What creates change? In the US we are looking to Egypt and the Arab Spring right now to ask, how can we get some of that? Not the violent uprising. I truly believe we are beyond that, outside of the inevitable clashes with the police, a nonviolent popular uprising is possible. However, it is critical to understand the entrenched forces that are against us, against we the 99%, a super-majority.
The most powerful engine available to mankind today is the market. And, it is critical that we recogonize there is no necessary connection between the physics of economic markets and the ideology of capitalism. When we, the 99%, catalyze a better world, that new world must be sustainable; economically, environmentally, emotionally sustainable. This better world is one where the rich, the 1%, are less rich and less important. If the philanthrocapitalists are willing to accept this, to accept that the world that created their massive wealth is an unjust and unsustainable world, then they will play a role in the shift.Revolutionary acts are not performed solely by the oppressed. Charity is not revolutionary.
Those that are currently in control must recognize that the system they own is broken. The center is rotten. However, the edges are filled with potential. Unfortunately we have ignored that potential. We have ignored the generative capacity of our communities. Technology has squeezed massive amounts of productivity out of fewer and fewer people in order to make more and more money for each concentric ring towards the center. However, "we are not some kind of a robot triggered by our greed." (Professor Mohammud Yunus) We must find business models that leverage the generative capacity of the edges of our economy, where our communities are. This is a disruptive innovation.This will spread wealth across the value chain, redistributing the wealth that is curently concentrated in the center. Not via regulation, fiat or decree, but via a just economy designed to serve all of hummanity, designed to make a reasonable quality of life possible for everyone.
It is more expensive to be poor than it is to be rich because we understand the distance from the center of power/wealth to be directly proportionate to the distance from produce to consumer. We understand the purpose of employment to exclusively be earning money to buy stuff to feed the center. This is what GDP is. Our economy exclusively respects the gravity of financial wealth, the weight of the center, around which we, the consumers, revolve. The next system must respect the intrinsic value of products and services and it must equitably compensate those that contribute to the creation of that value. Again, this is a disruptive innovation and those that currently benefit financially from their proximity to the center will fight this change, unless of course, they are willing to be revolutionaries.
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