“The elimination of cash will be a consequence of digital payment systems – whether public or private – proliferating. The reality is that, in a cashless world, every transaction will leave a digital trace, such that the transaction is either [viewable] by a private payments provider or by the central bank or some government agency.”

Economist Eswar Prasad in an interview with Coindesk
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2021/09/20/central-banks-vs-private-currencies-the-future-of-money-with-economist-eswar-prasad/amp/

The Dialectic: CBDC vs. Bitcoin

Since the U.S. Federal Reserve launched its FedNow payment system in July 2023, public concern over the dangers of Central Bank Digital Currencies – CBDCs – seems to be (modestly) on the rise, or at least acknowledged by a growing number of mainstream press and publications. Although the FedNow system does not itself establish the mechanism for launching a CBDC, some commentators say that it is a crucial step in that direction. It’s a slippery slope toward a brave new world in which trackable, traceable, programmable monetary tokens function not only for the public-facing reasons -that is, to streamline payment systems and prevent illicit transfers and money laundering, etc., – but also to enable government* to dictate what you can or cannot do with your money and, from there, to control all aspects of your life. To be sure, these dangers are real and the public’s growing awareness of them is progress.

Central banks, governments, think tanks, and financial analysts argue that CBDCs are needed in order to ensure that national economies remain competitive in an increasingly digitalized and globalized world – one which is also geopolitically fragile and in which terrorism and financial crimes continue to threaten public security. Navigating these global financial transformations in a manner that preserves domestic and international stability requires the specialized policy insight and an overarching perspective that only centralized banking authorities possess. Therefore, nation-states and central banks must ensure that CBDCs are the anchor of the emerging digital currency infrastructure. Moreover, these authorities should develop CBDCs that include verified identity systems in order to prevent dangerous actors from using digital money for illicit activities and to protect legally-compliant digital transactions from vicious interference. As stated in the Federal Reserve’s 2022 CBDC Discussion Paper,

The Federal Reserve’s initial analysis suggests that a potential U.S. CBDC, if one were created, would best serve the needs of the United States by being privacy-protected, intermediated, widely transferable, and identity-verified.

U.S. Federal Reserve, Money and Payments: The U.S.Dollar in the Age of Digital
Transformation
, January 2022.

The inseparability of CBDC and identity verification is a key reason why critics caution that CBDC will mean an end to consumer privacy and the culmination of state efforts to erect a total surveillance state.

I’d like to suggest here that the growing salience of CBDC’s totalitarian potential has been allowed or designed to occur in order to catalyze public demand for private digital currencies, which are no different from CBDC in terms of their potential to use your data against you and might be even worse from the standpoint of respecting contitutional and political rights. Insofar as private currencies contribute to the disintegration of nation-states and the transition to the new international economic order (NIEO) of governance, they create a system in which AI-calculated bottom-line (or “triple-bottom line“) financials and risk assessments determine what and whose rights deserve protection. I will return to this below.

The rush to develop government-backed CBDCs is, in part, states’ / central banks’ response to the development of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (sometimes referred to more precisely as a cryptoasset), which are digital tokens of commerce, created in the private sector, that provide an alternative medium of exchange to traditional money. Most cryptocurrencies claim to offer users a greater level of anonymity and freedom than conventional payment systems which depend on banks and financial institutions that are regulated by government law and policy. Cryptocurrencies, which are often attractive to those who distrust governmental power (especially after 2020) as well as to those who doubt the state’s capacity to keep apace of larger technological and economic transformations, have their own risks, especially their volatility (owing to their lack of a standard, secured asset to support their value), facilitation of opportunities for tax evasion and illegal transactions, and their potential to undermine national monetary policy and destabilize global financial systems. Moreover, cryptocurrency holders are often limited in their ability to redeem their value because cryptocurrencies lack status as legal tender. Many businesses are hesitant to accept cryptocurrencies as payment due to their being unsecured by a traditional asset or because of underdeveloped cryptocurrency infrastructure.

The dialectic between CBDC and cryptocurrencies has been framed in mutually exclusive terms: between CBDC’s value-stability and state surveillance, on the one hand, or crypto’s volatility and freedom / privacy on the other. Put differently, the narrative has coalesced into two choices: either CBDC’s total centralized control or crypto’s freewheeling, decentralized chaos. Either course would mean a real loss to the average person who wants to conduct his affairs with regularity and without state surveillance and the threat of losing access to his money for arbitrary or ideolgical reasons.

The “Third Way”: Stablecoins

As I have argued before, a monumental Reset of the world’s social, economic, and political order is underway. The Resetters who are endeavoring to accomplish such a feat – the ultra-wealthy, powerful elite who exert unchecked control over governments and geopolitics, global finance, academia and the media, and private corporations – have mastered the technique of the Hegelian dialectic as a means to direct the general population toward this brave, new configuration. The dialectic is a narrative strategy which operates by suggesting to the public eye two opposed and conspiciously problematic alternatives (thesis and anti-thesis) in order to prime the public for a new, “third-way” (synthesis) solution – a solution that promises to preserve all that was desireable in each of the two previous positions, while overcoming all their liabilities.

Stablecoins will not only affect how we conduct traditional payments like remittances but will also enable new forms of commerce previously unimaginable. Stablecoins could become the core building blocks of our future financial architecture.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/07/13/op-ed-the-future-is-stablecoin-wise-regulation-can-foster-its-growth.html

In the context of the digital currency dialectic, the third-way alternative appears to be the stablecoin, a protocol developed 1) to address the pitfalls of first-generation cryptocurrencies (e.g. their volatility), and 2) to make allowances for some degree of government / centralized banking oversight, without, however, surrendering the privilege of the private-sector to issue and manage digital currencies that, in effect, compete with the fiat currencies issued by sovereign states. According to Investopedia,

Stablecoins are a newer breed of cryptocurrency gaining popularity for their commitment to minimize the price volatility that has limited the use of Bitcoin (BTC) and other digital currencies as a medium of exchange. … Stablecoins promise cryptocurrency adherents the best of both worlds: stable value without the centralized control attributed to fiat.

https://www.investopedia.com/tech/stablecoin-answer-all-cryptocurrency-problems/

The following screenshots from cryptocurrency giant Coinbase list the key features of stablecoin design and show the rate of stablecoin usage over the past several years. Notice that the phrase “all the benefits of cash without the drawbacks” is repeated three times in the website post – a clear indication that the new cryptocurrency is the third-way solution “of the future.” And of course everyone wants to be included in “the future,” right?

Read the full Coinbase Stablecoin Whitepaper here:

Now let’s examine the landscape of stablecoin features to see more precisely how the dialectic shapes up. Stablecoins are digital tokens designed with requirements for asset-backing or for algorithmic controls to ensure that the coin maintains a predictable value profile. With asset-backed stablecoins, the value represented by the coin is pegged to traditional assets such as gold or shares of stock in a company or fiat currency, to name a few. In this case, the issuer of a stablecoin – whether an traditional bank or a firm specializing in new financial technologies (“fintech”) – establishes a protocol that defines the relationship between the face-value of the stablecoin and the value of some other specific asset or portfolio of assets, so that the price of the coin adjusts to the market conditions of its underlying assets. In the case of stablecoins governed algorithmically, the coin’s protocol fixes an algorithmic control that pegs the supply of its coin to a function of the market price, triggering coin buy-backs or additional coin offerings as needed to maintain a stable supply-to-price ratio. Pegging the face-value of a stablecoin to assets or by algorithm is a process called “tethering.” Tethering is the basis for the claim that stablecoins – unlike first-generation cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, whose value is largely a function of the coin’s reputation capital – carry less volatility risk for their users, especially when the coin’s issuers are established financial institutions and subject to public and private regulatory oversight on the level of fiscal and monetary policy.

[Note: I mention algorithm-backed stablecoins here simply to acknowledge one prong of the stablecoin landscape. Coinbase concedes in its stablecoin whitepaper (linked above), “It is now broadly understood that algorithmic stablecoins are not really stable, and it is a misnomer to call them as such. Their value is not backed by exogenous reserves, but based on a tautology – that one token can be converted into another, and vice versa, at a ratio determined by code.”]

Stablecoin issuers are also expected to adopt collateralization policies, which are much like reserve requirements in the traditional banking sector: reserve requirements ensure that banks maintain sufficient cash stores to ensure that account-holders may withdraw funds from their accounts when they wish, rather than at times dictated by the bank’s lending practices. Because stablecoin issuers promise to hold in reserve the fiat currency or other asset that justifies the coin’s price, stablecoin holders enjoy the added security of being able to redeem the face-value of their coins for cash or other assets quickly and easily. Additionally, stablecoin issuing institutions are expected to comply with Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) best practices (more on this below) in order to reduce the danger of illicit transfers and potential tax-evasion, another feature that contributes to growing consumer confidence in stablecoin markets.

“Stablecoins represent one of the most concrete examples of crypto’s promise, protecting individuals against currency devaluation, accelerating and reducing the cost of global payments for businesses, and building infrastructure for a more open, accessible financial system. At a fundamental level, stablecoins aren’t merely a new asset but a radical new platform.”

– Basho, “Stablecoins: the Next Financial Platform,” The Generalist, July 16, 2023

https://thegeneralist.substack.com/p/stablecoins

Their proponents argue that stablecoins not only hedge against risks to individual users and to society-at-large, they do so while at the same time offering the privacy from state surveillance and the freedom protections that initially made Bitcoin attractive. (Note: Whether blockchain actually ensures privacy is a topic for another post – I think it does not, as I discuss later. But for our purposes here, let’s take their claims at face-value.) Like Bitcoin and other first-generation cryptocurrencies, stablecoins are private financial instruments that operate via decentralized blockchain networks, such as Ethereum, rather than state-regulated centralized data networks. Therefore, stablecoin transactions may be executed peer-to-peer, bypassing central bank intermediaries and government oversight and reducing the threat of censure or confiscation by those entities. In other words, because stablecoins are designed to operate on the same distributed ledger technology as that which underpinned Bitcoin, they have multiple advantages over a public CBDC, namely, that stablecoin users may expect their transactions to be both secure and private because they operate on trustworthy, decentralized blockchain networks.

“Blockchain” is a term that is largely unfamiliar to the general public, and the technology it describes can be confusing. At the most basic level, blockchain is simply a new way to record and share information through a network of independent, yet synchronized, depositories. A summary post in Bitcoin Magazine clarifies the process and potential of the new technology:

The essential power of blockchain technology is its ability to distribute information. Because it is distributed across all of the nodes, or individual computers, that make up the system, the term “blockchain technology” is often swapped with “distributed ledger technology.” A blockchain’s database isn’t held in a single location, which could be infiltrated or controlled by a single party, but rather it is hosted by numerous (in the case of Bitcoin, tens of thousands of) computers all at once.

The blockchain network automatically verifies itself at certain intervals, creating a self-auditing system that guarantees the accuracy of the data it holds. Groups of this data are known as “blocks,” and as these blocks are cryptographically chained together, the pieces of data get buried and harder to manipulate. Altering any piece of data on the blockchain would require a huge amount of computing power.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/guides/what-is-blockchain

Significantly, blockchain is marketed as an alternative to the legacy systems of information and communications technologies (ICT) that have facilitated a dangerous concentration of power into the hands of established centralized regulatory authorities – especially with respect to power over data. The architecture of blockchain, its champions claim, guarantees the security of the data recorded to it and prevents unauthorized agents from writing or re-writing the books, so-to-speak. The decentralized structure of the network is the basis for claims that it is “democratized” and, therefore, acts as a barrier to manipulation by those who already wield tremendous control over resources, narratives, and money. The democratization of data security and integrity via blockchain opens up opportunities for individuals and small businesses that were previously available only to the large firms who could afford the costs of protecting their ICT networks. Touting the benefits of blockchain for small enterprises, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lists “creating non-fungible tokens,” “raising money in new ways,” and “showing how products are sourced.” And in a summary note to small businesses, the Chamber recommends blockchain-based cryptocurrency payments as being less susceptible to malicious interference by hackers than other electronic settlements:

Cryptocurrency is considered more secure than credit and debit card payments. This is because cryptocurrencies do not need third-party verification. When a customer pays with cryptocurrency, their data isn’t stored in a centralized hub where data breaches commonly occur. Rather, their information is stored in their crypto wallet. Plus, the blockchain general ledger is used to verify and record every transaction, making it very difficult, if not impossible, to steal someone’s identity.

https://www.uschamber.com/co/run/finance/accepting-cryptocurrency-as-payment

We see, then, that the “third-way” Stablecoin Solution to the CBDC vs. Cryptocurrency Dialectic rests heavily on the assurance that blockchain technology will ensure a highly-secure, or trustworthy, system for transferring digital assets of value (cryptocurrencies) from one party to another. And – because its security and trustworthiness derive from its decentralized design (its structure) rather than a guarantee (a promise) by a state or other centralized authority – blockchain technology appears to protect against intrusive meddling with that information by governments or other entities. Therefore, blockchain-based currency systems are pitched as the means to enable individuals and small enterprises to break free of traditional systems and rules, to contract with each other directly in new and innovative ways, and to bypass all sorts of social, political, and financial barriers to the golden ticket: opportunity.

