GoHuman Blog

I was on Ted.com the other day, listening to Seth Godin talk about tribes and more specifically about the dynamics of starting a movement. In this talk he spoke about how it is important to find a group that needs something and connect them with an idea that will address their needs. During this economic recession I have been bombarded with requests to forward resumes and requests for job leads from readers of my blog and listeners of my radio show. As much as I would love to help every single one of my supporters, I simply did not have the resources to make an impact.

I’ve been cooking up this blog since I lived in Germany in the early 90s.  I read “Food 2000″, a coffee-table book, touting “food miracles” – scientists solving world hunger and such.  It was sponsored propaganda against Alliance 90/The Greens.  I was horrified by what I saw.

I was just beginning to recover from an “incurable” auto-immune-related condition little understood by Medical Science, using dietary and other natural methods.  I told myself I would help change the system of systems.

Now Agribusiness is moving from propaganda to sinister control.  Scientific American, explains how Bio-engineering companies own articles published about their seed. Cropchoice.com explains how farmers using seed infected by patented seed are guilty of stealing.  Food Inc. is eating up the conscience of consumers.  Watch it, and take a symbolic stand, however small.

Yesterday Forbes arrived, with Monsanto on the cover as Company of the year.  Forbes’ arrogance since the economic meltdown has shocked this longtime reader.  The Frankenstein monster of business is  running rampant.  Our food supply is controlled by companies bio-engineered for greed.

Greg Brown sings “I watched my country turn into a coast-to-coast strip mall and I cried out in a song: if we could do all that in thirty years, then please tell me you all – why does good change take so long?”  Join us and speed up change.

Why GoHuman.com? reason #6?  Local Food

Fight for your right to control your own food!

Reason #1; Reason #2; Reason #3; Reason #4; Reason #5;

Next Time #7: All Hail Snopes! Reason #8; Reason #9; Reason #10; Reason #11; Reason #12

All this speculation about Google buying Yelp for half a billion dollars starts to sound suspiciously like some of the other high finance deals that led to the current economic crisis. But at the end of the day, these are two corporations beholden to shareholders and investors with wealth aggregated at the top and controlled from the top. Worse still, that wealth is still leaving your community.

Where’s the little guy in all this? The independent local professional or small business who just needs to get more customers in the door, no matter who happens to own the search traffic or content at that particular moment.

Google was supposed to be in the business of objectively aggregating the world’s information, not owning it. Buying Yelp ensures a degree of control over the content that is created. And remember who’s creating all that content? You and me.

Yelp was a directory created to give consumers a democratic voice in recommending brick and mortar businesses. I believe their motives were pure, but they leaned so far in favor of the consumer as to alienate businesses who now tell extortion-like tales. The review system is limited and features such as business responses and custom business info are afterthoughts at best.

There is a better way.

What if the website that contained all the customer feedback alllowed businesses to express themselves and interact in a more natural, independent way?

Better yet, what if the people who contribute to the website community end up owning it?

GoHuman.com represents something completely different — 1000’s of sustainable localized business communities connected through the Web yet protected from the rampant evaporation of local wealth. We’re building a unique collaborative economic structure that directly rewards those who contribute to its growth. It’s a revolutionary concept that takes a bit of faith to absorb, but we truly believe it will transform local communities from the inside out, equalizing the gap between the big guys and the little guys.

Goldman Sachs operated behind the scenes, defrauding millions of little guys & gals.  Our government failed us then, and continues to fail us. Check out this link to see how the government we elected has let Citigroup have its way with us, even after we became owners.

It’s our fault.

Americans, and everyone else on the planet, must own up, grow up, and participate more fully in ownership and governance. This nation was founded on these principles, but mass markets want to play vs. pay. Paying is acting responsibly; shouldering the burden of change.

But my daughter’s expression of frustration with her bank’s behavior, in tossing it over the gate by the stairs, was the real inspiration for this blog.

There are better ways to solve an economic crisis. Geithner’s failure to protect our interest, and Zoe’s latest antic, both highlight that responsible adults must be owners. It takes maturity to build something lasting. Spread the word and help us build it.

Reason #4 Why GoHuman.com is: We must own the global problem and work to change our own community!

Zoe solves the credit crisis her way

Reason #1; Reason #2; Reason #3; Reason #4; 

Next #5: The high cost of free; Reason #6; Reason #7; Reason #8; Reason #9; Reason #10; Reason #11; Reason #12

I’ve written about Goldman Sachs and Piggies before, but my daughter inspired me today, feeding change to her pig.

Goldman’s is a story of greed, power and collusion. They fueled an enormous Real Estate bubble by creating  toxic assets from doomed mortgages.  They called them safe and sold them to trusting people.  Mountains of money from whitewashing risk wasn’t enough, it gets much worse.

Using AIG, they bet against their own products, cashing in on their customer’s misfortune.  Outraged yet?

Next, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson fed them the Fed bailout.  After defrauding a billion people with the free market lie, they use our taxes to post record profits of $3.44 billion, while 10% (or 17%) are unemployed.

Read Matt Taibbi’s article to learn more.

When my 18 month-old saw daddy empty the bank from the bottom, she tried, but couldn’t.  She quickly got fed up feeding an unfair pig. Game over!

We can feed a different kind of change to rich pigs.  Stop giving them your allowance. Don’t let them enslave us with their free market.

Reason #3 Why GoHuman.com? A marketplace with change for everyone.

