Capitalism and Corporatism are not the same

The week saw protesters of the Atlantica initiative getting arrested in Halifax. They claim that they can't get press coverage without resorting to more violent tactics, blaming the "if it bleeds, it leads" approach of the mass broadcast media.

I've noticed that the main stream media don't cover the issues surrounding Atlantica very well. The CBC, for instance, is always quoting something from the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS), as if these guys represented what most citizens think. AIMS is a corporatist think-tank, pushing its own agenda, and doesn't even try to be unbiased. However, the CBC calls AIMS a "non-profit, Halifax-based think-tank" while it labels the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives a "left-leaning public policy group".

When the so-called Left protests initiatives that only further the richest people in our country, they are branded as anti-capitalist. But there is a major difference between capitalism and corporatism. You can have free markets and still place controls on the oligopolies that currently rule global trade.

As Henry Demarist Lloyd wrote in March 1881, “When monopolies succeed, the people fail …” and that “The nation is the engine of the people”, in his piece denouncing the practices of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. A century later, John Kenneth Galbraith warned of the dangers of blindly having faith in our industrial/corporatist systems:

“The greater danger is in the subordination of belief to the needs of the modern industrial system … These are that technology is always good; that economic growth is always good; that firms must always expand; that consumption of goods is the principal source of happiness; that idleness is wicked; and that nothing should interfere with the priority we accord to technology, growth, and increased consumption.”

Genuine Democratic Discourse

Reading Al Gore's The Assault on Reason has spurred me to revive this blog. As Gore says on p. 254:

The remedy for what ails our democracy is not simply better education (as important as that is) or civic education (as important as that can be), but the reestablishment of a genuine democratic discourse in which individuals can participate in a meaningful way - a conversation of democracy in which meritorious ideas and opinions from individuals do, in fact, evoke a meaningful response.

Though Canada's bicameral parliament and constitutional monarchy is a different system from the American republic, we are strongly influenced by what happens in the USA. A strong democracy to our south can only enhance Canadian democracy. That's why we have to stay involved in debate and reasoned discussion on both sides of the border.

There seems to be some hope that reason is coming to our own political environment. The way that Dion is staying away from political media noise machine and his cooperation with the Green Party, in spite of objections by his own party, may indicate a new way of doing business. It's up to the electorate to make it known that we want less partisan politics and more vision and leadership, especially when it comes to addressing climate change.

Commons-based Peer Production

In my previous post on Obsolescing the Middle Men, I had referred to commons-based peer production. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, VP Technical Strategy & Innovation at IBM, takes this form of production very seriously. Wladawsky-Berger states that :

Clearly, despite having built a highly successful, profitable business on a proprietary model, IBM takes the open source movement in its many manifestations very seriously. Working in an open community is for us a no-nonsense business decision, made only after considerable analysis of the technology and market trends, and due diligence on the community, its licensing and governance, and the quality of its offerings.

I think that we are seeing the next phase of open source getting bigger and more serious. Even more traditional business publications, such as Knowledge@Wharton are discussing open source models. There is a new practical and pragmatic way of doing business which can be profitable, but also idealistic in that it fosters the common good. This may be the new model that our antiquated managerial capitalist world needs.

Via George Siemens

PS: this is still a test post, depending on the amount of spam that this blog gets - signed: Harold, tired of eating spam

I'm Back
I had thought that using a CMS (Drupal) would solve my problems and integrate my static website with my blog. Given the thousands of comment spams that I have received every day for the past few months I have had to close the comment option on Harold's Blog. The spammer was able to find a way to add gambling links to deleted posts and my only option at this time is to close comments for the entire site.

I'm not sure if this blog (re-activated after 18 months) will be a temporary or a more permanent place for me to write. Anyway, my apologies for forcing readers to make changes to their aggregators, but I won't let some scum bag spammer stop the conversation.

Jarche Consulting Main Website

I now have a blog on my main website, which is where I will be posting new items. After a few experiments with various technologies, I've decided to use a CMS (Drupal) to power my own site. It has an integrated blog tool.

Denham Grey says that you cannot steal knowledge, which is what makes it different from information and data. This is the critical difference that many lawyers and corporations don't "get". Knowledge only resides within each knowledge worker, and KM or elearning can help each knowledge worker, but how people use their knowledge is the key to success.
It's not what you have, it's how you use it; and this takes real knowledge.
Knowledge-at-work: Stealing knowledge

The wave is gathering in Strength Universities Speed Up Open-Source Plans