The Trust Dialectic: Old Blocks and New Chains

It is no exaggeration to say that blockchain is one of the most “disruptive” technologies of our time. Its capacity to create a permanent digital record of any and all information pertaining to any and all resources (real or virtual or imaginary) is revolutionizing finance, business, geopolitics, accounting, data-management, predictive analytics, and communications in ways that are too numerous to list here. Suffice it to say that the most ardent supporters of the blockchain revolution – powerful and influential representatives of multinational corporations, think-tanks, business and professional organizations, academia, government, and social and activist organizations – celebrate its potential to usher in a bold new era characterized by the values of sustainability, equity, resilience, safety, inclusivity, transparency, and accountability. Or, in other words, to launch the Reset.

Conspicuously absent from most of the glowing, buzzword-laden visions of a blockchain-better world (or, at least from those presented to mainstream audiences), is a candid discussion of how blockchain undermines the modern system of nation-states and the very idea of constitutional government – both of which are among the primary organizing forces of contemporary societies. This silence is telling, and a closer examination of the development of blockchain technology reveals that it was designed not so much with the goal of liberating the average person from oppressive structures as it was for upending traditional sovereign states in order to implement technology-based networked global governance. Global governance differs from constitutional government, inasmuch as governance is a regulatory regime overseen by stakeholders – by private or quasi-private entities, especially financial and business entities that stand to benefit from the new regulations – whereas government by sovereign states operates through laws and institutions whose authority (at least on paper) derives from and is accountable to the people of those states.

The impact that blockchain technology is set to have on the existing system of nation-states is discussed in detail in the e-book Blockchain: Capabilities, Viability, and the Socio-Technical Environment, published in 2020 and linked below with annotated screenshots. The collection of articles, written by high-level consultants from the banking, ICT, and regulatory sectors, contains a history and explanation of blockchain technology as well as insights into its implications for existing nations–especially their ability to determine fiscal policy. Importantly, the study places national institutions squarely in the reactionary camp, claiming that blockchain has enabled the emergence of economic frontiers that burst the capacity of conventional legal frameworks and lie beyond national jurisdictions. The authors argue that new, global institutions with expanded regulatory authority are therefore needed in order to bring stability and fairness to the new blockchain-enabled global economy and to direct it toward ends that are decided to benefit the global community.

The study considers public opinions surrounding governance in general and suggests that the new regulatory frameworks needed to address the “social upheaval” wrought by blockchain would find greater public acceptance if they were promulgated by the national “democratic” institutions with which the public is most familiar, as opposed to unfamiliar global governing bodies, which do not enjoy the same degree of public trust. The authors go on to say that the familiar national institutions are constrained by laws and other considerations which pose intractable obstacles to their ability to develop successful policy resposes to blockchain-based transformations. Soft law, corporate policy, issuances of standard practice, partnership agreements, and other private-sector initiatives are therefore the critical fields for introducing and enforcing regulations that otherwise would meet with delay and opposition from public institutions. In short, blockchain technology presents the world’s nations with challenges that they are unable to navigate and which will, in the end, require a divestiture of authority to global policy-makers, administrators, and technologists.

The scope of transformation projected is difficult for the average person to imagine, but it’s one that the “innovators” in finance, technology, and governance speak about openly amongst themselves. See, for example, Politico‘s coverage of The Networked State, a book written in 2022 by former Coinbase executive Balaji Srinivasan. The book builds on Srinivasan’s remarks at the 2017 TechCrunch Disrupt conference, a key theme of which was the opportunity for technology firms to assume responsibility for filling the “gaps” left by government policy:

“Srinivasan’s vision for the future is more ambitious. In it, people build online social networks around a shared social vision (like life extension, or greater income equality), and eventually group together in pockets of physical land in the real world, forming internet-linked archipelagos. They also use cryptocurrency, keep records with blockchains, stake out their own slices of the Metaverse, and eventually win diplomatic recognition from existing nation-states. This vision culminates in what Srinivasan, a vocal critic of both American and Chinese political elites, calls a “recentralized center.” In other words, network states come together and take over the world.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2022/07/21/technology-vs-the-nation-state

Of course, many of the champions of Bitcoin knew this all along and, as demonstrated in the article below, they unabashedly support the sea-change.

The more that blockchains power the economy, the harder it will be for nation-state governments to track all of these money movements, and the harder it will be for them to tax these movements. … Today, the way governments do it is by regulating local banks, by getting direct data feeds from them, by intervening the international money flows through the SWIFT system, by freezing assets… But how do you do that in a world where all exchanges are decentralized?

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-and-the-end-of-nation-states

One must wonder if the demographic which would prefer a stablecoin (emphasis on the “stable”, with its tethering to state- /central bank-backed fiat currency) to investments in riskier cryptocurrencies would also be willing to accept the dissolution of the nation-state? My hunch is that such is not the case. After all, what happens to the value of a stablecoin when the state responsible for establishing the worth of fiat currency becomes obsolete? Or to the national economy if the stablecoin market outstrips the market for fiat currencies? If nation-states give way to private global regulation, could the value of a stablecoin exert pressure on the value of the fiat currencies that are supposed to guarantee the price of the coin? How such questions are answered has the potential to reshape drastically the social, legal, and political orders to which we are accustomed.

On a more practical level, won’t many stablecoin holders be concerned over the general consequences that erosion of national institutions will have, for example, on long-standing entitlement programs – Medicare or Social Security, for example – and other government services (FDIC or OSHA)? This is to say nothing of the possible attenuation of constitutional rights – the liberties and freedoms that government is established to secure – or the potential abandonment of the principle that just government derives from the consent of the governed. Are we ready to follow the example of Estonia, the world’s most advanced digital republic, into the era of the “networked state”?

It is on this point that we see how the dialectic of digital currency intersects with another instance of dialectical nudging: that of public trust, and whether it is to be placed in the old nation-state or its anti-thesis–the emerging networked state. As we saw discussed in the Blockchain e-book, public trust is a critical subject because of its role in determining which entities are perceived to have legitimate authority to govern – both in terms of issuing rules and enforcing compliance with them. If their operations are grounded in a solid reserve of public trust, governments, businesses, and other organizations may expect to receive the inputs that are necessary for their long-term stability, namely, the public’s acceptance of and compliance with their rules and terms and the public’s financial and in-kind support for their enterprises. In general, the public tends to place its trust in what it knows over the uncertainty of novel solutions (hence the ubiquitous marketing campaigns in support of “innovation”). Even the U.S. Declaration of Independence states that, “all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” Therefore, in order to transform the existing system of sovereign nation-states so as to capture the potential of the blockchain revolution to create a sustainable, resilient, transparent, etc. world, the Resetting elites must create a narrative that incrementally shifts the public trust away from the old and toward the new through a dialectic strategy. Within this narrative, the “third-way” solution of global governance appears to coincide with the principles of existing national, constitutional structures. By securing the appearance of compatibility with familiar, publicly-accountable institutions, global governance acquires a share of legitimacy and public trust that it would otherwise lack. The point is worth emphasizing: navigating the optics is of crucial importance.

The Edelman Trust Barometer Report, published in 2021, provides an excellent example of the Resetters’ technique of nudging public opinion on trust toward a third-way solution. Although this report is not explicitly concerned with blockchain technology, it is an example of the kind of “normative text” that the Blockchain e-book recommends (see screenshots) in order to prime the public for a world that is quickly moving beyond the nation-state. The Trust Barometer tells a narrative of 1) a problem: namely, the public’s waning confidence in traditional governments’ ability “to solve the world’s pressing problems” (to use one of the Resetters’ stock phrases) – and 2) a solution: the public’s new evidence-based trust in businesses – and employers in particular – as the ethical agents who are able to deliver solutions where governments fail to do so, especially in the increasingly globalized and digitalized world.

The narrative effects a subtle, yet critical, shift in the architecture of public trust as a concept: whereas a common-sense appraisal would likely identify the basis of public trust in historical experience (custom, familiarity, regularity, etc.) or in reference to normative theory (of law, justice, constitutionality, e.g.), the Trust Barometer posits public trust as a function of an institution’s success in materializing a specific set outcomes, results, or deliverables – all of which echo the themes of the Reset and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. That the Trust Barometer’s narrative of public trust 1) glosses over significant distinctions in institutional organization and purpose, 2) neglects alternative accounts of the pressing problems and their solutions, and 3) characterizes “the public” in unilateral terms, are indications that its account is pure propaganda–charts, graphs, and data notwithstanding.

Importantly, most Resetters do not openly advocate for the complete devolution of the world’s existing governments into digitialized networked states – a proposal too radical for most people and one that would certainly arouse public scrutiny of the Reset agenda. Rather, the suggested way forward is to enlist businesses and the private sector in the effort to rehabilitate and ennoble governments through partnerships in which businesses lend their expertise and problem-solving capacity to government institutions for the benefit of all. In other words, the Resetters propose a seemingly moderate third-way approach: for governments to regain public trust and to deliver the solutions that the people demand (or such is their claim) will depend on “reimagining” governments as public-private partnerships. What this means is that the force and authority of government may be directed according to the enlighted perspective of private business and “civil society” organizations that have the technological and operational capacity to usher in solutions on a grand scale. Marrying the two – 1) existing government forms and the public trust that has supported them with 2) the innovative vision, efficiency, and technological capacity of the private sector – in a third-way public-private partnership (or “P3”) avoids the public outcry that would certainly accompany an explicit proposal to enter the era of the networked state. Instead, the moderate-appearing P3 makes what is actually a grand-scale transfer of public authority to the private sector appear to be consistent with conventional governments and the principle of popular sovereignty which is (generally speaking) at the core of most Western constitutional systems. This sleight-of-hand is the means by which the private-sector Resetters co-opt public confidence in and compliance with a variety of “reimaginings” that all tend toward the new era of the networked global state. And promises to deliver built-back-better outcomes are the carrots that entice the public to place its trust in these partnerships.

Stablecoin Regulation: a Narrative of Public Trust, Technology, and the New Economy

In order to demonstrate the interconnectedness of the dialectic of digital currency and the dialectic of public trust, we have only to examine the dynamic emerging around stablecoin regulation, in which the model of state-/public- and private-sector collaboration features prominently. Take, for example, the points highlighed in the following screenshots from a response issued by Circle Internet Financial, one of the largest stablecoin developers and a partner with Coinbase, to the Federal Reserve’s CBDC Discussion Paper.

Here, Circle, the issuer of the USDC and EURC coins – stablecoins tethered to the U.S. Dollar and the Euro, respectively – follows the pattern we observed in the Trust Barometer: 1) calling into question whether government is fit to be trusted with the administration of digital money and 2) arguing that the private sector is willing to cooperate with and lend its expertise to the public’s legacy system in order to 3) implement a trustworthy solution that secures the best of both worlds.

It is not just stablecoin issuers – who presumably have something to gain – that proffer this and similar narratives. As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) put it in one of its blog posts, “The public and private sectors should continue to work together to provide money to end-users, while ensuring stability and security without stifling innovation. Banks could come under pressure as specialized payment companies vie for customers and their deposits, but credit provision must be sustained even during the transition. And fair competition must be upheld—not an easy task given the large technology companies entering the world of payments.”

Closer to home, FinExtra reported in 2020 that the U.S. Office of Comptroller of Currency gave its approval for federally-chartered banks “to hold stablecoin ‘reserves’ on behalf of customers who issue certain stablecoins.” And more recently, the U.S. Congress took up the subject in a Hearing entitled, “Putting the ‘Stable’ in ‘Stablecoins:’ How Legislation Will Help Stablecoins Achieve Their Promise” As the name implies, collaboration between government and private-sector stablecoin issuers is to be a pillar of the way forward.

