Earth & Society as Investors in Value Creation

As we talk about inclusion, sustainability, inequality, and other social and environmental injustices, it is important to revisit the underlying narratives of value creation. How, who, what and when value is created, defines how, who, what and when wealth is shared. Value creation and sharing are at the heart of the injustices we face as a species. And so, neglecting this aspect is fixing symptoms, it is spending already limited resources on futile solutions, it is letting the cancer of greed grow to uncontrollable levels. As we fix symptoms it helps to diagnose the real problem.

20s Summary

- Like corporations, earth and society invest in value creation.
— Like corporations have a duty to innovate, earth has a duty to sustain life, and society has a duty to cooperate.
— Like corporations, need profits to keep innovating, earth and society need theirs for their duties
— Like corporations gained personhood to protect private profits, community can use technology to protect earth and society’s profits as a common share.
- The common share is different from government taxes. It is a new social finance vehicle to address the glaring neglect of social and environmental issues.

Let’s start with these mind-blowing stats. In 2020 Apple made USD 274.515 billion that’s revenue of USD 848,090 per minute. Amazon made USD 386.064 billion and USD 955,917 per minute. Google made USD 182.53 billion and USD 433,014 per minute. On prime days Amazon, even Alibaba can make over a billion — in a single day. How is this possible today and not 1000 years ago?

Global population explosion no doubt has a hand in this, but it is far from being the cause. Making a million dollars is a million times easier today than 1000 years ago not because entrepreneurs work harder nor because they’re more innovative, take on the riskiest ventures but because the hardest, most creative, and riskiest building blocks needed to create value at a massive scale were already collaboratively and incrementally built by the diverse cooperation of the global-society.

The alphabets, numeric systems, algebra, chemistry are classic examples of millions of such inventions enabling massive wealth creation that would otherwise be impossible for corporations like Apple, GM, and others.

Entitlement by Labour

A mother goes through the pain and labour of carrying a fetus in her womb, endures a rapturing birth, breastfeeds and parents a child with the hope of turning him into a responsible person. It would be a painful injustice if her child is separated from her without her consent, either through a rough divorce, child trafficking, child soldiering, etc.

Like a mother, entrepreneurs feel entitled to 100% profits because they invest time and labour in creating products that we love. It’s difficult not to feel that selfish entitlement when it is your ingenuity, sleepless nights, resilience and appetite for risky ventures that go into products that billions are willing to pay for.

It’s also difficult to acknowledge input other than your own — especially if that input comes from not human individuals but common resources.

Entrepreneurs like to call their ventures ‘My Baby’. But all the hard work and efforts that go into commercial products can be said of the way earth and society create the common value that entrepreneurs depend on to create private products.

Earth too has babies — the natural ecosystems, the human-friendly climate, the freshwater bodies, the food and energy cycles and other natural processes made over billions of years.

Society too has babies — the knowledge, civilisation, cooperation, culture and others that society has created over thousands of years.

Earth’s Hard Work

The earth is a collection of slowly-formed shared resources, the Great Lakes of North America for example didn’t exist 20,000 years ago. For the Great Lakes to reach their present shapes, sizes and peripheral ecosystems, it took approximately 17,000 years for a mile thick ice-sheet covering most of Canada and Northern US to retreat and water from melting glaciers filling the basins.

The value extracted from natural resources like lakes, minerals, forests, land, fossil fuels, and others takes years of minute incremental changes. Most of which are harsh to life itself — involving bio-extinction, evolution, and other natural processes. The favourable climate that enabled the explosion of the human population also went through billions of years of incremental, destruction before perfection. You can relate this to the qualities and characters of our billionaire entrepreneurs — ingenuity, sleepless night, resilience and appetite for risk.

The hard work of the global society

The same slow incremental process is seen in intangible value like knowledge and civilisation, and cooperation. Each letter of the alphabet evolved the same way lakes are formed or an iPhone is conceived and developed — only it takes far little time for the iPhone. For example, here is the evolution process of the letter A from the shape of an ox’s head to its current form.

Number 4 also evolved from the triangular shape of the river Nile in Egypt to the Greek fourth letter delta Δ and the current shape 4.

Collective Intelligence

The world is running a knowledge economy today. Nothing really valuable is created and monetised without knowledge. What is absent in the current narrative about our knowledge economy though is that this knowledge is the result of global collective intelligence.

Without the diverse cross-society interactions that happened across the globe for over 5000 years, the most advanced society would probably be 2000 years back in civilisation.

Most languages are the result of more than three societies intermingling. The current alphabet used by hundreds of languages was copied and refined by over ten ancient societies on different continents.

The Hindu-Arabic numerals we use today, algebra, calculus, paper, printing, electricity, telephony, irrigation, mining, the scientific method, physics laws, and all innovations in education, health, agriculture, transport, economics, manufacturing and other sectors. All these went through cycles of creation by one society, copying (through trade, conquests, explorations) by another society on a different continent and refinement by another on the next continent.

