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Discussion: Reinventing Our Economy: The Need for Core Values started by David Richins

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Peter Burgess

Impact Investing Forum Impact Investing Forum 8,580 members Member David Richins Follow David Reinventing Our Economy: The Need for Core Values David Richins Content Marketing Strategist We tend to make a separation in our minds. We see doing “good” as an activity that is separate from everyday life and traditional capitalism. Instead of serving people in our hometowns and in our everyday lives, we feel the need to go to some distant land. Instead of running a business that happens to provide social benefits, we run a business specifically so that it can provide social benefits. Reinventing Our Economy: Part I — The Need for Core Values thelunchisfree.com Our economy is changing rapidly. The Great Recession has caused people to wake up and realize that our current system is broken. There is growing interest in alternative economic models. Many of us want to see an economy that looks beyond profit. We... Like (3) Comment (4) Unfollow Reply Privately20 days ago Comments Oleg Zaikovski, Michelle Parker and 1 other like this 4 comments Brian Kaminer Brian Brian Kaminer Owner Talgra LLC thanks for sharing Like Reply privately Flag as inappropriate 9 days ago Bruce Arbit Bruce Bruce Arbit Unleash the Possibilities through Fundraising, Community Investing and Strategic Philanthropy Enjoyed your piece, I'm doing a lot around creating different funding/finance vehicles that 'blend' social and more profit seeking objectives. Also looked at a few other articles, I particularly identified with the one on independent workers vs. corporate jobs. Absolutely 'the wild west.' Let's stay in contact. Bruce Like (1) Reply privately Flag as inappropriate 3 days ago David Richins likes this Akhil Kishore Akhil Akhil Kishore Investments + Corporate Finance Advisory Excellent!! I would like to stay in touch to see if there is work that can be done together. Like (1) Reply privately Flag as inappropriate 2 days ago David Richins likes this

Thank you David. The series describes a whole range of issues in a very constructive way, and there is very little that I want to take issue with. It all seems so sensible.

So why are these ideas not mainstream? Why isn't society and the economy managed along the lines suggested.

I argue that one of the issues that needs to be addressed is the matter of metrics, and what perspective we use in measuring progress and performance. I believe that the prevailing metrics which have an organization at the center and use increase in money profit and stockholder wealth as the dominant goal of the organization is fatally flawed. Money profit accounting is very efficient and very powerful, but it pushes decisions in the wrong direction.

The use of GDP growth by policy makers suits the organization, because with growth it is very much easier to make profit and increase stock prices.

The fact that none of these metrics addresses the important issues ... the externalities ... that impact people and planet just does not matter with the prevailing system of accounting and reporting performance. The business media is comfortable reporting on performance using these flawed metrics, and so, it seems most everyone else is happy to go along with them.

I want to change this. I want to see rigorous metrics that address all the elements of the triple bottom line ... people, planet and profit ... with the same accounting rigor that we currently use just for profit. I also want to see an accounting not only for the performance of the organization, but also the performance of a place.

There is another dimension that needs rigorous accounting and analysis. It is the life cycle of products and the interface with people who make buy or not to buy decisions. This is a product dimension that also needs rigorous accounting and reporting.

When this sort of accounting ... I call it Multi Dimension Impact Accounting (MDIA) is applied to the economic activity that is now driving everything, the results to be reported are very different from what we are using today. This is compatible with the ideas described by David Richins ... but puts numbers around them. A bit of my writing on this can be found via this URL: http://www.truevaluemetrics.org/DBadmin/DBtxt001.php?vv1=txt20080001

Peter Burgess - TrueValueMetrics
Multi Dimension Impact Accounting

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