See also, for example, what Charlene Fadirepo, “a financial empowerment speaker, a Bitcoin activist and former US regulator with 15 years of experience in the traditional finance world,” has to say about the obstacles that would beleauger a successful effort by the U.S. government (via its central banking system) to address the challenges posed by the blockchain revolution in global payment systems. Her remarks are clearly positioning for the private sector to deliver a solution that is beyond the capacity of public institutions acting alone:

“Plus, having spent nearly six years of my 15 year banking career at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in a bank supervision audit capacity, it is also clear that many politicians have severely underestimated the legal, compliance, financial, technology and regulatory administrative burden required to launch a central bank digital currency in the United States, not to mention the onslaught of congressional hearings and the passage of a specific CBDC law that would be required for a digital dollar to go live.”

https://blockworks.co/news/fednow-cbdc-save-us

No matter the sector, topic, or audience, the narrative pattern that consistently arises in studies, reports, articles, press releases, whitepapers, and all sorts of other marketing materials is clear: governments lack the vision, speed, expertise, and agility to navigate digital transformation and Globalization 4.0 – therefore, the private sector must step up to the plate just as it did during the public health emergency of 2020. This time around, it is the financial technology firms that have the opportunity to partner with governments to ensure that the latter is equipped to sanction private-sector solutions to the problem of an unsustainable economic order.

Building Back Better: Partnerships and the Economy of Trusted Identity

In January 2024, stablecoin-developer Circle Internet Financial participated in the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, the theme of which was “Rebuilding Trust.” The WEF is a partner of the United Nations and one of the most influential organizations in advancing global policy initiatives through collaborative, innovative partnerships between government, business, and civil society. One of the WEF’s signature initiatives is Inclusive Capitalism, which it advocates as a “new social contract” based on a reinvention of society, politics, and the economy and aimed at universal prosperity and planetary health. At this meeting, an “array of Fortune 500 firms… engaged with [Circle’s] leadership team,” and Circle executives presented at several events, all focused on the emerging internet financial system and how it may contribute to rebuilding the economy. According to Josh Burek, Circle’s Senior Director of Strategic Positioning, “a healthy economy runs on trust. Every transaction depends on it. To invest money is to trust in the future. To spend it is to trust in a good or service. To send it requires trust in the transmission.”

Circle’s approach to building the trust economy is twofold. First, Circle is committed to working with Congress and other public authorities as it continues to promote the private stablecoin market. As stated in its Response to the Federal Reserve’s CBDC Discussion Paper, “Bringing stablecoins like Circle’s USD Coin (“USDC”) under common-sense regulatory guidelines would ensure proper supervision over an asset that is already achieving many of the Federal Reserve’s objectives in a potential CBDC. In the longer term, the ability for existing blockchain-based payment system innovations to meet their maximum potential will be greatly enhanced once Congress passes a federal framework for regulating all digital assets.” Circle’s proposals for collaboration with government regulators include (among others): the development of clear rules and standards for regulating digital currencies, consideration to grant legal tender status to stablecoins, supporting the global competitiveness of the U.S. Dollar through private innovation, and countering financial crime. Circle even suggests that the Federal Reserve could serve as the custodian of its coin’s underlying reserve assets.

Importantly, Circle’s proposals for collaborating with public authorities – all of which aim at building the trust economy – are presented in contexts (its Response paper and at the WEF meeting) that also explicitly highlight 1) the government’s inability to provide solutions needed in the digitalized and globalized economy, 2) the public’s growing distrust of government and traditional banking institutions, 3) the numerous accomplishments of private-sector partnerships to drive innovation and address risks, and 4) Circle’s committment to create societal value through ESG- and SDG-aligned investments. This is a paradigmatic example of the convergence of the digital currency dialectic and the public trust dialectic, aimed at a soft privatization of the nation-state and its monetary authority.

The second prong of Circle’s approach to rebuilding trust is to develop, for its part, an internet financial system that is based on the pillars of “openness” (especially “open money”) and “interoperability.” What these terms mean for those who understand the language of the Reset is that the system is based on blockchain technology – the permanent digital ledger of any and all transactions recorded to it. Burek goes on to say that:

“For us, this effort begins by being open about who we are, what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. It’s embedded in our programming, emblazoned on the walls of our Promenade storefront, and enshrined in our values.”

https://www.circle.com/blog/at-davos-circle-opens-doors-to-the-open-money-era

While this statement might seem to be simply an innocuous – if grandiose – instance of ordinary corporate promotion, there is much more to it than that. Burek emphasizes the outward proofs of Circle’s openness as guarantees of the company’s programming. One of his implications is that verified identity – and the corporate-controlled technological infrastructure upon which it is based – is the primary building block of the trust economy. Blockchain-based proof-of-identity is the foundation of the new economic order championed by Circle, the WEF, and the vast array of corporate partners that support a policy of “Reinventing Capitalism.” It is no surprise, then, that one pillar of Circle’s business is a universal digital identity platform, developed in partnership with other major financial and technology firms. Circle’s Response whitepaper states the following:

Circle has established key partnerships to help combine some of the best practices of well-regulated, traditional financial and payments institutions with the inherent benefits of open, public blockchains; collaborations with BlackRock, Visa, Mastercard and Worldpay are just a few examples.”

Circle’s deep expertise operating USDC has also led to innovations that have the potential to address problems that have plagued society, in particular the challenge of verifying digital identity. About one billion people globally face challenges proving who they are, limiting their ability to access basic services and economic opportunity. In recent months, Circle has worked with Block, Coinbase and the Centre Consortium to develop Verite, a set of free, open source decentralized identity protocols and data models that allow people and institutions to cryptographically prove claims about their identities. Verite has the potential to reduce friction, protect privacy and increase compliance with Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) controls.”

Circle has, with other partners in the industry, developed Verite, a digital identity model that would provide a verifiable and proven identification that is scalable, usable by anyone, and interoperable across systems, while also providing individuals with the certainty that only the minimal amount of information is shared (to protect their own privacy).”

Universal digital identity is the real prize of the digital currency dialectic, and companies like Circle know that transforming global systems of finance and currency through the introduction of stablecoins is a crucial step toward creating a new economic system built on the “trust” that accompanies verified-identity-linked data. A post on Circle’s website observes that the 2024 Davos meeting confirmed “a growing convergence of stablecoin infrastructure with traditional banking, finance, payments, and aid.” And it goes on to quote Circle’s CEO Jeremy Allaire in saying, “The mainstream phase of this [growing convergence] is one in which you’ve brought together regulation, traditional finance, and blockchain technology and leading crypto players that can connect those worlds together.” What Circle executives, Fortune 500 firms, and the World Economic Forum are developing through the vehicle of stablecoins is nothing short of a complete overhaul of the global financial system and, which goes along with it, the international system of nation-states.

The emerging financial and economic system envisioned at Davos is based not on the exchange of money, but rather on identity-linked data. Private-sector financial technology firms are in the business of changing payment systems so that money, as most people understand it, and the sovereign states that have, until this point, been the primary issuers of it, become relics of the past, superseded by socially-responsible corporations that determine what outcomes constitute “true value” in a built-back-better world. In lieu of money, you will pay (or pay it forward) with your behaviors – behaviors that create the sort of corporate “value” that Circle’s spokesman alluded to in his remarks at Davos and which guides the company’s Impact venture, that the Trust Barometer took for granted, and that are repeated ad infinitum in whitepapers on Inclusive Capitalism, the Sustainable Development Goals, and myriad transformation policy briefs. To this end, the Resetters must – incrementally, so as not to fluster the public or lose its trust – work toward the sunsetting of nation-state-promulgated currencies before this transformation can take full effect.

The third-way solution of state-regulated stablecoins is the opportunity to make national fiat curriencies and the nation-states that issue them, obsolete, thus paving the way for a system of exchange in valued-behaviors. After having first partnered with nation-states to develop stablecoin regulatory frameworks and then slowly assuming their authority to issue currency and the public trust attached to that authority, the private fintech companies will be in a position to transition from fiat-backed stablecoins to stablecoins referenced to an individual’s concrete compliance with corporate stakeholder values. The digital identity infrastructure that undergirds stablecoins and other cryptoassets is the backbone of tracking, tracing, and enforcing this compliance. It should be noted here that whatever the stakeholders value will change capriciously in response to consumer/community preferences. Where nation-states manipulated the quantity of money (used to register one’s perceptions about what is most desireable), the Resetters will manipulate (through marketing and corporate culture development) the meaning of “value” so that bartering in behavior-outcomes-securitized tokens may become the currency for the new financial system.

Such a radical transformation may sound far-fectched, but its motions are already well-underway, both in terms of technology development and the coalescing of values-oriented partnerships between public governing entities and private-sector firms. Regarding technology capabilities, private-sector-issued stablecoins are enabled with smart contract functionality and have the programmability features of CBDC – and then some, as we read in Coinbase”s whitepaper (second screenshot, from paper linked above):

Coinbase Stablecoin Whitepaper

Stablecoins, therefore, have all the surveillance and controls of a public CBDC, but without the accountability to the public that a legal audit provides. Moreover, under the auspices of compliance with public Know-Your-Customer and Anti-Money-Laundering regulatory requirements, stablecoins carry the same verified identity information that has caused significant concern among critics of CBDCs. Below, I have linked the UN’s report on combatting financial fraud, which outlines how “hybrid co-regulation” of private currencies supports the openness and transparency of financial flows in a world that is increasingly without borders. The same basic principles are also written into Circle’s response to the the Federal Reserve paper on CBDCs, discussed above. When we consider the firms that manage Circle’s USDC coin – notably BlackRock – we are left to wonder whether a private-sector surveillance regime might not be even worse than a state surveillance regime.

Stablecoins are in the custody and under the management of the multinational banking and financial services conglomerates that already exert immense control over national governments and influence social and corporate initiatives through their partnerships with the WEF and other roundtable organizations. As a result, private stablecoins will likely evolve to have ESG-strings programmed into their protocols, making stablecoin transactions conditional upon the ESG-compliant behaviorial norms that are increasingly embedded into corporate strategy and mission-development. The business of ESG scoring is to link profits to “proof of impact”–that is, verified performance data gathered through a system of connected sensors and data-collection technologies in conjunction with blockchain-based identity credentials. Because stablecoins like Circle’s USDC have smart contract programmability and employ verified digital identity technologies, it is easy to imagine a scenario in which an individual who wishes to complete some transaction or receive payment in stablecoin currency may first have to complete ESG-related behaviors or disclose personal information in order to prove his alignment with private-sector corporate values. This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to unpacking the trajectory of the digital currency dialectic.

The NIEO is a globalized, privatized, data-driven system for measuring, managing, and monetizing your behavior – a social engineering program of epic proportion that operates through automated, networked systems that gather, share, analyze, and control data. No longer will the sluggish, messy, and oppositional process of representative politics and law-making govern the people of the world’s various nations and their concrete struggles to manifest justice. Rather, what the Resetters hope to accomplish is a society transformed by the extreme technologies (including blockchain) of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the 21st-century mindset of global citizenship, in which the good of the planetary community is defined by visionaries in the private sector and to which individual rights are subordinated. Data gathered from ubiquitous sensors, sophisticated analytics and prediction-modeling programs, behavioral nudges delivered through the Internet of Things and Bodies, and infrastructure systems designed to optimize the performance of and manage access to all resources are the cornerstones of a new rules-based global order that enshrines economic development as the universal and preeminent value. All other principles – such as justice – that (if only in civic myth and obligatory talking points) gave legitimacy to sovereign governments are, in the context of the networked state, reduced to economic calculations which are rational because they are neatly quantifiable in terms of inflows and outflows. That is in stark contrast to the lofty, yet abstract, ideals that have always generated more questions than answers and are often at the heart of intractable conflicts within the body politic.


I discuss this with Mic Meow here:

https://rumble.com/v45dllu-the-conservative-continuum-ep.-171-cbdcdom-with-dr.-julianne-romanello.html


Selections from the UN Anti-Corruption Playbook

Uniting against Corruption: A Playbook on Anti-Corruption Collective Action (2021)

Collective Action is born out of companies’ need to foster more ethical, transparent and less corrupt business environments, while mitigating potential business risks. Collective Action can complement, enhance and further develop current and future laws and regulations whenever the latter are weakly enforced or simply nonexistent. They can even be triggered by CSOs after observing a particularly corruption-risky business sector.

