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It's time to throw some Greek philosophers under the metaphoric bus. More apropos would be some exotic form of Spartan chariot but those are hard to come by these days. My speech on Friday at TEDx DelrayBeach highlighted the paradoxical conflict of the cognitive duality that we inherited from guys in togas.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) 2013 Spring Meeting wrapped up this weekend with some staggering insights into just how devoid of creativity the world's economic and defacto thought leadership has remained.

At what price your soul?

Getting real with investor rights and responsibilities

Of liars and statistics

Sequestration eve and not a creature is stirring

Boy Scouts and Global Financial Morality

Risk or Ignorance - you make the call

Platinum coins and Plato's allegory rationalized

Fiscal Cliff a long time in the making: Become Conversant with the issues

Honor the fallen in this week's shootings and share this if you can

"The city of Rio de Janeiro, seen by men of power as a watering-hole of mega-events, a tropical Disneyland of the 21st Century, is having its deepest references destroyed. The fury of modernization, accustomed to big business, crushes the intangible and that which cannot be measured by the logic of the financial market: Carioca (Rio) culture and its places of memory; powerful bonds of connection with the past, living lessons of the ancestry of a people who made sacred in celebration rituals our beaches, corners, pubs, lofts and schools of our territory." Click for full English text:LINK

Comments by Ken Dabkowski:

Luiz Antonia Simas’s article does a superb job of honoring the integral value of the Municipal School of Arthur Freidenriech.

This article is also the first and only statement in global mass media (which I have seen) which has clearly organized, substantiated/counted and chronicled the values of this particular place and community. This is unfortunate timing, for if the integral value of the place were more thoroughly recorded and communicated earlier in the process, it would provide the community an alternative value assessment and perspective to offer in opposition to the perspective of the incumbent financial power structure. The final poetic paragraph, if carefully considered, offers an opportunity for future community action and engagement. He states, “The fury of modernization, accustomed to big business, crushes the intangible and that which cannot be measured by the logic of the financial market.” What is the opportunity here?

Let’s start with, “intangible”. Working with an “intangible asset finance firm” for the last three years has taught me (at least) three things. One: the word intangible is an awful brand. It is a non-starter within Occidental/Western psychology and financial thinking. Intangible is something ethereal which cannot be touched or grasped, and psychologically (not logically mind you) triggers the unconsidered and irrational reaction that something “intangible” can’t be sold. Two: Intangibles aren’t really as ethereal as they sound. Brands, executory contracts, licenses, patents, trademarks all can be touched and sold. The markets for intangibles are simply less familiar and transparent than markets for everyday physical goods. Three: Intangibles, not tangibles, are where all of the hard core, real financial value actually is.

The psychology around intangibles is inherently non-sensical and conflicted. While everyone immediately reacts to the word intangible negatively, everyone also inherently knows that the reason why you pay more for Coke (rather than brown carbonated flavor water) is because of the brand (intangible). Take a handbag which costs $2 to produce and put a Louis Vuitton or Gucci logo (intangible) on it and it sells for thousands of dollars. Why do we pay more? Because brand intangibles build product trust, differentiate between products, and communicate wealth and association. In addition, when you buy a piece of property, you are actually buying the right to exclude others from that property in the form of a deed (an intangible asset) issued by a government. If you buy a patent, you buy a time limited negative right (again issued by the government) to exclude others from profiting from an idea disclosed in the patent. Why does a radio station buy a spectrum license? To exclusively transmit a signal through a space for a particular amount of time. How much is a gold mine worth without the governmental license (intangible) to mine it? Intangibles control marginal cash flows. They make or break markets. So to be able to take the reigns from perceived incumbent subjugation, it would behoove us to know what to grab.

Why does this background on intangibles matter? Because what Luiz Antonia Simas did in his article was actually account (not measure) the integral value of a place and of a community. He made the intangibles more tangible by actually counting and recognizing them. He described the Commodity: the buildings, the location, materials used to build, the sacred trees, beaches, corners, pubs, lofts; Custom and Culture: the history of the indigenous, the religions, the sacred trees, the memories, aspirations, anxieties, dreams, disappointments, conquests, weaknesses, happiness and inventions of the lives of innumerable generations that sat on its benches, material of the memory accumulated through the generations of professors and students that experienced the adventure of learning; Knowledge: Learning acquired through time, the memory passed down from generation to generation: Money: the outside pressure from investors; Technology: social technology of a school to train and educate, teachers; and Well-Being: the community’s experience of this place. These values are all things we exchange for and with every day. Rarely do we fully consider or record these values as such. If we do not acknowledge these values, we do a disservice to our well-being and actually enslave ourselves in physical and mental poverty. Additionally, if we don’t count them, they are given away in our transactions because they never became part of a deal.

The ‘logic’ of the financial market is actually pretty well defined. Most people transacting in the financial markets lack transparency to integral and intangible value systems. However, People make decisions based on the information they have at the time, whether informed or not. Fully perfect information doesn’t exist. Therefore, informing markets with transparent value statements actually changes the balance of power in an exchange. A community might see a money premium in an exchange which may make it valuable enough to give up all of the other five values present in the community. Currently, most of the time people don’t see it that way because they don’t count the other five value assessments. Most of the time, what we see are human-less transactions (not exchanges) and we see them through one value lens – money.

My bet is that the more people record, state, realize, and comprehend the massive amount of actual integral wealth currently existent in their communities, the more likely they are to participate in economies differently. Scarcity and the corollary state of poverty are simply mindsets, artifacts and value judgments. Building awareness of values, communicating this value within a community, and increasing well-being are all done by counting differently. Protesting, complaining and occupying are ineffective actions and are ineffective strategies. They do nothing but self-disenfranchise the already powerless. However, a community armed with value awareness is an alternative to the logic of the financial markets.

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