thank you an actus your check is in the
mail
I’m Jim Kuchar and I’m here to tell you
that capitalism is not a bad thing I do
however think we kind of screwed it up
in the past couple years before I get
started I got to do something I just
want to acknowledge the woman with the
tiara
what talk to me
what’s the tiara about it’s your
birthday what’s your name what’s your
name what’s your name
Haley happy birthday to you happy
birthday to you happy birthday dear
Haley happy birthday to you
[Applause]
you have now been embarrassed on the
Internet congratulations
all right most of you know who this guy
is right yes hello okay thank you this
is a participatory sport so regardless
of how you may feel about the election
one of the really interesting things
that Bernie Sanders did was he really
brought to the forefront a feeling that
a lot of people have that there is
something wrong with capitalism the
interesting thing is this is not an
American phenomenon this is not isolated
to our country nor to our political
system this is Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy
Corbyn is a British Member of Parliament
he was involved actively in the brexit
activities he like Bernie Sanders
describes himself as a socialist
Democrat this guy is Yanis varoufakis
he’s remember the Greek parliament for
about a year and a half he was actually
the finance minister in Greece and he
describes himself as a libertarian
Marxist these are just three quick
examples of folks around the globe that
are really having conversations about
whether or not the inherent fundamental
process of capitalism is wrong many of
them talking about returning to
socialism some other things Margaret
Thatcher said that the problem of
socialism is you eventually run out of
other people’s money some other crazy
guy said that in order to redistribute
wealth which is the core fundamental
thought of socialism you first have to
create wealth wealth does not come out
of the clouds
it must be created or in the words of
that great historical well-known
philosopher nothing from nothing leaves
nothing
there is no doubt that there is huge
concern in our society that people are
actively being hurt that there is a lot
of pain in our society and around the
globe about flaws in the economic system
most of you remember the 2002 seven
2007-2008 financial crisis we are still
recovering from that most economists
would say some of you may remember
Occupy Wall Street a couple dozen
crazies in Zuccotti Park and lower
Manhattan turned into 951 cities in 82
countries in a month
it went from five people in a tent in
Zuccotti Park to 951 cities and
eighty-two countries that says
something’s up here and its global my
man Pope Francis 2014 no to an economy
of exclusion no to the idolatry of money
no to a financial system which rules
rather than serves something must have
happened
Milton Friedman Nobel Prize winning
economist Chicago School of Economics
1970 editorial in the New York Times
said the social responsibility of bills
social responsibility of business is to
increase its profits okay that’s nice
and yes
running a business and making money and
earning income is a good way to
contribute to society you do provide
jobs you do increase the welfare the
economy that’s all a good thing Friedman
has become misquoted over the years and
what we’ve come to interpret freedoms
Friedman’s work to actually say is that
the sole purpose of a corporation is to
maximize its return to shareholders and
from there it’s a very quick jump to
seeing things like clear cutting a
forest and using a stream as a way to
deposit your industrial waste that what
we should do is anytime we have a
company we should stand on the gas pedal
as hard as we can make it as big as we
can and to hell with anybody
else that gets in our way that thought
actually came out of an earlier thought
Garrett Hardin also a Nobel
prize-winning economist what was
something called the theory of the
Commons the tragedy of the Commons that
says essentially this is his sort of
academic way of saying it but I’ll break
it down for you into real basic words
basically what he said is that human
beings left to their own devices will do
whatever they can to maximize their own
position even if it means hurting other
people in other words the collective
economy doesn’t work because we’re too
competitive and we just try to beat each
other up all the time that’s what Hardin
said that’s where Friedman’s thoughts
came from those are the fundamental
tenants of what we know now as the
American capitalist system that’s not
what it was built to be Adam Smith one
of the founding thinkers in capitalism
was actually designing a system that was
intended to free people from the tyranny
of feudalism let me break that down for
you real quick
feudalism is the lord of the manor and
everybody else in the manor is
essentially a slave Smith said well you
know what if we could start to have
divisions of labor and start to build
businesses maybe we could free that
Henry Ford Henry Ford was not trying to
build a global automotive empire Henry
Ford was actually trying to build an
employment engine not a huge global
conglomerate he was actually trying to
build something that could simply
provide steady employment and a good
