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I’m an optimist – it’s in my nature. Not a blithe one, but definitely my instinct is to not see the worst in a situation. Clearly so to is Douglas Rushkoff, author, public intellectual, and all round big thinker.

Douglas has a long essay on the implications of the current financial system crisis, that is well worth a read.

Rushkoff draws the distinction between the real economy (that is where folks make and do stuff), and the speculative economy. Here’s his take.

The opportunity here, while the big boys are down, is to rebuild the genuine, local commercial infrastructure. To make shoes, clothes, food, education, healthcare and everything else we can in a bottom-up fashion. While speculators enjoy the economy of scale, we inhabit an ecology scaled to the human being that was lost in the corporatist equation.

The sooner you “drop out” of the speculative economy and its abstract concerns, the sooner you will be able to create and provide real value for the people all around you, and the better position you will be in to get what you need for yourself and your family.

This is not bad; it is good. The pain that people are about to go through now is not the product of the speculative economy’s failure, but its former and intentional unjust success.

There’s much more there – and all well worth a read.