Teaching Zoe that Pigs eat your money!

Reason #1; Reason #2;

Reason #4; Reason #5; Reason #6; Reason #7; Reason #8; Reason #9; Reason #10; Reason #11; Reason #12

I recently blogged about how the top 20 Global Companies dramatically highlight the unbelievably unsustainable nature of the current global economy.  I’m following up with an online article about #43 on the list.

End of the world predictions are usually the domain of fanatics and fringers, but this global powerhouse is advising its clients how to prepare for global collapse.

Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

#2 of 19 random reasons Why GoHuman.com? is that a strong, connected, local community is an essential insurance policy if the worst of doomsday predictions were to come true. And investing in a local economy is by its nature more sustainable, not to mention the marketplace we are creating.

We hope you’ll catch the vision and spread the word. We can make a difference. We can change the way the world works.

Reason #1;

Reason #3; Reason #4; Reason #5; Reason #6; Reason #7; Reason #8; Reason #9; Reason #10; Reason #11; Reason #12

Speaking of gargantuan corporations, Fortune’s Global 500 proves our planet’s economy is completely unsustainable.

Seven oil companies: Holland (1) UK (4) France (6) China (9) and the U.S. (2, 5 & 7) are in the top 10.  These giants exploit nonrenewable resources.  #3 is big-box retailer Wal-Mart, under siege by environmental and local activists.  Dutch financial services titan, ING (see #1) is #8.  The world’s largest car company, from tiny Japan – which could be car-free, is #10.

By 20 we get 4 more oil/energy companies and 3 more car manufacturers.  If you are horrified, or at least care, watch the award winning documentary The End of Suburbia. Even if you don’t buy the logic of “peak oil production” (which I don’t) or Who Killed the Electric Car (which I do), it’s a revelation.

Sustainability is #1 in a series of 19 Blogs, in no particular order, of answers to “Why GoHuman.com?”.  A shocking recommendation by company #43 is next.

Picture of Crude Awakening – a Burning Man Event

Reason #2; Reason #3; Reason #4; Reason #5; Reason #6; Reason #7; Reason #8; Reason #9; Reason #10; Reason #11; Reason #12

I’ve quoted from Money and Markets before, but a recent issue has the perfect followup to my last blog on Goldman Sachs, edited here for brevity:

“The AIG rescue was the biggest taxpayer rip-off of all time, initiating a whole series of Wall Street taxpayer rip-offs…:

1. The U.S. Treasury bails out AIG, protecting AIG’s counterparties from direct losses they’d suffer if AIG failed.

2. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York pays off AIG’s creditors in full. As U.S. investors lose fortunes in financially viable companies, 16 major banks lose nothing in a company otherwise bankrupt, like…

3. Goldman Sachs, with Wall Street’s most extravagant executive bonuses in 2006 and 2007, and the most lavish payer of employee bonuses in 2009.

The money flow is clear:
* From taxpayers to AIG…
* From AIG to big Wall Street investment banks like Goldman Sachs…
* From Goldman Sachs to its employees in the form of lavish bonuses.”

The true cost to our institutions is erosion of trust.  Trust cannot be bought, it is built painstakingly, over time, through the delivery of promises and expectations.

Our economy may recover, in the short term, but the bankruptcy of trust will be much harder to undo.

GoHuman.com targets the underlying problems.  Change the way your world works, locally, at the level of basic human interaction.

Trust is rebuilt one handshake at a time!

Since I wrote about Goldman Sachs’ apology, investors are calling for a bigger share of profits. Don’t owners have a right to demand this?

Corporations are created to limit investor risk while making money. Sincepowerful corporations can cause enormous damage, layers of governance are added. A balance of forces and laws grow a company as big as Goldman Sachs. Then individuals personally profit from investing in, or working for, these enormously fattened pigs. Some gorge themselves on very large pieces of pork.

Governments become enmeshed and corrupted by capitalism. Bailouts become billion dollar opportunities for greedy individuals to exploit. With the balance of power and control being challenged, Investors, Executives and employees all scream for bigger slices of bacon. The Beatles nailed it in “Piggies”.

GoHuman.com promotes a sustainable model of equitable rewards and a new transactional model at the local community level. We celebrate the power of trust, built on transparent reputation. We look beyond the fallacy of so-called “Free Markets” to open markets of equal opportunity.

I’ll be blogging about these topics in the coming weeks. Thanks for the trust you display in working with us to change the way the world works.

Say cheese! or pork?

Decades ago Bob Dylan sang that the times were changing. There are again welcome indications of serious change underfoot. They are the real green shoots cropping up. One of the most recent ones I saw was the $500M apology from Goldman Sachs.

If anyone doubts that this is change, consider this. Goldman Sachs first blustered in defense of it’s profiteering coming out of the near global economic meltdown. They were obviously very happy to reap the spoils in a game of global chicken, in which the last one standing can make out like a bandit, if of course the horrifying crash is avoided.

They also took the standard arrogant stance that they deserved the out-sized bonuses they pay themselves for sucking enormous amounts of value out of the system, at the expense of those at the bottom, who’s blood they are harvesting as they squeeze the proverbial turnips.

But now they are apologizing. And in delivering the $500M to small businesses who have suffered from their exploitation of the so-called free markets and the resulting global economic serfdom.

So this is indeed a welcome start. It’s an indication that, ultimately, the world is programmed towards a new level of maturity. One in which the actual worth of each individual voice is equal, independent of their net worth.