The Problem is About Bigness Itself–Threatened by Dinosaurs
February 3, 2010 by Will Marre
I do leadership consulting for a living. I am fortunate to work with enlightened large companies helping to revolutionize their leadership training to a 21st century model where value is created by creating a sustainable future. What I’ve witnessed in the past 3 years is nothing short of astonishing. While big companies are far from perfect they are making rapid and amazing progress at inventing new products and services that are healthier, sustainable and benefit humanity. But this is far from the norm. There are many, many leaders that pathetically don’t get it. Their self-interest and wholly materialistic view of enterprise is the only Kool-Aid they drink. Increasingly they are desperate to survive, and they have become gigantic parasites sucking the life-blood of our economy and our future.
We used to think that business and government operated with a healthy tension that led to both a vibrant economy and a constrained government, but that is now a sad illusion. Now they simply feed on each other in a new kind of “state capitalism.” Please, please know that this is both an impulse of Republicans and Democrats. We know that by looking at what people do rather than what they say.
According to the Economist, the biggest expansion in the American state since the 1960’s was driven by none other than George Bush. As a give-away to drug companies he expanded a huge drug entitlement program of Medicare at retail prices. He also created the biggest new bureaucracy since World War II called the Department of Homeland Security. He also greatly expanded no-bid contracts to defense and other government contractors. 7000 new pages of government regulations were installed and wiretaps and financial data mining of our bank accounts became government-as-usual.
Since the financial meltdown taxpayers have had to bailout our big financial institutions and auto companies while no one pays any consequences.
Meanwhile both Democrats and Republicans are locked in an ideological cage fight played out in our hyperactive media while our nation convulses in dry-heaves of meaningless sound bites. If children are to thrive we need something more.
But that will be difficult. The marriage between big governments and big business is even greater in other big economies like China and Russia whose governments routinely “buy” private companies, decide who gets capital and who is pushed aside. (Most of these nations’ global companies are in fact owned by their governments!)
Meanwhile, a Saudi Prince (remember the Saudi Arabian government owns all the Saudi oil reserves) is the second largest stockholder in News Corp., which owns Fox “news” and the Wall Street Journal (see Fortune). He is also the largest stockholder in Citigroup, one of our too big failed banks. If you wonder whether this foreign quasi-state investor has much influence at News Corp. or Citicorp, Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup, remarked that Prince Alwaleed’s view of his performance would determine whether he keeps his job! Prince Alwaleed announced he is opposed to new taxes on big banks to recoup U.S. taxpayer support. Big surprise. Isn’t it interesting that a foreign Prince has that kind of influence over the leadership of one of our largest failed banks? More influence than the taxpayers who kept Citicorp afloat.
This is just a symptom of the twisted new world of State Capitalism where the financial power brokers of Wall Street have moved from New York to K Street in Washington D.C.
Now we’re in a brave new world, sanctioned by our Supreme Court that opens the door to global corporations supporting their favorite U.S. political candidates. Welcome to bizarroworld where free speech has become bought and paid for speech by global corporations who claim to have the same rights as individual citizens. How do you like that Thomas Jefferson!
It’s long been observed that when companies are growing, brimming with innovation and new products they spend little on lobbying. However when big corporations grow dull and profits are shrinking they “invest” millions in Washington to impact laws and regulations to tilt the playing field, restrain competition, gut anti-trust laws and create special tax breaks. They simultaneously tout free markets while they work like demons to rig things for personal benefit.
So the problem we face is not only about big government; it’s about bigness itself. Dinosaurs were huge. Their inability to adapt caused them to go extinct. Now we have the dinosaurs of big government and big business mating creating offspring that is simply devouring all the assets and resources of generations of work.
What is the best we can do? State Capitalism is the global rage. It reigns almost everywhere from Japan, China, Malaysia, the Middle East, Western Europe and of course our own bloated version of it. Its failures will be painful and drawn out. The most important issues are personal ones that impact you and your loved ones. My view is don’t expect the system to change soon. There is too much juice in it to voluntarily reform itself. It’s time to live prudently, become multi-skilled in work that ignites our passions and focus on all the things we do control. There will be great churn in the economy and great opportunities to out-run the dinosaurs. It’s a day of constant innovation and, if viewed correctly, unprecedented opportunity. There are still great companies to work for that are innovative, treat their employees well and are thriving even now (Fortune Magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For). Remember, it’s our day-to-day life that matters, and in every epoch there are those that adapt, thrive and pursue their dreams. Be one of those. Life is risky. Take charge.
What we’re seeing around the world is the result of the banking cartel, known in this country as the “Federal Reserve.” Which is neither federal nor does it operate on the principal of reserves. Their ability to create money at will gives them exceptional power and there actions are a tax on everyone. This tax is effectivley a tax without representation. As one can clearly see how the banking bailout programs have worked, the tax payers had little or no say. What the banking cartel wanted is what they got. No consequences for their actions, no accountability.
The populous is enraged, but you have to look long and hard for any evidence of this in the media. That is because the banking cartel, and the large corporations that have grown up around them, owns or control all the major media outlets. The information is extremely biased with an agenda of keeping the the status quo. If you listen only to the media, you would be left with the opinion that there are no realist alternatives.
