To be precise, this piece is about modern economic systems failing society. My simple disclaimer here is that I am not an economist. I am one of the individuals trying to make a living running his own, single person business.
After almost 25 years in the corporate environment my situation changed in a way that left me in a spot where I discovered that my years of diverse experience were counting against me. It was difficult to cast me in a specific job in the corporate pigeon holes. Had I been doing the same type of job for a decade, it could have been simpler, but I am also a generalist, not a specialist. I integrate the specialized stuff that others work on for ages; they research the details, I see the patterns that link it across boundaries. Maybe it is just a failing of the human resources departments, or the agencies, or my own inability to sell myself, but no-one could translate my (previously valued) experience into their environment and I could not do it either. I could not get into interviews and I had no option but to start my own business.
You soon find out that the economies of the world primarily consists of two large entities: government clusters and large corporations. Both have similar hierarchies and similar loops and hoops that one must learn to negotiate. As a knowledge worker (and I’ll come back to this concept) it is exceedingly difficult to compete for contracts that are being outsourced as companies and government departments become increasingly closed entities. This is to my mind the result of the insane concept of intellectual property. While several academics have questioned the idea, corporations and governments have (with eager lawyers in tow) seen it as another way to hype their perceived value. They own an asset that is intangible they claim, they can attach a price to it and they can trade in it. And so they do, trading these imaginary assets on their books. It seems that it often exceeds the real value of the company.
Where have we seen this before? Simple, the dot com boom and crash consisted mostly of organizations with some sort of innate value, unquantifiable in many ways, just waiting to be unlocked and valued on potential. The concept of a knowledge worker is part of this - we supposedly trade in things that consist of knowledge. Is this true? I think not. I have skills and access to the knowledge base of humanity. My skills can be tested. What we know is written down in books and other records. Experience and know-how are things locked up in people and in their networks. It is not quantifiable, unless it is used to generate solutions to real world problems or to discover new opportunities to develop and improve the human condition (or in some cases to take advantage of it). It is tested and made explicit in this way. It becomes tangible and only then does it have value. Do the corporates own people, like slaves? Well, we have to conclude that this is indeed true if they claim to own that which is in the heads and in the networks of people. I think this is a silly notion.
How does this link with my claim that the economic systems are failing us? For one, the economies of countries now rely heavily on this concept of potential value. They trade in it when they trade futures on the stock exchanges, and they use it to borrow money to make their departments work, all under the banner of making the countries viable and sustainable. It may surprise you that I am not at all confessing to being a capitalist, socialist, marxist or communist. None of these systems are viable anymore. They all claim to be something special, but it all comes down to a few being in power positions, able to manipulate the situation. Socialists claim that they will look after society by spending the money on societal projects, but they soon run out of the resources to continue to live up to the promises. Capitalists give free reign to the corporations to generate wealth for all, but somehow that money goes only into the pockets of a few. In both cases these ‘organisms’ thrive on being able to centralise the power structures. Freedom to the workers and other slogans just do not cut it any more. This is why I am amused by the whole “Occupy” movement. It is just another outlet for anarchists, marxists and disillusioned (read “failed”) capitalists. And it is just another excuse for those that are aggrieved by what others have and they lack, just an excuse to demand more in exchange for - what?
For a while now I have been following another train of thought. It seems the current financial systems and the economic paradigms driving them are running out of steam. We cannot continue to grow within the context that we are used to: growth equals making and selling more stuff. Growth will need to be something different as we are running out of planetary resources to support the “more” paradigm. Similar thoughts are being expressed by several individuals on the web. Rather than campaign for redistribution of the wealth (or what is left of it) the new thinking challenges the role of centralised centers of power, whether these are big corporates or governments. Sustainability will come as a counter trend to the development of larger metros and ever larger budgets to keep these monsters intact. Smaller cooperatives with distributed power based on synergisms will most probably start to replace the failing über systems. As fewer and fewer people can afford to be part of the mega systems they will be forced to find other ways to look after themselves. Local networks (and it includes those that extend via the internet) will become centers of power focussed on nodes of one or in some cases, the collection of a few. The currency will change back to skills exchange in many cases. Growth will be measured in value addition and the supply of necessities at a personal level, not by the desirability engineered by the brand managers.
Where this awareness cannot take root successfully, the rot of the large systems will cause major social upheaval and unrest. More “occupiers” will emerge with insatiable demands that will lead to the destruction of the power sources of the large systems as well as the occupiers in many instances. This is an uncomfortable view of the future. It may not come to the extremes explored here, but it will come in a form similar to what I describe here unless something really disruptive happens soon.
It should be obvious that if we want to campaign for anything at this time, it would be worthwhile to work to ensure that systems and technologies for communication and electrical power are secured. More people will be forced to know more about more and not more about less. Not being part of a metro may be rather beneficial. Campaigning for decentralisation could possibly avert disaster if those in governmental power realize that this is the way to best govern to the benefit of those that still chose to take part in elections. The next few years will be exciting as we see these patterns unfold. I’ll be campaigning for this evolution while working to develop my network and my skills and understanding who my fellow cooperative members are. You will not find me camping on the town commons.
What is distance to the heart? A beat translated to a flutter under soft skin and not seen, I guess. But that same heart will not be still and it beats through the fiber of space and time and we know it, no matter the time of day or the physics of the moment. The rhythm flickers through dreams and manifests in the moments of a day. Distance is not of the heart, it is of the mind. 
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