GoHuman Blog

Couldn’t help but share this article by James Altucher of Formula Capital who made minor headlines with his recommendation to legalize insider trading.

This comes in the wake of the demise of Galleon Group, a hedge fund whose head billionaire Raj Rajaratnam, was caught with a big hand in the insider trading cookie jar. This welcome clampdown on some of the real perpetrators, as opposed to the symbolic arrest and incarceration of Martha Stewart a few years back, is met with someone who should know better calling it a victimless crime.

I guess if the crime is not personal, meaning it’s committed against any and everyone indiscriminately, then those who are leveraging their positions of relative power and influence feel no one is really victimized.

Here at GoHuman.com we take a bit more of a holistic view of things. Our marketplace of local services is designed to be transparent, built from the bottom up, with shared ownership. We seek to make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for insider information to even exist, much less be exploited by a privileged few at the top.

We hope you’ll catch the vision, spread the word, and help make this marketplace the wave of the future.

Yesterday’s blog covered WFB firing Cheronda Guyton, and my hope that those running the show would be next in line. Today I’m celebrating. Five Bank of America Board Members have been subpoenaed.

The CEO’s boss is the Board of Directors. Their “fiduciary responsibility” is to “increase shareholder value” – which in plain English means “be successfully greedy”. In good times they are, and in bad times they muddle through the fallout of a greed-driven system.

The questions posed to these five people will be related to their acquisition of “troubled investment bank Merrill Lynch & Co.” Many players were involved, including our government. Will we find out what really happened?

Consider! The invisible gray suits pull the strings from behind closed doors, and they write their own minutes.

This much we know. “Merrill, with the knowledge of Bank of America executives” paid “$3.6 billion in bonuses shortly before the deal closed at the beginning of this year.”

I hope the investigation digs deeper. On Independence Day I blogged about my days at Countrywide, and its CEO, Angelo Mozilo, labeled #1 person to blame for the financial system’s meltdown by Time Magazine. I compared Countrywide Culture to the Mafia in a paper for my MBA.

What happened to Countrywide?

Acquired by Bank of America, of course.

Is anyone out there paying attention? How long will we let this game go on?

These gray suits essentially make the rules and print the money. They are among those who convinced America a “Free Market” was good for the economy. Translation? “We’ll make the rules, you’ll believe they’re fair”.

We don’t need free markets, we need transparent markets. You can’t get there from here. We need to change the way our world works.

I read an Associated Press release on Yahoo today that announces the U.S. slipping in global competitiveness to #2.

In 2005 Finland held the top spot, which the U.S. grabbed in 2006, and held on to until edged out by Switzerland this year.

But “Given that the financial crisis originated in large part in the United States, it is hardly surprising that there has been a weakening of the assessment of its financial market sophistication.”

Yep, hardly surprising, but the article fails to mention something that is. Have you spotted it yet?

Here’s another clue. “Singapore came third, followed by Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Japan, Canada and the Netherlands.”

Is it jumping out at you?

Think about the national debate in the U.S. around the economic crisis, and our two-party approach to solving it.

The U.S. likes to paint things black and white. Right and wrong. Left and right. You may have heard critics to the political right of our current President spreading the fear of “creeping Socialism”, claiming that we are trending closer towards an economic and global doomsday because of it.

Without getting into that debate take a look at the current top 10 “strong economies” as listed above. How many of them are considered “Capitalist” vs. “Socialist”? Can you clearly name them, and would others agree with you? Is the answer really as simple as “Capitalism” vs. “Socialism”?

Check out my Independence Day blog for my take on this question.

GoHuman.com offers a model that is outside these labels. Our vision is quite simple. A free, equal access marketplace, based on transparent reputation, to enable a restructuring of our economic system from the ground up.

Further, our business model leverages the latest technologies and trends in a platform that rewards those that contribute value to it. The principles of fairness, equality and integrity are more important to us than amassing wealth and gaining advantage over others.

We know we’ve got a ways to go to achieve this vision and these lofty goals, but we’re putting it out there. We’d also like to know how you think we’re doing.

And, of course, help us spread the word

Swiss Flag

On the surface I’m a typical white American male. Dig deeper and you’ll find that I was born in Canada and have lived in 7 countries. Some of my formative years were spent in Sweden, a “socialist” country bordering on the Soviet Union, during the Cold War years.

We didn’t follow regional basketball and baseball, we watched Sweden compete in Soccer and Hockey with countries that had opposing ideological, political, social and economic systems. My Swedish cousin used to joke that the Russian ships patrolling the Baltic borders were Keeping people from flooding into the “Worker’s Paradise”. I am fascinated by these differences, how they affect the individual, and the societies they produce.

Throughout history people have tried a variety of economic models, social systems and government structures, with mixed results. The Internet has enabled new experiments that leverage the “voice of the people” and democracy in new ways. In the US the Internet has played an increasing role in determining who can become a presidential candidate and, most recently, who gets elected.

I believe in the power of the individual, communities, and nations to achieve self determination, create change, and control their destiny. GoHuman.com addresses change up and down economic and power pyramids. It provides new ways of working and being compensated at the micro and macro level. It provides new ways of connecting, working and relating – one-on-one or in larger circles, in new, innovative, and positive ways. And I believe that as its adoption rate increases, it will produce real, lasting change.

GoHuman.com is not just “social networking”. It harnesses the power of the latest technology advancements of the human race, and pushes the envelope of integrating these into our daily lives, our economic philosophy, and our social structure. GoHuman.com has the power to improve the equality and dignity of individuals and communities across socio-economic boundaries, while celebrating their unique and cultural characteristics.

