Modern Economy 1.01 The Economic System Failure of Cheap Products!

The downward spiral of cheap products

Cutting costs costs! You want to buy stuff. You want it cheap. So companies, have to produce cheaper. That puts pressure somewhere along the line. Management decides where. Well, it won't be with them, so it has to come from the work and resources. For once efficiency and productivity can't be raised only bad options are left. Then with each price reduction things get worse for workers:

• from lay offs due to automatization to off shoring to robotics.
  
• from lower quality food to food that's no longer food, let alone healthy.
  
• from less good social conditions to the point of (almost) slavery.
  
• From working in accordance with, to working at the cost of (nature, customers, relationships, communities, society, etc).
  

At the same time, the people at the top, both shareholders and CEO's, decide where profits go. Well, they go to fewer and fewer people. 

Right from the start of the Industrial revolution, we saw industrialists seek to squeeze profits out of everyone. Child labour, dangerous work conditions for very poor pay was normal at the end of the 19th century. Then unions and communism were a valid answer in stopping them. Now the corporations have been learning new tricks: send the work to countries that (seem to) validate unfair squeezing of workers, make consumers demand lower prices for plastic that after a very short life cycle is thrown away so they keep on buying new stuff. And then there is tax evasion, lobby pressure on governments and unfair trade agreements like the TTIP that mostly benefit the big corporations. And now platforms like Uber that offer cheap rides. The small staff of Uber can have thousands of drivers work for under minimum wages, while they themselves make millions. 

So the real result of our consumer society, and our own buying patterns, is that we, more and more, can't trust our food, need to work harder and harder for less quality of life, food and environment. And what do we (the poorer people) do with our lower incomes? We pressure for even lower prices, amongst the last few competitors. Yet, for example, each time we use Uber, Airnb we make life for all of us cheaper and help lower wages, while the big profits only serve those who run the platforms.

The disconnectedness of multinationals

We have to deal with a big system failure. The system of shareholders makes companies work for results that benefit mostly the shareholders. The assumption that to do so, you'll have to make better and better products for happier and happier consumers is not true. In fact the long term result of pure profit driven business is forests gone, communities poor, millions of new homeless people (hardly shown on TV) even in the USA, the great home of the big corporations. We need to see and act on the insight work and production isn't there for the owners. That is the big mistake. 
A healthy society works for its own sustenance as a whole. Factories that were once build to provide towns with work, should stay there, although they might alter character, way of working and products. The current fact that a few people in offices far from a town, can render this town, or even a region, unemployed at a heart beat by outsourcing work to another country, is insane.

Any government allowing these practices does not have the interest of its people at heart. Any people voting for governments that talk growth and profit over healthy cycles of sustenance in their own community are as insane as those governments. Because of this downward spiral, we see all across the globe tensions rise. Mostly because we are led to believe in scarcity, while currently there is food, water, enough for everyone. Since the believe is that if we compete the shit out of each other, everyone will have a better life we sustain shortages for untold millions. If we would show compassion, apply inclusiveness and seek to grow the whole of society around us then things would be very different. For now the real abundance won't be for long any more, because the businesses profit from scarcity and the law of diminishing returns, like keeping on hacking away forests with very little replanting. This means that rather than work for the health of us all, they deplete natural resources without caring for the long term of us all, because profits now, give us cheaper products and them bigger bonuses.
We feel convictions that block access to the abundance that is there and that do not respect and protect their long term existence, and are not healthy for us all and are blocking the way ahead. In the end "Earth is a spaceship and we are all crew." That our captains are heading for the rocks, and we let them, is the biggest worry of our times. 

Solutions

During the Second World War the effect of an essential difference at work here could be observed sharply. The Nazis fought for Hitler and his ideas. The Allies fought for liberation of his reign. The difference is we should never work for a who (not even the likes of people as Steve Jobs, Richard Branson or Bill Gates, in short CEO's, owners or shareholders of businesses), always for a what. We should work for a healthy society on all levels, from working conditions, fair value exchange, to nature.

