You have said the things I have felt for a long time, very interesting and subtle.

Your kind of observation requires highly having luxury of time, sensible thinking and be able to articulate those subtle thoughts,

And when majority of people are busy at getting their daily chores done, not having too much luxury to step back and think through things, that results clashes with this kind of subtle, sensible observations. That’s why pointing out the negative side of current systems is not enough for most people, most of us are adapting to current system good or bad,and most people would tell us to adapt or suck it up, otherwise we can be being viewed a “whiners”.

This economy melt down is a wake up call for all modern financial system. How long will it last, it’s up to all of us.

It’s very hard to criticize when you don’t have all the answers. The existing system is a functional system (with a current downturn everyone wants to believe will just work itself out). You just know there is something better but everyone thinks you want to destroy the current functional system. If you can’t give a complete, detailed, believable plan on the spot they just dismiss your criticism all together. But it’s the highest calling, to try to imagine, to promote, to move human society in a direction so that 100 years from now it’s a little better off than if everyone just put their heads down and plowed along with the status quo. But it’s a heck of a swim upstream, isn’t it? Most people won’t hear that you want to start a process, to consider how things could be better, to have some public discourse on how that could be brought about, to try and experiment and fail and learn and work out a way to make things better. Even if in many ways they are good, why stop there? But most people just hear that you want to break what is functional. So maybe it would be good to emphasize that aspect, that you’re just trying to start a process, a dialog. That you don’t have all the answers and are just trying to point out how things could be better, and see if some ways can be found to move toward that, and that you are making a start by giving your suggestions and your lessons from your study of history.

As to the caller who said Adam Smith assumed a Christian principle in people in a free-market, that’s exactly right. He taught and wrote more on morals than he did on economy. And he made it clear repeatedly in Wealth of Nations that the system worked not just based on people acting in self-interest, but moral people acting with moral self-interest. The “greed is good” saying would have him rolling over in his grave.

Human are not being treated as human anymore, we are being treated as numbers and machines. Modern industrial machines are designed for NON-STOP production, so we as human are just another machines being used to operate machines.

Having only 2 to 4 weeks of vacation out of a year is brutal to our mind and body. Everything here in America is emphasized in “speed”. Just look at how we walk and talk now, so much faster than before the industrialization. No wonder today’s society is full of mental disorder, depression, anxiety, and self worth problems. We are being measured by how productive we are, why constantly produce and consume? Can we slow down. I found one of a helpful way to cleanse my mind is to try not to verbally talk so much and acting reactive, instead I write down my thoughts and listen more. Talking too much, especially some wasteful social talks is a distraction of having a clear and wise mind. I figured if I can’t afford to leave my job and pack my bag to physically go away for a while, then I am going to try to do that mentally. I started to pull myself away from the murky environment around me, observe, listen and not being too reactive, I started to see myself and the things around me with a clearer mind.

I am not suggesting everything would be just fine and perfect, they may never be, but it is a process of having a more peaceful then a murky mind. We all have to change ourselves before we try changing others.

Just some thought, I apologize if I go off the tangent too much.

What is wealth? The $681 trillion worth of derivative trades, with no intrinsic value or substance, most of which, even the financial engineers who participated in its creation (exotic securities), don’t understand, let alone the general public. This market is worth more than ten times the gross domestic product of all the countries in the world combined.

A healthy economy is supposed to serve life. It’s not supposed to suck real wealth from the very people it’s designed to support as they find and create a way to provide for themselves. Our economy, or rather, the Wall Street culture, which has become so intrinsic to our economy, that without it, our economy is doomed, leeches real wealth from the many to “feed” and supply the few with more than they could use in 100 lifetimes.

Currently, we, the taxpayers – as we bail out Wall Street – are paying the price for allowing ourselves to be brainwashed, and for choosing, as David Koren calls it, “phantom wealth” over real wealth. As they say, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

A “Lactation consultant” is or should be a midwife/nurse. You should learn this in the hospital, or you should have the option of one coming to your home as we did. My point was that the idea of hiring a “Lactation consultant” is symptom of how messed up health care is in this country. I’m never said people should figure this out by themselves. I had the good fortune to have access to good national health care system that had great child birth services.

I hope I cleared this up.

i agree with Putney Swope fully.

It is only logical to have some other form to feed your baby, people make it sound as if it is the only way.

just cause your a speacialist does not mean your services is not say silly, useless, or coud be done for free by someone else.

I see and saw working in child care when i was in collage parents(not all) wish to pawn all if not most of their responsibilities on others.

seen this time and time again with k to 5.

Our child wouldn’t eat and we needed more help; thankfully there was someone available who could help us at our home.

The bottom line is the health care system if you want to call it that, is in free fall and it’s not working at all.

This is the problem, the mere fact that one needs to hire a lactation consultant shows me that something is dreadfully wrong with how people have children and the care that new parents are given.

Specialization is not absurd.

Overcoming nipple aversion takes a lot of time, work, knowledge, and patience; and none of our friends or their parents had the tools to help.

We found a great lactation consultant through our religious community.

My point is that a lactation consultant is a sign of how absurd our American culture has become. We use to have midwives here. Doctors use to make house calls. To say I don’t know what I’m talking about shows me your more into hurling insults then reading the context to what I’m saying. It’s the system idiot.

Is a lactation consultant licensed? Are they trained?
What is a lactation consultant? Most likely this was a savvy midwife how used this kind of marketing gimmick to get upper class people to buy here services.

A few generations ago when nursing was routine, no doubt one would have gotten such advice from older relatives or neighbors. In the US, however, we are still recovering from a lengthy period when mothers were actively discouraged from nursing, and that lead to a dearth of practical knowledge in the general populace. None of my several neighbors nor my older female relatives nursed their babies. So we have to pay someone to help, and look outside our existing circle of friends for ongoing support. Which is the point??

Mr. Rushkoff’s point was that in a more connected society we could have our friends and family over to help the new mother figure the nursing thing out. The problem is that nursing was pretty much stamped out in the 1950’s by corporate interest in selling cows milk and formula.

As to Mr. Ashbrook and his interruptions and bullying…all of this is part of keeping his guests “on point”…rather than offering them the opportunity to make a New Point, or perhaps something beyond a point(which after all is an imaginary, non-dimensional concept)…a Spiral, or a Circle, or Wave Formation…the whole “on point” direction is about herding into a pre-chosen direction. At least he has good guests, even if we have to listen between the lines to get to the multi-dimensionality some of them are capable of expressing.