Robert Shiller: “It’s not the financial crisis per se, but the most important problem we are facing now, today, I think, is rising inequality in the United States and elsewhere in the world.”  And he won a Nobel Prize.

I have a theory about this problem.  Think of the set of all the world’s supply chains as a network.  I think we need to grow this graph so it’s a lot more bushy at the low-end.  Shrubbery!   I guess this theory shares a lot with Bill McKibbon’s ideas in Deep Economy; or the Prahalad’s ideas in Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

‘I don’t keer w’at you do wid me, Brer Fox,’ sezee, ‘so you don’t fling me in dat brier-patch. Roas’ me, Brer Fox,’ sezee, ‘but don’t fling me in dat brier-patch,’ …

I continue to harbor great optimism about the Internet,  It can help us with this.  The Internet has an amazing power to enable communities of common interest to form.  These communities are great of shubbery.  Precursors of commerce?  Maybe.

But, it’s worth chewing on the ideas in “how to lose friends and family via mult-level marketing” a posting that Andrew highlights.  Andrew introduces the idea that MLM schemes provide a way for people to liquidate (e.g. convert to cash) their social networks.  Liquidate is what you get when your done the monetizing a social network.  Lots of people are into that.  Monetize – what a word!  What can’t we monetize, my cat?

So while I love the Internet’s power as a host of community forming I must say I’m taken aback by how rapidly capitalism has evolved businesses models that feed on these tender shrubs.

Ironically my social network got infected by one of these parasites just today.   A friend signed up for Venmo, a p2p payment company, and they posted this exciting fact to Facebook on his behalf.  I admit to an unhealthy curiosity about these emerging currency systems.  For example, I think Bluebird is very interesting.  So I went and signed up for Venmo and installed the app.  A few moments later I was distressed to discover it was scanning the entire address book on my phone, maybe a few thousand entries.  If you want to use thier payment network you have to hand over your contacts.  No way to void it.  So I uninstalled, etc.  Who knows if that helped?

I totally get that building out “the network” is an existential issue for companies like Venmo.  Desperate need is an excuse in a starving man, is it an excuse for a start up?  Not that you need to worry about Venmo.  Venmo got bought, and the buyer then got bought by Paypal.  So they captured and sold a network.  That this is what most internet startups need to do worries me.

Returning to shrubbery as a tool to work inequality problem.  No doubt there are many much more ethical ways to convert the small communities into engines of economic activity.  It would be great to have a list.  No doubt looking at MLM business models would inform that search.