It’s consience and we can’t blame anybody but fixing what went wrong and forgive.

Social currency is the solution.
Consience!!!!, Trust, Reputation, Authentic connections,
Value created through cooperation, life hacking, Entertainment and Creativity.

Are you in?

Remember, we’re not living during the days of first two World Wars, where at least the USA was not seriously threatened with the type of destruction that ravaged many of the combatants. Today, a real World War could end up involving nuclear weapons placed on missiles that could hit targets 4,000 to 7,000 miles away–the combination of the Russians and Chinese have enough missiles aimed at the USA that they could literally wipe out the every major city and industrial site and still have enough to destroy most of our military bases. Humanity would be literally thrown back to not much better than the Stone Age, and the human population worldwide could drop to under 500 million as billions die from the effects of fallout radiation, “nuclear winter,” and the inability to grow food on a large scale. Do we really have to go down this apocalyptic route?

Jct: Local INTEREST-FREE community currencies worked well.
Best of all, peg your local currency to the Time Standard of Money (how many dollars/hour child labor) and Hours earned locally can be intertraded with other timebanks globally!
In 1999, I paid for 39/40 nights in Europe with an IOU for a night back in Canada worth 5 Hours.
U.N. Millennium Declaration UNILETS Resolution C6 to governments is for a time-based currency to restructure the global financial architecture.
See my banking systems engineering analysis at http://youtube.com/kingofthepaupers with an index of articles at http://johnturmel.com/kotp.htm

This is a lovely article; it’s hard for us to get our mind around the big (centuries of historical economic paradigms
embedded in every aspect of our culture) pix. I always felt I’d live to see a great crank of the wheel of history. Here it is.

I know this will be an uncomfortable thought for many, but these times have been predicted with amazing accuracy in the last 20 to 30 years by authors Dannion Brinkley (Saved by the Light), Chet Snow (Mass dreams of the Future), and others. Its going to get more interesting before things get sorted out. I don’t mean to freak anyone out, but the “medicine” will “go down a little easier” if you get right with your God (however you know him)…

They’ll keep floating this pig.

The fractional-reserve banking system, established by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 to oversee a debt-based currency, is obsolete and detrimental to the needs of the American people in the 21st Century. The very act of creating money by debt-assumption on the part of the citizenry gives unwarranted power to a financial elite and erodes the very foundations of the American Republic. The constantly increasing debt with its associated interest acts as a millstone around the neck of industry and stifles economic creativity, while rewarding the well-connected elite generously.

Therefore—-by amendment to the US Constitution, establish a new currency, the American Freedom Note.

All debt instruments (loan contracts, bonds, govt debt, etc.) originating in Federal Reserve banks, all existing Federal Reserve Notes and checking account balances, are exchanged for American Freedom Notes. Creditors forgo liens and are cashed out 100%. Debt is exonerated, and debtors assume 100% ownership of any encumbered assets, including—and most importantly—the productive assets of the country (factories, farms, productive enterprises in general).

A fixed quantity of AFNs results from this system-wide exchange and these fresh accounts can be loaned at interest rates determined freely in the marketplace, with the strict proviso that no fractional-reserve lending is allowed from that point forward.

Over time a natural deflation occurs and the American Freedom Notes, fixed in quantity by this Amendment, acquire increasing purchasing power.

Debt forgiveness, greed forgiveness. The financial elite are bought out, the rest of us indentured servants are freed, and most importantly, no blood in the streets and the American experiment in liberty, with its enshrinement of the rights of the individual, continues with renewed character!

Hi Dave, you can take a look here, Crom Time Bank:
http://cromland.cromalternativemoney.org

Hi Douglas, thanks for the great article.
I think this will be very interesting to you:
To Interpol: Criminal Complaint Against Global Elite For Crimes Against Humanity.
http://forum.cromalternativemoney.org/viewtopic.php?t=393

Regards.

One of the best articles that explains the economic crisis in essential terms is: “The Crisis in 10 Points” by Robert Stewart.

The economic bust was primarily caused by the Fed — they forced interest rates below the natural rate of interest, fueling an unsustainable credit expansion boom that resulted in tremendous malinvestment and overconsumption.

Roger W. Garrison explains how the Fed lost its way in this paper: “Interest-Rate Targeting During the Great Moderation: A Reappraisal”.

In other words we are in pre WW3 mode. The world is a tinderbox.

