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The US is a country built on a story: the story of our independence. We left Britain (and Cuba and Haiti and Iraq) to assert our independence and do our own thing (such as name our towns after British towns and set up neighborhoods full of Cubans and Haitians and Iraqis). Independence matters to us.
Except, it seems, with regards to our financial independence.
We’re a nation where most people get their money from one source. We wave our flags. We choose the beer we want to drink. We pick the color of our car. We vote. Okay, we only vote for singers and dancers, but we vote.
But we want our money to come from one company. We want to be dependent on one source for our future bread. We worry about losing our job because it’s the only thing paying the bills.
Independent?
The most peace and content and happiness I’ve yet felt on this earth comes from the fact that I choose every project I work on, and that my future is firmly held in my hands.
I went from having not enough money to pay the mortgage to being okay and having enough to share with charities that matter to me. Though I don’t strive to be independent (I prefer having teams and collaborations around the things I do), I appreciate the baseline of independence my work choices have brought me.
What about you? How much does your independence matter? What are you doing to earn yours? A new rocket will launch shortly. Watch for it.
Chris Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency. He works with large and mid-sized companies to improve online business communications like marketing and PR.
Great story!
So recently my conservative and socialist friends had a solid debate on my Facebook wall. One of the ideas that came out of it (credit to my friend Karen Thickman as I am paraphrasing her largely here) is this. Freedom is NOT about an economic system. There are socialist countries where people have few freedoms such as Cuba, and capitalist countries with less, like Saudi Arabia. It' all about the implementation. Because our society does not give everyone an equal shot, the idea that anyone who wants success and works for it in America can have it is bunk. The reality is that due to a lack of social supports, many of our so called freedoms are really hypothetical for most people. In much of Europe, people are freer to change jobs, take vacations, start businesses, leave bad jobs, get an education without crippling student loans, have children without worrying about such extremely limited family leave, etc.
At SXSW I had the pleasure of having a drink with 2 brilliant Canadian entrepreneurs. On my last legs of being my own boss (I have a kid and a mortgage, and I failed with the economy. whoops. I had been successfully independent for 5 years. Maybe I'll try that again eventually, but for everything there is a season.) we talked about when do you give up. They basically said they never would. They would live in a box first. Well that's great if you don't have kids, but of course that changes everything. But the other thing we talked about, pre health care reform bill, was that in America one of the biggest challenges facing new entrepreneurs is a lack of access to healthcare. They were visibly shocked. It had never occurred to them that some would be entrepreneurs would have to pass on their dreams because they or their child has a pre-existing condition, or they simply can't afford the massive insurance premiums. That was really an a-ha moment for me. Because their government recognized that there ARE some basic things (quality education, health care, security in impoverished neighborhoods) that are human rights and that without providing them you end up actually limiting freedom. They were not sure they could do it, and they are healthy young men, if they had to worry about breaking their arm and not being able to pay for it. In major American cities, on average (some cities are far worse off) drop out rates are at 50%. We can't blame the kids and the families for such abject failure, we as a society have failed our future generation, creating drop out factories. How are the half that don't even graduate high school ever going to be free? Healthcare and education being just 2 examples.
Our government shouldn't be the one corporation we expect everything from… but effective government that pays for 'common goods' levels the playing field and thus CAN lead to greater freedom of choice.
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