The New American Patriots
The Occupy Wall Street protests are finally here and it only took 30 years. I’m going to cut to the chase. I’ve known something was terribly wrong in America for pretty much my entire life. I know that you are a smart person so you did too. So let’s skip the review and do what we do best and extrapolate what’s going to happen now.
My constituency is small. I have no money (as in, less than no money, aka debt). I have no prospects, because future employers frankly can’t see as far as I do. Girls generally don’t like me, because my vision of the future doesn’t match theirs, although luckily my girlfriend is giving it the old college try. The software I use is crap. The devices I rely on are also crap, because I can design better ones myself, so most of the tasks I perform each day are a waste of my time. Politics is crap. Money is crap. I’ve spent my life working to buy food and pay the rent instead of getting real work done. I realized far too young that my body of work is pathetic, like a person on their deathbed looking back on his or her life with regret. If I were a business, I’d be so far in the red that even I wouldn’t invest in myself.
So that got me thinking. Why have others supported me? Why was I lucky enough to have nurturing parents, a good college education and banks willing to loan me money during the housing boom? I really need to figure this out, because I’m having some serious cognitive dissonance between my impression of the world and how it actually works. What do I really have to offer?
If I look at all the people I admire, like Steve Jobs, Franklin Roosevelt, John Lennon to Thom Hartmann, Van Jones and frickin Lady Gaga, I find myself wondering just how did they do it? How did they build a constituency? How were they able to achieve self expression, today’s version of freedom? Because to me, the only difference between you and me and them is the smallest sliver of opportunity. Or faith. Or affirmation. Or maybe enterprise. I just can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe divinity. Luck?
Something profound is missing from my life. It’s almost as if I’m missing. It’s like everything I’ve tried has been a Hail Mary and so far I’ve only missed. A single successful completion - just one - and I wouldn’t be here writing this right now. The odds of that are astronomically small. Maybe too small.
In fact I’m coming to realize that it would take more than one lucky outcome to fix my life. It probably requires many small moves. No, it’s more subtle than that. More like small adjustments, applied every day. In my thinking, speaking and acting.
If I think about the future I want to see, how does what I’m currently doing fit into that? The startling realization I’m faced with is that nothing I do has any bearing on the world at large whatsoever. It’s what YOU do that really matters. Or more precisely what WE do, because I have no say in your business. I can only suggest.
So if you are still reading this, maybe you are finding yourself in the same boat I am. No money. No prospects. No constituency. So what do WE have to offer?
Well, what are we left with? Our work maybe. Our minds. Our friends. So those are our bargaining chips, however humble. As far as I can tell, if things keep going like they’re going, then we will be forced to stop providing our services for pennies on the dollar. People have stopped paying their credit cards. They are going on strike. They have no income, so aren’t paying taxes. We are beginning to unplug.
Wall street has forgotten that they are still a business and governed by the rules of the free market. Their primary profit avenue is convincing people to pay, just like a car salesman’s profit avenue is selling a car for more than its purchase price. The only thing keeping them in business is our naiveté. We keep paying our credit cards. We keep providing our services to the highest bidder, not the one most in need. We pay a higher tax rate than millionaires. It’s remarkable, in a way.
Because if we just quit the jobs we hated, and got together with our friends to form new businesses, we could trivially solve the problems plaguing the world. If you made as much in 2 hours working for yourself as you did in an entire day working for some rich guy, how hard would it be to spend the rest of your time growing a garden and riding your bike and sticking solar panels on your roof or going fishing or travelling (or doing whatever else it is you want to do)? Instead of spending money on advertising and health insurance, what if you just made a good product and brought back tariffs so you don’t have to compete with third world workers? Then you slept 8 hours a night and exercised, and invested the rest of the money in curing diseases and helping those less fortunate so they could afford to buy your products?
If everyone in your apartment got together and told the landlord that you will all be paying half the rent because real estate prices have fallen by half, would he or she evict you? What if the whole block does it? The whole city? The whole country? The landlords would tell the banks that they only have half the money now and the banks can either take it or lose everything. A natural readjustment in the free market would occur.
The problem with these ideas is that they are all or nothing. We aren’t likely to convince everyone to do them. So I think part of what the protests are doing is creating a stew of ideas, because the old ideas have been ineffectual. We’ll likely see some new constructs flowing from it that form a bridge from where we are to where we want to be.
For example, eviction insurance. If it’s too hard to get everyone to join a tenant union, then people can instead form a smaller coalition where everyone pays their rent into a central pot, and it pays out rents to the landlord. Once a critical mass of people have joined the tenant union (perhaps 10% of a city’s population or whatever the financial viability point is for the real estate market), then the tenant union would begin to ratchet down the price of rent. Once the other tenants find out that rent has been lowered some percentage, then they can also pay less without fear of eviction. In effect, they become virtual members of the tenant union by enjoying the protections it provides. Every problem our country faces has a similar, viable solution between all and nothing.
So you see, it’s not that the protestors lack a cohesive set of demands right now, but that they are discovering how to move beyond the rules set by those in power. They are forming their own constituency. Our constituency. We will soon enjoy the benefits of their union even if it’s only virtually. I’ve heard that the protestors are forming small groups that will elect representatives to meet and represent us at a national level. This is true democracy unfolding right before our eyes, and we are the new American patriots. The best thing that you can do right now is to think of a minimum viable path to move beyond your problem and then throw that idea out into the world. Also be open to the small opportunities that will come your way as others imagine viable avenues for you to move with them beyond your shared predicament. In other words, be a part of things.
Join me on Twitter @zackarymorris
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