Make the Existing Model Obsolete

Why Do Jeff Bezos & Mark Zuckerberg Get to Decide?

You never change things by fighting against the existing reality.

To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

— Buckminster Fuller

This week revealed that, after many months, endless pledged tax breaks, confidential data reveals, and presumably extensive consideration, Jeff Bezos has opted to split Amazon’s “second” headquarters among New York, Northern Virginia, and Nashville. After cities like Columbus, Pittsburgh, and Indianapolis bent over backwards to prove their viability, getting their hopes up that perhaps the mega-corporation would bless them with industry and employment they both desperately need and want, instead Bezos opted for the country’s two predictable power centers, which happen to be two of the most overcrowded cities in the country (and the world).

Amazon's HQ2 Hunger Games Are Over, and Jeff Bezos Won

At the same time, we’ve learned that Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandburg, and others at Facebook not only knew about Russia’s attempted interference in the 2016 election by way of their platform, they took steps to deflect blame for that activity away from them and onto others, what spies would ironically call “active measures.” I don’t think anyone ever mistook Mark Zuckerberg for an angel, but Ms. “Lean In” Sandburg has certainly had her face dirtied by these revelations. As I watch Facebook friends threaten to de-activate, delete, or cease use of their accounts, it is important in moments like this not to mistake reprehensible individual actions for symptoms of systemic failure.

Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook's Leaders Fought Through Crisis

This is it, folks. This is the preferred model of 21st century capitalism.

Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Sandburg are the pros. This model is designed to ensure the rich get richer and the poor stay put. It’s designed to make you believe that your individual actions — such as deactivating your Facebook account — will actually have an effect on the system as a whole.

“If we all did it,” you insist, “there wouldn’t be a Facebook!”

Such has been the argument of vegetarians against the commercial meat industry for years. While beef consumption in America fell by 19% from 2005 to 2014, 37% of consumers cited price as the reason they stopped eating it.

In other words, poverty, not principles, was the primary factor affecting how many people eat meat.

Americans Ate 19% Less Beef From '05 to '14, Report Says

While we are up in arms about the choices of both Amazon and Facebook, it is easy to overlook the fact that this is exactly how the system is designed to operate. The public narrative insists on “one person, one vote,” while in reality, those who “commute” to work in the backseat of a towncar have the power and responsibility to decide that 25,000 more people should ride an already overcrowded, underfunded New York subway.

Thanks Andrew “Amazon” Cuomo!

In times like these, the natural response is protest.

“How dare they!” we cry. “Why don’t they care about me and my life?”

The cold, hard answer? They are playing by the rules, which offer no reward for taking you and your needs into account.

Buckminster Fuller was a smart dude. I don’t know that any of his inventions went the way of the telephone or the lightbulb. But he definitely had the good sense to see the forest from the trees. He understood that resisting the current reality doesn’t work. As Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked people what they want, they would have said, ‘a faster horse.’”

I spent the fall of 2016 working to elect the first female president of the United States. In the process of participating in that colossal failure, I learned just how broken the “system” really is.

So what is the current reality? I can’t promise to be comprehensive, but here are at least 18 dynamics that define the “existing model,” many of which are evident in the Amazon HQ2 decision, and the Facebook Russia cover-up:

• Companies finance political campaigns to ensure that elected officials do their bidding
• Companies demand incentives from elected officials to guarantee their profits
• Companies use the media to distort and disguise their true motives and actions
• Companies disregard how their choices will affect human lives and livelihoods, even those they employ
• Elected officials willingly accept corporate money to reduce the amount of time they spend fundraising and thereby ensure their (re)election
• Elected officials make choices that benefit their campaign donors even if the result will be worse for most of their constituents
• Elected officials make backroom decisions to which voters are not privy
• Elected officials defend their deference to corporate interests as “good for the economy”
• Elected officials give tax incentives that diminish their ability to invest in vital public goods and infrastructure
• Average people are not privy to (or often even aware of) the decisions made by elected officials and corporate leaders that affect their day-to-day lives
• Average people are not invited to participate in government choices, beyond voting representatives into office
• Average people are dependent on the services of monopolistic companies
• Average people get their news and social engagement from unmediated social media channels that make it easy to mistake falsehood as fact
• Average people are struggling to make ends meet, while members of the managerial-political class, the top 20% of earners responsible for most government and corporate decision-making, have never wondered whether they will be able to afford groceries this week
• Public narrative blames average people for their failure to escape or avoid poverty
• Public narrative insists that voting is the most important and impactful political action
• Public narrative insists that the media is trustworthy
• Public narrative insists that lifestyle and services must be “earned,” not free
• Public narrative celebrates profits and growth as the most vital and positive corporate attributes

In this moment, I am done with outrage. I am finished with protest. I will not continue to be bulldozed in “resistance” to the existing reality.

I am laser focused on Buckminster’s legacy.

Build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

Here are a few characteristics of a new model I’d like to see:

• Average people are collectively organized at the community level around a shared vision for the future
• Average people meet and interact in person more than they do online
• Average people are aware of and informed about the choices their elected officials make
• Average people are empowered to hold their elected officials accountable to decisions that affect their lives
• Average people are both empowered to vote and actively participate in other government processes to ensure they are inclusive and transparent
• Elected officials are held accountable to make choices that directly benefit a majority of their constituents
• Elected officials are held to a high standard of transparency in all their actions
• Elected officials are not influenced in their choices by corporate campaign contributions
• Companies are required to invest in the communities where they work, both through taxes and direct investment
• Companies consider both climate and community in the choices they make
• Companies are required to pay all their employees a living wage (and benefits) before their chief executive bonus packages

This is just me in the comfort of my own home musing about what I personally wish for the world. But none of this happens unless we find our way around point #1.

How might we collectively organize at the community level around a shared vision for the future?

Over the past two years I’ve been working on doing that here in Brooklyn, through The Vision Project. We’ve hosted dozens of workshops across the borough, where we collectively ask and answer questions about values, leadership, civic engagement, and a shared vision for the future.

The author facilitates a Vision workshop in Sunset Park

Across the United States, we’ve become mired in a culture of “us” versus “them,” where Democrats and Republicans are the only honored political identity. But self-identifying partisans are a minority.

Recent research on America’s Hidden Tribes shows that there is diversity in our political ideology, while at the same time a high level of disengagement among many of us, thanks to the shouting on both extreme ends of the spectrum.

What does democracy look like in the 21st century? Maybe now is our chance to decide.

It’s almost certain that what we have done and depended on in the past won’t deliver the future we need and want. I believe that change starts with a conversation. One that doesn’t ask what pre-conceived antiquated policies you are for or against, but one that connects us, human to human. When we show up for one another and share our lived experience as people, we unlock the opportunity to become allies to one another in our efforts to make tomorrow different from today.

I am on a mission to make real-life human conversations the starting point for a new model of engagement. One that isn’t about partisanship, but allyship, and a deep conviction that when we live into the heart of our humanity, untold dreams become possible.