A Vision for a Post-pandemic Economy

This essay is excerpted from my book, Planet on Purpose. Given that our economy has paused, we have a unique opportunity to examine it and rebuild it in a manner that is optimized for human flourishing and ecological resilience (versus the current machine that is optimized for consumption and accumulation). Given that purpose is critical to flourishing, scientifically linked to success, happiness, character and vitality (ScienceOfPurpose.org), this essay imagines an economy that is optimized for flourishing, one where everyone has a purpose-driven vocation and is fairly compensated.

You may be tempted to say “no f’n way, not possible.” Same was said about the Earth being round, American Independence and the airplane. It was also said about Civil Rights, the Hoover Dam and Apollo 11. Consider that new ideas are always first judged to be impossible. I know that you didn’t come here to do that. You’re here because you like to dream and you know a better world is possible. What follows is just one vision, a conversation starter to build an economy that works for all beings.

To create an economy that works, we must accept that the old economic system was broken. As in it’s over and not coming back, as I explored in this article last week. If we try to resuscitate the corpse, and do more of the same, we will get more of the same - more exploitation, more pollution, more inequality, more poverty, addiction and social decay. The old normal was not well designed, not living its purpose as a system. Our old system meant that 61% of us are lonely (Cigna, 2020), 67% are burnt out (Gallup, 2018), 75% are in debt and 78% live paycheck-to-paycheck (Careerbuilder, 2017), and 97% are unhealthy (Mayo, 2016). We should not be eager to revive this old normal.

We have to sacrifice the comfort of our familiar, but broken old economy for a great one, and we can only do this with each other’s help. This is a kairos moment, where all of eternity is experienced, where the tension between capital and labor, between sustainability and wealth accumulation, between fear and love, old and young are felt. We must risk everything, not only to thrive, but to survive at all.

“In order for things to truly change, the tension of the opposites must intensify and be tolerated long enough for a third energy to appear. The bird of good omen must emerge in the midst of all the tension and opposition just long enough to reveal the hidden patterns and motivations of the clashing forces. Then, in the moment of revelation everything must be risked at once and everyone must somehow pull together or else the dilemma will return and likely do so at a deeper level.” Michael Meade (The Genius Myth, 2016)

As with a butterfly’s metamorphosis, our political economy must rapidly evolve such that it is unrecognizable to its former self. As such, our vision must inspire us and help us create a better future, but it need not justify itself against this old normal.

So, what is it like to work in an economy that encourages you to live your purpose and asks that you create a better world? What is it like to lay your head upon a pillow at the end of the day, knowing your efforts are cherished, amply compensated and have advanced the wellbeing of our species? 

We’re beginning with the purpose of the firm and the purpose of money. I have two requests: 1. I request that you CTRL+ALT+DEL your current understanding of what money is, what a job is and how the economy works, and have an open mind, as if you were curiously discovering a new civilization. Remember, everything about how jobs, the economy and money work in "the old normal" were made up by us. They are not firm, given or immutable. Secondly, please note all of your “what-ifs”, “yeah-buts” and “who pays for this?” and reserve final judgment until you have moved through all of these 5 reforms.

#1 LEGAL REFORM: All corporate entities will become Purpose-Driven Enterprises and “For-Benefit” B Corporations, or cease to exist.

A Purpose-Driven Enterprise is a B Corp and requires that executives are purpose-aware, which is to say that they have done deep purpose work. The B Corp, a distinction of B Labs, is a for-benefit enterprise, a commercial entity that is explicitly crafted to improve the human and ecological condition (inclusive of all social and environmental impacts). 

There is a rigorous application and audit associated with becoming a B Corp that measures the impact of its purpose and accounts for transparency, inclusion, equity and resource usage. As such, each current organization will have a 2-year implementation period during which all key executives will become rooted in their individual purpose, recraft their company vision, offer purpose discovery education to their employees and then apply for B Corp status. Before being granted the right to trade as a Purpose-Driven Enterprise/B Corp, each organization must:

• Articulate the individual purpose of each founder, executive and investor, along with the methods they used to discover their life’s purpose. This means that every founder, executive and investor would have to do purpose-discovery work, before revisioning their enterprise and recrafting their careers as expressions of their purpose. (Without this inner work, a venture will ultimately devolve into one motivated purely by fear, greed and profit.)
• Empower every employee to discover and activate their purpose at work.
• Articulate the purpose of the PDE as it relates to Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs or UN Sustainable Development Goals, demonstrating a unique plan/method/product that makes a net improvement in the human or ecological condition.
• Outline a plan by which the PDE will economically support the biological, psychological and social needs of the organization’s employees and their households, such that each employee works fewer than 40 hours, has income is greater than 3x rent or mortgage, and a commute that is 30-minutes or less and is carbon-neutral.
• Acquire insurance for all commercial activities.
• Companies falling outside of these requirements, for example, mass producers of unsustainable fashion or apparel items or single-use consumer goods, will not receive a charter to trade and henceforth will no longer operate.

As part of their year-end reporting and accounting, all PDEs must justify their existence in light of the human, social and environmental resources they consume. Existing financial accounting/audit firms will partner with B Labs (the organization that created the B Corp designation and B Impact Assessment) and add this new practice area, to ensure that the management’s fiduciary responsibility reflects the purpose of the founders, and actually delivers a net benefit to humanity and the Earth’s ecology. 

#2 FISCAL REFORM: Abolition of usury (financial interest) and corporate income tax, to be replaced by consumption and land use taxes and currency demurrage (negative interest).

