a new prosperity of peace through finance of social and environmental justice in the conduct of commerce
a new finance of channels, mechanisms, moral codes and places for directing society’s surpluses from individual savings to enterprises for evolving prosperous adaptations to life’s constant changes
a new fiduciary duty of extraordinary prudence for Pensions & Endowments as superfiduciary stewards of society’s superfunds
new possibilities for popular participation in common sense & common wisdom
Our first issue is engaging People Who Care in new conversations about new possibility for popular participation in curated conversations with Superfiduciary Stewards of Society’s Superfunds and Visionary Leaders of Creative Enterprises for collaboratively co-creating the adaptively evolving common sense and common wisdom of extraordinary prudent intergenerational loyalty and excellence…
Job One: Awareness. Acceptance. EXCITEMENT!
changing the common sense & common wisdom of People Who Care, and the laws of fiduciary prudence for superfiduciary stewards of society’s superfunds
We are selling a talking cure
for financial system dysfunction.
This cure requires that we get a lot of people talking, about Finance, about financial system dysfunction, and the cure!
Many people will say that talking won’t change anything. But talking will change the common sense & common wisdom of People Who Care, popular choice and what ordinary prudent people think is properly prudent. That will change the standards of fiduciary prudence under the laws of fiduciary duty. That will change the way that Pensions & Endowments choose to invest the shared savings of society that we entrust to their good judgement to provide certainty against certain of life’s uncertainties.
And THAT will fix Finance, and put us on a new path towards a better future, of more that is better for more, in pursuit of a new prosperity, of peace through finance of social and environmental justice in the conduct of commerce.
So, let’s get talking!
Of course, it’s not enough to talk. We also have to be heard.
Peace Gardens are conceived as new urban spaces that will be fiduciary places where People Who Care can be heard by the laws of fiduciary prudence, and also by the superfiduciary stewards of society’s superfunds – our Pensions & Endowments – who are accountable to that law, and through that law, to the common sense and common wisdom of People Who Care and popular choice.
Peace Gardens
Peace Gardens will be fiduciary places that will be safe spaces for popular participation by People Who Care in curated conversations with Superfiduciary Stewards of Society’s Superfunds and Visionary Leaders of Collaboratively Co-Creative Enterprises to collaboratively co-create the adaptively evolving common sense and common wisdom of extraordinary prudent intergenerational loyalty and excellence.
how are you going to make
your voice
be heard?
Sometimes, in order to be heard, we first have to shift paradigms.
Now is one of those times.
We shift paradigms by talking about them.
adaptively evolving
common sense &
common wisdom
Money is core to how we live
today, in the 21st Century.
Money as Finance is how we, as a population,
decide what our future history can, should and
will be made to be through enterprise and exchange.
The question is, How do our own individual,
personal, preferences get represented
in the choices that are being made for us
by our professional financiers?
The answer, since 1972, has been,
Not at all.
This is an answer we are going to change,
by shifting our paradigms for prosperity,
and shifting power back
to community standards of
common sense and common wisdom,
for extraordinary fiduciary prudent
intergenerational loyalty and excellence
by superfiduciary stewards of society’s superfunds.
Power shifting
mobilizing
• people
• money
• ideas
Using Finance as a leverage point for pursuing the peace social and environmental justice in the conduct of commerce
is terrifying.
Let’s face it, as individuals we really don’t have a voice in Finance as it is currently being practiced today.
Decisions are not made by us, as individuals.
They are made for us, by professionals.
And these professionals are not really listening to us for guidance on what choices we want them to be making on our behalf.
Modern Finance
truly has become
Casino Capitalism.
The professionals whose voices are heard in the casino that Modern Finance has become speak the language of speculation. This is a language that most of us, as non-professionals, do not really understand.
This professional language of Finance as speculation is also a language of Finance as Growth. What these professional speculators are speculating on professionally is growth in the market clearing price for commoditized shares in standard form investment contracts traded on market clearing prices derived from market expectations for growth in the net present value (NPV) of expected future cash flows in markets for maintaining such market clearing prices.
What?!!!
If you think this is gibberish, you’re not alone.
Not very many of us, as non-professionals, can understand this professional language of finance as speculation on NPV Growth. And since not very many of us can understand this language, not many of us really feel that we can see Finance very clearly at all.
If you are among those who feel that they just cannot understand Modern Finance, don’t be too hard on yourself.
It’s not you.
Modern Finance as it is currently being practiced is not rational. No one can understand it.
UNLESS you can understand the dysfunction at the very core of Modern Finance, that is making it illogical, irrational and not understandable, and that is driving modern prosperity and society also into dysfunction.
will be
empowering
a new pattern for the enterprise journey towards the happiness of self-sustaining cash flows
new patterns for seeing…
It is not so much that Modern Finance is broken, as that it has become obsolete. Our times have changed, and Modern Finance is no longer fit to our changing times.
The times, they are
a-changin’
Bob Dylan, 1963
The roots of
are in the 18th and 19th Century Euro-American experience of standing on the creative edge of an infinitely receding horizon for industrial expansion, out of which we could always take more, and into which the consequences of our taking would disappear, seemingly without consequence.
In this experience, Growth was the pathway to prosperity, and Corporate Finance through speculation over the Exchanges was a powerful channel and mechanism for financing prosperity as Growth. No matter that speculation is a spectacularly inefficient mechanism for financing industrial efficiency (can you hear the irony?). When things went bust, there was always the Frontier, as a place for new beginnings.
