them ran out the door to the stairs to find the cat who was never let out (who was out) while the other picked up a broom and began chasing the bird who was never let in (who was in) all around the condominium apartment. The poor bird who was never let in (who was in) was squawking in terror, trying to find the way out in the maze of little rooms in the little apartment, and to avoid the swinging broom of the hysterical woman. Finally, he found the exit and swooped out, and the woman carefully retrieved the screen from the cement awning and put it back into place. The other woman had by then retrieved the cat who was never let out (who was out, hiding in the window grating) and was scolding her angrily but holding her tightly as she crossed the road and went back into the apartment. And so the cat who was never let out was back in, and the bird who was never let in was back out. The next day, as the cat who was never let out jumped up to the window sill, she discovered the window had been closed. She could still look out, but she could not hear the sounds or smell the smells. Soon after, the bird who was never let in soared down and perched on the streetlight. The two creatures stared at each other. Can you imagine what they were thinking? And then suddenly, it was as if the cat who was never let out winked at the bird who was never let in. Or was she blinking back a tear? And then the bird who was never let in shrugged and tilted his head and laughed at the cat who was never let out. Or was it a sigh? And since then, every day the cat who was never let out waits for the bird who was never let in, and they stare at each other and gesture to each other. As if they know something we could never imagine.
Category: Fables (for my granddaughter Cassandra)
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September 10, 2007
Natural Enterprise: The Book, The Title, The Web Tools, and the Journey
 As you probably know, my book on creating sustainable, responsible, joyful, community-based businesses will be published in the Spring by Chelsea Green. I need some assistance from readers to finalize a title and subtitle, and to design the web tools that will accompany the book. The original title for the book was Natural Enterprise. In discussions with another publisher and with my agent, the title morphed to Working Naturally: Discovering What You Were Meant to Do and How to Do It Responsibly, Sustainably, and Joyfully. Chelsea Green has challenged me to revisit the original title (or something close: The Natural Entrepreneur) and to condense or change the subtitle to something shorter and punchier. As the graphic above suggests, the book’s purpose is:
So what do you think — do you prefer Natural Enterprise, Working Naturally, The Natural Entrepreneur, or something else as the main title? And how would you shorten or change the subtitle to capture the gist in fewer words than my sixteen? The three-part website accompanying my book will contain tools to help people (a) find their ‘sweet spot’, and people to make a living with, (b) share success stories and war stories of what has worked and what hasn’t, and (c) expose needs and ideas that might address them to ‘the wisdom of crowds’. The first of these tools, Finding Natural Partners, would enable you to discover and share your ‘sweet spot’ with others — you could identify the Gift(s) and Passion(s) you have that are ‘on Purpose’. You could search for other people who share your Purpose and whose Gift(s) and Passion(s) complement your own — potential Natural Enterprise partners. You could discover what other people have identified as their Purpose and (if it resonated with you) make it your own. You could discover how Natural Partnerships had emerged in other communities, and replicate them in your own community. The tool for doing this would have to be very simple, intuitive, and fun to use. Any complexity would have to be ‘buried under the hood’. It should also enable both virtual conversations and face-to-face meetings. It has to be more structured than a discussion forum but less structured than a form-filling exercise. The process of discovering your ‘sweet spot’ is iterative, so the process of using the tool has to be flexible and not tedious. I’m not even sure it can be ‘specified’ — it may have to evolve. Peer production, anyone? Should I set up a very simple wiki or some other tool to ‘talk through’ its design? The second tool is the Natural Enterprise Community, and while it sounds like a forum, it’s actually more of a storybook. I foresee it being a place where people could tell their story, complete with moral (“remember to do this” or “don’t do that”), in the first person plural. Because I have never discovered a Natural Enterprise that’s a sole proprietorship, I will seed this with some collective success stories and some cautionary war stories about people who tried to do everything themselves. I’d like to offer a story template, but not impose it on anyone. Stories are valuable because they provide context through detail and specifics (so-called ‘best practices’ and ‘benchmarks’ usually oversimplify and sacrifice that essential context). We are all natural storytellers, and I just want to create a place where people can share their stories. The third tool is the Natural Collaboratory. This is an ‘idea market’ with a difference — no money changes hands. It’s a place for people to float ideas, do some secondary research, and get a ‘crowd’ of prospective customers and coworkers to assess these ideas, and perhaps even serve as the launching pad for Open Source, Peer Production or Open Space activities to move these ideas forward. I see this third tool as being more structured. Each idea