I can’t believe giving a few loans to black people and some trailer park white trash to buy Paper Mache stick built houses in the carbon copy burbs caused the world to collapse.

The real reason is the people who figured out how to package, sell , shift paper, IOUs and use it as currency created a house of cards over our heads about to come down.

None of them ever drove a nail, grew a carrot, raised a pig, milked a cow, sewed a stitch, fixed a tractor or unplugged a toilet or swept a floor.
All they do is skim the cream from the people who can do these things.

The only solution is WW3. “Nothing cleanses quite like Fire” Then we can rebuild from scratch.

The spark will happen in the Mid East and then will bring in China and Russia VS the West.

Invest in Guns, Ammo, Velveeta, Beans and Whiskey.

Second, spot on reply, John Coulthart. El Bergoober might feel like visiting “failed” Europe before he comments upon it. You will miss ignoring the people sleeping in the street that you step over to get wherever you’re going, the almost nonexistent (by American standards) of violent crime and the lack of state intrusion on personal morality — as I did when I first moved here — but humans are infinitely adaptable, aren’t they?

Oh, and maybe the reason the workers enjoy more benefits here is because they don’t expect the system to just hand it to them, but they actually proactively agitate for them (yes, that means going on strike sometimes).

Oh, and another thing you’re notice. We have immigrants wanting to come here, too. Many of them from the U.S.

Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2008:

“Federal Reserve governor Randall Kroszner, a conservative economist on leave from a teaching post at the University of Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business, says the Community Reinvestment Act isn’t to blame for the subprime mess, despite some accusations to the contrary.

“First, only a small portion of subprime mortgage originations are related to the CRA. Second, CRA-related loans appear to perform comparably to other types of subprime loans. Taken together… we believe that the available evidence runs counter to the contention that the CRA contributed in any substantive way to the current mortgage crisis,” he said in a speech today in Washington.”

Read the whole thing here: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/12/03/feds-kroszner-defends-community-reinvestment-act/

US News, December 17, 2008:

“Along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Community Reinvestment Act has been fingered by a number of critics–mainly from the right–as a key cause of the financial crisis. But in a speech Wednesday, FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair–a Republican–called such logic a “myth.”

From Bair’s prepared remarks:

“You’ve heard the line of attack: The government told banks they had to make loans to people who were bad credit risks, and who could not afford to repay, just to prove that they were making loans to low- and moderate-income people.

“Let me ask you: where in the CRA does it say: make loans to people who can’t afford to repay? No-where! And the fact is, the lending practices that are causing problems today were driven by a desire for market share and revenue growth … pure and simple.”

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/the-home-front/2008/12/17/sheila-bair-stop-blaming-the-community-reinvestment-act.html

ElBarbudo:

…and where oh where are “the new people (who) will change government once and for all, putting an end to the greed and corruption of the political class” going to come from? And once they ascend to unlimited power in the federal government, what will keep them from being just as corrupted as what we see today, or God forbid, more so?

And in fact many of the MOST corrupt are the formerly-idealistic icons from the 60s — more corrupt than anything we’ve seen before. Or perhaps just like now, in that pretend-ideal era those people only lusted for power, not the flower power that was touted by the press of the time.

People who want to be elected to public office are looking for power. Politicians and politician wannabes are the same pimps and whores, it’s simply that the first are already in office and the others…well, want to be in office. And sadly that is an insult to traditional pimps and whores.

Let us not kid ourselves. Elections are part of the entertainment of the masses — just like Roman circuses — and they are opiates that make us think our votes count. They don’t and I’m through pulling levers for politicians who want to use me in order to abuse me. I would not weep if Washington disappeared.

I really envy you your fine Spartan/American ethics, El Barbudo. It can be a nightmare living in here the UK. Like the times I needed two operations when I was young and the hospitals refused all offers of money from my parents. The doctors treated me then turned us away from their doors! My parents were forced to spend the money on toys for my sister and I. Then years later, when I needed treatment for an eye complaint. Once again the doctors treated me swiftly and efficiently and laughed when I suggested I pay them for their trouble! What audacity!

Worst of all was the times when I was unemployed and the government insisted on giving me welfare payments until I could start earning again. I was desperate to prove my Spartan resilience by living under a bridge in a cardboard box but, no, they insisted on paying my rent and making sure I had enough money to eat. It’s shameful, sometimes, it really is.

