I asked my friend Rinaldo Brutoco founder and president of World Business Academy to guest blog here on practical suggestions to reverse the trend we are seeing in our financial security. Rinaldo Brutoco is a leading international executive, writer and keynote speaker for over 25 years, widely recognized as a practical visionary, change agent and futurist who assists executives and organizations in adapting to change with breakthrough ideas. I believe his suggestions would be helpful for our next President as well.
The fundamental problem with Wall Street is not greed, but rather that it forgot the reason business exists.
The origination of business was likely started a individual who saw an opportunity to be of service by offering to bring the excess crops of one farmer to the other and to receive as payment a portion of what he conveyed. That is the fundamental role of business in society: to be of service to society. The World Business Academy has been publishing it’s belief that the purpose of corporations is not to make a profit. The purpose of any business enterprise, and that would include business organizations that populate Wall Street, is to provide some service or material goods that society needs. Profit is there as a necessary component of the transaction, but when it is seen as the only reason, we inevitably lose our way as we have today. Gambling and speculation may be something that society can afford to tolerate, but not something society can afford to have as its central economic model.
Success in life as well as success in business lies in the conscious participation of the expression of abundance and creativity, not merely for one’s own sake, but for others in society. This model of reward primarily through service rather than money is rooted in the truth that there is enough for everyone and that no one is better than, nor lower than anyone else.
The question is how we live this definition of success while watching our material world implode. If the answer lies in investment in green technologies, education and infrastructure, then the next question is: How will you pay for all this when so much money has already been committed to rescuing the financial institutions and credit markets? In fact, by intelligently leaving Iraq and reducing the military budget, along with judicious investment in wisdom-based economies, investment in education, universal healthcare, and our infrastructure, the American economy can actually create more money than these investments will cost us in initial outlay.
Re-creating our economy along the lines of this definition of success will generate a level of wealth in the US that will be a hundred times greater than the explosion of wealth that the US has experienced since the end of World War II.
It is ironic that greater material wealth will be created by adopting a non-greed definition of success but that is exactly what happens as a direct result of our collective decision to put important matters of humanity and the planet first. How does this happen? It happens as a direct result of making better choices so that we see our economic activity as being in service to each of us and to society as a whole. When we make better choices, business will begin to serve those choices as the most efficient way to thrive. Business in service to society.
For years I have stated publicly that I have never heard of, read about, or personally experienced any problem that human society faces for which we don’t already have all the resources and technology at our disposal to resolve. All that is lacking is our individual and collective will to resolve the challenge. This applies to overpopulation, global climate change, poverty, disease, and war. All that is lacking is our will to bring about this different paradigm of abundance and mutual success. And that begins with each of us accepting a new personal definition of success from which to experience all the difficulties we confront.
The time to do this is now.
The current bailout, is a band-aid. It is very important that we adopt it or something like it or society will bleed to death before we can make the fundamental changes to our society that will actually heal the broken economic system that we have. The pending bailout only buys us time. As soon as it becomes law we must put ourselves immediately to the task of re-building our entire economic system from one that was characterized as “trickle down” to one that I would characterize as “trickle up.” In a “trickle up” system we take care of ourselves and our neighbors by putting affordable housing, education, healthcare, meaningful employment, peace as a core commitment, and true success as our goals.
The speed at which the economic system is unraveling is mind numbing. This much speculation has to be brought under control carefully. We need to let the air out of the balloon slowly rather than have it pop. Adopting the bailout bill by itself will solve none of the fundamental, underlying, structural flaws in our economy. It will, however, buy us the time to address those flaws from a new level of consciousness and social policy. That is the short and long-term solution.
Rinaldo will be joining Deepak live on Sirius Radio tomorrow (October 4th) to discuss the economy.
Visit www.intent.com to read more from Deepak Chopra and other prominent voices.