[GPSCC-chat] [Fwd: Currency Speculator speech]

[Tian Harter]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Currency Speculator speech
Date: 	Mon, 12 Dec 2011 04:37:35 -0500 (EST)
From: 	DontBeFuelish at aol.com
To: 	tnharter at aceweb.com




Hello Y'all,

At the Green Party of California meeting last weekend I took an
opportunity during lunch on Saturday to share some thoughts I've been
chewing on about why I'm a sticker activist. On Sunday it was clear that
a lot of people had enjoyed my words, so I thought I'd share them with
you as well. My talk was spontaneous, so I don't have any notes to work
from. As far as I know nobody recorded it either. What follows is the
spirit of what I said, not the word for word transcript.

Hello everybody! Some time ago I heard a conversation with George Sorros
on the radio. He was explaining that back before the Euro a lot of
issues would go into the value of a currency. Such things as tendencies
of the people, resources of the Country, whether the leader were a thief
or an altruist and many other factors all boiled down to what the
country's money was worth. Currency exchange had something of a
"betting" quality to it. Now that Europe has one currency instead of
more than a dozen, they have to figure out how to allocate that risk
can't bring down Germany with their spendthrift attitude or whatever
it is. I listened to that and I thought "maybe I'm also a speculator."

I'm not the kind of speculator that makes large numerical bets based on
quantitative formulas and risk arbitrage. That kind of thing is for
quants with large bank accounts that don't care about strangers. I'm a
grass roots activist that believes in the power of good ideas to move us
forward together. My main criticism of Wall St. style financial analysis
is that it leaves people out of the equation to too large an extent.
A dollar means different things to different people. My work is based on
the idea that it's okay to use less energy than I do. As this female
voice on the radio put it, "If you don't spend money on cars, gas, and
insurance, you have a lot more to spend on other more entertaining
things." I'm speculating that we can build up that kind of activism into
a healthy organic movement where the win/win starts with being a good 
citizen.

I started with this long ago, when I learned firsthand that incumbents
that were owned by the status quo didn't want to bother showing up to
debates with people like me. They would rather spend a million dollars
on advertising during the last two weeks of a race using focus-tested
messages that were sure to win. How could I expect someone beholden
to the oil, car, defense, and pharmaceutical industries to care about
us? I just felt that being a good citizen ought to be worth something.

At Occupy Mountain View's vigil last week there was a woman with a sign
that read "I couldn't afford a lobbyist so I bought this sign." To me
that is so symbolic of the solution. Putting resources into a public
education campaign about decentralized solutions makes more sense than
hoping for a centralized solution to come from incumbents that can't
even listen to hundreds of thousands of people in the streets yelling
"NO WAR". It's also much more democratic than anything else I can think
of as a green activist.

I found the key to understanding this kind of stuff when I met an old
Libertarian during my Orange County days. He told of helping fight
against the San Onofre nuclear power plant. He'd made stickers to put on
light switches that read "VOTE ON NUCLEAR POWER" across the top with a
"YES" by the ON position and a "NO" by the OFF position. He'd found them
such a perfect image for democracy that he'd moved on to buttons about
the speed of light, "186,000 miles per second. It's the law!"
He dithered about whether that was a law that must be broken until he
realized something else about memes he couldn't quite explain to me.
His words were the inspiration behind my much more recent slogan,
"STOP VOTING FOR OIL COMPANIES AT THE GAS PUMP!" I feel so connected to
those vegetarians asking people to "stop voting for meat at the fork!"
There are so many fun angles for person centered grass roots democracy.

Is it speculation to believe in retail democracy? If it is, then I'm a
speculator. It's not the kind of speculation I expect will make me rich.
Every time I table for the Green Party and somebody else gives us a buck
for a button with a good idea on it, I feel like they have invested in
a better future. It's speculative that we can add that up to enough to
save our planet from climate chaos, but what other choice is there?
I'm listening for your ideas.

Thank you,

--
Tian
http://tian.greens.org
My Audie Bock exists (or did in 2000) page has been clicked on 12 times.
I have been car free for more than one month.

-- 
Tian
http://tian.greens.org
Latest change: US National debt now $15 Trillion plus.
The 5 actions 1 world pin is on a Nevada quarter.