----- Original Message ----- From: ripskis To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, 28 October 1999 4:54 AM Subject: "After the Lawyers Let's Kill the CEOs and Celebrities: Transforming America*" Post-Corporate - http://postcorporate.listbot.com Dear fellow admirers of David Korten, I joined this list back in August, soon after reading David's two books on corporations. And I have been reading your messages with great interest since then. To implement what David proposes will require a social movement. I invite you to participate in sparking such a grass-roots social movement. After you have read this entire e-mail message, please add your input via a personal note and forward it to other, concerned people on your individual e-mail list. More will follow later. Al Louis Ripskis P.S. Sandwiched in between the two chapters are my background and credentials. Dear Friends, After you read this, please forward it, preferably with your input in a personal note, to people on your e-mail list. Ask them to send it to at least 5 other people they know, who in turn would be asked to do the same. By the 12th step/term of this geometric progression most everyone in this country with an e-mail address will have received it. By then we may have achieved a critical mass for change and jump-started a social movement. If you would like to do more, post this on your Web newsgroups, discussion/mailing lists and chat rooms, as appropriate. Al Louis Ripskis P.S. You may want to print this, since there is quite a bit to digest. After the Lawyers Let's Kill the CEOs and Celebrities: Transforming America* By Al Louis Ripskis** Chapter I - Introduction "Unfortunately in America today, either you're a star or a nobody." --Director Michael Bennett As we step into the 21st century, we have the resources for everyone to live well in a rich, diversified culture that could support the flowering of creativity in America comparable to the fifth century's "Golden Age of Greece." Instead we are chasing an American Dream based on an ever rising standard of living, accelerating consumption and perpetual economic growth that is impoverishing our culture and devouring our resources at an unsustainable rate. Corporations are spending over 400 billion advertising dollars annually to entice us into consuming more and more, which is depleting our resources, ruining our lands, and polluting our air, rivers and oceans through strip-mining, clear-cutting, over-applying fertilizers/pesticides, and waste dumping. Global warming and the destruction of the Earth's protective ozone layer are just a few of the more publicized by-products. Imagine for a minute what will happen when other countries, like China and India, with over two billion people between them, begin to consume like the U.S. In the face of such, what appear to be overwhelming problems, many go into denial: they dismiss the bearers of the bad news as "Prophets of Gloom and Doom" and "Chicken Littles;" maintain that the projected destructive effects on our environment aren't universally accepted by scientists; and turn their attention to more pleasurable and entertaining pursuits. But regrettably, our culture of consumption and entertainment is exacting an exceedingly high price from us personally. a.. It has spawned a "winner-take-all society" that transformed many of us from doers, activists and participants into viewers, spectators, and consumers -- the minions to be manipulated by clever advertising. b.. Corporations have downsized 46 million of us out of our jobs since 1979. With an additional million more being laid off each year, our workplaces have become cauldrons of stress, anxiety, and insecurity. Demands for greater output with fewer workers is causing widespread job-related burn-outs. Americans work the longest number of hours in the industrialized world, according to a recently released International Labor Organization survey. Yet, more than ever before, we fear becoming career casualties in the next round of layoffs and ultimately being relegated to minimum wage, part-time jobs, without benefits at Staples***, McDonalds, Wal-Mart... c.. Meanwhile the corporate CEOs fatten their stock options and take huge bonuses on top of their already astronomical salaries*** for downsizing us and boosting corporate stock prices. d.. The urban overcrowding and traffic congestion has trapped many of us in highly stressful "commuter treadmill" lifestyles. e.. The mounting stress has pushed millions into escapism, substance abuse and addictions. Alcohol, hard drugs, gambling, compulsive shopping and over-eating (55% of Americans are overweight), TV viewing, spectator sports and Internet surfing have taken over our lives. f.. Drug use is pandemic: at the end of 1998 over 1.2 million Americans had been convicted of drug offenses, with 423,000 incarcerated and 820,227 on probation. g.. We fear for our children's safety from violence and drugs in schools that educate poorly. h.. We needn't be elitists to admit that most of our media is a wasteland of trivia and trash, dominated by hustlers and celebrities assaulting us with hundreds of messages daily on how much happier we'll be if we just buy what they are hawking. i.. The consumer culture has estranged us from each other by destroying any real sense of community and neighborhood. We literally have become A Nation of Strangers that Vance Packard documented over a quarter of a century ago. Since then the social alienation has become worse, as I discovered during a recent 9,000-mile research trip around the U.S. What's behind all this? First, a quick historical glance on how we have been manipulated into becoming the unwitting participants of the consumer culture. The social historian William Leach points out in his seminal book, Land of Desire - Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture, (Pantheon Books) that "From the 1890s on, American corporate business, in league with key institutions, began the transformation of American society into a society preoccupied with consumption, with comfort and bodily well-being, with luxury, spending, and acquisition... American consumer capitalism produced a culture almost violently hostile to the past and to tradition, a future-oriented culture of desire that confused the good life with goods." They stole the deeper meaning and purpose from our lives, and buried us "in an avalanche of junk."