Alex

we must get beyond numbers and the language of mathematics in order to understand, evaluate, and account for such intangibles as learning, intellectual capital, community, beliefs, and principles

I could think of no way to fully realize the concept by including merchants and cardholders as owner/members. The slightest hint in that direction raised a storm of opposition. We should have included them. Perhaps, with more time, tenacity, and ingenuity, we could have.

Nor is corporate power restricted to power over the employed. Global corporations now have implicit sovereignty over people throughout the world, since they are beyond the reach of any nation-state. [...] They do so by the simple expedient of bargaining one government against another for the claimed economic benefit of their presence.

Competition and cooperation are not contraries. They have no opposite meaning. They are complimentary. [...] Cooperation gone mad results in the mindless pursuit of equality, use of centralized force to achieve uniformity, ever-increasing coercion to sustain it, and eventual slavery. Competition gone mad results in the mindless pursuit of

By the standards of what Visa ought to be, it would be a lie to deny a sense of failure.

Everything is accelerating change, with one incredibly important exception. There has been no loss of institutional float.

How much time, energy, and ingenuity did they spend obeying senseless rules and procedures that had little to do with the results they were expected to achieve?

Could such an organization be patterned on biological concepts and methods? [...] What if we quit arguing about the structure of a new institution and tried to think of it as having some sort of genetic code?

The possibility of that which has never occurred cannot be determined by opinion -- only by an attempt.