By the beginning of the 20th Century, this New Frontier was already beginning to disappear. The earth as infinite horizon for linear expansion through economies of scale was becoming a sphere that closes back in upon itself.
Over the course of the 20th Century, the pursuit of Growth gave us a prosperity of booms that go bust: The Gilded Age gave us Trust-Busting (and The Great War); the Roaring Twenties gave us The Great Depression and the New Deal (and the Second World War).
The social devastation of fossil-fueled industrialized warfare on a global scale gave us a new boom of mid-century American Prosperity, and an illusion of Peace that masked an underlying continuing conflict as the Cold War became the Arms Race became the Space Race; and a new war with our own planet as pollution on an industrial scale gave us the 1960s experience of A Silent Spring, and the birth of environmentalism as a movement that has been at war with Corporate Finance and the externalization of costs to maximize profits, and, more importantly, Growth, in profits…and share price
In the 1960s, humanity left the limits of the earth, and ventured into Space, expecting to find a New Frontier of truly infinite expansion and truly endless social and environmental irresponsibility.
At 10:56 p.m. ET on July 20, 1969, United States astronaut Neil Armstrong, Commander of the Apollo 11 Moon Mission took his historic
“One small step for a man. One giant leap for Mankind.”
But the step Neil took was not the leap we were expecting.
We ventured into Space expecting to find a New Frontier. When we got there, all we found was rocks.
The historic step that Neil Armstrong was actually a leap into a New Reality.
We have the earth, and it is well and truly ours.
Also, it is what we have.
In this New Reality, we need a new prosperity, of Peace: earth peace and people peace; peace with ourselves and with each other, peace with our planet and with our future; the peace of sufficient surpluses circulating sufficiently throughout the populations and across the generations in patterns that are reasonably inclusive and fundamentally fair, changing over time, as times change, and humanity evolves prosperous adaptations to life’s constant changes through inquiry and insight, conversation and education, enterprise and exchange, saving and investing (finance), rules and regulations (government) and accountability to functionality (popular choice), making new choices more popular as better fit to changing times, and letting previously popular choices fade into history as a good fit at an earlier time, driving the flourish and fade of the social contracts that get formed between enterprise and popular choice through the endlessly recurring adaptively evolving cycles of learning, earning, spending, saving and investing to collaboratively co-create a future history of more that is better for more.
A New Reality
A New Prosperity
is purpose-built to finance Growth.
It cannot be used to finance Peace, except to the extent that peace is a driver of Growth, or a consequence of it. But Peace is never a part of Growth. Growth can be a part of Peace, but Peace is always bigger than Growth. We cannot finance Peace as part of Growth, but we can finance Growth as Part of Peace.
this is not a path to Peace
this is
We face a new FUTURE, of Peace.
We need a new FINANCE, also of Peace, the peace of social and environmental justice in the conduct of commerce.
the talking cure
for financial system dysfunction
reversing the polarities on ownership and stewardship
Modern Finance is built on the fiction that investors are owners, and corporations are stewards of enterprise as managers for the investor owners.
Truth is, investors do not actually own the corporations whose shares are listed for trading over Exchanges or through Funds. What they own are trading position in those shares. The Exchanges – more popularly, the markets, more precisely the Capital Markets – actually own those shares. And the purpose of the Exchanges is to clear the markets. They do this by delivering an always-available market clearing price. And they deliver this market-clearing price by demanding that corporations always be driving their share prices UP. Growth in share price is what allows buyers who become sellers to sell at a profit. Sellers selling at a profit is what attracts new buyers, who in their turn will become sellers who need the markets to attract new buyers at higher prices so they can sell in their turn, at a profit. And so on. Endlessly. At least in theory.
Future Finance makes superfiduciaries stewards for their beneficiaries (and, by extension, for all of society) and visionary leaders of collaboratively co-creative enterprises the owners of the social contracts with popular choice through which they pursue the happiness of self-sustaining cash flows.
Truth
We don’t fix obsolescence. We evolve beyond it!
upgrading fiduciary prudence from ordinary to extraordinary for superfiduciaries
ordinary
extraordinary
returning the Exchanges to Individual Investors
setting the Invisible Hand free from the tyranny of Professional Asset Management and speculation on movements in market-clearing prices and NPV Growth
Let’s explore Yvon Chouinard’s perception of the public corporation, and the possible alternative of
Corporate Finance
Superfund Finance
event formats
because Finance has to happen somewhere
Peace Cafes
Peace Charrettes
Peace Gardens
developing fluency and proficiency
evolving common sense and common wisdom
the new shape of global collaboration
What has changed or is changing in our times?
How are these changes changing what we need and want to have?
Does the proposal fit the need?
Is it a good fit?
what do these color blocks say to you about our uniquely human way of being in the world?
I see in these color blocks an abstracted visualization of what good stewardship of earth peace looks like. We have the earth, and it is well and truly ours. So, we have to be good stewards.
When we become good stewards of the earth – good global gardeners – we live in a world in which there can be found an abundance of sky life, of water life, of sun life, of land life, of soil life and of new life.
What is missing in this abstraction of earth peace is us. We cannot be at peace with the earth – we cannot become good global gardeners – unless we also learn to be at peace with ourselves, and with each other.
How can Art help us see the pathway to people peace through superfiduciary stewardship investing in negotiated agreements for prioritizing cash flows?
