Business As Usual?

Plenty of people guessed that there would be temporary consequences to the bailout blowout of 2008, but it turns out that those consequences are cementing into cultural permanence – and as usual, Wikipedia is the first to know about it.

Kind of.

Non-profit Wikipedia has raised $6 million to continue running its global information site – which is not necessarily newsworthy, except that it is.

While most companies are having a notoriously hard time meeting earnings expectations, Wikipedia reached its fund-raising goal six months ahead of schedule … and although the donations have slowed from a pour to a trickle, they’re still coming in.

Compound that with the fact that while most companies are doing poorly despite decreased expectations, Wikipedia has tripled last year’s fund-raising revenue … already.

Of course, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’ letter of appeal, which ran as a header on the site during December, helped raise awareness of the fund-raising goal.

And since Wikipedia consistently appears among the web’s ten most viewed sites, that made Wales’ letter perhaps the most widely-read of any fund-raising appeal ever.

When you think about it, that’s de facto proof that Wikipedia lives up to its own hype regarding “community input” and “user-driven success.”

Help was requested; help was given. No negotiations, no bartering, no leveraging, no questions asked – all in the spirit of “the greater good” of the Wikipedia community.

The whole thing is, if we’re honest, could be interpreted as a vindication and validation of Marxism. Sic Willie obviously isn’t going to like me saying that, but I’ve got mind control over him, people. As does any woman with a sharp tongue, for that matter.

And it’s probably not pure “Marxism” as this brand is a little different – distinctly American and undeniably millennial – but the spirit remains.

Juxtapose Wikipedia’s fund-raising success with the plight of traditionally structured companies. Those businesses, with increasing frequency, also rely for survival on the community – a community whose constituents are the same as Wikipedia’s, but not nearly as magnanimous.

Magnanimity, of course, is impossible when there is no choice but to give.

That’s Marxism, too, by the way.

And that dichotomy is the essence of the new American business model. Wikipedia has married enterprise with charity, answering capital with community and in doing so potentially changing the way America does business – on the web, especially.

Once the mantra was “build it and they will come.” That was unyieldingly American – enterprising, with a singular focus on personal contribution (”build it”) and on hard-won reward (”they will come”). It was a directive, stark and declarative: Just Do It.

Now the mantra is “ask and you shall receive.” Passivity has replaced initiative. Where once the risk was in the building, now the risk is in the asking. Where once the reward was in success, now the reward is in the taking.

But is there really any risk in asking, when “no” is the worst you can hear? And does that diminish the reward in taking?

That’s one question that even Wikipedia can’t answer.

Yet.

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