Finally: Bluebee's Insights

Eight months from now we have Christmas - isn't that a nice Insight to start with?

When I have chosen the name for my blog, I had a lot of Insights, but these Insights I had were merrily observations, not Insights why this happened. One of my Insights was that what we were experiencing is the result of mistakes made over the last thirty years, but when I read about the failing US-Automakers, my opinion was that it would be unpatriotic to let these companies going bankrupt. I had a lot of followers in this my opinion, but meanwhile there are voices telling going through bankruptcy will give the only chance to survive, at least for one of them.

This morning I had a revelation.
An observer with mindful awareness must have seen since a long time that vanishing of these companies is system immanent.

Isn’t it the credo of capitalist preachers that companies are coming and going? Why should this be different for the biggest ones? Because there are so many layoffs when a really big company closes its doors? Who really cares?

This was only a part of my revelation.
I am sure you are thinking this was not a revelation at all, everybody knows that.

But here is the point:
Look again what I wrote.
The vanishing of these companies is system immanent!
Analyzing the situation will lead us to the recognition that in our society companies are now driven by shareholder value. That means, the manufacturing focuses on parts and equipment which gives the most payback per buck invested. How it is known what gives the most payback? There is the experience of the past, market research, and customer surveys - all data gathered about results of the past. But times are changing, and when time changed, as it did “suddenly” last year, these presumptions break down like a house of cards, suddenly, and fast.

Our whole society is modeled after that. If somebody has an idea, he gets money from Venture Capitalists, if these VC’s are sure that they do not burn their (or their institutional investors) , but get paid back within a reasonable time. Background of their decision is the experience of the past, extrapolation of past experience.

Einstein once said "The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them." Will Einstein, if he would come here today, have the chance to be recognized as an asset to this country? Would he have any idea recognizable as worthwhile exploring with an enterprise? Franklin, Faraday, Edison, Tesla, Ford, Firestone, Burbank, would they get Venture Capital? If JFK would be President of the United States today, would Congress grant him the money to send a man to the moon? Certainly not. That’s the point. Think about it. This our society has changed.

Changed from being a society always looking for new ventures to make life easier and more bearable to a society always looking for cheaper stuff and higher surplus value - that’s what's driving jobs overseas and lowering workers and employees income with the result our people do not have the money to buy things they need or like to have - or they try to outsmart the system and get a loan: the outcome we have seen lately.

Henry Ford once said “I will build a car ...low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one”, and it worked. Ford made a point of paying his workers a high enough wage that they could afford to buy the cars they were building. Forgotten? Forgotten that people need money to buy products? Forgotten that people earn their money having jobs and get paid?

What now?
Attitudes need time - or dramatic events - to change. Some days ago I heard a speaker reasoning about her childhood memory when she was in awe about the results of JFK’s speech
"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth", and asking where is this challenge today? As a result of this challenge four dozen years ago Silicon Valley and the computer industry developed and gave new prosperity to this country.

An observer with mindful awareness will be able to see the challenge we are able to choose today: A world without poverty!

Let me prepare the speech of the one who will proclaim this goal:

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of ending poverty in the world and therefore finally bringing peace to the Earth. No single project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range stability and peace in this world; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.
We choose to go to end poverty in this decade and do the necessary things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.
To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required — not because the socialists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
The supreme reality of our time is our indivisibility as children of God and the common vulnerability of this planet. Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved in poverty, all are not free.
And is not living a decent life, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights — the right to live out our lives without fear of poverty — the right to breathe air as nature provided it — the right of future generations to a healthy existence?
Thank you, and good night."

Sounds familiar?
I used a Ghostwriter.