What We Have Going For Us

“By relying primarily on voluntary co-operation and private enterprise, in both economic and other activities, we can insure that the private sector is a check on the powers of the governmental sector and an effective protection of freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought.”

-Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom

As easy as it is to point our all of the problems with contemporary capitalism, it is more essential to propose solutions to them. This is exactly the purpose of ABC Squared Economics. But ABC Squared Economics is not the solution, only part of it.

A few years ago, I had the pleasure to meet Charles Eisenstein. I was about halfway through reading Sacred Economics at the time. He was passing through town and had agreed to stop and have lunch with a few people from Transition Sarasota.

I gave him a quick pitch on the idea behind ABC Squared Economics, but to my dismay, he didn’t take to the idea as excitedly as I’d hoped. Instead, he told me that he believed that the days of movements led by one person, like Facebook or Microsoft, were over. From here on out, collaboration would be key.

To be honest, I don’t really consider ABC Squared Economics to be my idea. I just looked at what society’s been doing for the last ten thousand years and tried to find some semblance of agreement and balance. There is a good chance that I’ve never had an original thought in my head, I just rehash what I experience in interesting ways.