“every picture tells a story”

-Rod Stewart

What’s your story?

First, we make pictures.
Then, we make words,
so we can talk about
what the pictures
are trying to show us,
and what we can see
through those pictures.

the art of creating a new finance
as the new language of Other People’s Money,
and a new prosperity, of peace

Below is a scrolling display of the many, many images we offer to help you see what we see about:

  1. our New Future, and the New Future Finance of superfiduciary superfund stewardship:
  2. popular participation in adaptively evolving the common sense and common wisdom of extraordinary prudence; and
  3. the new prosperity of peace in the 21st Century, and beyond…

This journey began with disappointment, frustration and annoyance at the growing social dominance of the Wall Street narrative of Prosperity as Growth

because everybody knows that the real story of prosperity is more about the flourish and fade of knowledge, learning and technology, as times change, and people evolve prosperous adaptations to life’s constant changes, learning new things, and making different choices,

so that constantly pursuing constant Growth in the context of constant change, and constant adaptation to constant changes, actually gives us a prosperity of episodically recurring booms on Wall Street that eventually go bust on Main Street, with catastrophic consequences for most.

At the same time, we’re watching insurance companies, as investors, staying out of the Wall Street system almost entirely, investing mostly in real estate, mostly for cash flows to “match fund” investment earnings to their benefit payment obligations

while pensions are caught up in the frantic pursuit of share price Growth on Wall Street, dancing to the tune of the trading tape, which is only making the booms on Wall Street larger, and the eventual busts that follow on Main Street more catastrophic.

Which lead us to ask ourselves,

why are we doing this?

Surely, there has to be a better way.

It was obvious to us that Wall Street investing by pensions – and also by endowments – was not working out well for pensions

and it wasn’t hard to see why

we could see that pension investing on Wall Street is degenerating modern capitalism into Casino Capitalism

and we could see that this had happened before

at least twice

some of the details were different, but the basic principle was the same: Wall Street cannot be allowed to speculate with society’s superfunds

the solution to us seemed painfully, obvious: get (pensions and endowments) out of Wall Street by having them invest on Main Street, directly, instead

we soon learned is not so easy for others to see, either the cause of the problem, or its solution

despite wide-spread recognition that something has gone horribly wrong

people calling for bold solutions to BIG challenges

and a new shape for a new future

people remained unwilling and unable to let go of what it is we think we know

to make the changes we need to be making today

it became painfully difficult to engage others in the conversation we need to be having about the new choices we need to be making for pursuing prosperity in out times

so we had to take great pains to find the right ways to inspire in others the desire to learn the new words we need to evolve a form of Finance that is right for our times in the 21st Century, and beyond

to break the monopoly that Wall Street currently exercises over how people think about what Finance is

and set our pensions – and our prosperity – free from the tyranny of endless specualation of future Growth in NPV

for that, we needed to find a new word – a single, powerful, inspiring, hopeful and practical word – that we could use to replace the word Growth that Wall Street had so effectively used to monopolize our thinking about the right way to measure a correctly functioning economy

that will maybe make it easier for people to see why this matters to them

It’s your money.

Don’t you want to know what they are doing with your money?

by the way, this is who we mean by “they”

Once we see Pensions & Endowments as financiers in their own right, and not just as aggregators of Other People’s Money so Wall Street can speculate with really large sums, we begin to see that Finance is a technology, in the strictest literal sense, as “knowledge of how to make something”, and that there are different kinds of financing technologies. Six, actually. The Six Capitalisms.

We begin to has some Aha! moments, as we start to see that Pensions & Endowments are actually unique technologies for directing aggregated savings – Other People’s Money – into enterprise for evolving prosperous adaptations to life’s constant changes on Main Street.

THEY ARE NOT JUST CHANNELS FOR FUNNELING MONEY INTO THE HANDS OF THE WIZARDS ON WALL STREET, as Modern Finance wants us to believe they are

and we begin to see how powerfully empowering it can be for People Who Care to participate in figuring out how Pensions & Endowments, as superfiduciary stewards of society’s share savings – Other People’s Money – your money, and mine – can, should and will be investing in enterprise, to generate sufficient superfund cash flows, forever, in a forever that will be good for future generations to flow into

creating a new pathway to the happiness of self-funding cash flows for enterprise

that is also a pathway for society, out of the Booms and Busts of Modern Finance, and into a new prosperity of managed transitions, from the old to the new, through the flourish and fading of the social contracts between enterprise and popular choice, as times change, and humanity evolves prosperous adaptations to life’s constant changes, making new choices more popular as a better fit to changing times, and letting previously popular choices fade into history, as a good fit at an earlier time

and also giving us “a new and better considered past for the sake of a new and better imagined future”

