Initiative
Common Dreams

'Dear Humanity, We Have a Systems Problem': New Project Aims to Promote Deep Solutions, Radical Transformation

Burgess COMMENTARY

I have been aware of Gus Speth's work and career for many years ... going back to the time when he became the UNDP Administrator. I know the names of many of the people who are signed on to engage with TheNextSystem initiative.

However, given the number of people with brains who are signing on to this initiative, why is it that I predict that it will achieve very little. The answer is simple. The problem identified is systemic dysfunction, while the solution proposed is anything but a systemic solution, and critically, the matter of development and deployment of effective metrics is missing.

I was a young corporate person early in my career. My job(s) were to help the company earn more profit. A simple goal in a fairly complex environment involving corporate resources, market potentials, state of know how, government regulations, all sorts of people with difference skill sets, etc.etc. In this quite complex situation I would always be working with quantified data ... quantified data about everything that we thought might matter ... and these data were made available to everyone who was making decisions that would impact performance. Bottom line, the outcome from this methodology was extremely rapid turnaround and profit improvement.

Fast forward I started to do consulting through the World Bank, the UN system (including UNDP) and deployed my numbers approach to the extent these institutions make it possible. The right numbers in the hands of the right people and performance does improve ... and wrong numbers are equally effective in getting the wrong results.

In our broader socio-enviro-economic system we use numbers, but they are largely not the right numbers that will result in social good, but merely the numbers ... wrong numbers ... that do nothing for social and environmental good but only facilitate money profit performance and wealth accumulation / wealth concentration.

Peter Drucker used the phrase 'you only manage what you measure'. I argue this is true. But also there is the idea that if you change the way the game is scored, you change the way the game is played.

Robert Kennedy in 1968 called for doing better than GDP growth as a measure of our socio-enviro-economic system performance ... and I concur. But what will be a better measure. Some might argue that the 'market' sorts this out, but this is patently not true in a world where most markets are dominated by a few huge players to the detriment of everyone else. The Enron debacle also comes to mind ... and others.

Scientists are measuring in amazing ways ... but there is no translation of their numbers into some common metrics that can be used easily all the time .. and economists it seems to me have dropped the ball because they are using complex algorithms from the past to compute the present and the future ... with a level of precision that is extremely low, assumptions that are rarely talked about and in the end there is zero accountability for performance anywhere is the system.

I want to see metrics that are multi-dimensional, multi-perspective, based on concepts like double entry in accounting where state and flow are clearly separated (this used to be true, but less so now with quite unprincipled law based accounting), where there are numbers for quality of life and environmental issues that are as rigorous as the numbers there are for profit, stock prices and GDP growth.

The Next System initiative cannot succeed unless is it combined with some serious work on the development and deployment of a coherent system of metrics about everything that matters.
Peter Burgess

'Dear Humanity, We Have a Systems Problem': New Project Aims to Promote Deep Solutions, Radical Transformation

'It's time to talk about alternatives,' says team of thinkers behind the Next System Project

The newly launched project argues that 'large-scale system change is needed' to address humanity's deepest crises, but that cautious optimism is warranted because social, economic and political alternatives do exist. (Image: thenextsystem.org)

'It's time to talk about what's next.'

'It is time for Americans to think boldly about ... what it will take to move our country to a very different place, one where outcomes that are truly sustainable, equitable, and democratic are commonplace.'

Those are the words of academic and author Gar Alperovitz, founder of the Democracy Collaborative, who—alongside veteran environmentalist Gus Speth—this week launched a new initiative called the 'Next Systems Project' which seeks to address the interrelated threats of financial inequality, planetary climate disruption, and money-saturated democracies by advocating for deep, heretofore radical transformations of the current systems that govern the world's economies, energy systems, and political institutions.

As part of the launch, the Next Systems Project produced this video which features prominent progressive figures such as actor and activist Danny Glover, economist Juliet Schor, 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben, labor rights activist Sarita Gupta, and others:

• According to the project's website, the effort is a response to a tangible and widespread 'hunger for a new way forward' capable of addressing various social problems by injecting 'the central idea of system change' into the public discourse. The goal of the project—described as an ambitious multi-year initiative—would be to formulate, refine, and publicize 'comprehensive alternative political-economic system models' that would, in practice, prove that achieving 'superior social, economic and ecological outcomes' is not just desirable, but possible.

• 'By defining issues systemically,' the project organizers explain, 'we believe we can begin to move the political conversation beyond current limits with the aim of catalyzing a substantive debate about the need for a radically different system and how we might go about its construction. Despite the scale of the difficulties, a cautious and paradoxical optimism is warranted. There are real alternatives. Arising from the unforgiving logic of dead ends, the steadily building array of promising new proposals and alternative institutions and experiments, together with an explosion of ideas and new activism, offer a powerful basis for hope.'

The mission statement of the project—articulated in a short document titled It's Time to Face the Depth of the Systemic Crisis We Confront (pdf)—has been endorsed by an impressive list of more than 350 contemporary journalists, activists, academics, and thought leaders from various disciplines who all agree the current political and economic system is serving the interests of 'corporate profits, the growth of GDP, and the projection of national power' while ignoring the needs and wellbeing of people, communities, ecosystems and the planet as a whole.

The statement addresses the dire crisis that now confronts humanity, but also marks the important element of optimism which undergirds the project. It reads, in part:

The good news is that the inability of traditional politics and policies to address fundamental challenges has fueled an extraordinary amount of experimentation in communities across the United States—and around the world. It has also generated an increasing number of sophisticated and thoughtful proposals for transformative change. Together these developments suggest that it is possible to build a new and better America beyond the failed systems of the past and present. [...]

It is time for Americans to think boldly about what is required to deal with the systemic difficulties facing the United States. It is time to explore genuine alternatives and new models—'the next system.' It is time to debate what it will take to move our country to a very different place, one where outcomes that are truly sustainable, equitable, and democratic are commonplace.

As part of the official launch, the team behind the project published a kick-off report—titled The New System Project: New Political-Economic Possibilities for the 21st Century (pdf)—which lays out the problems and the proposed set of solutions in more detail. Key goals of the project, as listed in the report, include:

• To crack through the national media silence and to radically shift the national dialogue about the future away from narrow debates about policies that do not alter any significant decaying trend to awareness that what must be changed is the nature of the political-economic system itself.

• To stimulate national debate about how best to conceive different possible models of a radically different system based on genuine democracy, equality, ecological sustainability, a peaceful global foreign policy, and a thorough-going culture of cooperative community based on non-violence and respect for differences of race, gender, and sexual preference.

• To give publicity to the many “next system” models and approaches now being developed and refined in many parts of the nation and around the world.

• To engage committed academics, on the one hand, and activist organizers and thinkers, on the other, in an ongoing process of close collaborative work and common development in furtherance of such work.

• To help develop concrete “elements” that will likely be required to deal with the structural reorganization of any next system design— and, at the same time, to invest in and work with others to help nurture a rising generation of young scholars who can carry the work forward over the coming decades.

Next month, as part of the project's public engagement strategy, key members and supporters—including Alperovitz and Speth—will participate in an online webinar in order to expand the conversation about these ideas with people across the country.

According to Alperovitz and Speth, bringing people together around these ideas is one of the key aspects of the new project. As they note in an essay published on Common Dreams, 'If we can roll up our sleeves and get organized and serious about really tackling the system question, about building a new system of political economy, there are grounds for optimism that deep and far-reaching change is possible.'

Let the conversation begin.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License