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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
Listen to the Intro
Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus summary
Douglas Rushkoff
How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity
15 mins
What is Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus about?
Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus (2013) explores society’s unhealthy relationship with money, as it transformed from a means to facilitate trade to a goal in itself. The rise of digital markets has done little to improve the situation. These blinks explore the history of money and offer practical solutions to help local communities make money work again for everyone.
Table of Contents
Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus
summarized in 6 key ideas
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Key idea 1 of 6
The greed for growth has driven elites to exploit the working classes since the Medieval period.
There was once a time when a person had to either make or sell any product on the market. If you sat down at a restaurant, for example, you had to order your meal from a waiter. These days, you can go to McDonalds and order a burger from a self-service stand.
What does that mean for employees? People all over are losing their jobs. A company’s relentless pursuit of growth is essentially taking jobs away from people.
Computers are often scapegoated for the decline in jobs, but really, it’s our greed for growth that is to blame. Businesses are so eager to expand that they replace people with cheaper machines whenever possible.
How did we get here? Why do we as a society rely on such a small number of rich companies for employment and economic prosperity?
The answer to this question starts with the Middle Eastern bazaar system, an open market for exchanging goods and ideas. Europeans who took part in the Crusades brought this market idea back with them to Europe.
The introduction of open markets led to rapid economic growth in Europe as well as the expansion of a merchant class, people with the ability to exchange products and services directly, without middlemen.
A craftsman, for example, could go to a market and buy oats directly from a peasant for a price equal to its real value, since there was no longer the need to pay a commission to a grain dealer.
As the merchant class grew wealthier, however, the aristocratic class started to lose both wealth and clout. So they developed monopolies, which led to the top-down economic system we still use today. They essentially killed the open market by granting certain companies exclusive rights in the industry in exchange for a share of their profits, curtailing trade in the bazaars.
This eventually led to our modern system of markets, in which workers earn wages from market-controlling companies, rather than trading directly from one another.
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Best quote from Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus
Instead of selling their wares, people now sold their hours.
—Douglas Rushkoff
Who should read Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus?
- Workers concerned about losing a job to a machine
- Students exploring sociology, history, economics or politics
- Entrepreneurs
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