wage for his people I love this woman
this woman is Elinor Ostrom
owner Ostrom is very interesting for a
couple of reasons
Elinor Ostrom is the only woman to ever
win the Nobel Prize in Economics Elinor
Ostrom is actually not an economist
she’s a political scientist what she won
the Nobel Prize for was disproving the
theory of Commons that the tragedy of
the Commons doesn’t actually
happen that people can actually overcome
that tendency to want to compete with
each other and work together and what
she used to prove that was lobster
fishing in Maine lobster fishing in
Maine was so bad and so competitive that
the lobstermen were on their boats with
shotguns and they would go in and cut
each other’s lobster trap cords just to
get rid of the other competitor and keep
the lobster fishery to themselves they
finally realized that this was crazy
this was unsustainable they got together
and they divided up the lobster fishery
along the Maine coast into zones and
each lobster fisherman is assigned a
zone and an area and they fish that this
has been so successful that the lobster
fishery in Maine has completely come
back last summer when my wife and I were
remain we were buying Lobster off the
boat for a dollar 25 a pound that’s how
well this has come back because people
said wait a minute we don’t have to do
this we can work together to make this a
better place Thank You Eleanor
traditionally we’ve used charity to try
to solve these kinds of social problems
you can’t walkathon your way out of this
problem a walkathon gets you quarters
not dollars and not hundreds of dollars
and you can’t go to a foundation to get
it because the way the tax system is set
up right now charitable foundations are
only required to give away five percent
of their assets math majors in the room
will very quickly realize that means
they hold on to ninety five percent of
it that’s not using money to make the
world a better place in addition to that
there are all sorts of issues around the
nonprofit behavior complex you’re
essentially begging for money which is
never a good thing in terms of human
dignity you have a very hard time
telling it works no donor wants to pay
for operations day to day work they all
want to pay for the next big shiny
object but they don’t want to pay for
the next big thing too many of them are
around trying to keep their
organizations intact rather than making
the world a better place and then the
last one which I a friend of mine coined
the phrase the white Savior industrial
complex which basically says we’re going
to parachute into your neighborhood and
we know better and
we’re going to deliver social change for
you as opposed to coming in with
humility and saying how can we help
well what about government maybe
government can fix the problem
anybody got enough sense of history to
recognize who that guy is in the bottom
in the middle
it’s rod Blagojevich former governor of
Illinois currently serving time in a
federal penitentiary for trying to sell
Barack Obama’s Senate seat when he was
elected president just next door to him
is Mark Sanford former governor of South
Carolina who disappeared from his office
one day they couldn’t find him for about
a week when he showed up he said he’d
been out hiking on the Appalachian Trail
he was in Brazil with his mistress he’s
actually been reelected as a senator now
fascinating story that building on the
top is the wall street I receive me the
Watergate complex for those of you that
are history majors clearly letting
government acting their own devices
isn’t going to solve this problem well
what if we just share it all well
Tiananmen Square and some other
experiments have proven that that
doesn’t really work well if you read the
last chapters of Animal Farm you’ll find
that it just ends ugly historically we
have relied hello how did we die there
we go
historically we’ve relied on our
neighbors our friends our social systems
our faith structures that’s great but
what about the people that don’t have
those networks what about the people
that are disenfranchised in some way
what about the people that don’t fit in
to one of those boxes well let’s get
back to capitalism for a second I said
at the beginning of my conversation I
was here to say that capitalism is a
good thing what the capitalist system
has done is allowed us to develop a
process of innovation a speed of
innovation a rate of change and
technological improvement in efficiency
communications logistics unparalleled in
the history of the planet
and because of that people have gotten
very wealthy I don’t think this is wrong
I think this is a good thing I think the
problem is what we did with the money
does anybody really need a hundred and
thirty-five foot mega-yacht couldn’t you
get along with 125 I think I could
adjust it might be a little cramped but
I think I could adjust to 125 feet I
don’t know maybe not what if we use that
money just a little bit of it I’m not
saying people shouldn’t get rich from
their efforts or get paid for their
efforts all I’m saying is what if we use
some of that money instead of making
that 125 135 foot mega yacht to make the
world a better place to feed somebody to
grow something I’ve had a chance to talk
to Erin Hurst I’ve met in my read his
book he coined the phrase the purpose
