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- January 29th, 23:16
I am not an economist. I do not pretend to be well-versed in financial matters. I have an MBA, but I can’t say that I’ve grasped the micro and the macro of it. What I have always known is that indefinite growth is impossible and that an expanding economy isn’t sustainable. Duh, right? We all sort of figured that one out.
What, then, should become the new measure of economic value? How do we measure success? For decades, growth and profit have been the Holy Grail of individual business and of the larger economy. But if we can all agree that growth doesn’t last forever and that the quest to push the envelope of growth will only lead to compression, collapse, and contraction, then what model should we hold up for the developing nations of the world, for the emerging economies?
It troubles me that, as we export jobs to the developing world in the hopes of lowering the cost of production and providing services, these receiving economies begin to grow. They begin to take on the characteristics of our old ways. They begin the pursuit of what will ultimately become unsustainable growth. So, are we just exporting a failing, untenable vision of economic success? Are we pushing these fragile economies towards a model that can only end in disaster?
Is there another way?
I don’t know. I’m not an economist. I simply observe and wonder aloud if we can define a new measure of success…
Illuminate Possibilities 
It makes me wonder what happens if we export… what Acumen Fund does, for instance. I used to call it positive-impact business and maybe I still should. (I always wonder what the best terminology is.) But there IS a difference between a company that really has a positive impact — a sustainable one, not just a brief one that may or may not be offset by other acts of that same company — and a company that does it for show, that talks big but doesn’t really change the spectrum much. And I haven’t figured out yet how to pin down that difference in real terms, rather than just gut feelings.
I don’t think there will ever be a big enough shift in…anything, really…until the currency of humanity changes. Once "humanity" can no longer be measured in terms of dollars or pesos or yen, then we’ll be on to something as a species. As long as a hard dollar value can be placed on human life, someone will be looking to make money…