Flickr photo set of the conference — here’s Marcy “Wheler” http://www.flickr.com/photos/majikthise/4056208500/in/set-72157622689565842/ — I see a video camera in the back of the room, will the video be posted online?

I don’t know about other people, but when I watched his talk it was like my pores were drinking up purpose and accomplishment and connection — in short, work worth doing, satisfying and human and lifeful, as opposed to…well… Watching him I felt like Marlon Brando: “I coulda been a contender!” Instead of being a cubicle tuber, which is what I am.

Part way through his talk he reaches for a plastic bottle of water and takes the cap off. Instantly I am back to the comment I wrote here before the conference, about the need for new jobs in cleaning up horrendous plastic pollution: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/10/27/building-the-new-economy-conference/#comment-196205. I wonder how he would see that and what he and his partners could make happen.

One of the last slides in his talk was a photo of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. An artificial line on a map is clearly recognizable as the real line between forested Dominican Republic and deforested Haiti. He talked about how, without the forest, the city now floods with even “just” a tropical storm, not even a hurricane. What’s true for Haiti is true for Appalachia. There is just so much work that needs to be done and so much rethinking. Our model of banks and corporations and capitalism is like cancer. In my original comment, I mentioned that a condition of incorporation in colonial times was that the corporation had to benefit the public good and was subject to public inspection of records (see table snagged from Thom Hartmann’s old website at http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2009/2/21/175240/955/211#c211). That requirement for public good got broken and instead now corporations are legally required to enrich their shareholders, measured in dollars. This truly, truly, truly needs rethinking. All the money in the world can’t buy a new healthy planet or restore lives lost.

(I think people wanting to go to business school for graduate degrees should be required to work for two years between the bachelor’s degree and entering the graduate program, at a job that pays not more than twice federal minimum wage, just so they have a clue what it’s like for the majority of people in this country.)

Unless it’s by default.