I always write as if people have lots of free time to surf online. I know of course that's not the case. Another thing I often do is to try to join two quite disparate subjects into some--often very questionable--thesis. That's what I often do, and I'm afraid what I plan right now.

I was leafing through Business Week at lunch. The issue is dedicated to Business@Work. Sometimes work really sucks ;-) Some of the articles really got my juices flowing, just perfect reading for lunch. My mother used to find my morning reading of the paper quite amusing. She correctly saw that I take some sort of perverse pleasure in outrage. And in the Business Week articles, stepping back I see I took some pleasure in them too.

Okay so that's one topic. I don't think it really important to link through to Business Week, although you might find some of the articles fun. The second topic is a bit more serious about the dramatic rise of the illicit economy in a blog post by Nils Gilman, The Politics of Deviant Globalization.

What if anything do these two things have in common? The simplest and most direct answer is probably just that I read them in the same day. But there seems something else I want to try to tease out.

Last week I was very impressed by the TPM Book Club discussion of James K. Galbraith's book "The Predator State." Very early on in the Bush administration I was shocked and disturbed by the abrogation of international rules. For example after the Asian financial crisis Larry Summers recognized that unregulated banks in such places as island of the Caribbean had been a factor in the meltdown. The USA with Summer's leadership worked out agreements with European Banks and others to tighten the rules about money transfers between such unregulated banks. Before 9/11 under Bush, there was a real pull-back from this position. After 9/11, the same week, Treasury Secretary O'Neil was on the Newshour saying there would be no regulation. That's just one of hundreds of such moves that left me confused and angry.

The TPM Book Club discussion helped me to understand how much of my thinking was shaped by rather traditional liberal positions. But also how far my positions had shifted. I still admire Galbraith. Surely his ideas about economics rest on much firmer foundation than mine. But it seems that Galbraith imagines that a strong modern state is possible and desirable. I'm not so sure about either count now, and it's not just the relentless rightest attack on the efficacy of government that gives me pause.

Some of the Stories in Business Week about work are funny in an absurdist way. Work as a way of life, at least in the corporate world, seems a sick joke. The back page of Business Week is a column by Jack and Suzy Welch. Jack Welch is widely regarded in business circles because he was at the helm when GE went from a $14 billion company to a $400 billion company. In the day he was known as "Netron Jack" for firing so many people but leaving the buildings standing. Back in the day calling a CEO "Chainsaw" was a complement.

Linda, I suspect that you, like so many others in this region, might have found such adoration of CEOs a little grating too. We watched as companies in the Pittsburgh region were plundered into bankruptcies in the 1980's, with pensions and promises broken, all the while outside CEOs were racking money into mountains and calling it their own.

Suzy Welch knows something about winning as does Jack the bomb. Who cares about losers, certainly not them! Needless to say, I don't admire either of them. But did find this week's column amusing.

[Question]: What do you think about the Google model of HR management, with its flexible work schedules and employee empowerment?

They don't think much of it because of course power is from the top down. "Superior players earn empowerment." It's the winning that counts baby, and don't forget to get out your shives and to hide the evidence. The way the game is played, is eat them or be eaten. Now, I take the Google guys Larry and Sergey's, "Don't be evil!" with a grain of salt, but The Welch's "Be evil!" makes me sick.

The trouble is, well, the Welch strategy works. It's not so far from a point Gilman makes about illicit tycoons:

Contrary to what the bien-pensants claim, most so-called failing states don't want to get fixed. In many of these zones, the local powers that be are quite content with these novel, informal political arrangements. It allows them to make fabulous amounts of money running globe-spanning commercial empires, while being recognized as the "big men" within the communities that they care about.

What's the way out of this mess? Through the Bush years I basically thought that a competent Federal government was an important answer. Not just a competent US government but international compacts between competent governments to reduce predation by licit and illicit enterprises. I can hear Jack and Suzy smirking with laughter: "You thought the rules had something to do with winning; ha ha ha ha ha ha..."

John Robb from whose blog I found the link to Nils Gilman's piece talks about Resilient Communities. I'm still rather attached to my liberal ways of thinking, especially Keynesian instruments like the Tobin Tax or even Keynes' Bancor interest me. You'd think I'd learn sooner or later that when something interests me and nobody else, it probably isn't as important as I think. Then again, resilient communities strike me as very important now, especially in trying to cope with my lessening confidence in state actors.

Buddhist economics, I suspect, has much to say about the development of resilient communities. But when one begins thinking at the community scale, it's immediately obvious that a grand plan is replaced by a multitude of plans.

Who gets the credit for "Think globally, Act locally" varies. I tend to credit Rene Dubos. Dubos believed that local success needed vibrant conversation across communities. It is not enough to act locally but we must also think globally. Acting locally does not mean indifference to the communities of the world, indeed our actions are shaped in communication with them.

We sure do live in interesting times. At times I despair. Asoke community living is a powerful model; one that sometimes brings me back from the brink. Surely it cannot be translated intact to American communities, but just as surely the model has much to say to Americans who are intent on building resilience in our communities. Perhaps, such models can even be an inspiration to those featured in Business Week, if judging from the reports correctly, where working in corporate life has become too absurd.