“Capitalism” is simply a free market, not an “ism”, per se. It is what exists in the absense of central control by the state, tribe or other forced collective – two people exchanging goods, free of control or tax by the state.

Corporatism is when the state colludes with producers of given goods or services to regulate. This regulation, often written by the corporations themselves, favors the growth of the corporation. A true free market has a localizing effect on commerce and favors the creation of small, local, independent business– businesses where you can shake hands with the man or woman whose name is on the door. Corporatism has the opposite effect.

See: http://barbedwiresmile.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/the-corporation-and-the-state-in-a-regulated-economy/

Premise: Capitalism (or whatever -ism name you want to apply to our current system) relies on growth to survive. I.E. a $1000 loan must be paid back in time for $2000. The person / small business / corporation taking out this loan must earn more money than it has borrowed in order to pay it back. They earn money by creating value (selling something they have created, and has a use). This system works, if the growth is small enough to be sustainable over time, matching closely to the natural growth rate of the ability of market / country / Earths population to create real value.

Through several perversions of this model, instability has been created,

Perversion #1: Banks lending out too much money, especially in high risk loans. When a bank lends money, it is taking a risk that it will be paid back. If the person / business / corporation that takes the money is unable to create value, earn more money, and pay it back, then the bank, and the people who keep their money in the bank, have just lost their money. This one is and has been carried out by countless financial institutions, spurred on by the government in their short-sighted and misplaced efforts to “stimulate growth”. When banks can lend out 30 times more money than they actually have, they take huge risks, and outpace the actual capability of the participants in the system to create more value. (see Sub-Prime mortages, and the avalance of unstable fallout)

Perversion #2: Speculative “investment” is the practice of making money by buying something at one price, and then selling at another higher price, without actually creating more value. I.E. futures trading, real estate investing, etc.. The stat quoted was 95% of the activity is speculative. No wonder the terrorists hate the capitalists.

Wall Steet and the banking industry has been Extreemly successful at it for many many years. Just look at the profits and salaries of the top execs we have been exposed too in recent months. How many $30K a year salaries would just one of those Lehman execs salaries cover?? (Scary Math: $165M / $30K = 5,333 people. That’s 5333 people who make Zero dollars, so one guy who moves money around can make $165 million.) Did that executive actually create value? or did he just move money around and skimm off the top. I’m not pickng on rich people, just those that don’t create value to earn it.

If we fix at least these 2 issues, we will have a sustainable economy.

As you can tell, I’m not an economist, just a systems engineer who understands a few basic laws of nature.

@Len: A CSA is a small business, not a commune. Yes, folks will work when it benefits them, but corporations sucks the wealth from the folks and deposits it at the top. Income distributions are skewed worse than 30 years ago – where’s the benefit there?

It is human nature to work “like a dog” to improve the lot of ones self, especially if one is working on a piece work basis, or in your own company.
When you are working for every one else and your pay is the same no matter how hard you work, the result is the USSR.
A USSR joke was – We pretend to work and They pretend to pay us -

This scheme, like socialism, or Communism will always fail.

Man will only work, think, invent, etc, when it benefits him.

Our Banking system is a Ponzi type fraud given us by FDR.
The Fed should be disbanded and its duties taken over by the Treasury Dept, which is its main reason for existence.
I agree that that the Fed should not ever charge interest.
Local banks should be allowed to lend out their customer’s savings, Not 10 times that amount.
All currency should be redeemable in gold, silver or other precious metal.

Credit card companies should not be exempt from bankruptcy discharge, and they should be subject to usury laws.

Oh and by the way, the revolution will not be televised!

I suppose if the goal is to return to an agrarian system where most people engage in subsistence farming and work until they die, Rushkoff’s suggestion that we “seize the day” and follow his advice is valid. Personally, I will continue to seek a more moderate approach that preserves societal features such as technological innovation while increasing the availability of financial and other resources to the general public, and making increased concentration of wealth less inevitable.

And by the way, don’t let an anti-Catholic bias keep you from considering this economic system, there is a lot of merit to it for the social well-being of our country.

With respect to the “nature of wealth”, I think that the “quality of life” paradigm in lieu of the “standard of living” paradigm needs to be stressed.

“Quality of life” includes personal happiness for self, family, friends, neighbors, and all others. It includes ownership opportunities for all and everybuddy having the things they need, including health, healthy and loving relations with family, friends, neighbors, and all the people of the world. It includes peace on earth, and it includes a future for all the children of the world.