I believe in GoHuman.com’s primary tagline – that you can use it to change the way your world works. As John Lennon said in one of his most famous songs, “Imagine” “You might say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.”

Wade Fransson
GoHuman.com Co-Founder

Me and my gal

Labor unions are still struggling to gain a foothold in North Carolina and Virginia, the only two states in the country with a total ban on collective bargaining by public employees. National bills are being pursued to gain access to large-scale negotiating to benefit the workers in these states. It’s heavy-lifting, but moving forward.

Here’s one model for banding people together in local communities to effect change. A Transition Town begins with a Transition Initiative, which is a community (lots of examples here) working together to look Peak Oil and Climate Change squarely in the eye and address this BIG question:

“For all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?”

If you haven’t seen this yet, check out Annie Leonard’s Story of Stuff. An insightful animation tells the story of the global supply chain.

In 1776 The U.S. of A. established itself as an independent entity.  Arguably, what has made this nation great, is the balance of power vested in three seperate branches of government.  This enabled the human resources of this continent to govern themselves without one person or group gaining undue control and influence.  Today the corporations of this planet are larger than governments, and their enormous wealth and power has usurped this balance.

In the last 18 months, even those who believe in “free markets” have become painfully aware of the extent to which greed and corporate influence  dominate the planet.  People are seeing through the “free market illusion” created by those in control, like the Vegas operators who paint the sky on Casino ceilings to keep players gambling day and night.

It’s time to declare economic independence and establish a new financial order.

Background!

Between 2004 and 2007 I headed up Strategic Planning for Countrywide’s Administration and Real Estate, writing approved plans for over a Billion dollars in capital and operational budget so the company could grow from 30,000 to 60,000 employees.  I left in disgust in February 2007, writing an MBA paper comparing Countrywide Culture to the Mafia.

In the February 23, 2009 issue of Time, Angelo Mozilo – former CEO of Countrywide, is listed as the #1 person to blame for the financial systems meltdown. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court, accusing Mozilo of making more than $139 million in profits in 2006 and 2007 as a result of exercising 5.1 million stock options.

This is by far not the only example I’ve personally seen of how executives abuse their position to extract value from  companies and shareholders they supposedly serve.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Global Capitalism, as practiced today, creates pyramid structures from which the rich and powerful at the top suck enormous amounts of value, at the expense of the disenfranchised workers at the bottom.

Here’s another example.  I have invested in a few single family rental homes in an inexpensive part of the country, and have a FICO score in the 700s.  One of these houses is worth twice the current loan amount,  and I need $25,000 in cash to pay down debt related to relocating to Madison, WI and the birth of our daughter. For 3 years I’ve been applying for an $80,000 refinance loan, submitting reams of documentation, tax returns, etc. to accompany four applications in excess of 15 pages, all of which have been denied.

With the recent tightening of credit I’ve given up, as banks keep raising the bar on what it takes to get a loan. Along with millions of my fellow Americans I am now paying credit card rates because banks will not perform their historical function of lending money against assets.

In contrast to this, the February 16 issue of Fortune magazine explains that 300 banks have received $314 Billion dollars of taxpayer bailout money, (TARP funds) by filling out a two page application. These funds were intended to be lent to people like you and me, who are negatively impacted by greedy and foolish business practices of financial institutions and the resulting tightening of  credit.

Having been rescued with tax dollars, banks are desperately trying to pay the funds back early, because TARP rules limit the amount of pay to executives.  They say these rules make them non-competetive.  They say they are doing us a favor.  Words fail me!

What are we doing about it?

GoHuman is a dot com that focuses on the individuals that form the economic backbone of our society.  A zip-code based deployment and business model enable an interconnected, integrated marketplace at the local level, so small business owners and their customers can “just say no” to the powerful elite that seek to control and dictate each local transaction while siphoning off value through the top of obscenely large corporations.

GoHuman.com leverages the grass roots power of Web 2.0 Social Networking to correct inequity from the ground up.  We have inverted the pyramid structure, and are keeping big players out of this community until you, the businesses and consumers operating at the GROUND LEVEL, stake your claim to a more equitable model.

Our platform helps working people focus more of their time and energy on the areas where they create value, while benefitting all stakeholders in an equitable, sustainable community.  GoHuman.com’s business model pays the people who create the value, and its growth model is to give itself away to those who build it.All who help build it share in the enormous value created.

What does GoHuman.com sell?

GoHuman.com is Software as a Service, (SaaS) delivered via the web. The scale of our platform, coupled with the Internet, and the effectiveness of our business model, provides inexpensive solutions that increase the ability, profitability, and viability of our customers, the small local busineses across North America, that are run by real people serving real people.

Individuals and the smallest of small businesses use the site for free.  As businesses grow with the community, GoHuman.com offers the tools needed for continued excellence, growth and sustainability for a monthly software subscription fee.  Other products are under development to be rolled out at Launch.

How will it gain momentum?

Our Pioneer Program allows you to share in the success of GoHuman.com and rewards you along the way. The program is built around the concept of turning this giveaway into a viral growth platform.  Pre-launch on Independence Day leads to our Launch on the 100 Year anniversary of Labor Sunday.

Where do you start?

Join GoHuman.com for free right now.  Or just spread the word about GoHuman.com to others near and dear to you.

The GoHuman.com team can’t wait to have you join us in making the world work better.