How to break the cycle? Easy: buy local. Buy from local producers, preferably not owned by shareholders elsewhere. Buy less, but better. Makes you feel poorer, maybe you need to wait half a year, or longer, to buy a new closet, or more than two for a new car. Hell, that used to be the daily reality of millions in the seventies. Makes you care more for what you do buy.

Shift from consumer stuff attitude to an experience driven lifestyle. Many people are shifting their focus to having experiences like festivals, personal workshops, dancing, yoga and meditation and it benefits them well. It also makes them more in touch with their bodies and intuition. Intuitive awakened people are harder to trick into lies, distortions and doing what's bad for us all. So wake up, by being become experience orientated.

And for governments: tax multinationals as much as locals. Yes, when they run away you fear loss of jobs. No, in fact that will create more business that do pay tax in your country and more local jobs that stay. For many people have to, and will do so, step into the gap. Everything will be a bit more expensive, but much more healthy, and with a local outlook and more local production, these businesses are here to stay, as part of their community. This is the best way to insure they'll also work for fair conditions.

And for workers inside big corporations and military in the field, don't just follow orders, ask about the bigger context in which things take place. Let it be known that you have morals, that the state of the planet worries you. Incite dialogue with everyone, because many share your worries, about the planet, the future of their children and the future of their society.

And the War against Terrorism you might ask? Much of the anger and violence in the world is not seeded in religion but in the trauma's of earlier wars and lack of future perspective (compare IS to gang life in Mexico and the mess in the Heart of Africa). Rather than fight people, seek to enrich them. It worked for the Marshall plan after WWII, it should work for all of us. And if we do this, based on fair work, green (cradle to cradle) principles we may, by turning our whole economy around, have a new Global Economic and Green Renaissance in our hands. For the rising middle classes of China, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Africa may seem good for business, but they can only have what we had, if it's cleaner, healthier for our planet than the stuff we use. That is, if we want to benefit from their rise, and not speed up Global Warming with every % of profit we make on their growth. Hence all companies need a huge transformation. That work is the profit of the future. If we don't do it, it will be our demise, with the guys in their palaces watching from afar, until it comes over the fence or their grand children drown in boiling seas with no fish at all. The choice may not feel that distinct or pressing, but, speaking as an unwilling prophet, I think it is.

The Start Up Trap

How the Start Ups are making the Rich richer and the Poor poorer, and how this affects the world we live in.

I thought I was a social activist. I thought I might be making a difference. I thought, quite probably, very wrong. Suddenly, looking at all my, and my friends activities, I got worried.
When you are either a Start Up, Small Creative Enterprise, Freelancer or an Independent Professional, you may have a the same problem. You/we are very probably helping inequality in the world to rise. Yes, rise! Here is how they/we° do it, and what is the consequence of it. I'll explain how the actions of all these small enterprises together enhance the problem and cover up consequences. And I'll show what needs to be done about it. For if we don't change our behavior, we will stay part of the problem. What problem? Right.

The Widening Gap (the playing field)

The West is in decline, but that decline doesn't seem to count for us all. The Rich, especially in the West, are currently getting richer in an explosive way. 85 individuals now own as much money as the whole bottom half of the global population. 85 persons. Bill Gates daily gets more rich than he has given away in ten years.


Also in the West is the number of poor rising and a lot of poverty, still hidden, is slowly getting out in the open. Governments are getting worried about the number of people in debt, below the poverty line and even hungry. Yet, big multinationals seem to avoid more and more regulation and somehow end up owning more and more. Governments seem to have less and less money to spend on social change, and differences among ethnic and cultural groups are on the rise. Lobbyists own more and more politicians, for buying a few officials is totally worth the millions it costs as compared to the billions it helps to make.

