In a plenary session titled "The Values behind Market Capitalism" this morning, I started with this:
Every morning when I wake up in Davos, I turn on my television to CNN in my hotel room. And every morning, there is the same reporter interviewing a bundled up CEO with the snowy "Magic Mountain" of Davos in the background. The question is always the same, "When will this crisis be over." They actually have a "white board" where they make the CEO mark his answer...2009...2010...2011...later.
But it's the wrong question. Of course it's a question we all want to know the answer to, but there is a much more important one. We should rather be asking, "How will this crisis change us?" How will it change the way we think, act, and decide things; how we live, and how we do business? Yes, this is a structural crisis, and one that clearly calls for new social regulation. But it is also a spiritual crisis, and one that calls for new self-regulation. We seem to have lost some things, and forgotten some things--like our values.
We have trusted in "the invisible hand" to make everything turn out all right, and believed that it wasn't necessary for us to bring virtue to bear on our decisions. But things haven't turned out all right and the invisible hand has let go of some things, like "the common good." The common good hasn't been very common in our economic decision making for some time now. And things have spun out of control. Gandhi's Seven Deadly Social Sins seem quite an accurate diagnostic for some of the causes of this crisis. They are "politics without principle, wealth without work, commerce without morality, pleasure without conscience, education without character, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice."
If we learn nothing from this crisis, then all the pain and suffering it is causing will be in vain. But if we can learn new habits of the heart, perhaps that suffering can even turn out to be redemptive. If we can regain a moral compass and find new metrics by which to evaluate our success, this crisis could become our opportunity to change.
Yesterday, I attended an extraordinary session here at Davos called "Helping Others in a Post-Crisis World." It was full of the insights of social entrepreneurs, and innovative philanthropists, all discussing new patterns of social enterprise--where capitalism is again in service of big ideas and big solutions; not just making money. But the session was held in a small room; not this big hall. And it wasn't full. New ideas of business with a social purpose have been here at Davos before but, as in the global economy, social conscience is a side bar to business. Social purposes have become "extra-curricular" to business. It's time for the side bar to become mainstream and move to the main hall of discussion and to the center of the way we do business.
If we just wait until the economic crisis is finally over to get back to business as usual again, we will have missed the chance we now have for re-evaluation and re-direction. Some of the smartest people in the world as assembled here on the mountain. But are we smart enough not to miss the opportunity that crisis provides to change our ways and return to some of our oldest and best values. Almost half of the world's population, three billion people, lives on less than two dollars a day--virtually outside of the global economy. Maybe its time to bring them in.
Jim Wallis is the author of The Great Awakening
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Communism = Privatization Capitalism
Posted in Uncategorized on July 16, 2008 by kittendiatribes
First let me begin by saying that I’ve made Corp. America $millions.
What both Privatization Capitalism and Communism both failed to realize is that there is a role for government to protect society. (Not the kind of protection from gay marriage feared by the Christian right, used a puppets for blood money.) Both communism and privatization/capitalism believe in freedom, whether it be freeing the individual from class distinctions or creating free market conditions (Milton Friedman, market economies are inherently stable if left to themselves, laissez faire. )
What both communism and privatization capitalism assumes humans are altruistic, that they will not lie to each other in “free market†transactions or Marx believing putting humans in such conditions that they would not wish to exploit others.. In a simpler form its kinda like Reagan’s“Tickle Down Economicsâ€.
Also an assumption of privatization is that by examining a government’s performance versus the private sector cost savings will be generated. Per the Smith Group Consulting’s website, “This allows the governmental unit to develop a competitive strategy and return savings to its citizens in the form of better services and/or lower taxesâ€. If this were truly the case, we would have single payer health care and wouldn’t be spending billions, trillions on war in Iraq.
So bottom line, Bush, Chaney, Rove and McCain are no better than Communists.
In other words, we are teaching business majors that it is immoral not to use child or slave labor (or both) if it helps the bottom line.
Anyone wonder how we got where we are now?
Too many things have gone wrong. Too many people now understand how disgustingly dependent upon debt spending the economy is. And too many "masters of the universe" -- you know, the brilliant, wonderful people who will lead us all into an era of economic prosperity? -- have been revealed to be greedy, petty little people (and none too bright, either).
If you're waiting for when things will "get back to normal," you're going to have a long wait. Things will NEVER again be like they used to be.
Since, the dawn of time Man has continued to repeat the same behavior, over and over. GREED, STEALING, CORRUPTION.
Madoff and Blago are small time players, the real culprits aren't even being looked at.
You would think the political figures who dreamed up these bogus trade deals that sent jobs out would of known this would happen. And it seemed no one learned from history when Deregulation was put into effect. Now we see what was deregulated away was ethics and any accountability.
I'm afraid its going to get much worse and who knows if it will get better at all. Its going to be bigger than any well meaning group can handle.
Isn't the purpose of business to make money?
Rich nations already have the resources of the poorer nations.
Are we now obliged to acquire their few remaining dollars?
Please elaborate.
Forgive me for chiming in but I was stimulated by your comment.
Davos may not be the best place to look for the answer to the current economic-financial crisis. The answer is already known and lived by people like LeonBNJ's grandmother and prpbably by Leon who have benefitted from the experience of the Great Depression. These people are not experiencing a crisis because their financial decisions have been honest, fair, realistic, practical and probably compassionate.
A crisis comes when one's value as a person is identified with one's financial holdings and hopes. When the holdings and hopes erode or disappear, one's value as a person is critically diminished and even disappears.
Those who are not experiencing crisis are aware that they are themselves, in cooperation with others, able to sufficiently create, maintain and sustain the value of their money and get the most "bang for the buck" out of their money with the daily decisions they make. There are other resources available in our lives such as spiritual insight, philosophical, psychological, and social resources that help keep people safe from being overcome by sudden catastrophic events. These resources are every bit as important and really more important than the bottom line of one's financial holdings.
The greatest accomplishments represent a spirit. The pyramids represent a mass will to accomplish something bigger than the individual, though some of that will may have been embodied in “slave laborâ€. http://www.blurtit.com/q491836.html
The Hoover Dam (oddly, more reported slave labor), or the great skyscrapers that dot our American landscape and our world landscape, all of these took a team effort to achieve. The talent pool to be tapped for escaping catastrophe must be more inclusive than that used to deliver mass suffering via the mechanisms of the elevation of some at great risk and cost to many others. If the foundation is strong then the nation is strong. Who we are remains the character and therefore the foundation of America. Mutual respect, concern, and goodwill are not empty words.
Motivation and stimulation leading to transformation of the nation or individual attitude reflects the leadership in relationship to any call by leadership for all hands on deck. A crisis of confidence in the markets can only transpire via the elimination of the crisis of confidence still raging in the human spirit. Reshaping hearts is crucial to reshaping nations.
...But then, what do I know.
"Elimination of the crisis of confidence in the markets can only transpire via the elimination of the crisis of confidence still raging in the human spirit. Reshaping hearts is crucial to reshaping nations."
"Bringing them in" sounds like a tack on market expansionism.
There is a consistency in the lives of those outsiders that is worth emulating. "Consistently deprived," you might say, yet their values are not dependent on the boom/bust cycle of capitalism or the greed and fear dichotomy that drives it.
If we could synthesize the dynamic energy of capitalists with the frugality and moral consistency of that other half, humanity would find itself in balance. Two sides to every coin is the way of the universe.