• by Hazel Henderson
• Tuesday, May 08, 2012
• Inter Press Service

The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act signed by President Barack Obama on April 4th, 2012, had been loaded with provisions pushed by Wall Street lobbyists to include "small" companies capitalised at up to one billion dollars and perverted by relaxing both requirements of Security and Exchange Commission reporting and compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley financial regulations passed in response to the 2008 crisis, writes Hazel Henderson, author, president of Ethical Markets Media (United States and Brazil), creator of the Green Transition Scoreboard, and co-creator of the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators.

In this analysis, Henderson writes that while the bill fell far short of its initial promise, opening capital-access to startups is clearly needed, especially for the many that are focused on social problem-solving. The latter can be frequently found on the new generation of so-called "crowdfunding" websites, like Kickstarter and GOOD, where proposals soliciting individual investments are posted. This is a boon for social do-gooder organisations that were denied conventional loans and venture financing.

Internet crowdfunding of such startups and non-profits is part of the social media revolution that disrupts incumbent industries and technologies by lowering costs, democratising access, allowing information-sharing, and ushering in the open-source, volunteerist, sharing sectors described by Don Tapscott in Macrowikinomics (2010). The IT-based revolution has changed newspapers, mainstream media, and retailing and threatens centralised energy, medicine, and agribusiness. It was only a matter of time before IT changed "too big to fail" banks and elite finance.

(*) Hazel Henderson, author, is president of Ethical Markets Media (USA and Brazil), creator of the Green Transition Scoreboard, and co-creator of the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators.

© Inter Press Service (2012) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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