{"id":66784,"date":"2013-05-08T13:00:28","date_gmt":"2013-05-08T17:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=66784"},"modified":"2013-05-08T13:08:13","modified_gmt":"2013-05-08T17:08:13","slug":"can-you-put-a-price-on-self-ask-mike-the-ipo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/can-you-put-a-price-on-self-ask-mike-the-ipo\/","title":{"rendered":"Can you put a price on Self? Ask Mike, the IPO"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the context of the current conversation about values and making conscious decisions based on them, prompted by tomorrow’s eclipse, what do we make of a young man who decided to become an openly-traded IPO and sell shares of himself? Especially on the eve of a New Moon in Taurus that echoes his own natal New Moon in Taurus?<\/em><\/p>\n

By Amanda Painter<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

What\u2019s it like to live your life like it\u2019s a live-action sci-fi novel?<\/p>\n

Ask Mike Merrill — a young man who, in 2008, decided to put himself up for sale<\/a> on the stock market. The idea is not entirely new<\/a> — David Bowie and a few pro athletes have sold shares of their future earnings. But those investors were not granted the power to decide some of the most significant facets of anyone\u2019s personal life.<\/p>\n

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Photo by Chris Buck\/Wired<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mike Merrill, however, has basically turned himself into a one-person corporation governed by his shareholders. In this age of Citizens United, this either makes perfect, bizarro-world sense, or it\u2019s unnerving and possibly tragic in a classical, Greek-hubris sort of way.<\/p>\n

However you see it, ultimately, his story is the story of Pluto in Capricorn.<\/p>\n

Here are the basics: on January 26, 2008, then 30-year-old Mike divided himself into 100,000 shares to be sold on the open market, and over the course of a week and a half, a dozen friends bought 929 shares. Mike kept the remaining 99.1% of his shares, promising that he would not have voting power. Those who bought shares would earn returns on any profit he made outside of his day job in Portland, Oregon.<\/p>\n

Merrill says he did not originally intend to give shareholders a say in his personal life. But at least one friend-shareholder objected to his decision to move in with his girlfriend — proposing that spending more time with her could limit time spent on projects important to investors. Merrill then opened much more of his life to their oversight.<\/p>\n

\u201cI figured they\u2019d make good decisions for me, since they had money on the line and wanted to see their investment appreciate,\u201d says Merrill.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, Merrill\u2019s girlfriend at the time felt differently — and she was infuriated and embarrassed when he decided to let shareholders vote on whether he should get a vasectomy. She won that vote by lobbying another investor for help. Ultimately, it wasn\u2019t enough to save the relationship as McCormick felt more and more like she was jockeying for influence over a corporate entity in a hostile business environment — not engaging in an intimate relationship.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A Wired.com story<\/a> details the bizarre twists resulting from Merrill\u2019s decision. But what does the astrology say about Mike Merrill\u2019s decision to live life as the IPO KmikeyM?<\/p>\n

For one, the emphasis on putting his personal worth into a tangible, material form comes from a cluster of planets in Taurus — including a Sun-Moon conjunction (a Taurus New Moon, just 5-7 degrees from this Thursday’s New Moon eclipse), and a Mercury-Chiron conjunction. (When contacted, Merrill did not know his exact birth time, but said it was \u201cvery close to noon.\u201d)<\/p>\n

So we know he likes nice things, indulges his senses (he has long planned to form a whiskey-tasting group) and might get a little stubborn about his ideas. Chiron conjunct that Mercury, however, indicates that his ideas about how much value things have, and how that is expressed, may get worked over when that conjunction is transited. And the experience may feel like a crisis before it bears any fruitful insights, Chiron-style.<\/p>\n

Merrill also has some fire in his chart keeping those earth planets on their toes. Most notably, he has an exact conjunction of Venus and Mars in Aries, with Eris right there within one degree.<\/p>\n

This should sound familiar: the Aries New Moon on April 10 involved a Venus-Mars-Eris conjunction. With such synchronistic astrology (there\u2019s even more, actually) accompanying the breaking of Merrill\u2019s story in Wired<\/em> last month and also on The Today Show, it\u2019s no wonder people keep asking about his personal relationships and sense of identity.<\/p>\n

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Natal chart for Mike Merrill. Click image for larger version; glyph key here<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Is this an image of unity between Merrill\u2019s male and female sides, or a picture of self-absorbed self-assertion? Has he figured out a way to forge a new approach to relationships? (His current girlfriend was approved by shareholders, and seems to enjoy playing the boyfriend-as-IPO game so far.)<\/p>\n

Or does Eris, goddess of discord and identity chaos, point to a life of feeling fragmented internally, potentially exacerbated by letting a committee steer his relationships? Pluto in Libra, loosely opposite this triple conjunction, suggests that Merrill\u2019s relationships may always be subject to upheaval and evolution.<\/p>\n

Speaking of Pluto: At the beginning of this piece, I mentioned that Merrill\u2019s story of becoming an IPO is the story of Pluto in Capricorn. As Len Wallick noted in late 2008, Pluto in Capricorn is about “what’s good for business” — possibly at all costs.<\/p>\n

I asked Len if any of the dates mentioned in the Wired<\/em> story showed anything interesting. You can see those dates (which all seem to have something to do with Pluto) at this link,<\/a> with his chart at the bottom of the page.<\/p>\n

There are a number of ways out of this scheme (described by commenters on Wired.com<\/a>) should Merrill decide he wants full control of his life back. But the whole scenario is a bit Faustian, and one has to wonder where Merrill hopes all the attention and trading will get him (just financially comfortable, or is he hoping for power? Or…?). How does one negotiate living with an intimate partner who \u2018owns\u2019 part of you in a literal sense like that? Does it make things easier or harder to put expectations of relational possession into a business agreement?<\/p>\n

If Merrill\u2019s Chiron conjunct his Mercury in Taurus says something about a \u2018healing crisis\u2019 surrounding his mental health, sense of worth and his material expression in the world, one has to wonder about the price that \u2018healing crisis\u2019 might exact.<\/p>\n

I hope that if Merrill has a therapist (or engages one in the future), he pays him or her in cash — definitely not stock options. And I’d definitely be curious to know if the astrology in this first week of May 2013 catalyzes a dramatic change of mind — or whether he will reinforce his current values with a deeper financial commitment to his business model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the context of the current conversation about values and making conscious decisions based on them, prompted by tomorrow’s eclipse, what do we make of a young man who decided to become an openly-traded IPO and sell shares of himself? Especially on the eve of a New Moon in Taurus that echoes his own natal … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":191,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66784"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/191"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}