Do you remember The Social Contract? Jean-Jacque Rousseau? The treatise on the relationship between the people and the government? Rousseau focused on the sources of political authority which he credited to "the people" rather than to a monarch who ruled by so-called divine right. His work revolutionized politics in Europe and significantly influenced the American Revolution.
There is another sort of social contract that threads the fabric of every society. It is an economic contract. In the context of capitalist industrialized societies, that relationship mainly lays between corporations and people. Basically, the corporations (i.e. the shareholders) own the means of production (sound familiar?) and the workers produce the products. The corporations sell the products and (here is the social contract part) distribute the profits between themselves and the workers. The corporations have a vested interest in the welfare of the workers, the workers have a vested interest in the welfare of the corporations. That's how it is supposed to work.
Then there are the banks. The banks make it possible for the corporations and the people to conduct business: Purchase and sell assets, finance large investments, store their money, and so forth.
There are rules and regulations that govern the transactions within this economic contract. They are intended to curb excess, prevent abuse, and prosecute it when it does happen.
The United States enjoyed a period of relative prosperity during the Clinton Administration. This got certain people thinking, hey, there is no limit, let's milk this thing for all it is worth. So they got rid of the rules, went hog wild, and then, eventually, as should be expected, it all came crashing down.
My issue is this: in the aftermath, the corporations and the banks (well, the people who run them, really) have made no effort to uphold their end of the economic bargain. It is much worse than that. They have coerced ordinary citizens (via the government) to pay to fix the mess that they made. Below I have posted an excellent video made by the political economist (excellent combo) and Brown University professor, Mark Blyth that explains this all quite nicely. (By the way, I find his accent super sexy.)
In the beginning I totally accepted the financial crisis hype, believing that allowing the banks to fail would lead to unbridled disaster. I believed that the bank bailout was unavoidable and prudent. Perhaps it was. However, the aftermath is unconscionable and I find myself growing more unwilling to participate in this nonsense.
So, I ask myself, what can I do to make big banks and multi-national corporations irrelevant to my life?
For me the answer lays in arranging my life in a way that has as little to do with mass consumption as possible. So, in addition to changing my life for the sake of living in the now and maximizing my happiness, I am also minimizing the stranglehold that consumerism has had on my life.
Imagine being free from worrying about money and the constant, grinding, soul obliterating obsession with the means of obtaining it and, rather, having one's needs met via direct exchange with other human beings. Imagine a life where what the "too big to fail" banks do has minimal impact because money is not the central mode of exchange.
Again, I am not doing this because I don't believe in industry and the economies of scale. I am doing this because our banks and corporations have not only betrayed and abandoned us to the wolves, they have become the wolves and they are feeding on us. Many argue that they always have. Fine. Whatever the case, I choose to be the prey that got away.