And near the bottom of the money pyramid we find many enterprising, positive and constructive passionate, individuals trying to make a change. And the worrying things is, I fear with less nuance than I hoped for, that they are very much a collaborative party for the rich and industries at the top.
They make the rich richer and don't bring the change about they claim or hope to bring. And here's why:


How the Start Ups enrich the Rich:

1. Start Ups are the new self organizing poor.

Among many Start Ups there's a great culture of Open Source, mutual help, of getting smarter at things doing cheaper or easier, especially when there's little money around. This sounds and feel innovative, which it is, and it gives a great sense of meaning. At the same time this all comes down to one thing: together we are getting smarter at being poor.  A quite valid attitude, but not what you once aspired to.
Exchanges among starters are often full of mutual help. I love that. I do it too. But, and this is the crux, this mutual niceness has a dark consequence.

2. Our Money goes mostly only upwards

In the Start Up circles a lot of time is spend, to help each other out. Little or no money is being exchanged. We share services. Although this is, often necessary, to be able to train, build websites, travel, exchange knowledge, help each other out with diversity of qualities, it means that all the money, you do spend, goes to the rich. Yes, most of the money that you do spend is all going up in the money pyramid towards the haves. You pay for your house, your car, your shopping, all expenses that in the end mostly benefit the owners of big companies, except perhaps what you buy very local and or green. And even then, the big boys in green, are, when it comes down to it, very often the same companies, only with a different product line, or the same money paradigm with a different flavour towards the environment.

3. Start Ups let themselves be enthusiastically misused by big business.

Rarely Start Ups strike it very rich. Mostly big businesses buy up the most successful Start Ups, or their ideas. Many Start Ups just hope for this chance of cashing in on their ideas, read, hope to sell out to makes millions; millions that make the rich billions.
But money can also be used to prevent Start Ups it ever getting made. In the Game Industry there are quite a few stories of consciously side tracking possible competitors, like through buy up and then fire everyone a little later.


Also big businesses 'lovingly' hand out free gadgets to popular trend setters, so they'll make new products popular. In short in exchange for a free gadget, you'll do the work of a professional marketeer for free. This trick is used from the introduction of the iPad to now placing chips in the body. The latter one being the dark dream of totalitarian governments in science fiction stories, is now enthusiastically experimented by hip techies. The same techies who play around with drones, that are then used to improve the killer drones, sold by the arms industry to be used by some governments and perhaps soon by gangs.

So basically the inventors at the bottom have stopped working for big contracts, work without hardly any research money. They outsmarted themselves by self organizing so much that big business only has the cost of buying up the most successful discoveries and innovations and let the rest muddle along. Thrilled by their own inventiveness and blind for consequences, many Start Ups thus enrich no other than the Rich.

4. How Businesses, Governments and Banks rob you daily.

Big Business first off shored all (our) work to China. This let to a huge loss of jobs here, while profits for them soared. While the business got the profits, the majority of the money stayed in China to cover all the costs (way more than the profits) Now the Chinese use their income to buy up many natural resources and often don't need us any more. No wonder the European multinationals apply for all these big European funds to stay in business. In short once again we pay for their existence.
The Banks in the mean time also steal from us, daily. You not only pay too much interest on mortgages and loans (if you get any); they also invent money with guesses about what you, or our economy, might earn in the future. In short without asking you, they turn their estimation of your future profits, into investment money and when they screw up, yes, then we all pay for their gamble, based on our collective income. Yes, you pay to keep banks floating who invented money that wasn't there at all, without your consent. Governments knowingly support this theft. And we, we are silent, for we don't care about the slow bureaucrats, we are people of action and we are making a difference for individuals, while our rights, liberties and money is being squandered by banks, governments and the big businesses eager to buy your best ideas.
And now with the secret TTIP or TTP agreement, where huge companies can sue countries for damaging their profits, even when harmful products are forbidden or restricted, we have become part of an economy that really might need a new revolutionary or protest generation.