Collective Action is evolving toward a “hybrid co-regulation.” Formal regulation efforts at a global and national level have increasingly been complemented by self-regulation efforts stemming from proactive cooperation between business actors from specific sectors or geographies. This often includes the participation of civil society, the public sector and other organizations.4 These complementary approaches have reinforced one another, creating positive synergies which are required from business in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Businesses and societies face complex corruption challenges on a daily basis around the world, and Collective Action is a key approach to slowing the scale of this issue.

Multi-stakeholder partnerships are indispensable in order to effectively tackle and solve the perennial sustainable development problems outlined in SDG 17.

In the end, the evolution of Collective Action is also the overall evolution from Compliance to Integrity. It is not only about individually avoiding and mitigating the risks, pitfalls and likely costs of corruption such as legal or financial, but above all seizing the opportunities and associated benefits of a robust culture of integrity that is fostered and implemented collectively by a committed group of like-minded stakeholders.

Uniting against Corruption: A Playbook on Anti-Corruption Collective Action (2021)

A few related items:

Cryptocurrency Blockchain and Sharing Economy https://thenextweb.com/news/blockchain-and-the-sharing-economy-a-match-made-in-heaven-this-startup-plans-to-prove-it

Payment systems blockchain economy of value https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid08pQbbjrZgRZ18ZkAuZLzT4E8uAhvSCWbpzbsuykEgH1Yj1p2BtNV9XVWE5sugfs9l&id=100035517380537&mibextid=UyTHkb

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230905549860/en/Visa-Expands-Stablecoin-Settlement-Capabilities-to-Merchant-Acquirers

https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/visanet.html

https://lex.substack.com/p/podcast-how-banking-and-power-intersect

https://ripple.com/ins…/a-vision-for-the-internet-of-value

Goldbacks private currency https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0YGcrzjSSgZBh7wP9Ce3yuN2q11sLsASxEFizTRxfqM5y8sWW7do4ZvBCTQF6NqCYl&id=100035517380537&mibextid=UyTHkb

Social Digital Currency https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0N4V9nDfRTZ3gaD6WkihioBSqN3XE8mB7Q3VYaskp5qXwXJ9DM1B1LdeyqZpDX4dCl&id=100035517380537&mibextid=UyTHkb

Social Digital Currency.

https://medium.com/vdcconsortium/the-social-currency-why-its-time-to-rethink-money-1cd930627b92

https://www.studio-vivace.com/journal/social-currency-creating-value-for-the-world-we-want

See also: https://marketbusinessnews.com/financial-glossary/social-currency-definition-meaning/amp/

Pilot program in Spain.
https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/digital/en/digital-empowerment/digital-inclusion/rec-barcelonas-social-currency

*Of course, the Federal Reserve is not a public entity, but for the purpose of this post, I link it to government. It is (on paper) subject to some public oversight, which is not the case for Blackrock, which manages the Circle USDC.

 

Comprehensive plans are tools adopted by government, its agencies, partners, and/or proxies (including task forces, working groups, stakeholder councils, community organizations, civil society partners and the like) to establish the language, goals, and strategies for transforming all aspects of existing social, political, and economic structures and their operations to conform to the United Nations’ 1974 Resolution on Establishing a New International Economic Order (NIEO).

In 1992, the contours of the NIEO were elaborated and specified as Sustainable Development, or Agenda 21, and in 2015, its programmatic vision for the reinvention of society, politics, and the economy was crystallized into 17 Global Goals in the 2030 Agenda. 

The NIEO and its Sustainable Development Goals are the impetus behind myriad change-oriented policy frameworks and have many monikers to appeal to a variety of audiences.  Among the most familiar iterations of the NIEO are “Smart Growth” policy, advocated by academic and non-governmental organizations, the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) “Great Reset” manifesto (“Reset,” for short) and the “Build Back Better” (“BBB”) efforts currently underway by governments across the world.  In order for the NIEO to replace the status quo, it must be established at local, regional, and national levels of government, and it must become the governing rubric for all sectors of human interaction and organization. 

Comprehensive plans are the mechanisms for manifesting the NIEO throughout the various levels of government and society, especially at the level of local government and public services administration.

The following bullet-point list summarizes the essential features of a comprehensive plan.  It is copied from a paradigmatic example of comprehensive planning, the Moving McAlester Forward plan for 2040, developed by Guernsey, Nealon Planning, Butzer Architects and Urbanism, and adopted by the City of McAlester, Oklahoma.  All comprehensive plans – regardless of location or sector – follow this template.

A comprehensive plan:

• provides a common framework for addressing issues pertaining to growth and development

• seeks to strike a balance among the many competing demands on land resources by creating development patterns that are orderly and rational, provides the greatest benefits for individuals and the community as a whole and avoids nuisance conflicts between land uses

• will help the community protect public investments since well-planned, orderly, and phased development patterns are less expensive for a community to provide with public services than low-density, scattered development

• will allow this community to plan development in a way that protects valued resources such as identified environmental features

• provides guidance for shaping the appearance of the community and fosters a sense of place

• promotes economic development

• provides an objective basis to support zoning and other decisions, particularly if legally challenged

–Adapted from definition authored by Gary D. Taylor, Iowa State University[1]

Comprehensive planning is taught in colleges, universities, professional schools and training institutes, and leadership-development organizations.  It is advocated by high-level, well-endowed, and influential think-tanks and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and by proponents of globalization and sustainability in both the public and private sectors.  Although comprehensive planning may be adapted to suit particular circumstances, its overall approach and aims are conspicuously uniform regardless of who promotes it or where it is taught or implemented.  This is because comprehensive planning follows the United Nations’ template for establishing the NIEO.


[1] Moving McAlester Forward Comprehensive Plan 2040. Prepared for John Browne, Mayor of McAlester by Guernsey, Nealon Planning, and Butzer Architects and Urbanism, and adopted September 25, 2019. PDF available here.


The following terms are of particular importance in comprehensive planning documents and are evidence of the Reset template:

Quality of Life / Vibrant City – these phrases indicate that the aim of the plan is to promote the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals through the delivery of publicly-funded services and social interventions (e.g., healthcare, education, workforce development, housing, etc.) that are continuously monitored in order to determine “impact” – the measurable change from a pre-intervention baseline situation to a post-intervention situation. The new economy is based on a shift “from fixed capital to human capital” – in other words, from trading in goods and services to trading in human behavioral outcomes. Therefore, progress toward the SDGs (quantified in an impact report) is analogous to the change in price of a share of stock in a publicly-traded company. The new economic order is based on value-creation through improvements to individual and community quality of life.

Economic Development – this phrase denotes a developed economy that conforms to the new international economic order in being globalized, privatized, and data-driven. At the highest levels, the designers of the new economy are financial industry owners and executives who incentivize public- and private-sector agents to implement it. Economic development policies prioritize targeted industries and sectors and align all resources – natural, physical, social, and human – toward their economic advantage.

Innovative Financing – this phrase signals the shift from public funding (i.e., tax revenues, which are subject to public oversight) to private investments or a mix of public and private contributions. Green Bonds and infrastructure bonds are common examples. Most innovative financing mechanisms (public debts) are secured on the basis of projections of future-growth or future-savings (cost offsets). The risk of under-performing investments is shouldered by the public, while the reward of well-performing investments belongs to the private sector.

Fiscal Responsibility – an approach to “rational, well-designed” planning that prioritizes the “best use” or “targeted use” of financial resources to develop or maintain existing assets such as infrastructure and land, according to future projections of economic growth and operational efficiency. In plain terms, this means that comprehensive planners have a vision for a specific development scenario (compact, high-density, mixed-use developments clustered around shared transportation hubs), and they use fiscal policy to control the supply of infrastructure (e.g., water service lines, roads, other utilities) so that development must occur within the parameters of that vision.

Placemaking / Neighborhood Identity – this is a strategy to create a narrative that governs what people think and how they feel about a particular place. It is designed to create pockets of special identity through an array of branding, public art and cultural offerings, historic preservation, micro-localization, design and building codes, and other mechanisms to “foster a sense of place” and create “unique destinations” and “eco-tourism” as drivers of employment. Moreover, these strategies encourage residents to prefer to stay-in-place rather than cross district lines and provide a justification for restrictions on activities and enterprise that fails to conform to the established vision. Paradoxically, the implementation of Universal Design Principles, Green Building Standards, and Inclusive Cultural Experiences factor heavily into placemaking strategies.

Connectivity – this term designates the imposition of a systems-wide approach to measuring and managing all resources, especially transportation/mobility options and the exchange of information through communications technologies. Broadband infrastructure, street design, supply chains, and social and cultural opportunities are key areas of introducing connectivity into the larger “ecosystem” of “human settlements” and balancing 1) economic growth with environmental protection, and 2) individual interests with the “needs of the community.”

Here is a link to a presentation I gave on comprehensive planning and smart cities:

The slide deck and supporting documents are available here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OP69appDtnJfG4y9ubCEbBJzZacXk026

In August, I posted a draft of collected terms associated with the Reset to Facebook. Many people suggested additions to that collection, and I thought of several of my own, which I’ve incorporated here, in Draft 2.0. This list – loosely organized by topic – still doesn’t include many tech-related terms.

Here is a link to the Word file:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GtFr4un45wrDyuuC7usjlm1CJWz8b7eI/edit?usp=drivesdk&ouid=106603636091431452133&rtpof=true&sd=true

DRAFT (2.0) – NWO BUZZWORDS, SLOGANS, TOOLS

Learn to spot the jargon. They use the SAME WORDS for EVERY PROJECT. You don’t even need to know what they mean. If the buzzwords are there, it’s a 4IR/NWO SCAM.

Agenda 21 buzzwords. Just a few…

* IMPACT *

GREEN NEW DEAL:
Environmental Protection, Conservation, Preservation, Preserving Resources into the Future, for Future Generations, for All; Climate Risk is Business Risk, Preserve the unique, rural, natural character/way of life, Ecosystems, Biodiversity, Nature Conservancies, Land Trusts, Green Spaces, Privately-Operated Public Open Spaces (POPOS), Active/Healthy Lifestyles (w/ Parks and Recreation), Floodplains, Watersheds, Environmentally-sensitive areas, Riparian Buffers, Regenerative/Organic Agriculture, Regional Trusts/Compacts/Agreements, Zero-Emissions/Waste, Carbon Neutral, Low-Carbon, Alternative Energy/Fuels, Active Transportation (Walkable, Bicycle-Friendly, Trails, etc.), Scope 3 Emissions, Wildlife/Nature Corridors,

RESETTERS:
Change-Agents, Thought-Leaders, Social Entrepreneurs, Community Leaders/Partners, Task Force, Focus Groups, Listening Sessions, Community-engagement surveys, Leadership, Capacity-building, Talent-building, Community Conveners, Backbone Organizations, Facilitators, Global Leaders/Shapers, Futurists, Representatives from Business and Industry, Vulnerable and Underserved Populations, Visionary Leadership, Bold Leadership, Innovative Thinkers, Collective Impact Strategies, Disruption, Shocks, Headwinds, Tailwinds, “a Growing demand for …,” Council of Governments, Federal Grants, Grantmakers, Founders, Start-ups

NEW INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORDER
New Economy, Circular Economy, Economy for the 21st Century, Economy of True Value, Regenerative Capitalism, Stakeholder Capitalism, Multicultural Capitalism, Inclusive Capitalism, Reimagined Capitalism, Economy that works for all, Circular Economy, Sharing Economy, Socially-Responsible Investing, Corporate Responsibility, ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance), Build Back Better, Public Benefit Corporations (B-Corps), Prosperity for all, “People, Planet, Prosperity,” Governance, Global Value Chains, Shared Value,

Social Impact Finance, “Big Bets” (investments made to promote behavioral outcomes), Gaps (to be filled by social service delivery), Opportunities (for Impact Investing), “Doing Well by Doing Good,” Faith-based investing, Values-based investing, Responsible investing, Triple Bottom Line, Pursue Value rather than Profits, Social Returns, Future-cost Offsets, Maximize Returns on Investments, Makes Good Business Sense, Accelerate the Return on/Transformation of _, Human/People-Centered, People-first, Community-first, Long-termism, Long-term perspective, Social Value, Solutions to “Pressing Problems,”

VALUES and GOALS:

Equity/equitable, Access for all (vs. lacking access, vs. barriers to )/Accessibility, Inclusive/Inclusionary, for all, “No one left behind,” Serves all, Diversity, Affordability (Housing, Transportation, etc.), Vibrant, Livable/livability, Thriving, Strong, Resilient, Striving, Innovative/Innovation, Transformational, Reimagined, Imagine/Imagination, Engaged/engagement, Connectivity/connected, Integrated approaches, Alignment, Collaborative, Cooperative, Consensus-based, Community-driven/led, Quality of Life for all, Human Rights, Trust/Trusted, Verified/verifiable, Accountability/Accountable, Transparent/Transparency, Person-centered/Human-centered (i.e. based on surveillance data of human behavior), Whole-Person Approach, Whole-of-Government Approach, Industry Transformation, Zero-Waste, Protected/Verified, Data-driven, Evidence-based, Results-oriented, Outcomes-based, What Works, Based on Studies/Data, Smart design, Solutions-oriented, Shared Objectives, Bipartisan/non-partisan/pragmatic, Responsive, Adaptability/adaptable, Flexibility/flexible, Personalized, Corporate Purpose, Purpose-driven, Power of Purpose, Leverage Corporate Purpose, Shared Prosperity, Urban Wealth Funds, Culture of Safety/Caring/Engagement, etc. Empathetic leaders, Servant-leaders, Service-oriented, Mission-driven, Mission-oriented, Forward-thinking, Future-oriented, Future-proofed, Risk-reduction (vs. “a nation at risk,” etc.), Preventative approach, Wellness, Safety/security, a New Social Contract, America’s Promise, Hope, Joy, Love, Grit, Empathy, Kindness, Human Capital, 21st Century Global Citizens

Welcoming/Vibrant/Attractive destinations (vs. “flyover zones”), Local Character, Place-based development/investing, Eco-Tourism, Neighborhood identity, Signage, Gateways, and Wayfinding, World-class _ (city, talent, amenities, etc.), Globally-competitive, Comprehensive/systemic/ecosystem approach, Well-planned communities,

TOOLS and STRATEGIES:
Measuring, Monitoring, Reporting, Digitalization, Data-collection, Real-time data, Data Sharing Agreements, Seamless/Frictionless/Integrated Systems, Automate Cognitive Processes, Mesh Networks, Cognitive Networks, “Scale the Network,” Intelligent Management Systems, Intelligent Cities, Wider Systems Change, Networked Solutions, Internet of Things (IoT), Predictive Analytics, Broadband Access, Responsive Systems, Agile Networks, Cloud Computing,

Hazard Mitigation and Early-warning systems, Code enforcement, Public safety, Public health, __ Indicators (Equality, Resiliency, etc.), Historical preservation, Landmark designations, Culturally-significant places,

Urban Design Principles, Green/Eco-certifications, Environmental Impact Statements, Reduce Pollution, Upzoning, Downzoning, Flexible Use, Mixed-Use, High-Density Development, Affordable Housing, Pop-up Businesses, Start-ups, Co-working hubs, Accelerators, Innovation/Tech Labs, Fab Labs. One-Stop Shops, Special Districts (Tax Increment Finance Zones, Education Districts, Opportunity/Choice/Promise Zones, etc.), Special Economic Zones, Digital Economic Zones, Civic Spaces, Public Commons, 15-minute cities, Efficiency credits, Cap and Trade, Green Bonds, Muni Bonds, Land-Value Capture,

Infrastructure upgrades, Infrastructure Based on Technology, Deployment of (Technology, Capital, etc), Coherent Deployment, “Send a clear signal to…,” Holistic Approach, End-to-End Analysis, Vulnerability Risk Assessments, Dashboards, Leader Boards, Gamification, Tokenization, Key Performance Indicators, Optimize, Performance/Efficiency/Productivity, Setting Clear Targets, Shared Objectives, Meet the needs of present and future generations,

Last-mile solutions, On-demand service delivery, “People able to live, work, play within the city, using its resources,” Age-/Gender-Responsive policy, Decade of Action, “Improve the lives of …,” Federal Grants, Challenge Grants, Hackathons,

Light rail, Mobility solutions, Scooters, Electric Vehicles, Multi-modal Transport Systems, Micro-mobility, Pedestrian/Bicycle-Friendly, Clustered Development around Transport Hubs, Traffic calming, Reduce Congestion, Reduce Commute Time, Reduce Travel Distances, “all needs met within a short walk or bike ride,” Elimination of parking minimums, Back-in parking, Car-free/car-optional neighborhoods, Pay-per-mile road user charges, Transit-Oriented Development, Zoning changes (especially to prioritize mixed-use), Complete Neighborhoods,

Public-Private Partnerships (P3s), Stakeholder Councils, Task Forces, _ Authorities (Port, Industrial, Economic Development, etc.), Innovative Finance, Community Foundations, Reinventing/Reimagining Government/Democracy, Arrangements to support a population-based/productivity-focused approach, Engagement with KEY Stakeholders

Comprehensive plans for geographic areas, sectoral innovation (e.g. mobility or economic development, etc.), Frameworks, Playbooks, Roadmaps, Toolkits, Pathways, Pipelines, Regional approaches, Revitalization, Redevelopment, Sustainable Communities Strategies, HUD Regional Planning Grants, Community Development Block Grants, Asset Based Community Development, New Market Tax Credits, Partnership for Sustainable Communities (HUD, EPA, DOT), Strong Neighborhoods, Co-Housing, Workforce Innovation and Development, People Management/Development Strategies, Office of Community Experiences, School-to-Work, Cradle-to-Career, P20 Pipelines, Talent Pipelines, Project-based design, Wraparound Services

Sanctuary Cities, Migration, Immersion Programs, Social Justice, Criminal Justice Reform, Financial Literacy Programs, Digital Citizenship, Civic Education, Common Core, STEM, STEAM, Direct Instruction, Personalized Learning, Life-Long Learning, School Vouchers, School Choice, Education Savings Accounts, Talent Pipelines, Mentoring Programs, Seed Funds, New Frugality, Universal Basic Income (UBI), Income-Sharing Agreements, Transitional services, Next-Generation _ (service delivery, design, etc.), Ambassador programs, Environmental justice, Circular/Sharing/Gig Economy,

Combatting Intergenerational Poverty/Drivers of inequality, Addressing Trauma/Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES), Racial Justice, Structural Racism, Promoting Mental Health, Addressing Health Disparities/ Social Determinants of Health, Population Health

Beware of dark ‘inclusive’ spirituality masquerading as light. Transformative change-making is an arm of the 4IR NWO, based on Communitarian social theory (not Sacred Scripture). Period. The appeal to people of faith to create ‘positive impact’ in their communities is a perversion of the virtue of Christian charity (and its analogues in other faith-traditions). Charity is grounded in love and is a free gift given to another. This New Narrative is based on impact, outcomes, and practical consequentialist behavioral science – in addition to military psychological research and eugenicist theory. The goal with this NWO spirituality is to create total, submissive conformity and to prepare us for singularity.

I found the Fetzer Institute through its affiliation with the Bloomberg-funded Aspen Institute. Here is a link to its very disturbing whitepaper on the social entreprenuership model of spiritual narrative creation.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B6YDk05ZJclMW-m2VhJfG8OFIQmAwiG6/view?usp=sharing

Fetzer’s Board is notable for its many ties to social impact investing and education programming organizations. Dan Cardinali is also on the Board of Independent Sector with representatives from Bridgespan Group and other titans of the Great Reset.

See https://independentsector.org/about-us/

There is A LOT to learn from these organizations’ websites, especially in regard to the transfer of govermental responsibilities to private corporations. See, e.g., this post about a Biden executive order to promote public-private partnerships.
https://independentsector.org/resource/executive-order/

“The attached document, prepared in deep consultation with legal expertise from Holland & Knight, suggests a “first year” agenda that the Biden Administration might pursue to build an unprecedented partnership and strengthen the nonprofit sector so that, together, the federal government and the nonprofit sector might best strengthen civil society and ensure that all people living in the U.S. can thrive. It also builds on the collective wisdom and learnings from multiple administrations about how best to build this relationship.”

When billionnaire philanthropists are partnering with government and social entrepreneuers, the goal is social engineering for financial gain – at the expense of freedom, individuality, and the Truth that is the substance of genuine faith.

https://fetzer.org/about/history

Are you ready for COGNITIVE CITIES? Oklahoma City, Oklahoma is already adopting Cognitive City technology.

Notice how Cognitive Cities focus on INCLUSIVENESS.  This buzzword ultimately intends to substitute the Hive Mind Singularity for rational, independent thought. Both Smart and Cognitive Cities do your thinking for you – the individual becomes nothing but a node in the Community Operating System.

A few thoughts on INCLUSION:

A “community” that is directed toward the “value” of INCLUSIVENESS / SOCIAL INCLUSION / INCLUSIVITY for every “identity”

IS THE OPPOSITE OF

a *society* that is  directed by *individuals* who possess the *characteristic* of CONFIDENCE / SELF-KNOWLEDGE/ SELF-SUFFICIENCY (or – to use a contemporary concept – SELF-ESTEEM).

INCLUSIVENESS is, first and foremost, about data capture and the compilation of hyper-detailed records of everyone’s attributes and experiences. This is for the benefit of human capital (and human liability) investors who want to make “big bets” on the possibility of achieving (or failing to achieve) “positive social outcomes” and it fulfills the desire of contemporary sorcerers to build an alternative mind – one to displace God’s Creation.

On a practical level, inclusiveness is also about creating “communities” in which everyone FEELS VALUED (as an asset) and EXPERIENCES (or has the perception of) BELONGING. Note that how one feels is a function of EVERYONE ELSE’S BEHAVIOR towards oneself – or how one perceives someone else’s behavior toward oneself.

Note that REASON / THOUGHT as well as INDIVIDUAL FORTITUDE / SELF-ASSUREDNESS are subordinated to EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE. In an inclusive community, one’s sense of self (-worth/value) is determined by one’s opinions about the opinions of others. This sounds like a recipe for creating a diffident, servile people – or, to use the kinder, more popular term, an ADAPTABLE people – who may be “developed” now and into the future (i.e. sustainably). Inclusiveness is designed to turn individual human beings into mixed-use assets-under-management.

The older language of CHARACTER depends on the assumption that individuals become who they are through their free choices and their responses to the situations, obstacles, and opportunities that they encounter over the course of life. Both reason/thought and passion/emotion/feeling, as well as the will, play a role in choosing how one will meet the uncertainties of life. And over time those choices start to coalesce into habits and a more-or-less settled character. Human freedom is an essential component of this ethical paradigm – though it may be lost by individuals who consistently choose to act slavishly and who indulge the passions over reason and thoughtful consideration.

The element of FREEDOM, necessary for the unfolding of INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER is wholly absent from the Cognitive City structure.

https://sponsored.bloomberg.com/article/tonomus-neom/cognitive-city-vs-smart-city

The economic reset is designed to turn all businesses into social change agents and soft enforcers of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.  Employees are to be seen at all times as brand ambassadors for the companies that employ them.  This means that there will be no meaningful difference between “on- and off-the-clock.” Adherence to HR motivational-speak will be required in one’s private, personal time just as if he or she were at the office.  This is what is meant by the line “you’ll have no privacy and you’ll be happy.”

You might remember an earlier post I wrote about the design to Reset the definition of a corporation in order to transition from shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism.  This whitepaper helps to explain how and why that redefinition is necessary.  Notice especially the screen shot that states:

“This level of change will require a huge mindset shift on the part of shareholders and management; however, the timing is favourable. The devastating labour market impact of the pandemic and the need for governments to step in and provide extensive support have made it clear that a financially incentivized business model driven by short-term wins no longer works; public and media focus on how companies manage their human capital resources is intensifying.”

The new economy works by “leveraging corporate purpose” to create SDG-aligned good global citizens.
#jmrsnips

Link to WEF whitepaper on Human Capital as an Asset:

Human Capital as an Asset

Heading Level 4

In this radio show, former Oklahoma State Senator Jake Merrick and I discuss the roll-out of Smart Cities in Oklahoma, the ways that the promise of “Economic Development” is beguiling Oklahomans, and what we can do as a state to protect our rights and the rule of law against an increasingly powerful global financial cabal.

Jake is a believer and follower of Jesus, married to Nicole for 12 years and father of two beautiful girls. He has a Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological University, and he currently pastors a church in Oklahoma City. As a former professor, he taught Bible and Philosophy for 5 years at Southwestern Christian University in Bethany. During this time he also owned and managed a fitness center. Currently, Jake owns a tool sales company and manages the non-profit Paraklete, Inc, which he founded to create an alternative to the failing healthcare system. As a former state Senator, he is also using the insights gained from his time in office to rally the people of Oklahoma to fight for their individual freedom via 100K Friends.