economy there’s a lot of other labels
out there social enterprise social
entrepreneurship I like this purpose
economy phrase because it really
clarifies what we’re trying to do here
we’re still trying to have a productive
economy but we’re trying to shift the
purpose trying to shift the purpose away
from making people ridiculously wealthy
towards making people better it’s
actually not a new concept you are
sitting in a social enterprise you are
sitting in a nonprofit that hasn’t
earned income strategy hospitals have
been doing this for years the difference
is that any organization that’s trying
to do this is trying to create wealth on
multiple levels they’re trying to behave
in a manner that is pro-social that
they’re trying to produce economic
wealth that’s entrepreneurship we’re
pretty clear on how to do that that
they’re trying to produce social wealth
which has historically been the area for
nonprofits and they’ve trying to produce
communal wealth which has historically
been the area for government these are
three great local examples
Harbor City Services runs a Moving &
Storage Company staffed by people
suffering with schizophrenia they run it
as a for-profit enterprise he was in
business for about 20 years before he
merged with a larger nonprofit never
took a dime of charitable money the
first time he took a grant he was
embarrassed and upset about having to
take a charitable grant vehicles for
change is now in four cities it started
in a little auto shop in Baltimore
helping people develop independence in
transportation local color flowers is
doing phenomenal work in Charles Village
totally changing the floral industry no
carbon footprint all the flowers they
sell are grown within 100 miles of their
store they’re gorgeous
they’re priced competitively all over
the world this is happening you
recognize some of these faces you may
not recognize some of the other ones
this is the Astra gates is doing
incredible work in Chicago Muhammad
Yunus a bunch of other folks this world
is coming the people that are going to
make this happen are not me I’m an old
guy I’m going to be gone in a few years
but people are going to make this happen
to you guys and I’m counting on you it’s
got a lot of names
don’t let the names bother you remember
that the point of this is you’re trying
to create civic wealth that comes out of
all three of these buckets at the same
time it’s not an easy trick but it can
be done it is being done and it has to
be done if we’re going to get out of the
hole that we’re in you want to talk to
me about it here’s how to find me thanks
for your time
[Applause]
I’m Jim Kuchar and I’m here to tell you
that capitalism is not a bad thing I do
however think we kind of screwed it up
in the past couple years before I get
started I got to do something I just
want to acknowledge the woman with the
tiara
what talk to me
what’s the tiara about it’s your
birthday what’s your name what’s your
name what’s your name
Haley happy birthday to you happy
birthday to you happy birthday dear
Haley happy birthday to you
[Applause]
you have now been embarrassed on the
Internet congratulations
all right most of you know who this guy
is right yes hello okay thank you this
is a participatory sport so regardless
of how you may feel about the election
one of the really interesting things
that Bernie Sanders did was he really
brought to the forefront a feeling that
a lot of people have that there is
something wrong with capitalism the
interesting thing is this is not an
American phenomenon this is not isolated
to our country nor to our political
system this is Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy
Corbyn is a British Member of Parliament
he was involved actively in the brexit
activities he like Bernie Sanders
describes himself as a socialist
Democrat this guy is Yanis varoufakis
he’s remember the Greek parliament for
about a year and a half he was actually
the finance minister in Greece and he
describes himself as a libertarian
Marxist these are just three quick
examples of folks around the globe that
are really having conversations about
whether or not the inherent fundamental
process of capitalism is wrong many of
them talking about returning to
socialism some other things Margaret
Thatcher said that the problem of
socialism is you eventually run out of
other people’s money some other crazy
guy said that in order to redistribute
wealth which is the core fundamental
thought of socialism you first have to
create wealth wealth does not come out
of the clouds
it must be created or in the words of
that great historical well-known
philosopher nothing from nothing leaves
nothing
there is no doubt that there is huge
concern in our society that people are
actively being hurt that there is a lot
of pain in our society and around the
globe about flaws in the economic system
most of you remember the 2002 seven
2007-2008 financial crisis we are still
recovering from that most economists
would say some of you may remember
Occupy Wall Street a couple dozen
crazies in Zuccotti Park and lower
Manhattan turned into 951 cities in 82
countries in a month
it went from five people in a tent in
Zuccotti Park to 951 cities and
eighty-two countries that says
something’s up here and its global my
