The economy is not the markets. It is a safe house for humanity that we collaboratively co-create, sustain and innovate in which to live our best lives, through our technologies out of the world of Nature into which we all are born.
The house we are living in today was inherited from the 20th Century. And its foundations are washing away. We need to innovate to make our house safe and secure in the 21st Century.
Bank of Nature is imagining that innovation through our innovative new social imaginary of Crisis > Awakening > Collective action in which:
the Crisis is inaction on climate, and our institutional inability to marshall society’s resources to rapidly resdesign and restructure our global energy economy to replace energy extraction from hydrocarbons with new earth-interactive energy capture-and-conversion technologies;
the Awakening is to the pivotal importance of Finance in taking action on climate inaction, and within Finance, the power of Pensions & Endowments, as institutional fiduciary owners of intergenerational Fiduciary Money, to step forward as our Heroes of Climate Security and Habitat Longevity; and
the Collective Action is a new 21st Century Global Citizenship in Fiduciary Money as a new 21st Century Global Commons for deciding through discussion what is and what is not fiduciary for Fiduciary Money when providing fiduciary equity financing to fiduciary-grade enterprises to shape a fiduciary economy that provides a safe and dignified house for humanity in the 21st Century.
So much is happening right now that is showing us that pensions are the solution to climate action that we continue to overlook.
Several Red States, lead by Texas are trying to make it the law that pensions must maximize financial returns, as retaliation for ESG, shareholder activism and investing away from climate change and towards changing our global energy economy.
New York’s Controller, who runs the New York pension investments, is chastising BlackRock publicly for being faithless to its climate action promises.
John Kerry is stating publicly that Government cannot solve the climate crisis.
Mark Carney is learning that the Markets won’t. It’s not their job.
Kerry is right. The private sector has to act.
So, where in the private sector going to find the tens of trillions it will take to redesign and restructure our global energy economy for climate responsibility?
Pensions. The tens of trillions of society’s shared savings aggregated, collectively, worldwide, into social superfunds for retirement security (pensions) and other social goods (endowments) with the super power to negotiate and the legal duty to negotiate towards a fiduciary future that is climate responsible.
But we’ve got that Money commingled with the Markets, rendering it impotent. Like Superman weakened by kryptonite.
We need to take the kryptonite of maximization away, so our Pension & Endowments superfunds can step forward as the Heroes of Climate Action that Government can’t be and Markets won’t be.
There are three key words that we must replace the faithless falseness of Maximization with. They are:
Institutional
Fiduciary
Negotiation.
First, we must acknowledge that institutions do matter - the Invisible Hand is wrong - because money matters in the markets, and Pensions & Endowments, as institutional fiduciary owners of intergeneration fiduciary money aggregated into social superfunds for retirement security (pensions) and other social goods (endowments) own and control more money, collectively, worldwide, than any other decision maker in the markets - or indeed, in the entire economy and all of society - today.
Second, we must come to accept that Fiduciary is our friend. This difficult and off-putting word actually means a legal duty to care about us, and a legal accountability to all of us for the exercise of that caring.
Third, we must become familiar with the truth that Fiduciary Money has the power to negotiate. It does not have to speculate. Some individually, and any number of them working together, collaboratively, in clubs or syndicates - a common practice already today in both Real Estate and Asset Management - have the size, the purpose and the time it takes to use technology to model out future expectations for enterprise cash flows and to agree formulas for sharing in cash flows that are prioritized for:
Sufficiency of cash flows to shape the right economy for keeping a good society ongoing into a dignified future, forever;
Innovation that is right for its time, as times change and humanity evolves prosperous adaptations to life’s constant changes through inquiry, insight, enterprise and exchange, making new choices popular as better fit to changing times, while letting previously popular choices fade into history as a good fit at an earlier time;
Fair Trade in all supply chains;
Fair Hearing of accountability to Government and the community;
Fair Caring for Impacts on Nature;
Fair Working conditions and compensation;
Fair Dealing with customers and competitors through all distribute channels; and
Fair Sharing between enterprising visionaries and their financiers, fiduciary and otherwise.
Once we awaken to this new learning about institutional fiduciary negotiation, we will discover the new possibilities that open up for all of us who care enough to participate to join as new 21st Century Global Citizens in this new 21st Century Global Commons of Fiduciary Money in deciding through individual contributions to local community engagement in globally curated conversations what is fiduciary and what is not fiduciary for the superfiduciary stewards of our Fiduciary Money to do when providing fiduciary equity financing to fiduciary-grade enterprises to shape a fiduciary economy sufficient to keep a good society ongoing into a dignified future, forever, in a safe house for humanity in which we each can find for ourselves a dignified place to live with dignity.
A Postscript on the Climate Crisis
Once we learn to see the economy as a safe house for humanity, we can then see how that house is built within Nature and the natural habitats on earth that are shaped by natural processes that we can manipulate through our technologies, but not without consequences to the longevity of habitats on earth that are inhabitable by us as humans.
There are consequences to our use of technology, and we must keep at top of mind a proper reckoning for those consequences. Otherwise, our house will not be safe, and our future will not be secure.
Climate change is a consequence we are unable to reckon with as long as we leave our Fiduciary Money in the control of experts who are not expert in the expertise we need to keep ourselves safe and secure into the future.
Let’s talk about how habitats on earth are important to our safety and security, and how our choice of energy technologies affects the longevity of habitats on earth that are inhabitable by us, as humans.