The Science-Stewardship Interface

Caitlin Hafferty shares in this post news of a

"seminar on understanding human-nature relations to tackle the climate, biodiversity, and human well-being crises"

that will explore, among other good things,

how knowledge is generated, used, and applied at the science-policy interface.

https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/caitlin-hafferty-b86289b2_interdisciplinary-socialscience-interdisciplinary-activity-7261689607426134016-k0zv

Charlie J. Gardner shows us that there are many scientists who would welcome the opportunity to engage in such an interface, speaking, as Ian Edwards says we must, with the Voice of Nature, as a Proxy for Nature.

But who, exactly can and should Science be speaking for Nature with?

To me, "policy" means politics, and politicians, and elections and popular vote at the ballot box for holding institutions of agency and authority for making and enforcing laws to right the wrongs to public health, public safety, public wellbeing and individual rights, reactively, correctively and redistributively, through constitutional representative self-government, accountable for authenticity and integrity in their institutional exercise of their institutional authority/power true to their institutional agency/purpose/mission.

Which raises in my mind the question,

Is the agency of policy a competent authority for "understanding human-nature relations" and "tackl[ing] the climate, biodiversity, and human well-being crises"?

My mind says,

No.

Because I see climate, biodiversity and human wellbeing as principles that can, should and must be guiding social choices about where the money can, should and will be made to flow into the right enterprises, in the right way, for their use in doing the right work, in the right way, for the right time, at the right cost and on the right terms, to form the right businesses for forming the right technologies for forming the right choices for forming the right economy for forming a secure society, and keeping it ongoing into a dignified future, for all humanity, on a planetary scale, in the 21st Century, and beyond, through our institutions of agency, authority and accountability in Finance.

And within the whole of finance, I see only one variation on the theme of aggregating savings to invest in financing for enterprise that can "tackle the climate, biodiversity, and human well-being crises". That is the form of finance I call Fiduciary Money. It is the tens of trillions in society's shared savings aggregated, collectively, worldwide, into social trusts for the social purposes of socially provisioning the social safety nets of Workforce Pensions and Civil Society Endowments.

This money is controlled by fiduciaries who have a duty under the law to:

act with the care, skill, prudence, and diligence under the circumstances then prevailing that a prudent person acting in a like capacity and familiar with such matters would use in the conduct of an enterprise of a like character and with like aims (ERISA)

Where their aims are:

to invest money (California Constitution)

for income as well as safety (the Massachusetts Rule of Harvard v Amory, 1830)

to assure (California Constitution)

income security in a dignified retirement for evergreen populations of current and future retired workers (the US Senate HELP Committee)

When we go back to the text of the law, we see that there aim is not only allocate assets, as is commonly noised about today, but to invest money. One way they can invest money is to buy assets for resale to extract profits from the buyers.  Is that a fiduciary way? A socially beneficial way? What other choices could they make, that would be more fiduciary, and socially beneficial?        

Their character includes:

vast size (these trusts control, individually, millions to billions to tens of billions to hundreds of billions, that aggregate, when taken together collectively, worldwide, to tens of trillions)

programmatic purpose (undivided loyalty to their aims, which are to invest money for income as well as safety to assure security and dignity)

forever time (they just keep going, as long as there are any workers working for security in their own personal and individual dignified retirement, or retirees who have already earned through lifetime of work, security and dignity in their retirement).

This gives them the capacity to use the circa 1983 vintage technologies of spreadsheet math, desktop publishing and digital communication to negotiate with enterprise of any size, in any business, anywhere on the planet.

Private Equity + Real Estate & Renewables = Equity Paybacks

Private Equity gives us many, many examples of how the stewards of these trusts, incarnated as Asset Owners, can use this capacity to financially engineer profit extraction through cost externalization (sold to us as "value creation").

Real Estate and some Infrastructure (especially US Tax Credit Equity Partnerships for Affordable Housing and Renewable Energy) give us many examples of how this capacity to negotiate can also be used to financially engineer socially beneficial cash flows for income as well as safety to assure security and dignity.