should be based on some real, primary research that indicates there is an unmet need to be filled, and the need and the research needs to be spelled out, as context for the idea (and to avoid people just being lazy and posting their pet ideas without having done the homework, and to shut up people who just ‘black hat’ ideas by claiming there is no unmet need for them). But beyond that I can see the idea development as very collaborative, very conversational, going where it will, facilitated by some real-time Skype or other inexpensive technology to allow more iteration and rapid idea development than forums permit. This is not intended to be a vehicle for innovation — in most cases I think innovation needs more resources and energy than any online tool could manage. It is a vehicle for ideation — for thinking out loud about how identified needs might be solved, imaginatively, without getting sidetracked by the details of commercialization. I am a little worried that people will be afraid to float ideas in case someone else steals them. The book explains that even great ideas are pre-commercial, and it is the innovation process that separates great ideas from great products and services. But some fear is inevitable. I am going to see whether we might use some kind of preemptive ‘idea registration’ process to preclude anyone taking a great idea and spending a fortune to patent every imaginable application of it. Ideas should always be free, and freely shared. I’d welcome your thoughts on these tools. I don’t want anyone rushing ahead to prototype them, because they need to be collectively imagined and talked through first. I doubt that anyone will be able to make money developing them — my hope is that they will serve as ‘working models’ for other applications that need similar enabling processes and infrastructure. They might even be among the first of a new generation of social networking tools that have actually been designed to meet a specific business need, so that unlike Web 1.0 and 2.0 tools they might actually achieve sustainedtraction in the business community. It’s worth a try. So — title, subtitle, tool evolution — what do you think? Category: Creating Natural Enterprises
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September 9, 2007
Sunday Open Thread — September 9, 2007
 What I’m thinking about, and planning on writing (and podcasting) about soon: Joyless Responsibility: I’ve written recently about the importance of each of us accepting personal responsibility for our actions, for our inactions, and for knowing their consequences. It is natural to accept responsibility, because in nature it is almost always joyful. It entails raising offspring, together, as community, and looking out for each other. It entails taking only what we need and knowing that by living simply we are preserving and sustaining a rich diversity of life that reciprocates our taking responsibility, and provides for us, so that our lives can continue to be joyful, astonishing, easy. But sometimes we have to take responsibility that is joyless, a burden, a thankless chore. For a few weeks each year when the fledglings are young, the adult birds in our yard look disheveled, exhausted. They know, I suppose, that it will pass, so they labour on, but they look tragic, unnatural. For many humans, too, responsibility is thrust on us unasked, even unfairly, and in our modern fractured nuclear society it is rarely shared. How do we cope when this happens to us? And what is our responsibility before that time, when we know billions of others are living lives of endless, lonely, joyless responsibility? Need Less: The essence of radical simplicity, of the gift/generosity economy, of natural community, and of natural entrepreneurship, I think, is needing less. Needing less makes us, as individuals, members of enterprises, communities and societies, more self-sufficient, and more resilient, and allows us to give more with the ‘excess’ time, energy and money that we have by virtue of needing less. Meanwhile, the industrial economy is utterly dependent on consumers needing (or thinking they need) more and more. Without ever-increasing need there can be no growth, and without continuous growth, the industrial economy collapses. By contrast, the natural economy is sustainable indefinitely requiring only generosity, resilience and innovation. Blog-Hosted Conversations: Delayed a couple of weeks due to technical problems with Skype and with Pamela, the software I was using to record the conversations. So starting next week, this blog will feature 30-minute conversations, initially on the subject of “What is your model of a better way to live, and what capacities do we need to develop or re-learn to live that way?” Open Thread Question: What’s your single favourite work of art, and why? |
September 8, 2007
Saturday Links for the Week — September 8, 2007 — The Anti-Corporatist Edition
 Ending the Personhood of Corporations:
Corporate Crime Reporter has a fascinating review of Robert Reich’s new book Supercapitalism. It’s good to see a mainstream politician (Reich was Clinton’s Secretary of Labor) who gets why corporations are inherently pathological, and what to do about it. Excerpt: Companies cannot act with criminal intent because they have no human capacity for intent. Arthur Andersen may have sounded like a person but the accounting firm was a legal fiction. . . how can any jury, under any circumstances, find that a company ëknewí that ëitsí actions were wrong? A company cannot know right from wrong. A company is incapable of knowing anything. Nor does a company itself take action. Only people know right from wrong, and only people act. That is a basic tenet of democracy.
