A story of two investments
The essay below is from Paul Krafel, one of my teachers about systems and nature. Paul, author of SEEING NATURE, one of the more influential books in my life, runs Chrysalis, a nature-based charter school in northern California
http://www.chrysalischarterschool.com. His special gift is noticing patterns in nature that provide new insights and possibilities for our lives and societies.
http://moveyourmoney.info which invites us, urges us and helps us to move our money from national and multinational banks to local and community banks and credit unions. Interestingly, the proposal seems to be popular with both progressives and conservatives, and has been picked up by a faith group
and
New York City
,
among others. Readers familiar with the film “It’s a Wonderful Life” (which I just saw this last Christmas) will especially enjoy the video created to launch the movement
http://moveyourmoney.info/audiovideo
There is also a popular personal testimony video at
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvRjt0j2p-Y?wmode=transparent]
(among other videos on youtube searchable using “move your money”…) I’ve got my own small funds divided between a stable local bank and a local credit union — neither of which got into any of the high risk debt packaging shenanigans and sub-prime mortgages that generated the financial crisis we’re currently slogging through. How about you? Would you like to join this “many drops in the bucket” movement to switch your funds from (a) the “too big to fail” banks that survive (and pay bonuses) on taxpayer bail-outs but refuse to free up loans, to (b) the “small enough to care” banks and credit unions that don’t need to be bailed out and are answerable to — and supportive of — their own communities? While you’re thinking along these lines, consider socially responsible investing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socially_responsible_investing
— especially investing in local enterprises, sustainable technologies, and social entrepreneurship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_entrepreneurship Money talks. Let’s exercise our financial freedom of speech! After all, corporations do… Coheartedly,
Tom PS: I invite you to move some small amount of your money to the Co-Intelligence Institute, as well. See
http://co-intelligence.org/donations.html ============= A STORY OF TWO INVESTMENTS by Paul Krafel This last summer we installed a playground at Chrysalis for our primary and elementary students. As I watch young children climb and slide and imaginatively play on the structure, I reflect on what a wonderful investment this playground is – from many angles. First is the investment in the health of the next generation. Kids are swinging across the monkey bars, climbing the ladders, growing strong. Second, from a financial point of view, for $18,000 we bought and installed a playground that should cost $70,000 or so, installed. This is because one of our parents noticed this playground sitting unused at another school. That school had been an elementary school but it was converted to a specialized high school. The playground, designed for 5-12 year olds, had to now just sit there, creating a maintenance and liability problem for that school district. So we bought it from them in a win-win situation. We got a playground in good shape for about a fourth the cost. They got rid of a liability problem, regained use of 3000 sq. ft. of playground area, and acquired funds that would help them retain a teaching position in these challenging state budget times. Plus the Earth benefited because we recycled a playground rather than impose the carbon footprint of constructing and transporting a whole new playground. Then there was a third benefit in that the county probation department did the work of moving and installing the playground for us. People on probation had the chance to participate in work that created something special for children. So, the playground has been an all-around wonderful investment. Then I read that Wall Street was developing a new investment opportunity based on securitizing people’s insurance policies. People in hard times are cashing in their insurance policies for a fraction of their overall worth. Profit can be generated from this misfortune; the articles said interest in the new investment vehicle was running high. I find myself contemplating the difference between these two investments. Many of the articles conveyed a sense of moral outrage which I can agree with. But it’s the contrast between these two investments that I kept turning over and over in my mind. The Wall Street investment was building nothing of value. Nothing was being made better for our future – like a playground. But more importantly, it revealed such a pathetic lack of imagination. The playground – now that was creative in so many ways. But having billions of our culture’s dollars flowing into investments that generate more profit if people live shorter, more desperate lives is not creative. What’s profoundly pathetic is that those involved in this securitization see themselves as shrewd. They see themselves as smart enough to profit while I see them wandering further and further away from the heart of this incredible gift of being alive. My heart goes out to them – not anger. We were born into this world, gifted with the abilities to create upward spirals, to nourish gardens of new possibilities, bring forth surges of hope. And to end up near the end of your life having learned not even enough to move beyond such dark, sideshow come-ons is truly sad. There is such a world of difference between extracting possibilities from a system—calling it profit—and helping possibilities emerge within a system. Contemplating the difference between these two investments deepens my certainty, born up in the rainy fields, that the power within money, like rainwater, becomes destructive if it becomes too concentrated. Currency loses its creative potential when it’s used to extract profit rather than generate capacity and that tends to happen as money concentrates. Money managers of a billion dollars won’t see the opportunity to move a playground, partly because it does not generate a “profit” (actually, it generates a huge profit but it isn’t in the form of money) and partly because it is too small for their radar. Securitize the insurance policies of millions of desperate people and a billion dollars can move in and out of that market easily. But it’s hard to easily move a billion in and out of the things that really matter. So I’ve grown convinced that one of the most important gardening roles of government is to make sure its policies and actions have the effect of spreading out and slowing down the rate at which money tends to converge. Help as much of the currency as possible to soak in high in the watershed and nourish a thousand acres of growth rather than helping it concentrate in a two acre-reservoir at the bottom. Some people will scream “redistributing the wealth” but the wealth is
always flowing, always redistributing itself. The way money concentrates currently is also redistribution of the wealth. One of the most important reasons for helping the flow of money spread out is because the thousand acres will transpire most of the water back into the air to fall as rain again, nourishing yet more possibilities…
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