Incremental Intelligence

Further, these innovations were incremental, each building on the other. There wouldn’t be Google for example without the internet, no internet without the computer, no computer without electricity, algebra, calculus, manufacturing, mining, arithmetic, numerals, and definitely not without the alphabet and languages.

One innovation used for task A in society X was copied and refined for task B by society Y, brought back to X or exported to Z to do task C and the cycle continues with indigenous refinement at each stage. It’s this millennia-old globally diverse collective knowledge creation and innovation activity that has enabled humans to leap the civilisation curve, create lots of wealth, and improve wellbeing for billions.

Like a tree that takes years to grow fruits, the fruits of both earth and society have ripened in our age but as we see in the unnatural concentration of wealth, they are harvested and owned by a few at the expense of a healthy society and environment. This is made possible with unfair exclusive narratives that have been scribed into laws and government policies.

One of these is that there’s no limit to wealth accumulation and the other is the wealth creation and ownership narrative that accords corporations personhood and denies earth and society the same.

Unfair Protection

While earth and society’s contribution to value creation isn’t backed by our legal system, ‘corporations’ conveniently attained ‘ corporate person’ legal protection so all profits legally go to them. This was self-seeking because, corporations, earth and society are all ‘social constructs that create value. This stems from the enlightenment age narrative that nature is inferior and is to be dominated by humans.

This injustice would be sustainable if earth and society’s exploited resources are infinite to suffice limitless extraction for private gains — but earth’s resources are finite.

The degrowth camp has called for more sharing and less hoarding of commonwealth if we are to foster sustainability — this calls for revisiting the mechanics of value creation.

Value Creation Dynamics

In The Natural Regulator to Wealth Accumulation, we discussed how the purpose of commerce has transitioned from the natural need for self-preservation to the need for endless wealth accumulation.

Since we are creating value not for self-preservation but for profit, let’s assume earth and society have the same personhood status as do corporations and governments — as the four have different roles in the value creation process.

On the supply-side of an iPhone for example, the person called Apple-Inc. innovates an unusable idea that involves extracting ‘earth’s mineral resources’ — still unusable value at this point , using value — ‘knowledge and cooperation from the global society’ and ‘government’s enabling infrastructure’ .

When the iPhone reaches the counter on the demand-side, the value of Apple’s idea increases from (unusable) to (usable) , earth’s resources from (unusable) to (usable) , society’s knowledge & civilisation to (usable) and government to .

The total increase in value is represented by the price of the iPhone and generates a total profit after deducting all costs of making the iPhone usable and accessible to users.

Wealth Sharing Dynamics

The major injustice is what’s done with earth’s , and society’s PS, — some goes to shareholders and then their luxuries, most of it is reinvested into rent-seeking innovations to further enrich shareholders, some of it is returned 10–20 years later to earth and society in the form of conditional philanthropy.

Our systems with their underlying narrative that you have to be a person to receive wealth from your value, transfer wealth to where it shouldn’t be (the 1%), undermine the value from a shared planet and society and are oblivious of how essential returning planet and society’s wealth is to global sustainability.

The Mother of all Injustices

When slaves ploughed sugar plantations in the USA, the major injustice wasn’t that they were owned as property or tools of production but that ‘the fruit of their labour wasn’t theirs to own’ — it’s parasitic extraction. When slavery was abolished and former slaves received rights and owned the fruits of their labour, their flourishing started.

We may have uprooted full-blown slavery and it may be repugnant today but subtle slavery is slowing down flourishing for society. It’s hidden in low-wages, sweatshops, unpaid housework by stay home mothers, low prices for farmers, corruption, Facebook or Google selling your attention, data, even privacy to advertisers and other such transaction. For planet earth, it’s still full-blown slavery and it’s causing outright ecological destruction.

That the system manipulates consumers to give corporations wealth incentives to innovate and deny planet wealth incentives to sustain us and society to cooperate is the mother of all injustices. This is echoed by the father of capitalism Adam Smith; “It is unjust that the whole of society should contribute towards an expence of which the benefit is confined to a part of the society.”

Parasitic Extraction Effect

Whether you are animate or inanimate, if fair profits or rewards from your input to ‘purchased value’ is owned and controlled by someone else, you are denied a right and incentive to execute your duty. You may keep executing your duties under a colonisation arrangement but eventually the capacity to do so wanes away, putting the sustenance of those who depend on you in danger. Like internal parasitic worms may cause the death of their host and themselves, dependants may sometimes be the colonisers themselves or the masters and their children killed as slaves rebelled.

Climate change, unproductive land, biodiversity extinction, deadly cyclones and wildfires, etc. are effects of a planet whose capacity to perform the ‘duty of sustaining us’ is weakened because its profits are usurped by corporations.

