Using the concept of Quo Bono? (Who Benefits?) regarding our personal spending, we can choose to spend our hard-earned money in such a way that it benefits our local community by deliberately choosing local stores, services and businesses.
Why local? If your city, town, village, hamlet or unincorporated rural municipality isn’t working, then it isn’t a nice place to live, bring up your kids, work, retire, or simply hang out in, then your life sucks.
Why should your life suck?
Employed, reasonably prosperous people with a half a shred of hope tend not to engage in looting, shoplifting, arson, vandalism, drug turf wars, drive-by gun play, selling their bodily orifices for money, or opening arbitrage accounts.
Working communities are very resilient when things go wrong, as they know they can rely on each other. Working communities are not afraid of change. Working communities are willing to offer a hand up, not a hand out, when times are bad.
Working communities encourage citizens to say things like “No” or “Piss off” when offered the new and improved, change you can believe in, more convenient, more economical, larger, faster and better as determined by Wall Street and Big Corporations.
Best of all, working communities scare the crap out of politicians, Wall Street and Big Corporations, as it demonstrates the potential for citizens to actually think and act together, instead of being lead around like cattle.
Therefore, change must come locally first. Wall Street and Big Corporations do not care about where you live. You do.
Second, the political class in the US and Canada are as a group, a bunch of lying sacks of shit who will say anything and do anything to get their lips on the money teat. Unfortunately, we cannot legally euthanize them for the good of society as we would rabid raccoons, chickens with avian flu or cows with Bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
Remember that Wall Street got its bailout from politicians. Did you get a piece of the $700 Billion? Did you get invited to a spa day and management retreat after declaring bankruptcy, like the folks at AIG did? Do you have a Gulfstream V business jet at your beck and call? Is Henry Paulson on your speed dial?
Did your bank call up out of the blue, to give you a couple of months to rearrange your finances and renegotiate your mortgage to a better payment plan that recognizes the way the economy is going? Did someone from Wall Street offer to share their bonus with you?
Me neither.
We should ensure that those responsible for dumping us in this mess get their attitudes adjusted. The least offensive way is to take away their money and power.
Politicians need an attitude adjustment and the only one they understand is being voted out of office. Wall Street and Big Corps? The only way you can adjust their attitude is to deprive them of money and their buddies in power.
All politics is local. I didn’t say that, Tip O’Neil said it and he was absolutely right. Even in national elections with a global focus, what happens in your community is what matters. Promises of ‘prosperity’ and ‘change’ are just promises, unless the politicians are very specific about what, locally, is going to change. Promises don’t put money in your pocket, groceries on the table, or jobs in the community.
Politicians at the local, state, provincial and federal levels need to fear that your community is watching them closely and will use the ballot box and the media to keep them in line. That’s how lobbyists do it. They engender fear in the politician that the lobby group will contribute massive amounts of money to the opposition if the politician doesn’t play ball.
Which is why we come back to working, local, communities.
Now you have the secret of Quo Bono. It isn’t actually to slap Wall Street and Big Corporations upside the head, no matter how tempting.
Quo Bono is designed to change the whole game by changing the political landscape, by changing the local landscape, by taking money from Wall Street and mindfully spending it locally where there are real benefits, not benefits for Wall Street. OK, we do get to slap Wall Street a bit, but not the way they deserve it.
Conclusion? When you put your hand in your pocket to pay for something, ask yourself; Quo Bono?
The rest will come.
RoadDave 