Wall Street

The Paragon of Capitalism

by Dan Robles on December 13, 2011

Capitalism is characterized by the condition where individuals acting in their own best interest consequently act in the best interest of society. By contrast, Socialism is characterized by the condition where individuals acting in the best interest of society consequently act in their own best interest.

Who are the Socialist?

While America espouses a capitalist system of social organization, the jobs that Capitalists create are contained in corporations that operate much closer to the socialist model of community organization.

In a corporation, employees are motivated to act in the best interest of the corporation as a means to assure their own best interest. Resources allocation is channeled through ministers who are led by a benevolent dictator responding to the priorities of a family of stockholders. Tasks are segmented into units of equal pay for equal work. There are limited avenues to advancement. People cannot talk freely against their employer. It is acceptable practice to banish some people for the best interest of the collective.

First Amendment To The U.S. Counterintuition

The opposite holds for the OWS movement – some say the occupiers are socialist, however, the jobs that they create are Capitalist. There is no benevolent dictator or appointed ministers or hierarchy to allocate resources. Anyone can join and nobody gets sent to the gulag. Yet, everyone knows what to do like some kind of invisible hand that elevates an ideal. Most importantly, there are unlimited avenues for advancement.

The movement was peaceful.

Buildings did not fall. Mothers did not mourn the death of children. There was no volatility induced on the stock markets, the lawyers stayed in their offices, politicians were relatively unscathed. Those protestors who did suffer are now celebrated in the media, culture, art, music, Facebook, etc. In short, People acting in their own best interest were in fact acting in the best interest of society.

Reoccupy Wall Street

Now that the movement has been dispersed, and the 89% who still have jobs return to occupy their respective corners of Wall Street. The global narrative has changed for everything from warfare to environmental protection to income equality.

The products that emerge

Already, mobile apps now exceed CD/DVD sales. Mobile computing devices will replace PCs. Television sales are going down. Many of us now own our last internal combustion automobile. Social Media Applications are mimicking financial instruments with new systems for trade, exchanges, trust, influence, and value creation. Allocating social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital rather than the now quaint but hopelessly static notions of land, labor, and fiat capital is producing real value.

Capitalism and socialism are simply two of many different forms of social organization. People are reorganizing.

89% Already OWS

by Dan Robles on November 23, 2011

99% of Americans don’t have a game that they can win playing by the rules imposed on them by the other 1%. But in order to keep this game in play, that 1% utterly depends on the remaining 89% who still have jobs to show up for work and do as they are told. The spectre of the 9% fallen is an incentive, of sorts, to those still walking.

These are the 89 percenters…

…who already occupy Wall Street with their knowledge of systems and processes to implement procedures and methods that support the connections and networks of the remaining 1%. Without these people in place, the system will fail faster than S&P can calculate a credit score, literally.

The 89% know what each other know

The logistics manager knows whom to call when the packages are late. The account manager knows all of the customers by name. The service team knows exactly how to get the computer systems back online. The loan officer knows where the money is. But only the 1% know where the knowledge is…and where it isn’t…

Knowledge is money

As RIM recently learned, if the computers go down, all the money in the world will not bring them back. Most companies have an off-line life span of only a few days or hours before irreparable damage occurs. Only the right knowledge in the right place at the right time can save the firm. This is a huge monetary vulnerability.

The Public Knowledge Inventory

I found a great picture of the Occupy Wall Street Library from here. The great irony is that OWS felt the need to build a Library that represents the ideas that they have between their ears. What they really need is a “Library” for the knowledge that actually lives, breaths, and acts in the minds of the 99%. Only then can they deploy the force that they need to move enterprises.

Divide and conquer

As long as Americans are fighting with each other, there is little chance that they will organize their knowledge assets and deploy their knowledge assets in a manner that serves social priorities instead of Wall Street priorities. This is the big shift that the World is waiting for. As long as people fear losing their jobs, they will comply with the 1%

What scares them the most?

The greatest fear of any company is to have their key employees poached by a competitor. Companies have gone out of their way to implement non-poaching agreements between known competitors and NDAs against unknown competitors. Companies hide key players behind a mountain of bureaucracy, misinformation, and obscure titles and job descriptions in order to hide them from the open market; yet they willingly poach other firms when they can.

The cry of the 99% is income equality.

Let me suggest that OWS consider knowledge equality as a superior alternative. So instead of the OWS book library, they should form a public knowledge Library. A public knowledge inventory would make knowledge transparent to all people and all companies equally.

Then Let the Poaching begin

If the 89% were not scared heartless about getting another job, then they would be far more willing to join the movement. In fact, the MVPs would be the most powerful voice of the movement – the top innovators and visionaries toiling their life away for a company willing to raid their pension fund or drop insurance coverage at the drop of a hat. Nobody is going to tell them to take a bath – they are the water.

The Science of Change

October 17, 2011

The key is that we need to change ourselves. We need to transform, not them. We don’t need to occupy Wall Street, we simply need to occupy Main Street because that is where they occupy us.

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