The soil has been prepared and the seed that was put in the ground all these years ago has begun to sprout. We have the first signs of life from our policorp. A development division and a music production division are popping their first shoots out of the fertile earth of the Boo.
I am excited about the quality of the people who are looking to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors to this endeavor -- true patriots all.
The challenge will be -- how to transition the monarchy that is the Boo into the policorp Nisenan Valley Group. I am playing around with the idea of leasing the property to the group for an nominal amount at first (roughly the amount I am currently taking out of it), and giving the group a first right of refusal option to purchase the property. Jon has a lawyer who put together his corporation and we will try to meet with her on Saturday to get her advice on legal structure.
The problem is that Nisenan has no assets at this point, other than the pledged efforts of people who have bills to pay, families to raise, and lots of other obligations. So, how to aggregate small investments in time and resources from multiple people to feed and water the fragile shoots that the plant Nisenan is putting out. As any gardener knows, this is the most vulnerable time in the development of a living organism.
But, I have great confidence in these ecoevolutionary horticulturalists.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
The Next American Evolution
The Next American Evolution
Incorporated Democracy and a Return to Common Sense.
There seems to be a growing consensus in this country that some thing is not quite right. That there is something structurally wrong with how society is functioning.
We are a world of incredible abundance that is not shared equitably, and we are beginning to believe that the American Dream is slipping away. The growing common wisdom is that the old belief of work hard, play by the rules, pay your dues, and you can build a life, not of riches, but of security, with some room for joy, seems more and more like a sucker’s bet.
Most of us have come to believe that we have hot air balloon economy that we get to ride in when things are going up, but we are tossed overboard if things dip in the slightest.
Honesty and integrity are becoming viewed as liabilities, as we see success going to those who are willing to take advantage and work the system. It is a commonly held belief that almost anyone who has succeeded, has done so at a price to others. Or that, as more and more of the wealth of our nation is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, success is going to those born of riches. Warren Buffett, no less, has said that "the idea that you hand over huge positions in society simply because someone came from the right womb - I just think it's almost un-American,".
It feels like the land of opportunity is going the way of the landed gentry and we have come to fear for the world we are leaving to our children.
But this moment in time is nothing new. From the beginning of the very origins of life there has been a struggle to evolve. The history of evolution has been the story of the triumph of cooperation over the tyranny of free riders. Of barriers to cooperation overcome, and the capturing of effects, and the distribution of benefits to those who create them, and then the deluge of abundance that follows the implementation of a better design.
From the primordial soup, with its auto catalytic sets of enzymes and proteins, and the creation of the cellular wall to keep out free riders and limit the benefits of cooperation to those who created them; to the development of hunter/gatherer bands, where free riders, who did not contribute and share, were banished to die in the wilderness; to the rise of Monarchies and the implementation of the rule of law, where thieves were punished harshly to protect the integrity of the emerging marketplace; to the Magna Carta and the nobility who reining in the excesses of the Crown; to the American Revolution and the increasingly powerful merchant class who dared to imagine a nation without a King; to today and our current barriers to cooperation -- the story is the same and the solutions have already been found.
It has been said that to know the true power within a society you need only look at the largest buildings in town. At the height of the Age of Kings, the castle loomed high above everything. During the Age of Enlightenment, the Church dominated the skyline. Then, the glorious monuments to democratic governance rose at the center of the great capitals of the world. Now, it is the corporate headquarters that darkens the streets below.
Akio Morida, the founder of Sony once said that “nations are a dying industry, corporations are the structures of the future.” By that, he meant to say that the true power of world society was no longer the halls of Congresses, or the gilded rooms of Parliaments, but was instead the Board Rooms of the world. The multinational corporation is the first organism in fossil history that is planetary in scope. Its’ organizational structure knows no geographic or political boundaries, and its’ loyalties are not to nations, but only to themselves.
So it is here that we must find our answers.
Many citizen of the world are coming to hate corporations and see them as something to be destroyed. Just as many Revolutions thru out history have sought, as their primary goal, to violently destroy the governments that oppressed them. Rarely did that worked out so well for regular folks; and, often, a greater tyranny took its place (although it is a perilous thing to try and judge relative tyrannies from the security of even a poorly functioning democracy).
America was blessed with founders who loved government and thought long and hard about what form of government would most likely secure the rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. They felt deeply that prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. It was the intensity of their respect for government that enabled them to lay the foundation for the great American experiment that the world has reaped the benefits of for over 250 years, and the flood of abundance that has flowed from their work has uplifted large segments of the world from want.
Now is our time to do our part.