**** And this consumer culture was foisted upon us, without our informed consent, as Leach explains, "...the culture of consumer capitalism may have been among the most nonconsensual public cultures ever created... First, it was not produced by 'the people' but by commercial groups in cooperation with other elites comfortable with and committed to making profits and to accumulating capital on an ever-ascending scale. Second, ... it raised to the fore only one vision of the good life and pushed out all others. In this way, it diminished American public life, denying the American people access to insight into other ways of organizing..." and living their lives. So what's the remedy? On the personal level we may have to shun the siren call of the American Dream, do some serious soul-searching and get in touch with our own personal values, desires and the kind of lifestyles we genuinely want for ourselves and our families. We have to come up with our own, individual dreams. It may entail giving up the "commuter treadmill" existence and opting to live life on our own terms. For some this may mean transforming cherished visions, avocations or hobbies into callings, vocations or entrepreneurships. For others it may require moving to a different part of the country or the world to find lives of adventure that are income-generating and economically viable. For still others it might be a life of creative leisure modeled after the Ancient Greeks. For details on how two dozen people redesigned and custom-tailored their lifestyles to escape the consumer rat race, see my book, Cutting Loose - From Rat Race to Dream Lifestyles.(Impact Journal Press, 1-800-877-BOYD. Website http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/ripskis) Obviously the personal approach addresses only ourselves and our immediate families, but not the rest of society. The terrible wrong that the perpetrators of the consumer culture have caused by "denying the American people access to insights into other ways of organizing" their lives, as Leach puts it, has to be corrected. Think of what makes you the most angry, dissatisfied and concerned with our culture and way of life. Share and exchange your concerns with your friends, co-workers, neighbors and acquaintances -- but with the idea of doing something about it, not just emotional venting. In turn share these thoughts with a larger number of people by posting them with Internet groups, along with this article. Express your views on call-in talk shows and by writing letters to the editor. Organize a local Transform America group and begin by discussing the books cited in this chapter. If you are a corporate or government employee, blow the whistle on any wrongdoing, mismanagement and waste that you run across by posting the information on the Web -- anonymously, if need be. As an example, see Chapter II - "American Sweatshops: Widespread and Thriving," below. We will be competing for the attention and allegiance of people who have access to a wealth of entertaining activities through the media. That's why all this, if it is be successful, will have to be done in an inclusive and entertaining way, cast as games and contests, and provide people warm and inviting organizations to belong to. As a critical mass for change is reached, alternatives will emerge to the current destructive values and practices, that will shape a New American Dream that is more appropriate for the world of the 21st century and for us personally. To get a perspective on our current values and how we might change them for the better, we need to take a good look at our own American heritage and traditions as well as other, unusually creative periods in world history. Particularly rewarding eras to examine are the fifth century Athenian Greece and the American Revolution. As historian J. C. Stobart points out in his The Glory that Was Greece (Grove Press), "Never in all the world's history was there such a leap of civilization as in Greece of the fifth century. In one town of about thirty thousand citizens during the lifetime of a man and his father these things occurred: a world-conquering power was defied and defeated, a naval empire was built up, the drama was developed to full stature, sculpture grew from crude infancy to a height it has never yet surpassed, painting became a fine art, architecture rose from clumsiness to the limit of its possibilities in one direction, history was consummated as a scientific art, the most influential of all philosophies was begotten. And all this under no fostering despot, but in the extreme human limit of liberty, equality and fraternity." Our mass consumer culture and the winner-take-all phenomenon does not support an environment for developing personally fulfilling lifestyles, or a rich culture that generates great art, literature, music... Consumer culture appeals to the lowest common denominator. It just asks: Will the book be a best-seller? Will the