030176.com : The Life of Mads Kristensen

Media commentator Jeff Jarvis has an interesting post, where he tries to come to grips with the worldwide economic meltdown by offering a version of how things would play out, if Google’s way of innovating and doing business precided over the financial markets. The idea is fascinating. And it’s almost manifesto style. A guide to a better world. Very idealistic and putting Google on a piedestal I don’t quite think they deserve. All in all there are a few issues with both his post and how people look at a solution, which I think is worth addressing. Even if it’s slightly off topic for this blog.

First of all there is history. I remember being at a U2 concert in the early 90’s, where a statement kept flashing during “The Fly”: “Everything You Know Is Wrong!” I think this could very much be the case in the current predicament. While I think we should be looking into history for whatever learnings and guiding we can, I also believe that fundamentally the system is screwed. We have worked ourselves into such a corner - or enormous junk yard if you will - that there really is no precedence in history. It’s a totally new ball game calling for drastic, game changing solutions. None of the so called bright heads out there - least of all the economists - are really equipped to handle it. Because they rely on theories dating back in the past. They’re running obscolete in their knowledge base. There, I said it. Add to that the other thing, I have been thinking about. Darwin’s theory of Survival of the Fittest. Remember that ‘Fittest’ doesn’t imply the most ethical or the most rightious. Only the fittest. So even if we imagined that the only way to get the world out of this gigantic mess, odds are that there would still be ‘fit’ people looking to take advantage, to exploit - and basically drive us down the same road again. Potentially at least. All in all this makes solving this thing really hard. Overregulating everything isn’t the solution - we saw that with the old Eastern block and how the collapse of The Wall made systems come crumpling down. What we need is something different. Something more in the middle. Something that gives people and businesses freedom to operate and prosper for it - but doing so in an ethic way, not exploiting neither ressources nor customers or other human beings they pass on their way. We need to insist on real value creation. Put a stop to derivates, riding on margins etc. Things that doesn’t contribute to anything but ultimate destruction of value. And we need the guts to set examples. To let people and businesses that were once ‘the fittest’ but not so any more go bust.