Posts Tagged ‘punk capitalism’
No straight lines of possibility?
Alan Moore’s recent post is worth a read:
In his article for The Observer – Tony Judt writes,
Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For 30 years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth.
The materialistic and selfish quality of contemporary life is not inherent in the human condition. Much of what appears “natural” today dates from the 1980s: the obsession with wealth creation, the cult of privatisation and the private sector, the growing disparities of rich and poor. And above all the rhetoric which accompanies these: uncritical admiration for unfettered markets, disdain for the public sector, the delusion of endless growth.
Indeed, this is a point of view that I share (here) and (here) and (here), in fact I have written a book about it (video) – Judt’s article goes onto examine the role of the state in the context its enthrallment with all things market driven. And yet we are told whoever comes into power in the UK slash and burn of core pubic sector services is inevitable. And of course this will be done in a manner redolent of the industrial age.
Yet – a networked approach to solving problems can help re-frame our world vision – providing new solutions to once seemingly age old and intractable problems.
Big lumpy clumpy balls of crap
Leading on from the previous post about the coolness of chaos…
Have you ever had to deal with a big lumpy piece of complex old software that was written years ago, then updated countless times, new bits added on, a new guy adding another bit, bolt-ons, sticking plasters and fixes… until it’s a big slow cumbersome piece of crap nobody can change or work with?
That’s pretty much industry as it stands – and other big systems for that matter (e.g. government, education). Since the industrial revolution, we’ve built up this massive ball of crap. Now nobody can do a damn thing with it.
The most obvious example that’s hurting right now is the whole free thing. We can listen to music for free. We can watch TV shows for free. We can read books for free. This of course screws record companies, publishers, broadcasters… oh yeah, and then there’s the whole fact that we don’t pay a blind bit of notice to advertising. The big massive balls of crap are stuffed because they’re prisoners within their own structures – too slow, too fat, too inflexible. They’re waiting to die, with their fingers in their ears, screaming ‘lah lah lah!’ as nimble network-based businesses spring up under the radar, taking over the world at lightning pace.
At the end of the day, all a business traditionally does is ensure people get paid. That’s it, when you think about it. Traditionally the big boys get paid much more than the little boys, but it’s just a bunch of individuals getting paid.
Now, think about the overhead in a big-lump-of-crap business. Big shiny offices, management structures, HR departments, blah blah blah. Think about MARKETING BUDGETS… zillions and squillions… to make sure you sell LOADS to make sure you can pay the overheads and pay the individuals (staff, bosses, shareholders etc). So we pay more to make more to sell more to pay more.
And it ain’t just the hippies who know sustainability is an issue. We need to stop producing so much crap. Reuse, reduce, recycle and all that jazz. Yet still we need to make people want more so they buy more so we sell more to pay individuals.
What if we scrapped all the crap?
What if there were no management structures?
What if there were no multi-million advertising / marketing budgets?
What if there were more or less no overheads?
Answer? We wouldn’t need to sell as much, so we wouldn’t MAKE as much. Sweet! It isn’t rocket science.
And could we do business without these business-as-usual / this-is-business stuff that costs so much? Hell yeah. It’s already happening. It’s soooo easy to change from ground level, as a bunch of individuals, with no management, a pinch of leadership and a sprinkling of magic dust – in comparison to attempting change from the ‘top’. It’s no surprise that people feel pretty darn good when they’re an individual within a collective, creating profit through good growth, without all the psychologically, environmentally (and every other ‘ally’) damaging self-fulfilling prophecies inherent in business as we know it.
I mean, we all know we went a bit crazy over the past few years (decades). We all got a bit carried away. It’s like full on raving in the 80s/90s (or whatever equivalent!). Bloody hell what a blast. Dance your face off – time of your life. But after a few years everybody starts to feel like crap, go nuts and realise it’s no fun any more and life’s better when you feel good. The individuals-formerly-known-as-consumers are just started to ease off the uppers. They’ve been turning your brain cells to mush and it’s much nicer to be wide awake.
So what now? Sit back and wait until the chaos period is over and this network-based commerce phase kicks in and emerges as the new status quo?
Err… that would be pretty boring.
Instead you could join a tribe. Or you could start one. Soon it’ll pay way more than your job (if that’s what you care about)… and really when you get into the swing of the new way you won’t give a toss.
Take it a leap beyond ‘markets are conversations’ into the realms of DOING, not planning. ACTION IS THE NEW FORECASTING.
It’s happening (scrmblr style)…
Seth Godin’s recent post here hit the nail on the head. He says ‘TV advertisers are finally discovering that YouTube + viral imagination = free media… The biggest shift is going to be that organizations that could never have afforded a national campaign will suddenly have one. The same way that there’s very little correlation between popular websites and big companies, we’ll see that the most popular commercials get done by little shops that have nothing to lose.’
Funny he should say that. It’s exactly what we Scrmblrs (’scramblers’) are up to (Scrmblr is a global network of producers who create low cost, good quality video and audio content… what you might call anti-ads).
