New Paradigms in Purpose Driven Economics

Workplace Revolution
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November 7, 2023
·  1 min read
New Paradigms in Purpose Driven Economics
New Paradigms in Purpose Driven Economics
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Here at the X+Why Co-working space in East London, we like to see ourselves as part of those taking the lead because we can. Working hand in hand with purpose-driven business, to usher in a new model of responsible capitalism that works in tandem with people and planet. An unexpected crisis like a pandemic, is one way of peeling the band aids and blinkers from the structural faults of a system, including wealth inequality, corruption and ecological destruction. This has blown the Overton Window wide open, allowing for a much wider range of ideas to take a more functional stance in political discussion.

Some of the shift to digital is unwanted, fraught with risk and lonely.

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But in some areas, organisations and leaders are realising that it’s actually more powerful and efficient.

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So why didn’t you do it before?

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Because it’s easier to follow. Because it’s more comfortable to stay where we are.

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Waiting to do something because you’re forced to is rarely a positive approach to growth or leadership. Abrupt shifts against our will may cause change, but they’re inefficient and destabilising.

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Next time, take the lead. Not because you have to, but because you can. - Because We Were Comfortable, Seth Godin

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Here at the x+why Co-working space in East London, we like to see ourselves as part of those taking the lead because we can. Working hand in hand with purpose-driven business, to usher in a new model of responsible capitalism that works in tandem with people and planet.

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A year or two from now, COVID-19 will have become a manageable part of our lives. Effective treatments will have emerged and a vaccine will be available. However a new behavioural and economic landscape will only just be emerging.

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An unexpected crisis like a pandemic, is one way of peeling the band aids and blinkers from the structural faults of a system, including wealth inequality, corruption and ecological destruction. This has blown the Overton Window wide open, allowing for a much wider range of ideas to take a more functional stance in political discussion - universal basic income, state surveillance, and government intervention to name a few.

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As discussed in previous pieces on the actions of Corona Virus as a catalyst for change, shifts that may have taken decades, can now occur in weeks, setting us on a trajectory that may leave society unrecognisable, much sooner than we think.

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The end of the second world war set the scene for a cataclysmic change known as ‘The Great Acceleration’, which was the greatest, and most rapid increase in human activity in history across a vast number of dimensions, including global population, trade, travel, production and consumption. Free-market Neoliberalism took its place in the Overton Window, thanks mainly to the post-war disruption caused by the Oil Shock.

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Our discussion with X+Why members Purpose Union previously highlighted some of the central concerns around the value system of capitalism today - namely that it seems to have come to represent the idea that humans are at their core, individualistic, calculated, and material. Today, the world’s 26 richest people own half the world’s wealth, of the world’s largest economies, 69 are corporations, and the relentless pursuit of profit and growth above all else have accelerated our need for Noah’s Arc in the face of climate change.

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Whilst many may be hoping to return to normal, the reality is that this is not something we can afford to do. If we were to return to business as usual, there is the risk that instead of shifting course from our failing trajectory, we would only accelerate further towards it.

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China has already relaxed its environmental laws to further boost production, Hungary has passed a bill allowing Viktor Orban to rule by decree, and Israel’s Prime Minister shut down the courts in order to avoid his trial for corruption. More covertly, where privacy and data are concerned, decrees are being passed to access user data and share location readings. As Author Yuval Harari pointed out, such short-term emergency measures may easily become future fixtures for life.

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However as with the founding of the United Nations, the international recognition of the crime of genocide, and the UN’s universal declaration of Human Rights after the second world war, there is always the capacity for change, and for positive reactions to emerge and predominate. While the Overton Window may be permitting surveillance and authoritarian practices on one side, it is also opening up new political realities and possibilities on another.

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This includes the possibility of a fairer society. Denmark plans to pay 75% of the salaries of employees in private companies, in order to keep them and their businesses solvent. The UK has announced a similar plan to cover 80%. Hotels are being leased to shelter the homeless, evictions for renters and homeowners have been halted and Spain is nationalising private hospitals. In America, Andrew Yang has raised the idea of a Universal Basic Income, which has now become a viable talking point.

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As far as the environment is concerned, Coronavirus has already been more effective in slowing down climate breakdown and ecological collapse than all the world’s policy initiatives combined. One scientist calculated that twenty times as many Chinese lives have been saved by reduced air pollution than lost directly to coronavirus. Over the next year, we’re likely to see a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions greater than even the most optimistic forecasts, as a result of the decline in economic activity.

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Although Globalisation has brought many benefits, there have also been pitfalls. One of these has been the ‘race to the bottom’, caused by Transnational Corporations encouraging nations to compete against each other to reduce worker protections as a means of attracting their business. As supply chains are disrupted, the same organisations are increasingly having to once again source closer to home under Glocalisation, in order to continue to meet demand.

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While production returns local, community and knowledge is going increasingly global, as people connect online and scientists collaborate around the world in an unprecedented collective effort to find a vaccine; a globally crowdsourced library is also offering a “Coronavirus Tech Handbook” to collect and distribute the best ideas for responding to the pandemic.

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Our increasingly fragmented and disconnected communities are once again being rebuilt. Rebecca Solnit’s 2009 book, A Paradise Built in Hell, documents how, contrary to popular belief, disasters frequently bring out the best in people, as they reach out and help those in need around them. The compassionate response Solnit observed in disaster zones has now spread across the planet with a speed matching the virus itself.

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Mutual aid groups are forming in communities everywhere to help those in need. The website Karunavirus (Karuna is a Sanskrit word for compassion) documents a myriad of everyday acts of heroism, such as the thirty thousand Canadians who have started “caremongering,” and the mom-and-pop restaurants in Detroit forced to close and now cooking meals for the homeless. The phrase “social distancing” is helpfully being recast as “physical distancing” since Covid-19 is bringing people closer together in solidarity than ever before.

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All of this leads to a revolution in values. This rediscovery of the value of community has the potential to be the most important factor of all in shaping the trajectory of the next era. New ideas and political possibilities are critically important, but ultimately an era is defined by its underlying values, on which everything else is built: fairness, altruism, and compassion cause us to identify with something larger than our own individual needs.

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At x+why, we support business on a values-lead mission to rebuild the economy of the future, one that understands the power of profit, but does not take this at the cost of community and ecology. This is why purpose-driven business has been at the heart of what we do, even before such a Pandemic arrived. The motives and ethics behind the businesses under our roof, alongside the B Corp and Why B Programme, are now more poignant than ever, as the start-ups and businesses of the future lead us into the next paradigm.