“Standard of living” implies maximizing the consumption of things.

The current Capitalist dominated system is dysfunctional both from an equity/fairness and economic and natural resource sustainability perspective.

The dominant paradigm in Capitalist financial business operations uses something called the discount rate which assumes that money will be worth less (eventually worthless) in the future, thus creating a necessity to extract profits exceeding a “hurdle” rate leading to unfair and unwise exploitation of workers, borrowers, and natural resources, and to rampant inflation.

The use of credit is not a good business or personal practice. In business, it should be discouraged because creditors have first claims on net revenues and hold liens on real property and capital assets. For “consumers”, the use of credit is unwise because the system is set up to extract profits from interest thus assuring that when consumers use credit that they are losing money relative to inflation. Certainly the current foreclosure crisis in the USA is ample evidence of the inflation and the unfairness and unhealthiness of the mortgage lien process.

Credit Unions and Mutual Insurance companies are in theory attempts to institute non-profit economic democracies for their respective industries. However, because of the need to compete for customers, both of these relatively progressive financial service organization types are forced to play the same game that is basically destructive to individuals, families, communities, and the natural environment. Ideally, credit should only be used as a last resort, much more preferably not at all. We should replace all aspects of the extant financial system with an Equity Union. In some ways, a mutual insurance company is similar to an equity union. However, because such companies are required to realize profits in order to compete for “policy holders” (really investors), the companies that comprise the portfolios of the mutual insurance firms cannot be not-for-profit, can not be mutual organizations themselves.

In a not-for profit Equity Union financial services system based on principles of mutuality working in concert with ethical, wise, knowledgeable, and intelligent community, inter-community, inter-regional, and worldwide planning there would certainly be an important role for financial service workers.

A major impediment to such an Equity Union would be the competitive advantage of the current financial sector and the fear of the friction of change to those individuals and organizations. Dealing with this sector of “the” economy, it would be more feasible with regards to Capitalist resistance and more humane, to orderly and peacefully transition to an Equity Union, coordinated with ecologically sound economic planning.

I am writing and talking about transitioning slowly, methodically, and with the minimum amount of friction and hardship from a dysfunctional financial system, based on self-interest, to one designed to benefit everybuddy.

At risk of understatement, it will take a huge amount of work to educate folks to the need and benefits of such change and to communicate the basic Plan. Transition Planning will also be a very difficult process, but I see no alternative to the current, impending and worsening global economic, political, social, and natural environmental collapse.

The Peoples’ Equity Union concept is designed to be a grass roots, popular choice “movement”. I am organizing with individuals, workers, and shopkeepers in my neighborhood, adjoining neighborhoods, and through the inter-net to whomever I can attract an interest in the concept.

The focus is primarily local, yet global at the same time. It is my dream, not a hope yet, to encourage a critical mass of people to organize locally around a unifying mission, unifying principles, unifying strategies, and unifying tactics in order to minimize the amount of executive administration at the regional and global levels.

The theory is that neighborhood locales, the neighborhood community/worker hybrid association will have maximum autonomy and will be guided only, in their inter-community and inter-economic sector relationships by regional Planning Boards and a Global Policy Committee.
We must replace the current equity trading systems, corporate conglomerate corporations, insurance companies, and usurious banking systems of the Capitalist status quo with a worldwide Peoples’ Equity Union with branches in every community/neighborhood.

The goal is to be a true economic democracy: of, for, and by the people.

I read your essay, “Let it Die”, earlier today and I agree with every word of it.

Nice job.

Here’s a little something that I wrote on the Quaker Peace list-serv that may be pertinent to what could take the place of the Capitalist status quo.

“I hope that Friend Funke is more correct in his interpretation of FCNL’s (Friends Committee on National Legislation)
position on Afghanistan, and more importantly that the policy of the United
States Government becomes that as advocated in that interpretation.

Because interest rates are approaching 0%, this may be a very opportune time
to make peace with the Islamic world and the struggles of working class and
other financially oppressed peoples of the world.

In accordance with Moslem law, loans are not acceptable because they view
all interest as usury. At a time when interest rates are approaching 0%, it
may be a good time to convert all banks and lending institutions into
community development credit unions (CDCUs) and to convert the CDCUs into
equity unions (where communities form equity partnerships with existing
and/or would be community betterment cooperatives and/or small independent community betterment
businesses).