5. Start Ups are positive and collaborative.

This seems a very beautiful and it is too. Basically Start Ups seem the hope of the future. They indeed help resilience to grow, and sustainability to become smarter. Except since they don't, yet, bring much big shifts happening, they are basically a problem (work for poor pay) that doesn't want to be seen as a problem. For governments this positivity means that these poor, don't complain, self sustain and basically stay of the radar until they hit rock bottom. Hell, most governments don't even want to invest in them. Because unlike the big companies they lack strong pressure groups, read lobbyists, that protect their interests. Thus they make some big issues invisible and only the already powerful organizations with lobbyists get big support.

What to do about it?

Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, wondered why the poor didn't eat cake, when they didn't have bread. The same idiocy is the opinion that when people are poor, they must be stupid or didn't work hard enough. The fact that near Madrid there's a slum rising with many academic trained people in it, counters this idea. No individual can be blamed for poverty that hits a whole society. Anyone may have options, and the options of the young entrepreneurs seem a bit better, but on the whole, they must seek to maximize their impact.


Thus the Starters and Young Entrepreneurs seem to have little choice. To survive they need to keep self organizing smarter and to have an income they need to sell out. And in their enthusiasm they are misused by smart big organizations that know how to play this group.
Think about this: The game rules of society created by the Rich, favor the Rich. Why anyone could cut down age old trees for a few dimes, own genetic codes of seeds, monopolize important medications, harm nature without punishment is beyond me. It just doesn't make sense. We are the world together. We act if ownership is right, when it comes to our most important assets. Soon we may have war about waters, food, oil, while we could use all that money that the Rich are hoarding to solve all these problems way more peaceful.
So, what can the Starting Entrepreneurs do about it?

A: Support local businesses, strengthen resilience and self support.

Try to let as little money go upward as possible. Start producing, join the makers revolution, this being the 3d printer technology that might make many industries obsolete. All the tech to generate your own clean energy, produce much more food yourself, recycle smarter is there. Use it. Share it. Become a contributing member of your community. Keep on becoming smarter poor, for Europe will probably be declining for quite a few years to come. And if you are already green and local, make it more fun, attractive to join your party. For aliveness is what so many in normal work as missing and longing for.

B: Be way more Disruptive towards the Rich.

B.1 Self organize the new economy from the bottom. Upset their economy with new business models and new economic models. Bitcoin is just the start, but can be done so much better. And why aren't there yet any big games that try out totally different economic models? So many science fiction games and not one innovative economy among it!! Strange, or is it because it's big business making those games? Why aren't you experimenting more with new games, new rules, that target to change the game in favor of the current poor?

B.2 Think holistic. How is my work benefitting whom? What could bad people do with my innovations? The CIA and NSA are all the time thinking in scenarios what terrorists might do, with new technology. Why aren't we thinking enough what they (both terrorists and those agencies) might do with it? Invent from the onset out stuff that is for everyone. Some open source projects like the new Tesla, make such moves and I think it's brilliant. In the end, we are society together. We own our land together. We should all co-own our future and make it impossible for a happy few to own anything that belongs, or should belong to us all*.

B.3 Push to make money trickle down. There's enough evidence showing that a healthy trickling down of money keeps societies stable. The current increasing pressure between religions, immigrants, fear of terrorism, sadly takes away the deeper issue of our increasing poverty and the daily pressure this gives to many families. Thus we need to invoke more trickling down. The point being an big healthy middle class keeps the peace. They must be invited to hand over money they owe us. Basic income for everyone and government funding for Start Ups could help a lot. In the end, it will be much safer for the Rich too. Because when they start hiding in gated communities, violence is only one street away: first for everyone else, and then towards them. So start to get heard, for some good shouting now, can prevent worse shouting later.