Heading Level 4

In this radio interview, Bruce de Torres and I discuss the problems and potential avenues of restoration for the American Nation.  We focus on public-private partnerships as a danger to representative government and how state-level action might be our best option for salvaging the rule of law in this country.

 

Bruce is the author of GOD, SCHOOL, 9/11 AND JFK: The Lies That Are Killing Us and The Truth That Sets Us Free, Marketing Director for TrineDay Publishing and moderator of TrineDay’s podcast, THE JOURNEY: CONVERSATIONS WITH PUBLISHER KRIS MILLEGAN, and host of WORLDSTAGE WITH BRUCE DE TORRES on TNT Radio DOT Live.

 

This is a recording of a presentation I was honored to give to a group in Newcastle, Australia about the transition to the Impact Economy and how the city’s Smart City Plan is integral to it. Smart cities collect the data that makes the Impact Economy viable – ubiquitous surveillance provides “proof of impact,” which is used in determining the Return on Investment for impact investors. Smart city technologies also deliver nudges – or automated signals – designed to change behavior in ways that support the impact agenda, which coincides with the UN SDGs. In the simplest terms, Smart Cities are for social credit scoring and geofencing. I discuss the role that Anchor Institutions and Collective Impact strategies have had in advancing the 4IR Smart City agenda quietly and without genuine public oversight.

Many thanks to  @Kate Mason  for setting up this meeting. Her video on the real-life consequences of Australia’s social policy responses to the events of the past 2 years is excellent to share with those who are still wrestling with the true nature of the new normal. Here is the link to her talk: https://youtu.be/En-OzwJohu4

See Newcastle’s Smart City plan here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FhiymCZoqAU60fWUwOopQjXrWcEwjKhn/view?usp=sharing

G8 Report on Social Impact Finance, which details the importance of measurement for social impact finance markets and states that smart communities are those wherein smart city tech and the impact economy cooperate to transform society: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E4YXXvIngTnGIDzTXH4khrMKLWFnNd6l/view?usp=sharing

Australia’s Griffith University whitepapers on Social Impact Finance and Universities as Anchor Institutions: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10VkFcekEwyKD-mbDZz4GCccnfqYfSxuS/view?usp=sharing

AND

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kM6XrHMIkHz4I8ymiQtrSOd2uf2bSKnL/view?usp=sharing

University of Newcastle Strategic Plan: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14fRd8uYjlC7gWo_sApm5ni-yEe7BF648/view?usp=sharing

Greater Newcastle Economic Development Plan: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jKcYepzIgrQ5Wh-3lO5ozAyDMnhVZFY8/view?usp=sharing

On Smart Payment Systems for Social Services, Commonwealth Bank of Australia: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZQKo7pT6XD4xmEu9FZRcgKXjujgrnXXJ/view?usp=sharing

On Blockchain for Education (aka Human Capital / Social Credit Scoring): https://drive.google.com/file/d/16t6Bm2ng-jwQwO8AVErAdtxABHK64NGw/view?usp=sharing

……..

An easy way to raise awareness about your city’s implementation of the smart city model:

1. PRINT YOUR CITY’S SMART CITY PLAN.

2. ATTEND ANY COMMUNITY MEETING WHERE AN ELECTED CITY OFFICIAL WILL BE SPEAKING.

3. IN PUBLIC Q&A,

▪️STATE THAT YOU HAVE OBSERVED THE INSTALLATION OF NEW SURVEILLANCE HARDWARE,

and then

▪️ASK THE OFFICIAL TO GIVE A STATUS UPDATE ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE SMART CITY PLAN.

4. WATCH THIS PERSON SQUIRM.

5. BE PREPARED TO ANSWER QUESTIONS FROM THE OTHER MEMBERS OF THE AUDIENCE WHO VISIT YOU AFTERWARD TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE PLAN THAT THEY NEVER KNEW EXISTED.

………

A draft of a plan for organizing the people for freedom (2 formats): https://docs.google.com/document/d/10aLuGFvT2GrPLc3bKCG_3xCf1xvEeftd/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rfVQC75imVIJIxQuQXsqBuKxrhDO5EJV/edit?usp=sharing

The financial cartel have been setting up the New Inclusive Economy, based on a model of social-engineering-as-a-service, for over 15 years. Inclusive means that EVERYTHING and EVERYONE will be “measured and managed.” This Harvard Business Review article argues that having a comprehensive approach to the MANAGEMENT of PEOPLE SYSTEMS has strong PREDICTIVE VALUE for a company’s FINANCIAL RETURNS.

This means that THE MORE YOU ARE MANAGED, THE MORE MONEY INVESTORS – AND SPECULATORS – WILL MAKE.

SMART TECHNOLOGIES, which replace HUMAN JOBS, are also about managing people and therefore about predicting and driving financial returns. They won’t go out of style anytime soon. All environments will become SMART – in order to manage, measure, and monetize the people who have been rendered “economically irrelevant” by Fourth Industrial Revolution technology.

“More than 120 million workers globally will need retraining in the next three years due to artificial intelligence’s impact on jobs, according to an IBM survey.” The amount of individuals who will be impacted is immense. The world’s most advanced cities aren’t ready for the disruptions of artificial intelligence, claims management consulting firm Oliver Wyman.

– Forbes.com, 2020


This is setting up a vicious cycle of corporate and state-sponsored social control that will drain all true vitality from human existence. Notice how this approach was tested in and applied to schools – the more manageable the child, the more productive (and predictive) the asset. Remember the saying, “No child left behind“? It expresses both the comprehensive nature of this program AND the deliberate destruction of children – because in the place of a child, this system leaves nothing behind but a machine.

See: https://hbr.org/2007/03/maximizing-your-return-on-people

The phrase “long-term value” – as a goal of or approach to the new economic order – signifies the transition TO Impact/ESG outcomes and investments (FROM real goods and services) as the fundamental unit of economic value. “Long-term” is a phrase that operates as a sort of risk-management strategy. You’ll likely never see materialized the economic “value” that these approaches purport to create. That is, you won’t see any problems fixed or satisfactory outcomes achieved.

In order to prevent questions and the rejection of the system, the architects of this grave reset have hedged their bets, so-to-speak, by claiming at the outset that the returns are to be realized far, far off into the future. They can do this because they’ve also defined the problems as global, systemic, and structural challenges that are impossibly large in scope – not to mention usefully vague and apt to morph in nature, scope, or origin. When you are inclined to think that “long-term strategy” means something reasonable or prudent, just remember that these wordplays always appeal to our highest aspirations as a way of obscuring their sinister and deceptive meanings.

The excerpts below (from linked articles) lay out the parameters of the 4IR transformation and its relation to ESG/ impact investments.

(Ftr: I think the Millennial/Gen Z “demand” for ESG accounting is 100% manufactured and maybe 10% truthful.)

-jmr


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Companies that look ⚠long term – to 2030 and beyond – and master the integration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks and opportunities with commercial strategy will build the resilience to thrive over the next decade. Getting this integration right matters for C-suites and boards – and it matters because we urgently need to accelerate progress to live within planetary boundaries and towards social justice and equity.

The principle here is simple: sustainability strategy is smart⚠ long-term business strategy. Increasingly, it’s also smart near-term strategy.

Why? Because effective management of ESG opportunities and risks contributes to commercial value creation. Sustainable offerings can increase topline revenue and build trust with customers. Operational eco-efficiency can reduce costs over the ⚠long term. Values alignment and ESG performance are increasingly important to attract and retain top talent, which in turn drives productivity and innovation. Community investment bolsters social licence to operate and can help secure sources of supply – while driving positive societal impact. And strong ESG performance increasingly unlocks capital, either as a signal of sound management to investors, or through sustainability-linked loans or bonds.

From now to 2030, businesses across industries are rapidly transforming due to digitisation, AI, big data, the future of work, consumer power, and reshaping of global supply chains, among other macro-trends. Compounding these shifts are rising expectations for companies to deliver ESG performance and value to stakeholders, including – but no longer limited to – shareholders. And around the globe, governments and businesses are facing calls to “build back better” and deliver an inclusive, green, economic recovery.

To optimise near-term value through ESG, while building a⚠ long-term strategy for sustainable and responsible business, companies need to make smart decisions about what to prioritise and resource. At Corporate Citizenship, we are seeing companies develop sustainable and responsible business strategies through two approaches: 1) bold and rigorous ⚠long-term planning that sets direction and identifies early wins; and 2) “fail fast” innovation sprints that build early momentum and lay the foundation for ⚠long-term goals and targets.

https://corporate-citizenship.com/2020/11/30/think-2030/

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Building resilient businesses will require a new mindset for many leaders. Instead of focusing exclusively on maximizing efficiency, resilience involves building new capabilities that may come at a short-term cost. And instead of managing short-term shifts in performance, resilience requires a focus on consistent ⚠long-term value creation and a balancing of short-run efficiency against ⚠long-run effectiveness.

As the post-COVID world emerges, leaders will need to shift their attention back to ⚠longer-term challenges. By building resilience, digitizing for advantage, and supporting collective action on climate change, leaders can put their businesses in position to succeed in and help shape the new reality.

https://www.bcg.com/en-us/publications/2021/three-pivotal-themes-for-the-long-term-business-agenda

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Securing competitive capital.

As millennial and Gen Z investors become an increasingly important segment of the investment market, their interest in values-based investing will enhance pressure for ESG-type transparency. Addressing the evolving wants and needs of these stakeholders will be critical to secure the capital needed to make ⚠long-term, growth-oriented investments⚠ and supporting new programs and initiatives that will evidence an organization’s commitment to its stated values. Organizations like the Montreal Social Value Fund, which Eva has co-founded, and other Social Value Funds across the country are run by post-secondary students who make impact-first investments that prioritize the social and environmental efforts of Canadian businesses. And they’re one of many initiatives that work directly with organizations who are committed to driving sustainability efforts.

https://www.ey.com/en_ca/long-term-value/investors-are-demanding-greater-transparency-and-so-is-the-next-generation

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Companies are increasingly shifting towards more sustainable strategies and stakeholder capitalism by⚠ moving away from short-term shareholder primacy.

Financial and accounting systems influence decision-making, the assessment of corporate performance, and the value attributed to it. Therefore, financial and accounting systems play an important role in helping management and others evaluate a company’s ability to identify and manage ESG risks and create ⚠sustainable value over time.

As accountants, we are expert in financial capital, management information, and accounting standards. But I would strongly argue that the stocks and flows,⚠ impacts and dependencies of other forms of capital are ⚠equally – if not even more – important in the 21st century to understanding value creation.

https://www.wbcsd.org/Overview/News-Insights/WBCSD-insights/Accountants-creating-long-term-value-through-ESG

See also: https://wbcsdpublications.org/board-director-resources/covid-19/
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Investors aligning COVID-recovery with ESG

ESG investing focuses on understanding how ESG risks and opportunities impact on long-term success, and takes into account externalities and the potential impact on performance.

These considerations have not disappeared as a result of COVID-19. In fact, there is growing recognition from the investment community that ESG is more important than ever. The United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) – the international network of investors with over 2500 signatories – has recognised that systemic recovery from the crisis is paramount, signalling that PRI signatories should be ‘supporting sustainable companies through this crisis – in the interests of public health and ⚠long-term economic performance – even if that limits short-term returns.’

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/post-pandemic-investors-look-esg-build-back-better-yvonne-ngo
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See also:

https://www.bsr.org/en/our-insights/report-view/business-role-creating-a-21st-century-social-contract

https://www.vsqm.com/blog-esg-trends-in-2021.php

https://www.riskierworld.com/latest-insights/embedding-social-value-in-project-planning-is-more-than-a-nice-to-have

https://www.bcg.com/publications/2021/three-pivotal-themes-for-the-long-term-business-agenda

Imagine a young girl, maybe 20 years of age, who has been courted by an older man for a long time. He spoiled her with flattery and gifts and she felt on top of the world. Her parents were no where to be found, and the young girl came to depend wholly on the older man for her sustenance and for her sense of selfhood. She never hesitated to do his bidding, and she enjoyed the feeling of power and agency that it gave her. But her older lover was often absent and didn’t tell her where he was going or what he was doing. As she grew a little older and her beauty began to wane, and her lover’s affections cooled, she began to question the man’s actions and his intentions, and she began to wonder about herself – whether she had any life or identity independent of her keeper. She looked back on the years she had been by his side and started to perceive – as through a glass, darkly – that she had been deceived and abused and, to her deep embarassment, that she had welcomed it, not knowing any better. Now she is dazed and struggling to find her way before the walls close in.