The incorporation of democracy is the great movement of our generation. Are we willing to mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honors? If great patriots do not step forward in this time of peril, demagogues and charlatans will seize the levers of evolution and manipulate us to their purposes. Hitler rose from the economic ashes of the Weimer Republic. We must never forget the price of liberty.
On July 7th, 2007, a small group of committed patriots ratified the Declaration of Interdependence that set forth the causes which impelled them to seek to form a more perfect economic union, so that companies of the people, for the people and by the people shall not perish from the earth.
We now seek to convene an Intercontinental Congress to draft the constitution for the new democratic economic nations that will be needed to insure that our children inherit a future more magnificent than our own.
Incorporated Democracy and a Return to Common Sense.
There seems to be a growing consensus in this country that some thing is not quite right. That there is something structurally wrong with how society is functioning.
We are a world of incredible abundance that is not shared equitably, and we are beginning to believe that the American Dream is slipping away. The growing common wisdom is that the old belief of work hard, play by the rules, pay your dues, and you can build a life, not of riches, but of security, with some room for joy, seems more and more like a sucker’s bet.
Most of us have come to believe that we have hot air balloon economy that we get to ride in when things are going up, but we are tossed overboard if things dip in the slightest.
Honesty and integrity are becoming viewed as liabilities, as we see success going to those who are willing to take advantage and work the system. It is a commonly held belief that almost anyone who has succeeded, has done so at a price to others. Or that, as more and more of the wealth of our nation is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, success is going to those born of riches. Warren Buffett, no less, has said that "the idea that you hand over huge positions in society simply because someone came from the right womb - I just think it's almost un-American,".
It feels like the land of opportunity is going the way of the landed gentry and we have come to fear for the world we are leaving to our children.
But this moment in time is nothing new. From the beginning of the very origins of life there has been a struggle to evolve. The history of evolution has been the story of the triumph of cooperation over the tyranny of free riders. Of barriers to cooperation overcome, and the capturing of effects, and the distribution of benefits to those who create them, and then the deluge of abundance that follows the implementation of a better design.
From the primordial soup, with its auto catalytic sets of enzymes and proteins, and the creation of the cellular wall to keep out free riders and limit the benefits of cooperation to those who created them; to the development of hunter/gatherer bands, where free riders, who did not contribute and share, were banished to die in the wilderness; to the rise of Monarchies and the implementation of the rule of law, where thieves were punished harshly to protect the integrity of the emerging marketplace; to the Magna Carta and the nobility who reining in the excesses of the Crown; to the American Revolution and the increasingly powerful merchant class who dared to imagine a nation without a King; to today and our current barriers to cooperation -- the story is the same and the solutions have already been found.
It has been said that to know the true power within a society you need only look at the largest buildings in town. At the height of the Age of Kings, the castle loomed high above everything. During the Age of Enlightenment, the Church dominated the skyline. Then, the glorious monuments to democratic governance rose at the center of the great capitals of the world. Now, it is the corporate headquarters that darkens the streets below.
Akio Morida, the founder of Sony once said that “nations are a dying industry, corporations are the structures of the future.” By that, he meant to say that the true power of world society was no longer the halls of Congresses, or the gilded rooms of Parliaments, but was instead the Board Rooms of the world. The multinational corporation is the first organism in fossil history that is planetary in scope. Its’ organizational structure knows no geographic or political boundaries, and its’ loyalties are not to nations, but only to themselves.
So it is here that we must find our answers.
Many citizen of the world are coming to hate corporations and see them as something to be destroyed. Just as many Revolutions thru out history have sought, as their primary goal, to violently destroy the governments that oppressed them. Rarely did that worked out so well for regular folks; and, often, a greater tyranny took its place (although it is a perilous thing to try and judge relative tyrannies from the security of even a poorly functioning democracy).
America was blessed with founders who loved government and thought long and hard about what form of government would most likely secure the rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. They felt deeply that prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. It was the intensity of their respect for government that enabled them to lay the foundation for the great American experiment that the world has reaped the benefits of for over 250 years, and the flood of abundance that has flowed from their work has uplifted large segments of the world from want.
Now is our time to do our part.
The incorporation of democracy is the great movement of our generation. Are we willing to mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honors? If great patriots do not step forward in this time of peril, demagogues and charlatans will seize the levers of evolution and manipulate us to their purposes. Hitler rose from the economic ashes of the Weimer Republic. We must never forget the price of liberty.
On July 7th, 2007, a small group of committed patriots ratified the Declaration of Interdependence that set forth the causes which impelled them to seek to form a more perfect economic union, so that companies of the people, for the people and by the people shall not perish from the earth.
We now seek to convene an Intercontinental Congress to draft the constitution for the new democratic economic nations that will be needed to insure that our children inherit a future more magnificent than our own.
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