As all companies are now PDEs whose goal is to improve the net human and ecological condition, taxing their cashflow (their ability to invest in their mission) would be a disservice, not only to the PDE founders, investors and employees, but to humanity. The abolition of corporate income tax in favor of resource consumption and land use taxes (vs. taxes on income and property value) will create the financial incentive to invest cash flows and align the activities of PDEs with the interests of the commonwealth, to treat people fairly, and to use natural resources sparingly and land wisely.

Thus, this system encourages PDEs to reduce the resource use/carbon footprint of their properties. Land use taxes tax the value of the land, not the property, and provide incentive for real estate developers to make the most of each parcel: to create dense, walkable and bikeable communities, to build up (vs. out) around commercial/transit centers, to open up sustainable development on property near the commercial centers and to return parcels to nature/the commons if they cannot be economically utilized.

Further, as money has no purpose other than to serve the needs of humanity, it must be reimagined and function from this perspective. Thus, financial interest and the “time value of money” are functions that are no longer needed. Money has a new purpose, to move energy and resources as efficiently and purposefully as possible to where they are most needed.

From this perspective, the purpose of money is to empower creative, generative, just, sustainable and emergent economic activity, by measuring the exchange of value and enabling the velocity of transactions. To achieve its purpose, money must be abundantly supplied and exponentially depreciate the longer it is held in any account, a concept called currency demurrage, e.g., losing 1% of its value in month 1, 2% in month 2, 4% in month 3, 8% in month 4, etc. 

This creates the financial incentive for money to move quickly, to be paid out to suppliers and employees, and invested in research and development, professional development and capital improvements. This makes it unattractive for monetary wealth to be accumulated, and shifts the entire concept of the value of an enterprise or investment portfolio, from a static to a dynamic measure, wherein the value of an entity is primarily driven by its actual sustainable and generative economic throughput for meeting the needs of people and the planet.

#3 CULTURE REFORM: PDEs are cohesive communities.

We are social animals, who thrive when we are connected and develop deep relationships. As such PDEs, or autonomous divisions within PDEs, may comprise no more than 150 employees, such that the social contract, collective purpose, culture and ethics are easily maintained. This isn’t an arbitrary figure, it is known as “the Dunbar number” (Dunbar, 1992), the number of people with whom an individual is able to maintain stable social relationships, ethics and culture. This naturally-occurring, human dynamic allows for company culture and purpose to be naturally maintained without burdensome, ongoing culture projects, training, enrollment, or bureaucracy. In teams up to 150, people naturally feel connected to each other, remain committed to the team’s success and have the experience of being woven into the fabric of the community.

#4 PRODUCTION REFORM: All PDEs adopt a cradle-to-cradle product life cycle.

Each PDE adopts a cradle-to-cradle product life cycle whereby all products produced and materials used are durable (intended use of 10+ years), updatable or reusable, and can be easily deconstructed and reused, or will naturally decompose without a negative ecological impact at the end of their usefulness. Doing so makes each PDE fully responsible for the use and termination of its services and products. This dramatically shortens the feedback loop between economics and environment, making it impossible to externalize hidden costs of doing business upon suppliers, customers, the environment and future generations.

#5 GAAP REFORM: Labor becomes a line item on the balance sheet, AND biosphere services becomes a line item now found on the GAAP income statement. 

Currently, labor is an income statement expense, and businesses have an economic incentive to minimize it, and thus exploit labor. Moreover, the costs of raw materials (extraction/harvest, production, distribution, use and disposal) do not include many of the costs accrued to humanity, the environment or future generations. This results in the inevitable structural consequences of inefficient resource use, waste, and income inequality, ecocide, and animal exploitation. In our new economic paradigm, human capital would now be cultivated, accounted for and invested in as an asset on the balance sheet. 

Company leadership would then be motivated to retain their employees and invest in their potential, training, fulfillment and purposeful expression. Further, as each PDE is uniquely chartered to serve the goals of the species and planet, ecosystem services consumed by the enterprise will be accounted for as an expense. At the end of the year, each PDE’s resource use will be paid by tax payments made to local governments to restore and regenerate the supply of natural resources used by the entity, and to address the planet’s most pressing global ecological problems and opportunities for regeneration, conservation, cleanup, biodiversity and ecological resilience.

Conclusion

Collectively, I believe these 5 policies would would limit certain behaviors (e.g., soulless work, illness, discrimination, consumerism, pollution, exploitation) and encourage others (purpose discovery, fulfilling work, vitality, psychological health, sustainable enterprises and more tightly knit, inclusive communities). I believe the net effect would be more power and freedom, not less. Freedom to be self-expressed. Freedom to have your purpose and livelihood be the same. Freedom that comes from truly belonging to a community. Freedom to enjoy your life with abundance and spaciousness.

What's your vision?

As I mentioned, this is merely a starting point for the discussion, shared with you to inspire you to craft your own vision for humanity, your community and your career, to join the discussion and contribute your leadership. As to how this will actually unfold, well, that is the story we can now collectively begin to write. But it begins with sharing our visions. What is yours?

About the Author

Brandon Peele (he/him) is a Midwesterner, best-selling author, international speaker, the Vice President, People Science at ion Learning. Over the last two decades has written / co-written 4 books on purpose activation, and worked with organizations like Morgan Stanley, LinkedIn, the US Marine Corps and Johnson & Johnson to activate purpose-led and inclusive cultures. 

He has also taught at Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Minnesota and Northern Arizona University, and has had his work featured in media outlets such as Forbes, U.S. New and World Report and Conscious Company Magazine.

He is a PGI Certified Purpose GuideTM, Imperative Certified Purpose LeaderTM, serves on the Council of the Global Purpose Leaders and has an MBA in Leadership from Columbia Business School. He lives in San Diego with his wife, Stephanie.