As I’ve reported before, the courts made a huge mistake decades ago when they gave corporations ‘personhood’, the rights of persons under the law without commensurate responsibility (their liability is limited by law). When you give anyone (or anything) rights without responsibilities you are asking it to behave irresponsibly. I agree completely with Reich that corporations should have no standing whatsoever under the law — they are fictions, constructions of convenience that were designed for one purpose, the raising of money for collective enterprise. They were never designed or intended to be lobbyists or litigants, or to do anything other than hold and disburse collective moneys in accordance with the needs of the enterprise while protecting investors from financial liability beyond the amount of their investment. On the one hand, that means that they should not have any legal standing in court — no right to sue or to hear ‘their’ arguments. As non-persons they should not be allowed to disburse funds or to lobby for political purposes. The quid quo pro, as Reich argues, is that they should not be allowed to be sued, nor should they pay taxes. You don’t sue the corporation, you sue the executives, the directors, and (to the extent they vote for measures that cause injury) the shareholders. Since the corporation is a fiction, a financial holding instrument, no one should be allowed to hide behind the corporation, and corporations as non-persons should not be allowed to indemnify anyone from litigation. When any decision you make exposes you to direct personal liability for the consequences of that decision, you’re going to act responsibly in making that decision. Likewise, corporations should not pay taxes. Today, corporations act as tax shelters, because corporation taxes are lower than personal taxes. Stripped of its personhood, corporations would not be able to shelter shareholders from tax, because the income would flow through to the shareholders and be taxed in those individual shareholders’ hands. It then makes no difference whether profits are distributed as bonuses, share options, or dividends, or are retained in the corporation for reinvestment. The individuals, real people have earned the profit, and they should pay tax on it. Corporations were designed to be, and should be, completely transparent. The removal of personhood, of identity to corporations has other implications as well. What happens when the executives, directors and shareholders need to decide between two courses of action, one of which will benefit the shareholders and the other of which will benefit the employees or the community or the environment? Today, executives and directors can be sued or dismissed for failure to resolve such conflicts uncompromisingly in favour of maximizing profit accruing to shareholders. The argument is that it is ‘unfair’ for executives and directors to be liable for balancing conflicting needs and wants. Yet we all have to do this every day of our lives — e.g. we balance our personal needs and values against those of our employer and those of our employer’s customers, which are often in conflict. Why should executives and directors be treated differently? I believe every corporation should have a charter, developed and approved by shareholders, that stakes out their collective philosophical position and guides directors and executives in their actions. If it says damn the employees and the environment, let’s ravage the planet and offshore all the jobs to Asia to line shareholders’ pockets, that’s up to them. As investors, community members, and members of watchdog agencies, we will then be able to determine whether we want to ‘take any stock’ in such a corporation, and how much attention we should be paying to the actions of that corporation’s people and, when necessary, suing them personally for violation of the law. If the charter says social and environmental responsibility are paramount, and rank ahead of the financial interests of shareholders, then shareholders will have no cause to complain if short-run profit growth (and share price) suffers in the interests of creating longer-term sustainability. This is all about personal responsibility for one’s actions, including one’s actions as a so-called ‘agent’ of a corporation, and as someone who gives their money to those who run corporations, in the knowledge that that money can be used in a variety of ways, ways that have consequences. It includes the responsibility to be informed and to take an active part in understanding what those consequences are. (a tip of the hat to Common Dreams, in my view the best aggregator of what’s happening that’s important in the world) What Else Is New This Week:
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