COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Dear Amrote It seems like a 100 years since you were in New York ... and in that time I have not done very much, in contrast to yourself who seems to go from strength to strength. Superb. The world is a very interesting place. Sadly, a lot of what goes on does not make for making the world a better place, but I am encouraged that a lot of young people seem pretty determined that old corrupt men need to step aside. Still a huge amount of work to do, but I am encouraged that there is a growing community of people who appreciate what is possible. I continue with my interest in accounting, accountability and meaningful metrics for a smart society. As long as the primary and really only metric of success is money profit and money wealth, we will continue to allocate resources in ways that make the rich richer and ignore the vast majority who are quite poor or extremely poor. By having something I call social valuadd in the core accounting metric there can be an incentive to allocate resources in a different way. Will this ever get done? Not if the rich have their way ... but they are a rather small population and getting smaller! All the best ... and best wishes Peter