The Wealth of Community

Josh Mailman is a founder of the Social Venture Network, Business for Social Responsibility, Threshold Foundation, and a founding investor in Grameen Phone, Stoneyfield Farms, Seventh Generation, Utne Magazine, Stirling Energy Systems, Global Telesystems, Wayfinder Systems, A.B., Motivano, Econergy International plc., the Fund for Global Human Rights, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, U.K., the Joshua Mailman Foundation, and an advisor to the Pema Fund.

To say the least, he's been busy!

He's certainly one of the leaders of the movement and I found the following quote from him in Kenny Ausubel's book "Bioneers" :

"I'm much more sanguine about the impact that we've been able to have, but I don't want to discount the small acts. We have a need for small acts, and I consider the things I have done small acts, hopefully compassionate acts. To the extent that I've been able to make a contribution, it's been out of a desire to build community, realizing that I'm no more important - and I think in many ways less so - than some local activist. The real leaders are the people that are in there day after day, slugging it out, who have chosen something other than monetary gain, who are there because they are fed by the experience of community that they have."

A recently published book "The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom" speaks to this truth, in the context of the internet and our economy...

The book is available onine CLICK HERE.

Our community is our greatest wealth, I would add.

As I reflect on my life, I see that my life depends on a vast network of people 99% who I don't event know, literally. Just think of the number of people it took for you to have your daily cup of tea or coffee, or piece of toast, or oatmeal, or electricity... and that's just people. Add layers of animals, plants, earth, energy, air and water, and the community you live in expands exponentially!

The Wealth of Finding your purpose

Gratitude
Community
Service to others
Family
Meaning

Lynne Twist on Money:
"Q. In conclusion, what is the message about money you most want to convey?

LYNNE TWIST: When the use of money is consistent with our core values, it strengthens the quality of our commitment and our accountability for it. It has a powerful impact on our ethical and moral fiber. We can begin by turning our attention to making a conscious effort to use our money with life-affirming purpose, to nurture those people, organizations, projects and products that represent our most soulful interests. And we can stop the flow of money toward those that debilitate or demean life, or drag us down. We can be more financially generous with organizations and individuals doing good work that we want to support. Some of us may devote ourselves to public service or become advocates for socially responsible public spending on health, education, safety and government. The mindset of scarcity and the longing for “more” will begin to lose its grip when we begin to make different choices. We each have the power to arrange life to take a stand with our money and our life. Every moment of every day we can bring this consciousness to our choices about our money, our time and our talents to take a stand for what we believe in. We have the capacity for much greater lives than just “getting and “having.” I invite you to take a stand. I invite you to separate yourself from the prevailing winds of scarcity, greed and accumulation and use the opportunity that we each have to explore sufficiency and enough – - the true portal to prosperity . I invite you to deepen your values and to live in a new freedom and power in your relationship with money and life."

Price list for polluting - the economics of regulating Carbon Dioxide

A recent article in NY Times discusses issues around Climate Change and regulating carbon dioxide....

The article touches on a very important factor - we must quantify and measure the financial costs of polluting. Money is the driving archetypal language of our current industrial civilization, so when we talk about the perils of pollution as it relates to money, it gets people's attention.

The old adage "money talks" strangely applies in many contexts.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

"Price List for Polluting

'Setting a real price on carbon emissions is the single most important policy step to take,' said Robert N. Stavins, director of the environmental economics program at Harvard University. 'Pricing is the way you get both the short-term gains through efficiency and the longer-term gains from investments in research and switching to cleaner fuels.'

Some academics see an analogy between a global warming policy and the pursuit of national security in the cold war. In the late 1950s, American military spending reached as high as 10 percent of the gross domestic product and averaged about 4 percent, far higher than in any previous peacetime era. A Soviet nuclear attack was a danger but hardly a certainty, just as the predicted catastrophes from global warming are threats but not certainties.

'The issues are similar in that you pay now so things are less risky in the future — it’s an insurance policy,' said Richard Cooper, a Harvard economist. 'And in the cold war, we taxed ourselves fairly highly to mitigate that threat.' "

Read the whole article on NY TIMES here.