It won’t be easy to climb down from the ladder of inflated market costs, and
other problems, due to the fundamentally inflationary and the irrational
resource allocation nature of Capitalism, but it could be a very good start
toward peace and local, inter-community, inter-regional, and worldwide
humane, quality, equitable, sustainable economic recovery.”

********************************************************

I will send you two additional e-mails with respect to my alternative economic plan. Please peruse these relatively brief essays and if you have the time look at my web log, http://www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com .

It would be great to get your feedback.

Peace,

Mike Morin

But consider what a bank does. If I put $1000 in the bank, it’s mine – but the bank can loan that money out too. So I have it AND someone else has it – new money has been created – “lent into existence”.

When the central bank issues billions of Treasury bonds – billions of dollars are created from nothing.

This is hardly some leftist fantasy – read anything the government writes about the “money supply”. Banks have a legal right to literally create money from nothing.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – in a well-regulated market.

I have to say that I really don’t understand the rest of your comments. What part of “borrowed… paid back” is unclear? In what world do you live where people lend money and don’t charge interest?

(My credentials are that I worked on Wall St for years and have a degree in math.)

Here is the point at which I stopped reading this article:

“These centralized currencies worked the opposite way. They were not earned into existence, they were lent into existence by a central bank. This meant any money issued to a person or business had to be paid back to the central bank, with interest.”

Mr Rushkoff, you know an immense about your subject. The problem is that you have lost sight of the staggering ignorance of a layperson, such as myself, who is desperately trying to understand the root causes of what is happening.

When you say “lent into existence”, what on earth does that mean? For example, if you ask me if I can lend you a pencil, is there some strange alchemy by which I can “lend a pencil into existence” in order that you can be in possession of a borrowed pencil? Is there a fundamental property of matter of which I have been totally unaware for the last 60 years? That property by which, after receiving a request to borrow a quantity of matter in whatever form whether it’s a pencil or a Large Hadron Collider, that then enables it to be “lent it into existence”.

Then you talk about “any money issued … had to be paid back … with interest”. The problems here are manifold.

First, the expression “money issued” obviously relates to the alchemical process of “lending into existence”, and so I’m completely unable to understand how this abstract magic money is “issued”. What does “issued” mean? Does it “droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven”? Is that the form of its issuance or is there another form?

Second, we have “had to be paid back”. What on earth are you talking about? You have supplied the reader with the adjective “issued” without explaining the form that this issuance takes, and then you talk about “paying back”. I’m able to connect your tenuous threads here just a little. You referred to “lent into existence”, which probably relates to “paid back” as in terms of a loan. But in the adjective “issued” there is no hint of loan/debt/borrowing. Which results in me having to start going round in circles by asking yet again: What does “issued” mean?

Third, and finally because I’m getting a little tired, you use the expression “with interest”. Certainly, I’ve borrowed money from a bank and repaid it with interest. But I’ve never had any dealings with a central bank. In what manner does this central bank create magic money and “issue” it without any implication of loan/debt/borrowing and then persuade the recipient of the issuance that interest has to be paid? None of this adds up.

You know so much about your subject that this response will probably fall beneath your radar and will be dismissed as the ravings of a senile idiot having a bad day. So be it.

I shouldn’t send this, but someone in the comity of economists has to be made aware that you aren’t communicating as you should in these extraordinary times.

We’d lose our international strength, if only for a time, but what a time it is to lose that edge!

We would not be able to return to the top of the dogpile soon enough to weigh influence and keep foreign powers down.

This revolution, if it is to happen at all, needs to happen slowly. Cut the worst offenders out of the system and let them shrivel and rot. AIG, The big 3 auto makers, and the like. Replace them with smart, domestic innovation that bends knee to Rushkoff’s line of thinking.

Instead of a communist revolution they got Hitler. Do you think that we would fare any better?

In fact there are many things that can be done with intelligent collective action to bring our modern economy into balance with itself and the world. Just because our leaders for the past 30 years have been monumentally clueless in this respect does not mean that it cannot be done.

http://wonksanonymous.com/2009/03/05/equal-time-for-fools-on-the-left.aspx

Some of these technologies have been used to foster community, but we have to remember that most of these technologies came about for the purpose export-oriented and import-oriented industries. Globalist capitalism, which is more extensively seen and felt where I come from, has a different face when you come a small country where the currency is devalued by virtue of structural adjustments. Capitalism also has a different face when foreign companies come to our national soil to buy coffee from our farmers for $5 per ton.

