Edgar Cahn, founder of the Time Dollars program, has interesting thoughts on the economy in a TEDxAshokaU talk.
Excerpts:
Traditional economics are focused only on “part of the map”; they ignore the 1/3 that economists think are unimportant: “the one that you go home to every night, it’s called home, family, community;…it probably doesn’t do anything important from the point of GDP. It just raises children, makes neighborhoods safe and vibrant, raises strong families, takes care of the elderly, gets involved in things like elections, tries to make democracy work, tries to make officials accountable, fights for social justice, tries to keep the planet sustainable, but nothing of economic importance you understand …” (laughter) “There is a core economy” (family, neighborhood, community, civil society, networks and informal support systems) that is analogous to a computer’s operating system; many powerful specific programs (like monetary system) don’t work if the core economy goes down.
He notes that new “social enterprise system” is about reviving this social economy. Traditional entrepreneurship can’t effectively unilaterally deliver health care, education, welfare, community justice, or democracy. Need to enlist people as “co-producers”. Need economy that runs both on money and on compassion, since traditional economy values things only that are scarce and love, compassion, grieving, decision-making in small groups, standing up for what is right are universal and hence defined away by the traditional economy as worthless.
We need to revalue compassion, caring, civic engagement. Alvin Toffler explained this point by asking a corporate CEO how effective their best employees would be if they were not toilet-trained. A critical component is reciprocity and “pay it forward“, which is what lead Cahn to “time dollars” (the currency of time) or his “time dollar youth court“. We need to look through the lens of possibility: returning prison convicts in DC could guarantee safe passage at any street corner through gang territory.
“Need to ask why are we here and what kind of world do we want to leave behind…Father Fahey said ‘We have no money; all we have is each other’…To me this represents good news; it means we have true abundance.”
[tip o’ the hat to Lew Feldstein for alerting me to Cahn’s talk.]
Social justice, like european countries or russia/ussr/china, come on get real people. What we have is a country turning into a welfare state, less people willing to work at common labor jobs and you know it. Hey if they can’t make it in sports, rap, government pud job then they turn to crime and drugs and you know I’m right. I worked at bridgeman dairy restaurant in Minneapolis in 1970-71 and did busboy work and dishes while I was in college so shut up. The liberals think to steal from they haves is justified, many of these people worked over the past 40 years to get what they now have. The youth of today want it all now, and Obama and his regime are using you ignorant people with socialism speech’s with no substance other than take from those who have. I believe in justice for ALL LEGAL American’s USA, but for those who pass up doing common jobs until they get to the job they desire. I say wake up your not above the rest of us who had to work menial jobs. Please take a moment to really look at yourself and be honest about who and what you really are. My brother and I were on welfare for 11 years after a divorce split our family. We hated it and at the age of 16 we move from iowa to indiana, mother and twin bro and I got jobs, so don’t tell me it can’t be done. Shame on you people who are beggars collecting free money from hard working Americans when in fact you are able to work. Shame on you professional generation after generation milking the system and its hard working tax payers. You owe yourself to be responsible and do your part, do something for your country and stop expecting your country to carry you.
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