There is a movement on captial hill to audit the fed. We should all support this so that for once we can see that what goes on behind the curtain is unconstitional and does not represent the interest of the citizens of this country. This is the last thing the fed wants and they are mighty. One of the few avenues of near term hope we have is to continue to express our outrage and support of this measure.
Bigness? I would word it differently, taking ‘bigness’ as an aspect of the ancient cyclical dynamic Plato and Aristotle identified as operating in political societies 2,300+ years ago: decay. In scientific terms, ‘entropy’: the organization of our lives in our world (which includes our own sophistication and perceptiveness, our own mentality) has reached a point where now breakdown is ever more evident. Supposing that some amount of bullsh**t is unavoidable in life, one could say that some things break down faster than others, depending on the amount and density of b.s. in the foundation, and how long it gets warm enough for the melt and the stink to start making things go to sh**t.
Let’s take state socialism and compare it to state capitalism. They are mirror images, in a way. State socialism (primary textbook example: the defunct Soviet Union) conceptualized itself as being on a lower level of development than Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ Communism, and therefore did not do away with government; Bolshevik ideology imagined the dynamism of revolution embalmed in government for as long as necessary until supposedly reaching the goal of full Communism (“from each according to his ability; to each according to his need”). Therefore, in Soviet state socialism, people lived under the slogan “from each according to ability, to each according to work” because work was the motor of the ‘living revolution’ (government). Can anyone ‘smell’ the…(ahem) decay? Is state capitalism any different?
Let’s see: capitalism is all about people needing and wanting stuff (demand) and creating ways to provide stuff (supply), and this is done by the free flow of ideas, money and labor. This is the ideal, isn’t it? But instead, this ideal, inaugurated 230+ years ago by Adam Smith, could not be implemented whole-hog; those whose goods and services would be in high demand one moment would eventually not be in high demand, if free-flowing capitalism were the order of the day. The only way to somewhat preserve one’s advantage in the market would be by eliminating competition and establishing monopoly. So, the flow of demand and supply could no longer be free. Government either facilitated this arrangement by favoring businesses or stepped in to break up monopolies. Either way, government had to be involved, and which way it went depended on who was friends with whom, who was enemy of whom, and what mix of avarice and philanthropy was operative. And so it is today.
As William Penn wrote centuries ago in the Preface to the 1682 Frame of Government of Pennsylvania, “Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But, if men be bad, let the government be ever so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn.”
So, yeah, ‘bigness’ as an aspect of complexity. It is the breakdown of ethics in a very complex economic environment and in a sold-out political climate. And because we are blind to it, and we don’t care so much about it, and we therefore idiotically keep it going, the problem is also us.
One of the biggest problems we all face is that there are so many major critical issues that need addressing at one one time – RIGHT NOW! Of course, they didn’t all happen at one time, they were just not addressed when they needed to be and they therefore just kept coming back for attention until now the fix list of major issues which need to be addressed just keeps growing. Still, I might add with no proposed serious thought process other than disaster-driven panic and throwing our money at them.
Government and those that govern, both in the States and in Washington just are not doing their jobs. There is no common sense, no personal responsibility, no financial accountability. There is no change, it is business as usual and shouts of “the sky is falling” everywhere you look. The right things must be done to solve our country’s issues before we become an also ran in the world. Every day the government is taking more from all of us in every way and giving nothing in return.
What are the highest priorities for our country? We need a constantly updated list and a logical, responsible plan to address those priorities. Congress’ daily disarray of poorly thought out, special interest oriented, cost is no object solutions don’t and will not work. They are media/special interest obsessed egotists who just don’t care about the American people let alone the unprecedented convergence of critical issues needing to be addressed.
It is sad to say in a way, that Will is right, we need to take care of ourselves and our own the best we can while looking to the horizon for the next opportunity. But at the same time, part of the bigger problems our country faces are a result of repeating past mistakes and not properly caring for and dealing with the growing number of our fellow human beings at the bottom of the pyramid. Haiti is the latest, because it happened to be news because of a tragedy (but let’s face it, Haiti has been there a long time and it has always been a disaster under our noses). But why does it take an earthquake or a tsunami, or a genocide to get everyone’s attention? The poor around the world are out there every day living under unbearable conditions, regardless of whether there is a natural disaster to trigger our attention. Somehow, I believe, we were not just meant to live our lives on this earth in a solitary fashion just to be “successful” according to someone’s definition of what that means. We are meant to be the best we can be in every way and reach our highest potential, while simultaneously sharing what we are and have with those less fortunate and less enlightened in order to uplift all of us.
The world we live in is our mirror of who we all are, both as individuals and as a society. We must all take that responsibility seriously because there is no denial. We create that world out there every day and we are the only ones who can change it for better or worse, it is our choice either way. We have hit the tipping point in way more areas than one could imagine – we really overdid it this time, in oh so many ways, and the sooner we all realize it and begin to swing things back to what made us great in the past, we will have to live with what we created. I for one just took my first step forward on a new path to a better future. Anyone else out there care to do the same? we sorely need you all.