What is the “idiom of capital”? A simple way to think of the term “idiom” is “language”. Languages have dialects. Understanding the “idiom” of a special language requires a level of fluency. Fluency is most often acquired by immersion—spending time with a given dialect.
If you play an instrument well, you demonstrate this concept: music is a language and musicians speak this language as idiom. If one shares an interest in the subject of sound, lyric, rhythm and harmony—taking steps to learn the idiom feels quite natural.
Simple terms like, “iPod”, have become symbolic of a powerful idiom—personal music accessed by way of the download. We invent new language to describe what we really care about.
Capital can be experienced similarly--as both a culture and an idiom. “Wall Street” is actually the public name for this special culture. Some of us may have friends who work on “Wall Street”. In other words, “Wall Street” is about people and their dialect for thinking about resources. Without knowing its idiom, however—Wall Street is a latter day Godzilla (big and awkward with seemingly unusual powers).
Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Agribusiness, as industries, also possess unusual influence--the type of influence that goes with size combined with a perceived power for social dominance (more Godzilla).
But big, by itself, is not the key idea. Something else has to be at work. There are very big businesses, for example, deploying huge sums of capital in the pursuit of making candy, who do not define the social agenda. As an industry, the technical term for businesses engaged in candy making is “Confection”.
Do you recall a cable news program or newspaper talking about “Big Candy” or "Big Confection"? We could--the Hershey and Mars companies, for example, are as dominant in this world as Exxon and Pfizer are in theirs. Maybe some day we will think of candy as an idiom or culture. Before this will occur, however, the industry will first have to be perceived as strategic (not simply pleasant or important) to the culture of men and women everywhere.
As an industry becomes important to society, we begin to sense its power—this often coincides when it begins to foster its own idiom or language, viz. Big Oil or Wall Street.
How else do we think of institutional power today? Money. Resources and their control. The State.
How do we think of grassroots power? People. Lots of them. In this story, grassroots power is Cinderella—one who overcomes (peacefully) the influence exerted by the few.
History teaches us that power always and only consolidates itself among the few (the mean step-sisters-- who wanna be friends with Godzilla). It has always been so.
Authorities with the power to tax (the State) and revolutions (grassroots) are the only two ways resources, and their control, are pushed in new directions across history. In each instance re-pointing the flow of consolidation is difficult, sometimes, even bloody. Politics alone cannot get it done.
The Share-Capital Foundation is a student of the idioms of big power: grassroots power or people as Cinderella and Godzilla as the power exerted by big capital (viz., Wall Street, Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Agribusiness and Government).
What Share-Capital would have us consider is this: let’s become familiar with the idiom (language) of capital. Let’s take steps as individuals (as Cinderella) to participate in capital markets—not as holders of IRA or 401(k) accounts—but as grassroots investors who take positions in public companies in strategic industries: doing so assures that Cinderella will meet Godzilla.
The Share-Capital Foundation is seeking to connect with a whole new culture of people who sense deeply that government is complex, and capital is complex—and the revolution ahead does not have to be bloody. These same folks also sense that neither government nor capital markets will figure it out peacefully, or soon. On a deep level it is also possible to sense that the revolution ahead will take place in the boardroom and with browsers—not on the streets or with petitions.
The boardroom is a place where one is welcome as an “owner”. The new grassroots frontier is about ownership, not the American Dream as code for “debt”—but ownership of capital “as equity” with social power.
The first step to learning about “capital markets” as an idiom, therefore, is about owning—not voting or protesting. As “people” (citizens) we are learning unless we own shares, we don’t own the profits of companies. We are also learning, evidently, we do own the downside—with or without shares. An excellent challenge.
It is time to say, simply—“Okay, Godzilla, meet Cinderella. Let’s talk.”
You can learn more about the mission of Share-Capital at www.share-captial.com. Enter a comment or question in the Guestbook if you like to step into the circle.
The op-ed material for the Avarice Fellowship blog is provided by the Share-Capital Foundation.