This allows us to tell our very technical story about enterprise, finance, pensions, speculation, stewardship and a new prosperity of peace in the new economy of computer-connected, globally evolving adaptive networks in a more affordable – in the design sense of “giving people the ability to see directly, and correctly, what they can do” with this new technology – way, as the next new chapter in the evolving story of humanity’s pursuit of prosperity

This inquiry begins with a feeling that our times have changed; that there is something radically and fundamentally different in the possibilities for prosperity that we see before us today, that is unlike any other time in the whole history of humanity’s pursuit of prosperity. Many, many other insights tumble out of this one insight into the radically different way we live today. One is an insight into how people used to live, differently from us, before today.

reflecting on these differences takes us very quickly into an inquiry into the technical ways in which we use technology differently today, than people did previously

looking back deeper into history, and prehistory, we can see that enterprise has always been an important part of humanity’s unique way of being in the world, and that humanity has been adaptively evolving our capacity for enterprise from the earliest beginnings of our being as people

episodically expanding our possibilities for prospering through enterprise in radically transformative ways

episodically expanding exponentially our definitions of who we think of as “we”

requiring the adaptive evolution of new technologies of Finance for enterprise design through investment decision-making

showing us the social structures of Finance we have today

and the new capitalism of The Capitalisms

through which to finance a new future of more that is better for more

in the new computer-connected, globally evolving, adaptive networks economy of the 21st Century, and beyond

this image illustrates our New Reality in the 21st Century, that the earth is our garden. We have to become good global gardeners. This is the fundamental change in our time, to which stewardship is the prosperous adaptation

to become good global gardeners, we must learn to live at peace with the earth

and the life into which we are born – sky life, salt water life, fresh water life, sun life, land life, soil life and new life – out which we we create the lives we choose to live

to be at peace with the earth, we must be at peace with each other
we use the new symbol of the Extinction Rebellion to represent Earth Peace, and the Peace Symbol from the 1970s to represent Peace Peace

to live at peace with the earth and each other, we must first learn to live in peace with ourselves, and with our future

there is no image in Western traditions for peace with ourselves and with our future, so we adapt the Chinses figure of the yin and yang

this image shows our uniquely human way of being in the world as nodes in a network of connections to other people in other places, connections that change over time, and from time to time, as times change, and we, as people, evolve prosperous adaptations to life’s constant changes through inquiry, insight, and enterprise for collaboratively co-creating and sharing surpluses of learning put into action, taking the world about us as we find it, and changing it to be more a way we choose to make it

this is the cycle of prosperous adaption to life’s constant changes that begins with learning about the way the world about us works, and how we can take the world about us as we find it, and change it to be more a way we choose to make it, that empowers earning by doing the work of putting learning into action collaboratively co-creating surpluses of that learning put into action that we can share with others, that empowers spending of our surpluses through exchange with others for the surpluses of their earning, that empowers saving earnings for later spending, that empowers investing in new learning to adapt to changing times, that empowers new earning that empowers new spending that empowers new saving and new investing in yet more new learn, and so on, indefinitely, until we have learned all that we need to know to live well pursuing peace

This shows that the structure of the human personality is constant. What changes over time, and from time to time, constantly and unendingly, are the details of the choices we make for how we choose to interact with the world into which we are born, both individually and in community

This shows that people are like ants, in that we live together, working to build the world in which we live out of the world into which we belong; and also that people are not really like ants, because unlike ants, we as people are constantly learning new things about the world into which we are born, and putting new learning into action changing the way we live in the world

This shows that for us, as people, times change constantly, and we, as people evolve prosperous adaptations to life’s constant changes, through inquiry, insight and new learning put into action empowering new choices for how we can take the world about us as we find it, and change it to be more a way we choose to make it, making new choices more popular as a better fit to changing times, letting previously popular choices fade into history, as a good fit to an earlier time

This shows our uniquely historical way of being human, collaboratively co-creating the future history that we can and do live, both individually and in community, out of the possibilities that are presented to us

This shows that we are all in this together, making the stories of our individual lives as part of a larger story of humanity’s pursuit of prosperity

This shows that good stewardship happens at the creative edge of new learning about new possibilities where humanity chooses what its future history can, should and will be made to be

which leads to the discovery of Finance and Investing as the opposable thumb that forms the power grip for making choices about what our future history cans should and will be made to be

enterprising individuals see the possibilities

finance provides the money

government regulates both regulates and invests for the public good

popular choice determines whether enterprise, finance and government are getting it right

which brings us to this core question for new learning in our times, about finance getting it right for our times

for choosing a future history of peace – with ourselves, with each other, with our planet and with our future