Wars, violent extremism, gangs, riots, looting, immigrations, petty crime, non-cooperation, mental health etc. are the effects of a society whose capacity to perform the ‘duty of cooperation’ is weakened because its profits are usurped by corporations.

Why Planet & Society need their profits.

Because; they have duties to themselves and their dependants. When your profits go to another person, it’s he to flourish while you stagnate or deteriorate like in planet’s situation. Profits do two things a) incentivise you to do what you do — and when they finally come in, b) you use them to access resources like food that gives you the energy you need to execute your duties and provide for your dependants.

So, do inanimate beings have duties and dependants? Let’s explore a truck for example. ‘You depend’ on it to do the ‘duty of delivering merchandise to the market’. The truck’s incentive and profit to do that for you is the fuel and service — just like yours is the revenue from the sales. To the business the truck’s fuel/service may be labelled as costs but if it could talk, the truck would object — ‘that’s my revenue, not costs, I worked for it and I need it to keep going’. Even workers don’t see salaries as costs but as incentives and eventually fruits of their labour which they use to access food and other resources that enable them to continue working.

Capitalism fundamentally thrives on the right to own the fruits from your property and labour. The only profits corporations truly own, are the ones generated from their now usable idea . In taking on earth’s (PE) and society’s (PS) and sometimes government’s (PG) (in tax havens, tax-deductible policies, etc.) capitalism breaks its most fundamental rule. It accords zero value or zero cost (as seen on the corporate balance sheet) to shared property generated by earth and society. When you divert your truck’s returns (i.e. fail to buy fuel and maintenance) — it may not complain because it can’t speak but it won’t deliver your merchandise.

To own another’s profit is to rob them of the ability to execute their duties and put dependants at risk.

The key to note here is that, today we run a system where nothing gets done without money. Reducing air/water pollution, investing in regenerative products and a carbon-free economy, poverty reduction, all require the common share of profits (). Yet it’s held captive by corporations and a few individuals — the 10%. The corporation’s key duty of maximising shareholder value shouldn’t be accomplished by encroaching on the common share — and certainly not on earth and society’s duty to flourish themselves and their dependants.

While we see some of capitalism’s parasitic extraction effects today, the worst is yet to come for future generations — because in letting corporations steal we are legally denying planet and society to perform their duties — all because we believe they need personhood to own their profits.

No Personhood No Sustainability

Under today’s brand of capitalism our relationship with earth and society is one of slavery and colonisation and cannot be sustainable. True sustainability begins with recognising that, earth and society have indispensable duties in the value/wealth creation process and like corporations, their input, rights, and rewards ought to be protected.

If we created a system of corporate personhood purposely to protect the ideas, incentives, and profits of corporations, is it not fair to create a similar system to protect the input, incentives, and profits of earth and society. If not to signal fairness and reciprocity to our inanimate partners, then to avoid or reduce the inevitable onslaught of the parasitic extraction effect of a master/slave relationship above.

A quick hack against this injustice is for earth and society to attain personhood as well — technology and the masses, not lengthy legal gymnastics is what will make the hack quick.

If personhood symbolises self-interest, this move hacks common interest into self-interest.

Community Awakening

The challenge is in getting businesses to — surrender the common share of profits to community. This is especially tough in today’s financialized world where everyone is competing towards accumulating the most wealth, power, and fame.

We currently do this in two ways; a) coercion through taxes and b) voluntarily through modern philanthropy. These two methods try to fill the social-finance deficit, but two things are clear;

The of social-finance is increasing with increasing wealth concentration. It’s just not enough what commons is getting through taxes and philanthropy.

If the common share goes into private control, it doesn’t come back easily. Taxes are manipulated;philanthropy comes back decades later in form of conditional grants.

A third way to get businesses to surrender the common share is by reactivating and repurposing community, from being the submissive consuming lot to an active caretaker of common interests — especially the common share.

The power of government is in coercion, the power of business is in satisfying our material needs, and the power of community is in mass cooperation.

Today community’s cooperative power is untapped, even worse, it is manipulated and corrupted by modern advertising — so, community cooperates through impulsive mass buying amidst rising social ills.

Therefore, coordinating community to enforce the common share while buying personal daily products is the main goal of this project.

In recent years, the modern community has shown an appetite to reclaim its role. Whether it is protests or crowdfunding, communities galvanise around global issues. This awakening is low-hanging fruit to streamline community power from one-off events to lightweight daily action.

In the commercial sense, community means the people you sell to. In the humane sense, community means people with common concerns about neglected social and environmental issues, and a common sense of duty to fix them.

Merging the commercial and humane sides of community offers us another powerful tool of influence. One that inspires businesses to honour the common share and other common interests like ridding value chains of slave labour and wastefulness, reducing emissions, etc.

Originally published at https://www.selflessmarkets.com on August 25, 2021.