B.4 Make the points noticed. Make sure the governments start to know the good they get from the self sustaining positive people. Make them pay for it. Make them protect and support them, so that it becomes attractive to join the new entrepreneurs. Demand your government to be supportive and inclusive to everyone. I once read a letterª that asked all this money invented by the banks, over our backs, to be payed back. It should have renewed attention.

B.5 Organize. While most entrepreneurs I know don't like to be part of organizations, especially when it just costs time and money for the organization. And because often the people running it are mostly the kind of bosses, that made Starters go independent, we tend to avoid these organizations. But loose networks can become strong too. New approaches such as collective intelligence, swarm leadership and new network tools can help to make organizing cool and effective. Learning how to make it work, might just be the innovation democracy and society needs to start working again. Use this challenge to invent just that.

B.6 Educate. Educate anyone you can to learn think critically. Teach every child that cares for nature, for the world, for justice, that it should not be giving in to the cynicism of the adults. How? By being the example. By trying with heart and soul to make a real difference. Support them where you can and, even better, let their sharp sense of justice, fairness, caring be your guiding flame.

C: Play a different game.

The rich get richer because they play a certain game very very well. Don't use their techniques and don't admire their successes. They, most likely, play very disconnected from the world. Profits are more important than thousands of poor workers with no fair wages and little to none options out. Wars are incited, murders committed along the line, wittingly or unwittingly to the Richest, just to protect their interests. The thing is we are destroying our natural resources, ecological habitat out of disconnectedness, because we think great strategies are better than peace of mind. Because we think being successful, being a hero and awesome is what we should strive for. No, we should strive to be connected to our planet, to our inner peace and wisdom. Or free after Einstein: “No problem can be solved with the same consciousness as that created it.” Even when this means we should not see them as the enemy. They aren't. They are most likely lost souls, caught up in a theatre without an exit. Help them to find it. And foremost find that exit for yourself.

Be the Change

Does this make sense? Perhaps. I hope so and I fear so. Will it be easy? No. Will this be challenged? Yes. Probably foremost by Starters that act like Ostriches, or feeling that their cool and independent image should not be questioned. And especially sustainable Start Ups may feel offended that their good intentions are attacked. My point is, when it does, look real for once. For creating a safe corner for yourself and your loved ones is not enough anymore. We live in a world where nature soon will have regional system collapses, through a economic system, that since the fall of communism thinks itself the answer to everything. Real change is now more needed than ever.


In the end it's like Gandhi said: “Be the change you want to see in the world”. That may be corny, but he, initially on his own, kicked the British out of India. Thus we might see our own odds, against the 85 Richest individuals who own as much as the bottom half of the whole global population, a little bit less impossible. Only one of us has to find the key that will change the game totally, when we are prepared to follow it, when it's there. Just try to be the one. I hope I at the least showed a bit of the key hole and some of the land behind it.

Notes:

° ) The word 'our' here reads for all Start Ups, young entrepreneurs or perhaps any independent professional. And yes, I am part of the problem too. When I did see it this way, I didn't like that sight at all. But I fear it's more true and important to share, than my discomfort. So here's the arrow to my own contribution as Entrepreneur in the hope we'll be able to find a way out of it.
*) No, I am not a communist. I like having some stuff to come home to. But anyone with more than 10 million seems to lose all moral sense and easily think themselves above the law. So I would make that as an upper private possession. Heck, I could probably live very rich from even 2 million (one for a house, the rest for everything else in relative luxury). On the other hand, why guys at the top can decide their own bonus, or raise, has always eluded me. Wouldn't it be better it the bottom half decided about bonuses. That might bring a very different incentive.
ª) The letter can be found on this page. It is in Dutch and called “Brief aan mijn Bankdirecteur”

Links:

Bruce Sterling explains how Start Ups make the Rich Richer. Watch from minute 7:00 Same idea, different reasoning and different ideas for next steps.
Ana Jain shows what soon will be the new 'normal' and some innovative jumps that might end up very scary. At the least she created for me a link why these guys and their drone play, might unwillingly be working for free for the weapons industry.
Facts on the unequal money division. According to Oxfam 85! individuals own as much money as the bottom half of the Global population. That is insane, and we all know it.

