Creating an America for All of Us
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JUL 21, 2015
Peter Burgess sent the following messages at 2:46 PM
View Peter’s profile Peter Burgess
Peter Burgess 2:46 PM
Dear Heather
There was a time when I seemed to be visiting Demos all the time ... but those times are long gone. It seemed to stop when the Washington operation picked up steam several years ago ... or was it me?
In any event ... the need for an environment where the banks contribute to the performance of society rather than functioning to leech the living blood out of society remains a high priority, and Demos efforts in this regard are much respected.
My view is, however, that laws and regulations will never do the job because the socio-enviro-economic system is far too complex and these tools are far too clumsy ... too slow ... and too easy to game. Something else is needed to complement good work that gets done by legislators and regulators.
This something else is, in my view, an enhanced system of metrics that builds on the ancient system of double entry accountancy that is ubiquitous, but also incorporates numbering for impact on society (people) and environment (planet) as rigorously and as cost effectively as there is accounting for the performance of the organization (profit).
The corporate world has done some amazing things over the last 50 years using the profit metric to invest heavily in things that would improve the profit performance of the enterprise. Nothing like it has happened in the area of society, the public space and the environment or commons. There are no metrics to give incentive to investment in these places. There is a reliance on public funding and philanthropy which is never going to be sufficient nor in the best places.
In a few months time I will be celebrating 50 years of being in the United States. Soon after I arrived Americans set foot on the moon ... but what infrastructure investment has the USA done in the past 50 years? The Chinese have built more modern rail in the last 10 years than the USA built in the 19th and 20th centuries combined.* We have laws and regulations about everything ... and more potholes per mile of highway than any of the richer countries on the planet.
Well designed metrics are fast and they are effective. We can see that in the profit performance of the private sector. There are no equivalent metrics for the performance of the public sector ... and this is a huge constraint on everything.
The example of Greece is informative ... there is no answer under prevailing law and the prevailing thinking about money and finance and prevailing metrics of performance ... prevailing metrics that value money but have no value for people or the environment or anything that is not purely measured in money ... what price the Parthenon?
The opportunity to do something better exists ... seems to me that it is time to get it done
Peter Burgess
TrueValueMetrics.org
Multi Dimension Impact Accounting
* Not quite true ... but the concept is valid!
SUNDAY
View Peter’s profile Peter Burgess
Peter Burgess 10:52 PM
I just watched a C-Span interview with you and had a smile on my face from the get go to the end. So much of the conversation resonated with me. I am British, white male and married since the early 1980s to a Jamaican. I went to a boarding school in England and then Cambridge at a time when the male female ratio was around 50 to 1. At the end of the first year I wanted to go to the May Ball, but had no date! One of my college peers learned of my predicament and suggested that possibly I could take his sister who was at Girton, one of the ladies colleges! This was a great solution ... so I got to take Princess Elizabeth of Toro (Uganda) to the May Ball. Previously she had attended a British boarding school (Sherborne) where she was the only black student! Subsequently she became one of the first female lawyers called to the British Bar ... and then the Uganda Bar ... as well as coming to the USA and working for the Ford Model Agency and I believe the first black model on the cover of Vogue! ... and then representing Uganda at the UN ... and running foul of Idi Amin. She survived, her brother did not! I have understood since my days at Cambridge that my comfort level with Black people is explained in large part by the fact that my first interactions were very positive, and intellectually challenging because they always seemed to know stuff that I did not. This has served me well for 60+ years. My wife does remind me from time to time, however, that I will never truly understand what it is like to be Black, and, of course, she is right!
My best wishes to you and for all the things you seem to stand for!
PeterB
FRIDAY
Heather C. McGhee sent the following message at 9:42 PM
View Heather C.’s profile Heather C. McGhee
Heather C. McGhee 9:42 PM
Thank you for sharing this lovely story.
All the best,
Heather
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