A few months I wrote a manifesto of social and economical implications. This is a shorter, more abstract restatement.
There are three global problems that can be treated as one: poverty, enviromental degradation and toil. All three are a result of our current economic system and particularly of the assumptions underpinning it. Consequently, a subtle change in the assumptions can bring about radical change on humankind and nature.
Theoretically, economics treats these problems are unavoidable, because of the axiom of scarcity. The antidote to this principle is the concept of iterative efficiency, which treats today’s trade-offs as temporary failures of imagination, or more positively, as learning opportunities to find ever deeper economic and technological breakthroughs.
We’re not facing scarcity, but rather inefficiency. If our economic system were more efficient, there would be no room for poverty, environmental degradation, nor toil. The real question is then: how can we facilitate the workings of iterative efficiency on a direction which can help everyone and everything?
Through abandoning the concept of profit maximization, it is possible to create organizations that function and thrive within a capitalistic system, while providing services at an increasing quality and decreasing cost. The renunciation of profit maximization is a voluntary, decentralized and non-binding act that requires no strict regulation. Its consequences, however, cannot avoid being deeply political.
The North Star of non-profit maximizing companies is to provide the greatest benefit to everyone, at the lowest cost possible, constantly reinventing its approach so that it can tap onto possibilities that were always there but not used until today. For those who want to work on these problems, the subtle restatement of companies as profitable, non-profit maximizing entities that maximize social value represent a fresh and promising angle of work.