https://www.jacobsm.com/deoxy/deoxy.org/korten_agenda.htm

Oh boy. Let me tell you about the deoxyribonucleic hyperdimension. Back when the web was still fresh and shiny and new, deoxy.org was the place to go for an expansive yet idiosyncratic curation of knowledge about drugs, consciousness, politics, culture, and more. Imagine if the 60s were not viewed with nostalgia but rather as the root for some unknown alternate future that we can still realize any time we wake up and decide to do so. The original website is down but thankfully some kind souls have worked to preserve it for posterity.

I often think about how there will never be another website like deoxy.org, because even if you got the content and the tone right, the world is just a different place than it was in the 90s, and the internet is much more of the world, which makes it harder for a place like deoxy to get any attention at all, really. And, mirroring deoxy’s relationship its roots, I think the internet of the 90s still serves as a blueprint for a bright future that’s not so alien as it seems. But maybe that’s what nostalgia’s turning into. Old right wing cranks are much more into mythology than nostalgia these days, and for people my age, I think our comfort in the past is characterized by the feeling of inevitability that things will get better, as opposed to many who grew up in the mid-twentieth century when, at least for some, things were already better. We don’t want things to be the way they used to be, but we want to feel the same way about things as we used to, not feel like the light at the end of the tunnel has prematurely burned out just when we thought we might be getting there.

Anyway, the referenced page is based on When Corporations Rule the World, by David C. Korten, a book about which I know nothing, but please drop me a line if you’ve read it. I’ll say some ideas here may have sounded radical at the time but make perfect sense now (Prohibit political advertising on television), while I think others sound good only if you possess a strong misunderstanding of economics (e.g. eliminating fractional reserve banking).

People have been publicizing their ideas for reform at least since Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church. I think there’s some merit in having these ideas out in public space, but at the same time I often have to wonder how serious these reformers Are. The Citizen Agenda calls for the government to “strip corporations of their fictitious human rights.” In the wake of Citizens United this is probably a better idea than ever.. but who is going to do it? How do you get the right people in power? How do you get people to go along with it? How do you implement these radical changes in a way that doesn’t shake up the ordinary lives of everyday people too badly? Those are the actual problems that need solutions and you don’t hear a whole lot about them from people who are otherwise enthusiastic about telling us all how things should be.