man Pope Francis 2014 no to an economy
of exclusion no to the idolatry of money
no to a financial system which rules
rather than serves something must have
happened
Milton Friedman Nobel Prize winning
economist Chicago School of Economics
1970 editorial in the New York Times
said the social responsibility of bills
social responsibility of business is to
increase its profits okay that’s nice
and yes
running a business and making money and
earning income is a good way to
contribute to society you do provide
jobs you do increase the welfare the
economy that’s all a good thing Friedman
has become misquoted over the years and
what we’ve come to interpret freedoms
Friedman’s work to actually say is that
the sole purpose of a corporation is to
maximize its return to shareholders and
from there it’s a very quick jump to
seeing things like clear cutting a
forest and using a stream as a way to
deposit your industrial waste that what
we should do is anytime we have a
company we should stand on the gas pedal
as hard as we can make it as big as we
can and to hell with anybody
else that gets in our way that thought
actually came out of an earlier thought
Garrett Hardin also a Nobel
prize-winning economist what was
something called the theory of the
Commons the tragedy of the Commons that
says essentially this is his sort of
academic way of saying it but I’ll break
it down for you into real basic words
basically what he said is that human
beings left to their own devices will do
whatever they can to maximize their own
position even if it means hurting other
people in other words the collective
economy doesn’t work because we’re too
competitive and we just try to beat each
other up all the time that’s what Hardin
said that’s where Friedman’s thoughts
came from those are the fundamental
tenants of what we know now as the
American capitalist system that’s not
what it was built to be Adam Smith one
of the founding thinkers in capitalism
was actually designing a system that was
intended to free people from the tyranny
of feudalism let me break that down for
you real quick
feudalism is the lord of the manor and
everybody else in the manor is
essentially a slave Smith said well you
know what if we could start to have
divisions of labor and start to build
businesses maybe we could free that
Henry Ford Henry Ford was not trying to
build a global automotive empire Henry
Ford was actually trying to build an
employment engine not a huge global
conglomerate he was actually trying to
build something that could simply
provide steady employment and a good
wage for his people I love this woman
this woman is Elinor Ostrom
owner Ostrom is very interesting for a
couple of reasons
Elinor Ostrom is the only woman to ever
win the Nobel Prize in Economics Elinor
Ostrom is actually not an economist
she’s a political scientist what she won
the Nobel Prize for was disproving the
theory of Commons that the tragedy of
the Commons doesn’t actually
happen that people can actually overcome
that tendency to want to compete with
each other and work together and what
she used to prove that was lobster
fishing in Maine lobster fishing in
Maine was so bad and so competitive that
the lobstermen were on their boats with
shotguns and they would go in and cut
each other’s lobster trap cords just to
get rid of the other competitor and keep
the lobster fishery to themselves they
finally realized that this was crazy
this was unsustainable they got together
and they divided up the lobster fishery
along the Maine coast into zones and
each lobster fisherman is assigned a
zone and an area and they fish that this
has been so successful that the lobster
fishery in Maine has completely come
back last summer when my wife and I were
remain we were buying Lobster off the
boat for a dollar 25 a pound that’s how
well this has come back because people
said wait a minute we don’t have to do
this we can work together to make this a
better place Thank You Eleanor
traditionally we’ve used charity to try
to solve these kinds of social problems
you can’t walkathon your way out of this
problem a walkathon gets you quarters
not dollars and not hundreds of dollars
and you can’t go to a foundation to get
it because the way the tax system is set
up right now charitable foundations are
only required to give away five percent
of their assets math majors in the room
will very quickly realize that means
they hold on to ninety five percent of
it that’s not using money to make the
world a better place in addition to that
there are all sorts of issues around the
nonprofit behavior complex you’re
essentially begging for money which is
never a good thing in terms of human
dignity you have a very hard time
telling it works no donor wants to pay
for operations day to day work they all
want to pay for the next big shiny
object but they don’t want to pay for
the next big thing too many of them are
around trying to keep their
organizations intact rather than making
the world a better place and then the
last one which I a friend of mine coined
the phrase the white Savior industrial
complex which basically says we’re going
to parachute into your neighborhood and
we know better and
we’re going to deliver social change for
you as opposed to coming in with
