Search and bookmark!

I'm reading George Carlin's autobiography. It has been very interesting to learn about the evolution of his comedy routines. The beginning of chapter sixteen struck me as poignant observation.

"The reason I prefer the sledgehammer to the rapier and the reason I believe in blunt, violent, confrontational forms for the presentation of my ideas is because I see that what's happening to the lives of people is not rapierlike, it is not gentle, it is not subtle. It is direct, hard and violent. The slow violence of poverty, the slow violence of untreated disease. Of unemployment, hunger, discrimination....The real violence that goes on every day, unheard, unreported, over and over, multiplied a millionfold."

The core of this idea is not new, but rarely expressed so well. Not everyone has the grace to see what happens and understand that the consequences slip from awareness or hardly register. For all the power and magic of the internet, it sadly seems just to add to the noise of everyday life without also giving badly needed clarity. If you want to find it you really have to be willing to search and bookmark!

Shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism

I couldn't miss the opportunity to pass this on. Apparently, the good citizens of Vermont are finding the courage to tap into the zeitgeist and test out a new law. The Vermont Benefit Corporations Act will now allow companies to stipulate public benefits with a standard of conduct laid out for their board of directors to follow. Please read more about this at Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility.

Many authors who write about the current state of the economy have been calling for this kind of directive for a long time. Writers like David Korten and Juliet Schor insist that in order to save ourselves from environmental cannibalism, one of our greatest imperatives is to hold businesses accountable for ALL their effects on society, not just the monetary ones to shareholders.

Schor's book Plenitude lays it out very well in chapter three, Economics confronts the earth.

"The canonical models used by the mainstream are addressed to what happens within markets, rather than to economic dynamics more broadly. Because air, water, and many natural resources are neither owned nor priced, the effects of economic activity on their health and functioning do not fall within the purview of the standard treatments."

And speaking of reading more, there are many inspirational gems of wisdom to be had from her research. In future posts, I'll be coming back again and again to references from this book.