Markets are miracles
On the way to New York from L.A. I sat next to a beautiful man named Sayo Ajiboye, who was en route to St. Louis from Hawaii by way of Los Angeles and New York.
A religious scholar who had just finished teaching courses at an institute in Maui, Sayo (pronounced "Shayo") is also a Christian minister in his home country of Nigeria, and — it quickly became clear — a deeply wise man. Among his accomplishments was translating the highly annotated Thompson Bible into his native Yoruba language, a project that took eight of his thirty-nine years. We talked about a great many things (you can cover a lot of ground in 5 hours and 2800 miles, and that was just on the plane).
When I began to tell him about weblogs, and the linked cacophony of published conversations that all feed and nurture each other, he said, "That sounds like markets in my country." Then I told him about Cluetrain and its first thesis, markets are conversations.
As I've experienced before with people who know traditional markets intimately, markets are conversations delivers the news impact of skies are blue. The response is yes, of course. And the meaning is literal. I told him I was deeply interested in traditional markets, which we barely touched in the Cluetrain book — and which I want to explore much more deeply, since one of my main ambitions is to research and write a book about markets in their most native forms, which I believe industrialized societies have long forgotten, and which the Net in many ways restores.
So Sayo treated me to a conversation about the natural economics of traditional markets, which place value on far more than goods and money. He told me it's easy in the industrial world to hear in the market's noise only the sound of exchange. "It's about relationship," he said. "When the vendor says something is worth $500, he's not saying that's the price. He's inviting a conversation. He also isn't just looking for a sale. He's looking for a relationship with you — one that only starts with your repeated business with him. The whole market is a system of relationships."
But it goes deeper than that. When we see markets, and business, only in terms of exchange — of value for equal value — we think and talk in terms of accounting, of that which is purely fungible; and we discount the deeper, larger and essentially unaccountable values of relationships, which make markets profoundly social places.
That was deep stuff, but we continued to dig down even deeper, into moral matters, which we also concieve in accounting terms. We "owe" and "return" favors. Felons are made to "pay " their "debts" to society. We "gain" respect. We express moral math with expressions like "two wrongs don't make a right."
I realized, in talking to Sayo, the high degree to which our moral and financial vocabularies are conflated. We talk about business in moral terms in much the same way as we talk about morality in business terms. "Wall Steet was kind to my portfolio today," for example.
Yet markets, as conversations — and as relationships that depend on conversations — cannot be fully understood in accounting terms, which always need to balance out. Markets grow. They have "positive sum outcomes." Yet "positive sum" is yet another accounting expression. Markets enlarge our knowledge, our expertise, our connoisseurship, our authority, and our humanity in the course of all those changes. You can't fully understand or express those gains in terms of exchange.
We went on to discuss the economics of altruism. Whole markets gain when one company generously gives its time and expertise to build common market infastructure. Yet if all we understand are the economics of accounting, rather than the economics of relationship, we cannot witness the obviously positive effects of generosity. We're too busy looking for the payback, for ways to balance the moral books. We have given generously, we must be compensated. So we miss or discount the effects of generosity, of mercy and forgiveness, whcih are not about accounting or accountability. In fact they have miraculous effects because they release us from the need to hold others accountable, and to hold ourselves in a state of waiting for others to pay us back somehow.
So much deep, rich, thoughtful stuff. Wish I could remember it all.
It turned out that Sayo's last connection, from New York to St. Louis, was going to be by train (this after eleven hours with his tall frame wedged into tight coach seats from Hawaii to New York). The reason was cost. When we talked about the prices involved, it was clear to me that Sayo's sources of information were unacquainted with the miracle that is Southwest Airlines. So we went to the apartment after we landed and did some heavy research on the Web, discovering that Southwest would deliver Sayo in St. Louis in a few hours for only a little more than it would cost to take Amtrak through Chicago and a string of other stops over the next two days. The only inconvenience was taking the Long Island Railroad out to Ronkonkoma, and then a shuttle to the MacArthur airfield out of which Southwest flies. So we booked the flight for the next morning and went out to eat at the nearest restaurant featuring spicy food. When we ordered drinks at the bar, Sayo asked for something without alcohol. So I ordered two lemonades that came to a very New York sum of $14. Sayo observed that this exceeded his starting monthly salary as a Christian minister in Nigeria.
There wouldn't be room to cover everything we talked about, but subjects ranged from deep religious, social and political matters to the delightful excesses of Times Square, which we visited after we walked back from the restaurant. It was midnight, the streets were filled with happy people, and we were truly standing at the Crossroads of the World.
Among the many common interests we discovered was a love of radio. While it's an old obsession of mine, it's a fresh calling for Sayo. He is working on developing community FM radio stations in Nigeria, starting with one in Lagos. He has most of what he needs in place, but lacks transmitters. So, on his behalf, I'd like to extend an appeal to my friends in the broadcasting business, where I am sure there are many old transmitters that are out of service but still quite serviceable. If you would like to donate one or moe of them to a good man with a good cause, write to Sayo Ajiboye, Executive Director of Mission Africa International ("Africa without borders, nations without custom posts"), at missionafricaint@yahoo.com
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