I added a new page which you can look at by clicking here or going to the tab up top that is labeled Strategies. There you will find a detailed report of what I have actually done, what I am trying to do, and what I plan to do, but haven't gotten to yet. If you think I should do more things, list them, and I will likely give it a shot. While you are playing around with the tabs, I have some numbers crunching under the statistics tab too.
The balance between doing something worthwhile, that makes you proud to go to work, and earning enough money to get out of debt and live with financial abundance, is a tricky one. I just got a letter from a big organization that was looking at hiring me informing me that they are unable to meet my salary requirements (enough to pay the loans) and therefore can't offer me the job. It would have been coordinating a multi-state campaign to tackle energy efficiency at the local level. This could be HUGE! Just listen to Kalia Lydgate at the Marion Institute (video by yours truly). But alas - no-go on the jobby-job.
I am currently working on two projects that are right in line with the vision I expressed in the video this week. I have been working with the people who created Captain Planet to use the global popularity of the character to communicate message about responsible consuming (among other things). As of now we have nearly 400,000 people on Facebook, and reasonably cool website.
The other project is straight up crazy. I am working on putting a team together to build a sustainability research facility and conference center on a private island in the Pacific Northwest. Take a look at the site.
So in addition to those things (neither of which pays) I am trying to apply for jobs that make a difference. I did get a gig writing for a website called TheSocioCapitalist, but it is more an awesome outlet for my writing and a great community, and less a significant revenue stream - unless of course you get all of your friends to make it super popular :) (click those links - I made it easy)
I also applied for a few fellowships, some paid, and others unpaid, but prestigious. I got word today that I have advanced to the next round for one of them, and will have an interview in the next two weeks, so that rocks. I also have been connecting with people who might need social media services like this web video I just made for Half Acre Beer in Chicago. I have a couple promising prospects that would do some social good, and even pay in the next few weeks (fingers crossed).
So as you saw in the video - A big goose egg represents my student loan payments this week. Boo. I have devised a system beginning two weeks from now to have the money my dad is paying me for the consulting work I am doing go directly to Citibank in student loan payments. That would be $200/wk, or a little less than 25% of the goal. Still its steady and significant.
Hi! Good luck on paying your student loans back. I also have some, and they can be a real bear.
ReplyDeleteAs for using capitalism as a force for good, I think that's a noble cause, but I wonder if maybe it's self-defeating. Isn't the demand for "sustainable" or "worker-freindly" or "free trade" products always already conditioned by capitalism itself? So that in fact the desires that we who are interpellated as consumers have are given to us by the system, just like our bourgeoise ideals and values?
TB - Thanks for reading, thanks for the encouragement, and thanks for the thought-provoking comment! (I love your blog!)
ReplyDeleteYou are probably right. Can you know if you want something because you want it, or because there is social pressure that makes you want it? If society were not as gendered as it is, would girls be naturally inclined toward pink and purple, and boy similarly disinclined? I doubt it.
At the end of the day though, I find that line of thinking to be fascinating, and not terribly practical. If our bourgeoise ideals and values can actually create a world where people's basic needs are met, their human rights respected, and our global economy aligned with the planet such that we can produce enough for everyone within the bounds of what the Earth can regenerate, then who cares if we did it because of social-pressure or advertising.
I think of it like a game. At the moment, companies play a game called, "Make more than you did last quarter". In this game there are rules as outlined by national and international law. Some time companies break them, but in general, the game is played and companies win or lose by how well they play i.e. how many people they can convince to buy their product.
What I am suggesting, is that consumers actually have all the power here. If they decide to buy one thing over another, companies trip over themselves trying to produce what consumers want to buy. Your point here is well made - that it may actually be the companies and their advertising that tells consumers what they want (It is really).
What I am saying is that if consumers decided that they only want to spend money on products that they were sure were made by workers who were being paid a living wage, whose human rights were respected, and came from raw materials that are not being used faster than they can regenerate, then they just established a new rule within which the game must be played.
I don't know if I drink coffee and beer because I like it or if I saw is as a right of passage into adulthood. I don't know if I like U2 because of their music, or because advertisers convinced me there were "cool". I don't know if I want people to be able to live with enough to eat, clean water, access to medical care, and freedom to chose their path in life because I really think it is right, or because I have been indoctrinated - but when I consume the things I need and the things I want, without thinking about the consequences of how those products were made, I contribute to the game where human rights and Sustainability don't matter. I would rather contribute to a new game where they do.