Combining the two together shows us that prudent stewards of social trusts have the unique capacity, that they alone posses, to financially engineer socially beneficial cash flows with enterprise of any size, in any business, anywhere on the planet, though negotiated agreement on:

• Equity payback to an actuarial/fiduciary cost of money, plus opportunistic upside (for Actuarial Compliance as to income ongoing into a secure future)
• from enterprise cash flows prioritized by contract for suitability of the technology under the circumstance the prevailing, longevity of the enterprise under the circumstances then prevailing and fairness in how the business does business under the circumstances then prevailing (for Fiduciary Faithfulness as to safety ongoing into a dignified future) across all six vectors of fairness in business:
• fairness to suppliers (Fair Trade);
• fairness to communities, of place and of interests (Fairn Engagement)
• fairness to Nature, Society and our shared Future (Fair Reckoning)
• fairness to workers, and in the workplace (Fair Working);
• fairness to customers and competitors (Fair Dealing); and
• fairness to the savers whose savings are the original and ultimate source of the money made to flow into enterprise by its financiers, fiduciary and otherwise.

A New Way of Seeing Enterprise

When we stop seeing the fiduciary stewards of pension and endowments trusts as Asset Owners, and start seeing them as prudent stewards of social trusts with the super power to negotiate for fairness in how business does business, we get a new way of seeing enterprise as:

• a physical coming-together of people who share a common knowledge about how the world about us works, and how we can change the way the world works, to make it work more a way we choose to make it,
• to do the work of putting that knowledge into action collaboratively co-creating a surplus of artifacts of that technology in an abundance that can be shared with others, for their use in making their own personal and private lives more a way they choose to make it,
• in exchange for a price paid in money or other value;
• through which money flows along six vectors of Trade, Engagement, Reckoning, Working, Dealing and Sharing.

By looking at enterprise this way, we can begin to see how negotiating for Fair Reckoning creates a new Science-Stewardship interface, for understanding the future consequences of present choices as to where and how fiduciary money is made to flow into enterprise, to form our economy.

How shall we activate that interface?

What other, similar interfaces can we activate?

What is your issue?

As a citizen, social critic, social change activist or just a person who cares, what is your issue when it comes to how business does business in the economy today?

Is is Fair Trade with suppliers?

Fair Engagement with communities?

Fair Reckoning with Nature, and Society?

Fair Working in the workplace (a living wage, right to bargain, workplace safety, DEI, income security in a dignified retirement, etc.)

Fair Dealing with customers and competitors?

Fair sharing of the money (corporate purpose and accountability)?

Each of these issues, in all their manifold variations, can give people who care a reason to engage with the financialization of fiduciary money, making the journey through the law of fiduciary duty as it applies to the fiduciary stewards of social trusts for socially provisioning the social safety nets of Workforce Pensions and Civil Society Endowments, to arrive at need and the opportunity to join in mobilizing the movement of fiduciary finance, out of Asset Ownership for Profit Extraction and into Prudent Stewardship of socially beneficial cash flows.

What will be your own best point of departure as you embark upon this journey?

A New Grand Narrative for the 21st Century

Will you want to go on an adventure of existential deconstruction, to clear away the edifices of inherited narrative, to build up the right new existential narrative to fit the changing circumstances of our changing times?

Radically Rethinking Money, Finance and the Sociology of Social Choosing

Should we begin with money, and move through an inventory of finance, to arrive at the innovation of financially engineering socially beneficial cash flows in fiduciary finance, and the innovation of fiduciary activism for holding stewards of social trust accountable for prudence and loyalty in their exercises of fiduciary discretion true to their fiduciary aims?

A Technician's Technical Answer to a Technical Question

Will it interest you to begin with financialization as a thing that is a problem for society today, and proceed through a deconstruction of financialization to arrive at innovations in fiduciary finance and the innovation of fiduciary activism?

Wherever you begin, will you be happy to arrive at the innovations in fiduciary finance for financially. engineering socially beneficial cash flows, and the innovation of fiduciary activism for holding the stewards of our social trusts accountable for prudence and loyalty in their exercise of stewardship?