ESSAYS on THE NEW ECONOMY #9
How to keep calm and panic! (just kidding, I meant "Keep Calm and Reinvent the Economy" but that sounded too optimistic. we've hardly even started.)
In the New Economy, it will be more important your health than your wealth, more valuable the quality of your friendships than the quantity in your bank account, more inspiring to show how curious you are about others than to demonstrate how much you already know. Are you manifesting the New Economy in your life?
Are we living in Anxious Times?
First off, let’s talk about the New Economy (a term I did not invent). In the 80s and 90s it was coined as a term to describe the disruptive and transformative ways that innovative technologies would change the entire economic system. New technologies continue to reshape our economy, so there is debate whether or not we have arrived in that sense or not.
There is also debate whether or not the innovative technologies (like Artificial Intelligence, Digital Automation, Nanotechnology, 3D Printing, etc) are bringing to life a ‘better’ economy or if they are worsening wealth inequalities, mental health and social divisions. Certainly they are giving some people who learn how to use the technologies and have the ability to leverage them for their advantage ‘god-like’ powers, as tech billionaires and the companies they run are wielding powers at times superior to most national governments.
In the 21st century, the New Economy has also been used to describe a global movement to prioritize people and planet over endless economic growth, and thereby create an ‘economy’ more just and sustainable.
Sometimes known also as the Solidarity Economy, the global movement includes a few large enterprises (like Danone, or Patagonia), many small businesses, most non-profits, millions of worker-owned co-operatives, and other hybrid structures (such as a Perpetual Purpose Trust that is a form of steward ownership). Many of these hybrid structures are legal inventions of the last 10 years; others have been around quite longer (such as community land trusts and union-owned banks). Though considered marginal by mainstream capitalists, the Solidarity Economy may well ‘replace’ the status quo in our lifetimes.
Recent European ESG regulations, widely available data related to high-ranked ESG businesses outperforming the market, and the severity of the polycrisis are helping wake up business leadership to the need to transform fast.
What is ESG? It stands for “environmental, social and governance” issues that impact investors might use to evaluate a company’s sustainability. In other words, rather than looking only at financial profits, an investor might look at the environmental impact or the way that company is organized (governance) to see how it shares the ownership with its employees (if at all). With the new European regulations as well as other global efforts to standardize the criteria for measuring such impacts, those interested in “impact investments” are better able to decide which businesses to support.
Some might think that it’s a zero-sum game: If you choose a business that has a positive environmental impact, for example, then it probably is going to be distracted from maximizing profits. Many studies have shown that this is rarely the case. Similarly, some business “experts” believe that if you raise wages or share ownership with your employees, then it will weaken leadership and create revenue risks. When in fact, often the trust that is shown to employees (when you pay them a fair wage and/or give them a financial stake in the company) results in employees staying at the company longer and performing better. Which in turn improves the overall team effort and the revenue as well (because of positive impacts on client relationships, team productivity, and HR costs).
The reports exist, the data is difficult to argue with, but sometimes we are kept so busy and distracted we fail to notice: Solidarity Economy organizations and strategies are proving more durable financially and more healthy for us and our planet. Why don’t we talk about them more?
The current media machine is primarily owned by billionaires. Pick a news media you read, watch or listen to and google “who owns ___.” [fill in the blank with the media organization you interact with the most] There are some helpful exceptions, such as The Guardian, the BBC, or NPR. The tendency though is against local, independent news — and this has been a worsening problem for decades.
Besides the troubling lack of local news, today, the media-ownership problem adds further chaos into the mix because it’s not necessarily that billionaires are deliberately thinking that they want to ruin the world or obscure important solutions. Instead, it’s simply that the messaging that tends to filter down is that news should get a reaction, especially strong emotional ones, because it grabs our attention and encourages us to share with others. The more attention these news conglomerates get, the more profit (from advertising), the happier that business leadership is.
We ought to be careful where we give our attention. Easier said than done, though.
Tech companies are a major reason that stock markets rise, and tech-enabled startups receive a lot of hype and a heavy amount of venture capital investment. Meanwhile the average American today is saving less money per month by percentage (x3 less than 50 years ago) and has accumulated far less savings. But it’s so much more exciting to hear about Google and Netflix and Facebook, that we tend to forget about the financial difficulties our neighbor might be facing. Thus the problem becomes not only a growing wealth inequality gap but also a growing gap in attention.
I mentioned earlier that those tech billionaires who own businesses that have mastered innovative technologies are being granted ‘god-like’ powers.
When the Roman Empire shifted its capital from Rome to Constantinople (approximately 17 centuries ago), there was debate at the top whether they would stay “Pagan” or go “Christian.” Different emperors had different opinions, and it wasn’t always clear what the outcome would be. That said, it was also the case that fewer and fewer people were visiting pagan temples. Fewer were investing in new temples to be built. Enthusiasm among the general public was in favor of Christian churches. This was in large part due to the growing desire for marginalized people to feel included, to feel they belonged. As fewer and fewer people believed in the old gods, the temples shut down and became (if lucky) historical landmarks or (if unlucky) recycable rubble. More and more attention was given to the Christian churches, and well — that’s a story for another time, but most people know that Christianity today is a global religion. The point here is that the switch happened in a relatively short time, and where people put their energy and attention is what then grew.
Today if we continue to give an out-sized amount of attention to mainstream news and ‘innovative’ digital technologies, then we enrich the rich even further.
If we start to spend more time and attention believing in and educating ourselves about the New Economy, aka Solidarity Economy, then we will accelerate its growth.
And as a final point, during a year in which the mainstream news cycle might make it seem as though electoral politics are the be-all end-all … here too we can shift our attention and find more hopeful possibilities.
The politics of culture change has been widely argued to be more meaningful for a healthy society. To be more neighborly, to be organizing our local communities, to be addressing our problems of loneliness and to be caring better for our physical and mental health — we will need to slow down our obsession with electoral politics. Every day that we choose to focus on electoral results rather than the meaning behind those results, we lose an opportunity to listen to our friends and neighbors.
You likely know people who vote differently from you. NOT KNOWING which way they vote is probably more helpful for deepening your relationship to them. Having relationships with people who share some things in common but who also have different points of views is helpful for creativity and problem solving. It also helps us laugh at ourselves, if we hear our point of view presented in a different way by someone we trust.
To build these sorts of relationships takes time and attention. It takes persistence and listening as well as doing things together. It’s like cultivating a garden; some things take years of tending to fully grow. When we are deeply rooted though in a community of connection, we are happier, healthier humans.
Protests are powerful but they don’t open us up to a diversity of opinions. Outrage is sometimes merited but it doesn’t help us listen to a lonely neighbor or anxious teenager. We might feel calmer and more united around a shared meal or after an unhurried conversation.
The Solidarity Economy will be fully realized (and fully fair) when it does not rely on jargon or a certain type of rhetoric, when anybody interested can see how to participate and say “it just makes sense.” So I have written the above in the hope that it simplifies some of the ideas and sparks some curiosity about ways to shift attention towards what is new and good.
Interested to hear what resonates, and whether or not you believe we are living in anxious times.