Our vision is a worldwide entrepreneurial ecosystem based on the Open Source Capitalism framework.
It is our belief that the transaction-based culture of Wall Street and the ultimate perverse incentives which have resulted in a few people accumulating wealth at the expense of the many is the root of our country’s financial woes. The corruption on Wall Street is a documented historical fact. Unfortunately, most of the corruption still goes largely ungoverned and, worse yet, some of the activities while completely unethical are none the less, legal.
Finance capitalism is a term characterized by the pursuit of profit from the purchase and sale of, or investment in, currencies and financial products such as bonds, stocks, futures and other derivatives. Finance capitalism is viewed by many as a dialectical outgrowth of industrial capitalism, and part of the process by which the whole capitalist phase of history comes to an end. In the tradition of American economist Thorstein Veblen, it is contrasted with industrial capitalism, where profit is made from the manufacture of goods.
Our stated goal is to create a new brand of capitalism- Open Source Capitalism- to serve as a modern day contrast to these antiquated systems.
History teaches us that democracies eventually fail. The explanation given is that, what begins as a spirited and courageous endeavor by men to build a system which allows the greatest freedom to all participants and also the greatest possibility for individual and collective liberty, reaches a “tipping point” where both abundance and service transmute to an individual and collective mindset of scarcity and self-interest. Apathy and greed define political, economic and social interactions and the degradation begins, reaches a critical mass and the democracy implodes.
We absolutely believe that, for the first time in history, we as a society now have at our disposal the tools, the perspective and the commitment necessary to intervene and re-balance our democracy. The TIF ecosystem is one important vehicle to achieve this balance.
The observation of democracy’s natural cycle of demise is stated best in the following quote, attributed to Alexander Tytler, a Scottish attorney in 1770:
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years.
Tytler also authored the graphic shown below.
Where does the United States currently sit in this famous graphic depicting the cycles of democracy?
