Efficient Outcomes

We live in a world that is flawed by you, and everyone you do and don't know.  Those everyone's are humans; homo sapiens that reside at the top of the food chain but way below the chain of common sense.

Not to beat up on humans, I love being one, but let's take a look at some primary accusations the rest of living organisms might make if they could, well...only find a way to communicate with us.  One perfect example can be found in a book titled Ishmael.  While I don't purport this novel to answer humanities failures, but it does probe into the culture of our behavior. 

We lack the ability to respond to a fundamental reality of finite resources because in an economic system the value of these resources are externalities that hold little meaning in comparison to wealth building in financial terms.  We fail miserably in efficient outcomes.

Why?  A culture of belief that never ending consumption, is the key to our remaining at the top of the evolutionary chain.  This includes development, a term that has evolved from the establishment of civilization. Humans have a tendency to conquer rather than coexist.  As Darwin might say, survival is based on one's ability to thrive over another organism.  Evidence of this can be seen not only in grand edifice as a symbol of human greatness, but in our crowing achievement of eliminating disease.

To be certain, there is no turning back the magnitude of our achievement, though cataclysmic they may be in

scale.  Sure we will see glimpses of a change in the tides but culture is a difficult thing to change.  Not only are we slow to respond, in many cases we are just to late.  It is human culture that  is the greatest contributor to the accelerating background extinction rate, dominating the landscape with estimates from 1000 to 10,000 times normal extinction rates of other living organisms-- that is the impact of a civilized society.  Wikipedia has a very interesting way of stating it, as long as species have been evolving, species have been going extinct; no species is evolving faster than humans.

What The 99 Wants...? Deliberate trajectory ?

The Struggle within the We Are The 99 (The 99) is merely speckling the landscape of big financial interest having celebrated their two month anniversary (Nov. 17th 2011).  But with each advancement their efforts seem be derailed due to the overwhelming strength of the financial institutions and politics.  The concentration of wealth may be the concern, but a well thought out counter proposal must be developed if they are to succeed.

It is not hard to face the fact that we live in a quasi-capitalist society (true capitalism would not provide subsidies industry); nowhere is that more true and evident, than in the United States, during times such as these.  And with each argument, government seems to respond with further questionable act of decision-making (or lack there of), when concerning groups associated with social justice concerns such as The 99.

• Between 1976 and 2008, the pretax income for the top 1% of the U.S. population went from 8.9 to 20 percent of the nation's income.  This tells us that tax and revenue policies have continued to work in favor of the most wealthy. (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(1), 2008)

The 99 is in need of a specific objective with a road map of how to reach that objective as a set of proposals or demands.  Such a proposal should be methodical and well reasoned that gets the concerned population closer to transforming the status quo for the people they represent.  The current reality might start out... we know where we are, we are learning where we want to go, we have an idea about how to get there; this is our proposal...

This proposal should have some expertise(able minded people) behind it, that represents well reasoned research addressing specific issues; one example might be how much are you asking from the corporate giants or greed agents/ white collar capitalists (whatever your perspective might be); what do you expect that ask to achieve, how will it redistributed?  Also what are the implications and turn around time for the desired affect?  Identify what is standing in the way and why you believe it is movable.  This is only a small example of what should be happening.  Instead what seems to be occurring is The 99 is losing steam.

 What is wrong?

• Disparity between wealth and poverty on a perpetual  path of disproportionate growth
• Opportunities for elevation out of poverty increasingly distant
• Families and individuals unable to maintenance and prevent poor health
• Lack of job security
• Inability to secure prosperous housing
• Poor academic environment
• Deteriorating communities

These inequities foster the flames that create much of the fire in the relationship between the  extremely wealthy individuals, and other 99 segment of the population.  There are multiple examples of where an equitable society has proven to make a difference.  Not all of them are in the most obvious places, but The 99 should begin to assemble those pieces together and transform their argument into a statement of purpose, if they plan on being agents of change rather than advocates.

Change is most likely to occur when something is really wrong, an assembly of people work to change what is wrong and a plan is developed to make what is wrong obsolete by presenting a better alternative.