Date: 2024-07-17 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00007214
Burgess COMMENTARY
Peter Burgess
The purpose of the TrueValueMetrics website
Technology is better than at any time in history. Around the globe, young people are better educated than at any time in history. This should be setting the stage for a magnificent era of peace, progress and prosperity. Why then are people 'in a funk'about the state of society and the global economy?
It is more than 40 years ago, early in my career, that I first started to see examples of socio-economic dysfunction, but could not understand the underlying root causes of this dysfunction. I have been thinking through the functioning of global society and the economy for years. This website enables access to much of the material that has influenced me.
Society and the global economy are large complex systems ... not as complex as nature, but much more complex than any of the systems that human beings have built. The genius of Adam Smith was that after he had studied the economy of his day, he concluded that there were some natural behaviors of people and the market that made the system work in an optimal manner. This economic system facilitated wealth creation during the mercantile era and the subsequent industrial era. Note, however, that all the analysis of performance in these periods was done from the perspective of the Europeans and the Americans who were gaining wealth, but left out those that were losing wealth.
In my view, there has been a lot of dialog about the various problems of modern society, but rather few meaningful potential solutions. As a former corporate CFO I am aware of the power of the accounting system and financial reporting ... and I propose that there should be a new system that expands on financial accounting about the profits of the organization to include value accounting for impact on people, place and planet.
The TrueValueMetrics contains backgtround material that supports the concepts of TVM and Multi Dimension Impact Accounting (MDIA)