play or film be a smash at the box office? Will the TV show have mass appeal? As we re-examine our values and practices, hopefully there will be a shift from the "winner-take-all" to wider distribution of rewards for participants in all creative endeavors that will unleash the creativity of the American people comparable to the level reached by the Ancient Greeks. We must move from the present economy of profligacy to a more balanced, frugal consumption style that Americans were known for originally. The current "Voluntary Simplicity" movement is a beginning. David C. Korten, in his two masterful, groundbreaking books, When Corporations Rule the World and The Post-Corporate World (Berrett-Koehler/Kumarian Press), describes one way out of the consumerism trap by organizing ourselves around local centers "that bring residential, work, recreation, and commercial facilities together around sustainable production to meet local needs with substantial degree of self-reliance." More specifically, he proposes that, "Human and environmental production activities would be melded into localized, closed-loop coproduction processes... Family support services such as community-based day care, family counseling, schools, family health services, and multipurpose community centers could become integral neighborhood functions, engaging people in useful and meaningful work within easy walking distance of their homes... We would see a return of the multifunctional home that serves as a center of family and community life and drastically reduces dependence on the automobile and other energy-intensive forms of transportation." To fundamentally transform our consumer culture will require a social movement. And history teaches us that successful mass movements require charismatic leaders, effective organizations, believable manifestos, pithy slogans and clearly defined villains. During our Colonial period the Declaration of Independence was such a manifesto and King George III was the villain. There seems to be a growing feeling today that our greedy corporate CEOs, the modern day versions of the 19th century robber barons, would be the logical candidates for the role of villains. But most importantly the successful movements of the past built parallel organizations that eventually weaned the people from the old values and into the new institutions. If you want to take part in an already ongoing public discussion and debate on how to revitalize our consumer culture and participating in its transformation, log on David Korten's sponsored Positive Futures Network at www.futurenet.org. But before you do that, please hit the "Forward Message" button, add a personal note and share this with people on your e-mail list, with a cc to [EMAIL PROTECTED] *The title, needless to say and with apologies to Shakespeare, is a hyperbole. We do not advocate violence of any kind. **About the Author. Ripskis is a social critic and a former government whistleblower. The above are excerpts from his new book-in-progress "After the Lawyers Let's Kill the CEOs and Celebrities: Transforming America." A decade of profiling unique lifestyles all over the world culminated in his previous, Pulitzer-sponsored book Cutting Loose: From Rat Race to Dream Lifestyles. Web site http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/ripskis For 13 years prior to that Ripskis was an investigative reporter and government whistleblower. His exposes sparked Congressional investigations and hearings that were widely covered by the media. He has featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and other major newspapers and magazines. Ralph Nader wrote a syndicated column about him. See The Washington Post's piece on him "HUD Houses Bureaucrat/Critic With Impact," June 8, 1982, p A15, and The Nation magazine's "More a Calliope Than a Whistle[blower]," February 13, 1975, p174. Since graduate school Ripskis has been a student of social movements. ***If you haven't been downsized to a job paying close to minimum wage job, and want to get a good sense of what that would be like, see the chapter below. ****Culture critic David Denby Copyright (c) 1999 Al Louis Ripskis Chapter II - American Sweatshops: Widespread and Thriving By Al Louis Ripskis I applied for an "Associate/Owner" position at Staples, an international office equipment and supply chain. I uncovered sweatshop-like conditions that I subsequently found are more the rule than the exception among retailers across this country employing some 22.8 million workers. Here is how it works. When I told the Staples store manager that I wanted a full-time job, he informed me that initially I would have to work on a temporary, part-time basis, without any benefits. I found out later that numerous other employees at the store who had worked there from two to seven years were still in "part-time," status. This arrangement is highly advantageous for the retailers. They minimize or avoid paying fringe benefits such as life and health insurance, retirement benefits, overtime or differential pay for Sunday work. When I told the manager that I wanted to work as many hours as possible, he told me that every employee at the store asks for that. The maximum he ever allowed me to work was 31.5 hours a week. Most often it was in the 21 to 26 hour range. So at $7.25 an hour for a 31.50 hour work week I grossed $228.38. After deductions for Social Security, Medicare and federal, state and local taxes, my net take home pay was $178.48. This translates to a net of $9,281 a year. That's poverty wage, especially in a high cost area such as Washington, D. C. How do people sustain themselves on such abysmally low wages? From