This is one of many images that comes to mind when I consider the tragic situation of my country, the United States of America. Most of us have no understanding of the role we’ve played in the world.

A Glimpse into the Future

The following questions were occasioned by this interview write-up:

Looking into the Future of Work, Relationships and the with Liselotte Lyngsøhumans-with-liselotte-lyngs/

How appealing are the following innovations, each of which is described in the above interview as a possibility in the not-so-distant future?

●Licking your phone to experience gourmet aromas and flavors?

●Having your company require virtual water cooler encounters to nudge more diverse interactions?

●Determining whether you and your spouse should accompany each other into the Meta where you date other virtual creatures?

●Education based on an AI profile of you that has run every possible scenario for your pathway?

●Having a digital twin of your child to coach you on what parenting decisions you ought to make?

Each of these scenarios assumes a fundamental shift in the order of human life and society, and the moral assumptions that hold them together. Do any of these things sound like a future we want for ourselves or our children?

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is a New Religious System

One of the most important concepts to grasp at the cusp of this catalysmic shift in human history is the fundamental model of managing wants and needs through predictive profiling. The Precision Economy is based on the power of an AI to know you better than you know yourself and to determine how to optimize you for the benefit of yourself and others, ostensibly leading to habits that generate less waste and more happiness. At its core, this type of human-management system is, I think, the result of an effort to erect a substitute for God – a project guided by man’s desire to believing that he is his own maker. Yuval Harari’s 2016 article in The New Statesman is a clear example of this type of existential grasping.

The assumption that metaphysical and ontological structures are changeable and changing is evident in an article I recently came across: an Age of Aquarius interview with Danish futurist, Liselotte Lyngsø. Her company, Future Navigator, markets “Future-as-a-Service” and other similarly nebulous offerings to its clients. Until recently, the fantastical projections of professional Futurists have seemed too far-fetched for the general population to take them seriously as a guide for personal or business planning. But the events of the past 2 years have brought the Fourth Industrial Revolution and all its technologies into the mainstream, and – as its architects are the ones who are currently driving the rapid transformation of human society – we would do well to pay more attention to the Futurists’ incredible predictions. They are absolutely serious in their efforts to foresee and to control new worlds on the basis of advances in high technology.

Skeptics may find it helpful to consider how technology has already been put into place at employers including WalMart and in schools in the United States. Moreover, according to the World Bank, the growth of educational gaming protocols – sometimes called “edutainment” – as a behavior-modification technique are being used in both corporate and education sectors. In 2017, an article by Jump Associates, an innovation strategy consultant to major corporations, describes how VR “experiences” can alter perceptions and lead to behavior change:

VR’s ability to transport people into situations that are physically and emotionally inaccessible shows much promise. Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab is experimenting with using it to influence choices people make in their everyday lives. They’ve found that after VR interactions like playing the role of cow eating and drinking before being sent to slaughter, or virtually eating lumps of coal representing energy used to heat water while taking a shower, people see a connection between choices they make and the potential environmental costs of their actions.

https://medium.com/@jumpassociates/vr-will-make-you-rethink-empathy-2c183ca531e8

Notice how, in the example above, human beings are presented with non-human – i.e. animal – experiences in order to encourage them to develop an emotional (vs. intellectual) commitment to carbon-reduction goals that are key to UN Sustainable Development Goals.

This type of attitude-management strategy is crucial to the Build Back Better, or impact economy, because it will not only increase a corporation’s ESG rating, it will also increase employee productivity by linking competitive gaming frameworks to job performance incentive strategy, as for example, in Salescreen’s product line.

How the ostensible conflict between competitiveness and empathy or global citizenship will be mediated in a future-world that takes all morality and metaphysical and ontological structures as fluid is anyone’s guess. My guess is that it will be decided by those who care more for management than they do for people.

In conclusion, I highly recommend listening to the 55 – minute podcast embedded in the Age of Aquarius article. Liselotte Lyngsø is optimistic, open-minded about the positive potential of these futuristic technologies, forthright in her assumptions, and blissfully unperturbed by the dystopian visions of humankind 2.0. In other words, she has bought into the 4IR ideology and will give you an honest tour of the best possible version of it. Of course, her naivete is demonstrated by her belief that we – regular people – will be able to determine how these technologies are put to use. I doubt that that is the case, but think rather that we will have no say whatsoever in transhumanocracy and its subjugation of all things genuinely human. The reality is that this agenda will be forced on us in the same manner as the coronapocalypse, as a set of VR goggles, and so many other titanic programs of domination.

Podcast

 

Over the past decade, and especially since 2020, billionnaires, mega-corporations, and the government have, with growing intensity and volume and in the same words and images, called on civil society, business, and the public to end systemic racism. There is something curious about the fact that these groups – which have long histories of exploiting minorities and (directly or indirectly) encouraging bigotry and strife for purposes of profit – have suddenly become vocal promoters of racial equity, dismantling systemic racism, and diversity, equity, and inclusion norms, etc.

We can begin to unravel this paradox of public good will by considering the organizational commitments to racial equity published by JUST Capital. A non-profit organization founded by “a group of concerned people from the world of business, finance, and civil society – including Paul Tudor Jones II, Deepak Chopra, Rinaldo Brutoco, Arianna Huffington, Paul Scialla, Alan Fleischmann, and others,” JUST Capital is an organization that claims to promote a “just economy” and “true prosperity for all” by measuring and ranking corporate performance on a set of common metrics related to those goals. Investors who are concerned with racial equity, for example, may use JUST Capital’s rankings to determine which companies are most committed to this moral norm and most deserving of investment capital.

By examining JUST Capital’s statements about what goes into tracking racial equity, we start to see that one social justice issue is used to justify the imposition of a much larger program of human capital scoring.

“We have listed below our internal commitments to racial equity and how they deepen our mission’s impact. 

As an organization, we commit to: 

Audit the demographic composition of our workforce – including race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity, among other intersectional dimensions – on an annual basis, and share results publicly. 

To track and report on the distribution of employees across standard pay bands – by race, ethnicity, gender, and job category – on an annual basis, and share results publicly, including whether any adjustments have been made. 

Develop fair, equitable, and inclusive hiring and promotion processes by conducting a diversity audit of existing practices; setting goals for hiring, promoting, and retaining Black and Brown employees; and establishing a transparent framework for determining salaries, internal pay bands, pay increases, and promotions. 

Build a more diverse board of directors by setting clear board diversity targets and actively recruiting new directors who represent the Black and Latinx communities. 

Continue to discuss and address issues of bias within our organization through antiracist training and education for our leadership team, staff, and board of directors. 

Create and clearly define a more comprehensive grievance mechanism that allows employees to report instances of marginalization and discrimination, and provide training to those responsible for handling grievances. 

Continue to cover structural racism and racial equity in our research and content, even after these issues have become less prominent in national consciousness. 

Ensure that a greater diversity of voices is integrated into our content and events by elevating the voices of our Black and Brown colleagues and external leaders. 

Build our network of partnerships and collaborations with organizations advancing the cause of racial equity.” 

https://justcapital.com/about/

From these commitments, we can see that a published concern for racial equity makes a very effective justification (i.e. a cover) for implementing universal standards for and expectations of HUMAN CAPITAL monitoring and reporting.

No matter what JUST Capital’s Public Priorities Polls claim to demonstrate (I suspect they are heavily influenced by the Solutions Journalism/Impact Media approach, which is not unlike that which a now-infamous data modeller from London’s Imperial College used back in 2020. See, e.g. this ESG-related poll.), I think most people – black, white, and all others – are categorically opposed to the kind of SURVEILLANCE PROFILING entailed in the policy recommendations proposed by this organization. Or at least that would be the case if the peddlers of this brutal scheme were honest about how it is designed to work and to what end.

There are other reasons why racial equity is in every foundation’s, every corporation’s, every NGO’s mission statement – these include things like disrupting social demographics, redistributing wealth, demoralizing people who are white, and shifting economic power and prestige to the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (which is a main offender in terms of human capital tracking).

Note: I think that there are real wounds and scars and ongoing injuries that are the result of bigotry and prejudice. The statements above are not intended to dismiss those real injustices. Rather, I hope my observations will encourage further scrutiny of the language of systemic racism and especially its invocation by billionnaires, corporations, and the government. There is something unsettling about the fact that the same interests that are quick to eulogize George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement are also funding the pilot program installation of FLOCK SAFETY license plate readers in (to use a local example) a low-income, predominantly Black TULSA NEIGHBORHOOD. These groups care little about genuine progress in the area of race relations. Why would they? Trauma, division, strife, and poverty are the conditions upon which the new impact economy thrive. And, after all, Paul Tudor Jones, the mastermind of this organization made his fortune in …. what?

I encourage you to look it up.

Paul Tudor Jones video

Please watch this 3-minute-long promo video for Grapheal’s TestNPass application.

This is the “solution” (digital identity health pass) that has motivated the “problem” (the declared illness) and the “reaction” (the economic and social collapse that will justify the Build Back Better, or Great Reset).

More than Simply a Health Pass

This digital credential-verifying technology eventually will be used to register every possible data point generated about each one of us. This data will form our unique human capital profiles, which will, in turn, determine what “privileges” we are “allowed” to access. Some privileges will require that we comply with “personalized” recommendations for “wellness” or “social responsibility.”

Notice that IBM offers a health credential passport, a learning credential passport, and more using the foundation of blockchain distributed ledger technology.

Behind the theatrics of the Covid 19 pandemic, a seismic shift in corporate and economic structures is underway, and the digital passport introduced in response to a “public health crisis” is the prologue to a full-scale digital identity credential passport that will serve the new model. On short, corporations are transitioning their business strategies from shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism.

Stakeholder capitalism is as brutal as the name sounds, which is why this Emperor is clothed in a tapestry of pleasant buzzwords such as Resilience, Sustainability, Inclusiveness, Equity, Innovative, Accountability, Collaborative, Transparent, and Diversity. These terms give us the impression that ESG investing – the new model of “socially-responsibile investing” that purports to benefit all ‘stakeholders’ – represents genuine progress from profit-oriented shareholder capitalism to something more beneficial to “the community.” Not so, however.

ESG Investing incorporates Human Capital metrics into a corporation’s overall, ESG profile – a profile that determines whether the firm will receive capital investments from banks and other lenders. The Digital Credential Passport will be the tool for tracking not only employees’ health statuses, but also their larger social responsibility (ESG) profile, as captured through Smart City infrastructure and the expanding Internet of Things. If an employee is not ‘committed’ to the attitudinal and behavioral goals deemed appropriate to a good 21st-century global citizen – viz. the UN SDGs or Global Goals, which are commercialized in the Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics – his or her employer will intervene to correct that, assigning professional development training that measures attitudes before and after the assigned intervention (tracking impact / investments in the workforce). Moreover, as a result of AI processing of employment applications, anyone who does or is likely to fall short of good global citizen status will probably find that he or she has very limited, if any, ‘access’ to employment at all.

Tracking Employees’ Loyalty to the Firm

We also see that, in the Built-Back-Better economy, employees will be expected to have, in addition to a commitment to the Global Goals, a level of engagement to the firm that leads to his or her personal promotion of the firm even and especially during off-the-clock life. In this industry piece from Marketing Insider Group, CEO and author of the book Mean People Suck Michael Brenner writes:

Statistics show that employee engagement does indeed drive marketing ROI by a significant percentage. The more business your engaged employees bring in, the more it drives up profits.

Loyalty 360 study supports that conclusion. Reporting customer retention rates 18 percent higher for companies whose employees are “highly engaged,” the study demonstrates the impact engaged employees can have on this sought-after marketing metric.

  • That kind of engagement can only happen when every department acts as the right arm of the marketing team.
  • That kind of collaboration depends on the marketing team’s initiative to get everyone from the CEO to the janitor and everyone in between involved in marketing efforts.

In the 4IR future of work, corporations will expect employees to be their “walking billboards” and brand ambassadors. The Framework for Inclusive Capitalism recommends instituting pay equity on the basis of an accurate assessment of the value that an employee creates for the company. Here again, this is where a digital access pass, based on blockchain distributed ledger technology, proves its worth beyond health-related applications – the access pass can hold massive amounts of data about all sorts of employee choices, attitudes, and interactions – occurring both on- and off- the-clock and recorded by multiple sources – that might have some bearing on the company brand.

This brand ambassador ledger becomes an important tool in standardizing human capital scores for pay equity initiatives, especially insofar as employee behavior during non-working hours has the potential to generate steep ROI for companies that have ‘activated’ their employees.