To a certain extent, the middle classes of industrial nations may be enjoying some of these developments. But a large portion of the world’s population, including me and my countrymen are not. Where I come from, the average wage in the busiest cities are less than $4 a day. And we’re talking about degree holders or even MA or MS students here. There’s underemployment, and we have had an 11% unemployment rate for quite some time now.

Our OIL, in the Malampaya Oil Reef is not “ours”. 45% is owned by Chevron, another 45% goes to Shell and a meager 10% is owned by the state itself. Our oil tax is at 12%. How can you say that any sense of community has been formed? We have been DIVIDED because the middle classes want nothing to do with the rest of the poorer populations of the country. Our educational system is rotten to the core. Our state universities are being privatized mercilessly. Where’s the community there? I think in these situations, the Internet, airplanes and trains cease to be sources of community.

So-called neo-corporatism is the way most modern western democracies are organised, OTOH, i.e. the recognition that there are different interests among the various actors of a society who in turn voluntarily(!!) – grassroots-based – form organisations like trade unions or employers associations and the like.

So I’d still maintain that what R is referring to is essentially capitalism.

It’s no variety of corporatism the way we define it in Europe that crashed, as far as I can see, it is good old capitalism that brought this about.

they’re in control

http://www.thesixtyone.com/paintingtasters/song/Corporations/39612

http://www.thesixtyone.com/paintingtasters/song/Corporations/39612/

Trading goods, services and ideas fosters community, no matter the distance.

Also, cathedrals are neat, but give the devil his due: the corporatist system gave us planes, trains, automobiles, the computer, the internet, and a large portion of modern medicine. Cathedrals aren’t nearly so useful as that.

With any luck and the right nudging, the corporatist system can probably provide the sustainable energy solutions to power all that stuff without destroying the planet.

Not that I’m defending corporations or the corporate-government alliances, but it’s pretty hard to look at things like the internet and air travel and say that they haven’t done anything to foster community.

@Veltlina:
corporatism is not an expression of capitalism. capitalism is simply voluntary exchange, absent coercion. corporatism implies coercion. corporatism is a system of state-imposed barriers to voluntary exchange. it necessitates taxation to fund regulatory bodies (which of course are vehicles for politicians/bureaucrats/parasites).

Secondly, a lot of what R. points out is what Karl Marx already analysed 150 years ago, so I can’t see the novelty of his approach. Except that his take on pre-capitalist times is too rosy IMO. What about feudalism and serfdom?

And thirdly, I’d like to hear where he found evidence that women were surprisingly tall in the LATE middle ages, since I’ve only heard about Northern Europeans, including the British, being tall in the EARLY middle ages (900-1100 AD) and shrinking afterwards. See http://tinyurl.com/c42zbr

zeitguy, obviously you need to get to know your neighbors a bit more. Try having a block meeting every month, or post bulletin boards on telephone poles. Get closer to your community, and you’ll find that all the answers to your questions are right in front of you.

In the mid sixties as I was going to the U, I began to wake up to this situation, and wanted to act on it with a group of smart, capable, highly motivated peers. While there was some success in bringing this to the attention of others during the seventies, the people who understood this became marginalized, and bought into their own marginalization.

By the boom cash years of the Reagan era, the will to create an alternative narrative about corporations and cultural necessity was pretty broken.

Rushkoff has done a good job in this essay of resurrecting the insights of the radical social critics of the sixties. But the fires are out. The outrage is diffused among too many virtual spokesmodels, while the option of action is not addressed.

Every one sits on their hands, until they wave them for a while, then go back to sitting on them again.

How in hell is anything going to change?

Without leadership, there are no options The John Stewarts and Doug Rushkoff’s of the world can make us want to tear our eyes out for the perfidy we have witnessed. But they cannot get us to stand in line, and march, and seize our lives from the jackals that have tried to brand them and sell them back to us.

Who can get us to stand in line, and move heaven and earth back to their proper order again?

Coming from Seattle, I know all about the anti-corporate reality tunnel. And I’ve found that it’s a better one to live in! There were some people who thought the W.T.O. protest was a big party — I was mainly confused, and awed at the time. But now I can consider myself one of those people

May the dream of Cyberia never die!