More how banks create money. Funny, not.

Two Very Clear Ways to Understand Occupy



Two helpful pictures to understand the Occupy Protest. The First is a change of Paradigm. The Old doesn't get the New in any way. The Old is the Corporate world as it is today. The New is the Networked Society.

Look at the picture and consider on which side you live, on which side you('d) want to be and if you believe it's possible? It tells you your current place in the world.

What world do you live in?

A Model to Understand the Protest and Its Aim Better
The Second picture shows a simple model to understand the difficulties of the protest a bit better. And offers some advice how to see what really is the issue and who should be working together and who are not doing that, yet.

The real focus of the protest revealed and understood

Many people resist change. Change is always scary. This is why sometimes beaten women stay with their violent men. This is what they know. Many Honest Loyal seem to think being a 'little' cheating should be accepted as part of the game. The new world Occupy favours might be worse. Thus the Honest Loyal dislike the protest and on top of that they are being fed prejudiced news.

The protest is also being harassed by the Corrupted Loyal, who defend the system, often with arbitrary means. They think they have to protect the system against all attacks. Police intimidation, Prejudiced media and all forms of extreme Loyalism seem to side with the Honest Loyal, but the Corrupted Loyal are as far away from it as the protesters in a different direction. This is what the Honest Loyal often don’t get. Because the Corrupted Loyal seem part of the same system as they. Countless movies of heroes committing mass murder for good have made sure of that.

There’s also always a lot of citizens who seem to think, 'our government is a corrupt, but it is ours and someone must take the decisions'.  Well sadly, the Corrupted Loyal are often being played by the Corrupt Disloyal. They are being bought, they are being played. And the Honest Loyal often don’t seem to understand that the Protesters are aware of this. That is why the Protesters or Honest Disloyal are so angry. They see the corruption better, because they understand that everyone has a choice. They choose to be Honest and see others being Dishonest. The Honest Loyal often think everyone but real Gangsters are Honest and that Honesty is, or should be the same as, Loyalty. They forget that being Disloyal to the system, may be still a way to help the system to become better. Think about Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. They protested the Status Quo, definitely for the better!

At the same time many Protesters often think the Honest Loyal are part of the corruption too, because they protect things as they are. They are not! They are the people the Protesters are also fighting for. How to solve this?

Tips on How to fight Corruption and improve the system.

The Honest Loyal should aim to protect Stability and Honesty and dare to admit that not everything is alright, because the whole system they so proudly protect includes the protesters. So stability is served when they are curious and willing to find out how to (re)integrate the protesters within the system.

The Honest Disloyal should target Corruption and those parts of the system that threaten Stability and Honesty. Then they can work together with the Honest Loyal. They both want a stable and trustworthy Honest System, with Honest People.

The Corrupt Loyal are seen by the Honest Disloyal as agents of Corruption, while they too want to protect the System. The Corrupt Loyal should strengthen their Loyalty by serving Honesty. They should put aside Prejudice and Corruption in order to strengthen the system within the Law and with Honesty. Thus they can win the trust of many Honest people, by upholding the Law towards the Corrupt Disloyal, who are the real crooks in the System. And those that are corrupt in the sense that they receive money to turn the blind eye to Corruption and Crime, or are being paid to misrepresent events in their media? They are Corrupted Disloyal.

When these three sides take on the Disloyal Corrupt together they can win. With their victory they can create the space and trust for an open dialogue. Then they can reflect what can stay as it is, and what might be improved upon. This is how South Africa beat Apartheid. This is How the Berlin Wall fell. This is How Occupy and Loyal Citizens can help Capitalism to revitalize into a Healthy Green and Honest Economical Model for everyone.