We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, August 30, 2014

What We Can Learn About Corporations From the Man Who Sold Shares in Himself

Click here to access article by Nick Bentley from Reclaim Democracy!

Bentley writes about some important insights about our society when reading an amusing piece about Mike Merrill who sold shares in himself, and thus giving "owners" power to rule over himself. There were many problems in this arrangement for Merrill's more intimate relationships as there are, of course, with corporations in relation to their employees, customers, and in the communities where their operations are located. Bentley was struck with the following insight while most people were only amused by Merrill's experience:
The only difference between public corporations and Mike Merrill is that we’ve come to accept the consequences of absentee ownership as “normal” in the context of publicly traded companies, so we’re blind to their pathologies. When the same thing happens in an unusual context, it’s easy to see what’s wrong with it.
Any dysfunction can seem perfectly normal if we’re sufficiently used to it. But that doesn’t mean the world wouldn’t be a much better place if we woke up to the problem and fixed it.