talking to my fellow employees I found that the younger ones either lived with their parents or in group houses and cramped quarters. Some of the older employees were retirees receiving Social Security or some other retirement benefits. Others had to work at two and sometimes even three jobs. The way management handled the weekly work schedule assures the loss of control over one's life.The manager has almost total discretion on assigning when and how many hours each employee would work for the week ahead. The schedule comes out on Friday and day-shift employees can be assigned to work any time from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. weekdays, or 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sundays. But if you were scheduled to work on a specific day and things are slow at the store, you are out of luck and are summarily sent home. You got paid for only the hours you actually worked. There is no minimum pay that you are entitled to receive for having made the trip in to work, no matter how long it might have taken through gridlock traffic. Ironically, even though adjusted for inflation, this was the lowest paying post-college job I had worked. It was also the most stressful and demanding.The job is highly stressful because of cumbersome management procedures and the fact that some managers and customers use you as a convenient psychological punching bag to displace their frustrations and hostilities. Some customers just loved venting their aggressions if you weren't familiar with some features of a piece of equipment, or you didn't know where the items they wanted were located, from among the thousands that the store carries. But the most debilitating part of the job is that you have to be on your feet all day. Even if there are no customers around you are not permitted to stand or sit behind a counter. You had to constantly roam the aisles, making sure that all the shelves were full and the goods properly aligned. After seven or eight hours of this I was completely wiped out. I returned home feeling totally drained of energy and will power, and wound up vegetating in front of the boob tube most evenings. During my 13 years as an investigative reporter and government whistleblower there was an article of faith among my colleagues that government bureaucracies were grossly wasteful and inept, and that private industry, motivated by the need to make a profit, was a model of efficiency. That's why what I found at Staples was such a shock. Sunday morning customers were streaming in, with Staples sales fliers in hand and teenagers in tow, wanting to see the particular computer/monitor/printer combinations that was shown as being on sale and which they wanted to buy for their college-bound sons and daughters. It turned out we didn't have them in stock. One customer was even willing to buy a floor demo laptop computer, but a part was missing that no one could locate. Others wanted to buy individual items shown in the flier. But even though the computer inventory check showed the items were supposed to be in stock, we couldn't locate them. Customers were marching out of our store furious, vowing never to return again -- after waiting an inordinate amount of time while we had tried frantically to track down the sales items unsuccessfully. These were big ticket items that Staples was losing substantial profits on. So what was going on here? The day before, Saturday, there was no preparation to have in stock the items listed in the Staples fliers that went out with the Sunday paper. Instead, during Saturday night closing time the sales clerks were ordered to roam the store's sales display aisles, making sure that all the items we had on display were properly aligned and not out of place. Staples management doesn't trust its customers or staff: the more expensive items such as printer cartridges were under lock and key and the costly, big ticket items such as computers and printers were in back stockrooms to which only the managers had keys. That's why during the busier times things were in a state of pandemonium. While the managers were preoccupied with the varied, daily operational and customer problems, the sales clerks, were trying to borrow the single key each manager had to get items from the back stockrooms to fulfill waiting customer orders -- who by now were ill-humored because they have had to wait so long. Their dispositions got worse when we had to tell them that we couldn't find the items even though a computer check had shown the goods to be in stock when the customers had phoned, prior to coming in. An even more basic problem related to management's preoccupation with the short-term bottom line. Selling computers, printers and other office equipment requires considerable technical and sales expertise, which takes time to acquire. Staples paid its store staff close to minimum wages, and high labor turnover was the result Meanwhile, while we in the trenches were being subjected to all that stress and paid $7.25 an hour, guess what Staples top management -- Chairman/CEO Thomas Stemberg and the President John Bingleman -- were pulling down? According to documents filed with Security Exchange Commission for 1998, Stemberg, including various stock options, took $6,343,408 or $3,172 an hour, while Bingleman took $6,783,723 or $3,392 an hour, which, by the way, included $95,886 for "Relocation Expenses!" Copyright (c) 1999 by Al Louis Ripskis. Excerpted from his book-in-progress After the Lawyers Let's Kill the CEOs and Celebrities: Transforming America. http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/ripskis) P.S. 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