Date: 2024-08-17 Page is: DBtxt003.php bkTVM009010200
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Burgess Manuscripts
TrueValueMetrics ACTION INFORMATION FOR ALL OF SOCIETY Metrics about the State, Progress and Performance of Society, the Environment and Economy Metrics about Impact on People, Place, Planet and Profit |
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Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION 1-2 SLOW PROGRESS It seems that humankind has sought to improve life since the beginning of time ... but progress has been slow. Progress has accelerated in the last few hundred years, but results have been mixed with some societies progressing faster and better than others. |
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5000 years of very slow progress ... until very recently
There was very little change for several millennia, but in the recent past ... that is, the last 300 years ... incredible change. We are no longer in a world where shortage and hunger are endemic ... and insoluble. Rather we have a planet where there is the possibility for everyone to be out of poverty and enjoying a reasonable standard of living ... but there are systemic issues that make progress impossible for as much as half the world's population. Though some take pride in the progress as measured by corporate profit performance, stock market prices, and personal money wealth ... others are looking at the continued high levels of poverty, hunger and disease, and the vast amount of waste that characterizes modern society. The universal goal in the modern capitalist economy is more and more growth, and in turn so that there be more and more business profit and incremental investor wealth. 
It is possible to argue that achievement over the past fifty years has been pathetic compared to what could have been ... what should have been! The power of science and technology has progressed at an amazing rate, but the actual achievements are modest relative to the possibilities. 
I drew the above sketch many years ago, early in the Internet era before the incredible progress of the last three decades. Already the issue was clear, but it is now even clearer. Why is this? How is this? The progress and power of science and technology has been far more than expected ... it is amazing ... it is accelerating ... it offers huge potential. But why has science and technology not translated into a much better quality of life. A relatively few have multibillions of dollar wealth while others are scraping by and a huge population live in abject poverty around the world. Achievement is so much less than what might have been expected ... there is something terribly wrong and there seem to be no leaders who are willing to articulate what is wrong. There is a systemic failure of some sort ... and much of the discussion is ideological and outdated with little attention to what the data show. 50 years ago ... great expectations 50 years ago, in the 1960s, the economic power of the United States was at a peak ... WWII had been won ... Europe was rebuilding and international development expectations were positive. There was the expectation that the economies of the 'North' would continue to grow, and there was also the expectation that the poor economies of the newly independent countries would grow as well. The prevailing view was that independence was going to result in a new a better global society. It was expected that the North would progress and that the South would start to catch up. 
What has happened has been very different ... North has had continuing success and the South has largely failed. The North has doubled its wealth every decade for the past five decades. Rich get richer ... poor get poorer. The South has lost wealth every decade for five decades. 
There are some successes ... and the lesson from this is that there could have been much wider success if the governance, the leadership and the system had been tolerably effective. The result is a failing socio-economic system with about half the population of the planet stuck in poverty and hungry and diseased. The North has done better than the expectation due to amazing scientific and technological progress. The South reflects the tragic impact of failed development. We know enough to have had some successes ... the fact of failure in the aggregate suggests something is terribly wrong. Compared to where we could be ... where we should be ... we have failed. There is an obscene amount of poverty, hunger and disease and leadership does not seem to be much capable of making material improvements. We know there has been amazing increases in productivity during the past 40 years, but we also know that almost all of the impact of increased productivity has been for the benefit of the investor class, and for the laboring class there has been a global 'race to the bottom'. This is the default behavior of a market system that has a singular focus on money profit for the business and stock price performance for investors. Diminishing socio-economic expectations The view in the 1990s was that the North was going to have a difficult future because of an approach that depended on unsustainable consumerism and unfriendly global partnerships. As population increases and as aspirations are dashed and hopelessness increases there would be more and more instability and insecurity. This was not a good future scenario. At the same time, the South has no leverage to change anything, and its deterioration would further fuel global insecurity. 
For many reasons, this rather dismal scenario does not have to play out. Technology can be used so that there is continuing progress in the North and with favorable global cooperation, the South can progress as well. The South has a huge capacity to progress, but there needs to be cooperation. This will play out with a new geopolitical balance of power where the old economic predominance of the United States and Western Europe is overtaken by countries like Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (the BRICS) driving progress together with powerful new alliances involving raw materials and energy. There is a better way ... the north has all sorts of possibilities with well intentioned global cooperation. The south has huge capacity in terms of human resources and raw materials but needs well intentioned global cooperation to make these abundant resources productive and valuable. A better socio-economic system is not going to be based on more money being spent the same old way ... it is one where the legitimate hopes and aspirations of the multi-billion people in poverty can start to be fulfilled. Science and technology have huge potential. But this knowledge needs to be mobilized for social good and not merely for a rather limited profit goal. People have a huge potential for doing good ... but the framework for this must be established. 
It is apparent that a part of the failing socio-economic system is the lack of metrics that show what is being successful and what is not. It is difficult, if not impossible to manage what you do not measure. |
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