humility and saying how can we help
well what about government maybe
government can fix the problem
anybody got enough sense of history to
recognize who that guy is in the bottom
in the middle
it’s rod Blagojevich former governor of
Illinois currently serving time in a
federal penitentiary for trying to sell
Barack Obama’s Senate seat when he was
elected president just next door to him
is Mark Sanford former governor of South
Carolina who disappeared from his office
one day they couldn’t find him for about
a week when he showed up he said he’d
been out hiking on the Appalachian Trail
he was in Brazil with his mistress he’s
actually been reelected as a senator now
fascinating story that building on the
top is the wall street I receive me the
Watergate complex for those of you that
are history majors clearly letting
government acting their own devices
isn’t going to solve this problem well
what if we just share it all well
Tiananmen Square and some other
experiments have proven that that
doesn’t really work well if you read the
last chapters of Animal Farm you’ll find
that it just ends ugly historically we
have relied hello how did we die there
we go
historically we’ve relied on our
neighbors our friends our social systems
our faith structures that’s great but
what about the people that don’t have
those networks what about the people
that are disenfranchised in some way
what about the people that don’t fit in
to one of those boxes well let’s get
back to capitalism for a second I said
at the beginning of my conversation I
was here to say that capitalism is a
good thing what the capitalist system
has done is allowed us to develop a
process of innovation a speed of
innovation a rate of change and
technological improvement in efficiency
communications logistics unparalleled in
the history of the planet
and because of that people have gotten
very wealthy I don’t think this is wrong
I think this is a good thing I think the
problem is what we did with the money
does anybody really need a hundred and
thirty-five foot mega-yacht couldn’t you
get along with 125 I think I could
adjust it might be a little cramped but
I think I could adjust to 125 feet I
don’t know maybe not what if we use that
money just a little bit of it I’m not
saying people shouldn’t get rich from
their efforts or get paid for their
efforts all I’m saying is what if we use
some of that money instead of making
that 125 135 foot mega yacht to make the
world a better place to feed somebody to
grow something I’ve had a chance to talk
to Erin Hurst I’ve met in my read his
book he coined the phrase the purpose
economy there’s a lot of other labels
out there social enterprise social
entrepreneurship I like this purpose
economy phrase because it really
clarifies what we’re trying to do here
we’re still trying to have a productive
economy but we’re trying to shift the
purpose trying to shift the purpose away
from making people ridiculously wealthy
towards making people better it’s
actually not a new concept you are
sitting in a social enterprise you are
sitting in a nonprofit that hasn’t
earned income strategy hospitals have
been doing this for years the difference
is that any organization that’s trying
to do this is trying to create wealth on
multiple levels they’re trying to behave
in a manner that is pro-social that
they’re trying to produce economic
wealth that’s entrepreneurship we’re
pretty clear on how to do that that
they’re trying to produce social wealth
which has historically been the area for
nonprofits and they’ve trying to produce
communal wealth which has historically
been the area for government these are
three great local examples
Harbor City Services runs a Moving &
Storage Company staffed by people
suffering with schizophrenia they run it
as a for-profit enterprise he was in
business for about 20 years before he
merged with a larger nonprofit never
took a dime of charitable money the
first time he took a grant he was
embarrassed and upset about having to
take a charitable grant vehicles for
change is now in four cities it started
in a little auto shop in Baltimore
helping people develop independence in
transportation local color flowers is
doing phenomenal work in Charles Village
totally changing the floral industry no
carbon footprint all the flowers they
sell are grown within 100 miles of their
store they’re gorgeous
they’re priced competitively all over
the world this is happening you
recognize some of these faces you may
not recognize some of the other ones
this is the Astra gates is doing
incredible work in Chicago Muhammad
Yunus a bunch of other folks this world
is coming the people that are going to
make this happen are not me I’m an old
guy I’m going to be gone in a few years
but people are going to make this happen
to you guys and I’m counting on you it’s
got a lot of names
don’t let the names bother you remember
that the point of this is you’re trying
to create civic wealth that comes out of
all three of these buckets at the same
time it’s not an easy trick but it can
be done it is being done and it has to
be done if we’re going to get out of the
hole that we’re in you want to talk to
me about it here’s how to find me thanks
for your time
[Applause]
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