More on Punk Capitalism
Someone asked me yesterday what exactly Punk Capitalism means…
Punk was all about a DIY revolution, rejecting authority and hierarchy, working for yourself without taking cues from the mass market, setting up businesses that aren’t fussed about competing and place purpose over profit, advocating that we should produce as much as we consume. Nowadays we’re all working more independently and struggle with crappy managers / bosses, we want richer experiences and creativity is our most valuable currency. We’re coming to the end of the Industrial Revolution cycle… the final nails are going in the coffin for mass production (and in turn mass marketing) – starting with the internet making it free to transmit stuff digitally ourselves. Now punks in lab coats are working on things like 3D printers, already in use by Adidas, BMW, Sony etc for making prototypes. Once these are available in our homes there will be no boundaries left between producer and consumer – just creativity. It’s not far off Star Trek replicators! Then nobody has to be bribed to do shit jobs. Phew! What we deem piracy is the best form of distribution in a Punk Capitalist world.
My previous post mentions this here; and refers to this book as the ultimate Punk Capitalism and piracy resource.
Skipping the curve
Most people at some point question what they’re doing… where their life is going… whether they’ve achieved enough or made the correct choices. Whether they should be playing this game or jacking it all in for a beach shack. This post is for all you guys. 
I, for one, sometimes get sick of the sound of my own voice, repeating the stuff of ‘those who get it’ – as if it’s still brand new. As long as there are ‘those who don’t get it’, perhaps we still feel good about ourselves. Or maybe we’re all secretly afraid we’ve wasted our lives on a load of old bollox?
Here are a few typical state-of-play regurgitations:
- Markets are more competitive and we have more choice (long tail etc)
- Broadcast is crumbling as we filter the noise
- Marketers increasingly have to justify their budgets (and silver bullet solutions fail to deliver on promises)
- Markets are conversations
- Word of mouth recommendation is the biggest influence on purchase decisions
- People no longer trust authorities, institutions and advertising
- There has been a power shift from brand to consumer
- 360 degree, relevant, targeted, tailored, personalised blah blah
etc etc
We bang on about social media and word of mouth as if they’re actually marketing disciplines. Word of mouth is not a marketing discipline. Social media is not a marketing channel.
The reality is, they’re just more of the same thing humans – people of the world – have always done… more communicating. Not rocket science. We’ve always done it and we always will – with increasing speed and ease via technology, in our evermore fluid, diverse societies.
Unless we’re all gagged, of course we’ll share things and recommend stuff. It isn’t a phenomenon; and it doesn’t even necessarily have to be ‘harnessed’.
Okay, so there’s a general coming-around to the idea that advertising is dead. Market research is also balancing on a credibility knife-edge. Back in 2005, Simon Clift, CMO and Group VP of Unilever’s Personal Care Division, said, ‘I just don’t believe in predictive research. And we don’t use it.’
No surprise there, when you think about it. We ask people what they think, what they do and what they’ll do in the future – and take their answers as if they’re objective truths. We extract wads from brands knowing full well that’s somewhat counter to common sense, particularly as we’re in the futurist half-arsed scientist’s club and we know better.
Perhaps we need to ‘fess up and admit the truth… i.e. that we don’t have a clue. Our predictions are based precariously on platonicity. We suffer from confirmation bias, historical bias and more or less any bias you can think of that makes us think we will be and were right.
If you consider the kind of industry thinking and activity we had in the past; the kind we have in the present; and the kind we futurists have about the future… how’s about we skip all that – skip the curve – and start making things happen in line with the future beyond our current prevarications.
Maybe it’s worth considering that marketing is dead (or at least will/could/should be). That business models are people-driven. That nobody wants to have a conversation with a Brand. That there are no Us and Them divides between brands and consumers – we’re all just people. That scalability comes from putting the people of the world in control. That the complex supply chains which leverage the hoarding of knowledge for big bucks are no longer needed nor wanted (we see them falling by the day). That we marketers are no longer needed nor wanted. As individuals, we’ll control our incoming and outgoing communications ourselves; in a punk-capitalist-come-communist society (if you feel the need to name it). The knowledge of the people of the world is out there and it’s spreadable, mashable, monetizable and free. So many of our positions are no longer relevant. What a bloody fantastic opportunity!
Punk Capitalism
Listen to these distinguishing features / central axioms of Capitalism:
Each person owns his or her own labor and therefore is allowed to sell the use of it to employers [Take this a bit further forward along the curve and companies don't tend to have employees, just pools of talented people who do stuff]
The best allocation of resources is achieved through consumers having free choice, and producers responding accordingly to meet collective consumer demand [Yes, we like free choice... so much so that we're kissing goodbye to the mass and saying hello to the long tail. Again, pools of talented producers / citizens of the world meet collective demands of the people]
And…
Globalisation in its literal sense is the process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones. It can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together. [Now that's not so bad, is it?]
Looks like we need to redefine a few things. We humans are frighteningly susceptible to the power of suggestion. As Malcolm Gladwell illustrated in Blink, if you ask a bunch of people to walk down a corridor, sit a test and walk back up the corridor – the fact the test contained hidden references to old age will make them walk back much more slowly. Imagine what we’ve anchored to words like ‘Globalisation’ and ‘Capitalism’, evidenced by those irritating grown-ups who rant like freshers, contradictions galore, without actually doing anything.
Matt Mason talks about Punk Capitalism in his book The Pirate’s Dilemma. He says, ‘Punk’s independent spirits spurred a DIY revolution, encouraging us to reject authority and hierarchy, advocating that we can and should produce as much as we consume. Since punk, this idea has been quietly changing the very fabric of our economic system, replacing outdated ideas with 21st century upgrades of Punk Capitalism… There is a misconception that all changes we are experiencing as a society are the result of new technologies… the changes are profoundly cultural.’
So there we go. Punk Capitalism is the new way.
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