When you activate your employees, though, it’s marketing magic. Activation includes a wealth of tools to empower your employees to become walking billboards for your company, including:

  • Training that not only makes them more informed about your products, but also allows them to climb up the corporate ladder – imagine – you gotta love a company that trains you to qualify for a better job
  • Permission to post content on social media and elsewhere about your company’s culture, products, and services
    Involvement in creating blog posts, videos, white papers, and other “official” marketing content, creating a platform on which they can showcase their expertise

Once your employees start sharing the love your company has shared with them, it will pay off. Not only will it pay off in good vibes, but it will also likely make a huge impact on your bottom line.

Source: Michael Brenner, “21 Marketing Trends You Need to Know For 2022,” Marketing Insider Group, 2021

Since positive comments and posts about an employer on an employee’s personal social media account create significant value/profits for the firm, corporate strategy will include investments in activation programming, new and existing personnel who are amenable to being activated, and technologies such as a digital access pass which enable firms to measure and manage the value of their investments in employee activation.

The willingness to stake one’s own reputation on the company brand – and one’s effectiveness at so doing (which may be determined by consulting the ledger of interactions written to a digital access pass) – will be a major factor in determining a person’s ESG Score, or human capital score. That score is the employee’s key to unlocking privileges across many sectors – personal, professional, mobility and recreation, etc., and is also an opportunity for market speculators to make big bets on how one will fare in the human capital futures index.

Will anyone actually go along with this program for total surveillance and corporate behavioral engineering of employees? Unfortunately, yes. Most people will accept the access pass and the program that comes with it because the corporate resetters are demolishing the economy and engineering human labor surpluses in order to create massive unemployment. Jobs will be few and hungry families will be many. This is their strategy to force people to accept the “activation.” The digital identification system is about behavioral conditioning and control.

Here’s a short talk about Ocean Protocol – a new ‘solution’ for the problem that we don’t own our own data. In other words, the problem that the data that we generate (through all sorts of signals intelligence, e.g. Fb) belongs to and is monetized by the giant data-capture companies, leaving us as merely ‘the product’ of the services we use. The speaker here is an enthusiastic supporter of Ocean Protocol, and he celebrates the potential of privacy-protecting open-data platforms to enable ‘some whiz-kid’ (Greta’s bff, perhaps?) to discover a solution to all the world’s problems. He also explains that Ocean provides compensation to data-providers, eliminating the ‘you are the product’ problem.

But listen to this talk closely. The speaker knows his stuff (certainly better than I!), but I think he overlooks three very important things.

First, when he talks about being compensated for data-production/intellectual activity, he explains that our data output becomes an asset that may be leveraged to gain privileges. This sounds a lot like a human capital ranking or social credit score.

Second, the corporate partners involved in Ocean Protocol – Daimler, IBM, Roche Diagnostics, BMW, to name a few – have deep roots in the eugenics revolution of the 20th century. That they would pivot to caring about human beings is a long-shot indeed.

Third, Ocean is partnering with the World Economic Forum and the United Nations. No need to explain that one, as everyone knows that Klaus and his band of thugs want to Reset the world. There’s also the MIT connection, the hexagon logo, the creepy octopus symbolism, but I won’t go into that.

Bottom line: lots of serious investors and social engineers are setting up the new data economy, and they are using the coronapocalypse to do it. But this open-data ‘solution’ is a trap. Its real aim is to usher in techno-facist regime of digital totalitarianism, smart contracts, social credit scoring, and VR GOGGLE-prisons.

Ocean Protocol Video

Besides facebook reactions, I don’t have any way of knowing who has read or considered the information that I share in my posts.

I hope the information I share – which deals with the CLEAR AND PRESENT danger to AMERICANS’ BUSINESSES, BANK ACCOUNTS, and BILL OF RIGHTS might somehow reach individuals who have the COURAGE and the CLOUT to stand up against the CONTROLLED DEMOLITION of AMERICAN SOCIETY and INSTITUTIONS.

INCLUSIVE CAPITALISM is a program that delivers into the hands of FOREIGN-OWNED PRIVATE CORPORATIONS all the coercive tools of government, effectively obliterating any public check on the use of this power.

Someone is going to interject, saying that government was set up to oppress the people and that popular sovereignty is a myth, etc. etc. I am not interested in that argument right now.

If the CORPORATE TAKEOVER of the United States of America and the implementation of the UN Habitat Smart Cities program CONTINUE, everyone will be required to profess allegiance to the planetary technate, and the prospects for meaningful discussions of alternative lawful and political paradigms will be nil.

This is what I think is important right now: If enough people BELIEVE and are WILLING TO ENFORCE the principle that government is a creation of the people, set up to protect RIGHTS, the source of which is SUPERIOR to ANY constitutional or political system, then the institutions will become – in practice – answerable to the People. The Bill of Rights has power because the People believe and are prepared to enforce that its prohibitions and protections are FOUNDATIONAL to the organization of society and have an INVIOLABLE STATUS as principles of constitutional order.

“But, but the laws that have been passed… and the Supreme Court rulings …”

We would do well to remember one pithy response to institutional overreach, “Mr Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”

With these statements, I am not glorifying the state or a particular form of government or the American regime. I am trying to call attention to the FACT that we are facing a HIGHLY ORCHESTRATED, COORDINATED EFFORT to abolish individual rights and the rule of law and the freedom of thought and conscience. This is taking shape through the transfer of public administration to foreign-owned and -interested corporations. If this transfer continues unabated, there will be NO GOING BACK and the American people will truly be the most miserable in the world. The Fourth Industrial Revolutionary Regime will be a TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT POLICE STATE.

There is a term for entities that conspire to destroy the foundations of law and institutions, that sell their country to a hostile cartel. And there are criminal penalties for engaging in the activities comprehended by that term. The American People need to think deeply about the significance of this and of the existential crisis that we are facing right now.

I recently came across this excellent little piece of 4IR-start-up-venture propaganda, written by TheCodeWorkTeam: https://thecodework.com/blog/what-is-technopreneurship-meaning-business-model/

It was the occasion for a few reflections on corporate marketing in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The 4IR isn’t only about technological upheaval, transhumanism, and surveillance – it’s also about “blurring the lines” https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/ between what’s real and what’s not so that *experiences, *feelings, and *perceptions become more important than *objectivity, *intellect, and *reality. This is a necessary step in the march toward the sacrifice of real life for meta-life.

This article’s catechesis in “technopreneurship” is a perfect example of the brassy, venture-hipster-chic-speak that the peddlers of false perception have to use to if they are to trick people into buying their meta oil. They aren’t making or doing anything original or genuinely valuable. They are in the “experience” business, which lacks substance, but is glutted on buzz and stock imagery and the fantastical conceit of market-driven social progress.

Just look at how they plan to finance this emerging class of start-up technoprenuers – through investments secured by the promise of future cost offsets in the public sphere.

Capitals and investments: Investments are one of the most essential parts of any business. Right? Naturally, an Entrepreneur/ technopreneur needs capital to start up their business ventures. So what do you think they do? They take economic support from various investors. Simple! They use the public savings which in turn leads to economic flow and development. To be very precise, technopreneurs use the money for overall societal development. Tell me you love the idea already!

https://thecodework.com/blog/what-is-technopreneurship-meaning-business-model/

They predict that their “innovations” will save society some future expense that it would incur (or so they predict) should it continue according to the status quo, and that these savings ought to justify the expenditure/investment in their experience service. But IT’S ALL HYPOTHETICAL, which is why they must rely on narrative manipulation, or propaganda. The fleecing of the public, on whose backs the whole burden of this sham will fall, is, however, very real indeed.

The language used in articles like this one gives us an indication that the “societal progress” envisioned by the Technopreneurs is one that is disembodied, artificial, and augmented. The “brainchild” of the technopreneurs’ “validated brainstorming session” is tweaked and teched for the purpose of revolution, ad infinitum.

In this technology-driven era, technopreneurs start their businesses with a validated brainstorming session. Once they reach an innovative idea, they start plugging technology into this very brainchild. It is all about using creativity and innovation to revolutionize business productivity and traditional practices. You already see the flow, don’t you?

https://thecodework.com/blog/what-is-technopreneurship-meaning-business-model/

I see the flow, and it looks very much like the closed system of sustainable finance – a circular economy that operates as a reflexive feedback loop, designed to benefit only the very few by impressing the rest into an elaborate system of measured, managed, meta experiences.

This has been the goal for a long time – corporate global governance, enforced by advanced monitoritoring technology and social credit scores. We are seeing the final stages of the maturation of the techno-fascist surveillance state, which began in earnest 19 years before the Covid 19 epidemic: on 9/11/2001. Then, in 2010, Richard Florida, an influential social engineer from the University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute, coined the term ‘Great Reset’ in order to describe a seismic transformation of the global economy based on concentrating most of the world’s inhabitants into urban megacities.

Here is an excerpt from a review of his book:

“In The Great Reset, Florida examines the roots of our current economic crisis. Unlike most observers, Florida argues the crisis is not merely a temporary emergency in government policy. It is a fundamental shift in our economic system—a “great reset.” Florida claims that times of major economic crisis necessitate the resets. Every reset involves a spatial fix, a change in where we live and work. The first reset involved a movement from farms to cities. The second involved suburbanization. Our current reset is a move towards mega regions, dominated by major urban centers.”
See: https://c2cjournal.ca/2010/06/the-great-recession-or-the-great-american-opportunity/

2010 was also the year that Sir Ronald Cohen, an investor from the UK, developed the first Social Impact Bond (SIB), a financial instrument that incentivizes corporate investments in social impacts/outcomes in roughly the same way as a bonus for early completion of a contract would incentivize a private company to agree to accept a public project. SIBs are also called Development Impact Bonds (DIBs) or Pay for Success Contracts (PFS) and all fall under the category of Social Impact Finance (SIF). The language of “what works,” “data-driven,” “performance-based,” “results-oriented,” etc. signals a shift toward private social impact financing rather than, or in conjunction with, public tax revenues.

MaRS, a Toronto-based “engine to lead Canada in the Innovation Economy,” explains Cohen’s social impact revolution in a 2010 article, excerpted here:

“Sir Ronald’s goal is to connect the capital markets to the social sector. “It is not enough to increase the standard of living at the high end. It is right at the same time to worry about those who are left behind,” he says.

It would be a shame to waste the economic crisis that we have just endured and not learn lessons from it. Sir Ronald offers the following reflection and I would suggest hope that “societies everywhere will come to the conclusion that an important part of the capitalist system is having a powerful social sector to address social issues, because government doesn’t have the resources.”

Sir Ronald and his colleagues have formed an organization appropriately called “social finance” and have come up with the concept of a Social Impact Bond – “a contract between a public sector body and Social Impact Bond investors,” in which the former commits to pay for an improved social outcome. Investor funds are used to pay for a range of interventions to improve the social outcome.

“By enabling non-government investment to be utilized, Social Impact Bonds will lead to greater spending on preventative services. These interventions can have a direct impact on costly health and social problems.”

“Social Impact Bonds are a unique funding mechanism, in that they align the interests of key stakeholders around social outcomes”.
See: https://www.marsdd.com/news/sir-ronald-cohen-on-social-finance-the-next-big-thing/

In 2016, Cohen explained that SIF would be a crucial mechanism to compensate for pervasive budget deficits that had rendered many governments across the world incapable of providing basic services for the people they serve. Austerity is a precondition for shifting from public finance to private SIF:

“Governments across the world are throwing up their hands when they see the “yawning gap” between the need for social services and their ability to pay for them, Cohen said. “We’re beginning to see governments across the world saying, ‘We can’t cope. We need money from the capital markets.’” Venture capital, he said, was a response to the needs of tech entrepreneurs: “Why can’t we find a similar response to the needs of social entrepreneurs who are motivated by empathy to help others?””
See: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/how-connect-social-entrepreneurs-capital

Then, in April of 2020, when many people were still trying “flatten the curve” of the forecasted surge in cases of the novel coronavirus, and before the public announcement of the Abraham Accords, an article in Arabian News discussed the promise of SIF for addressing the social and economic weaknesses exposed by the Covid 19 epidemic:

“The World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid-19 a pandemic on March 11th, 2020 causing significant economic and social implications, which continues to evolve rapidly across the world.

The persistent effort for finding long-term solutions to overcome its effect is both ongoing and at the forefront of governments, corporates, philanthropic foundations and the global community itself. There is a need more so than ever to look for innovative ways to combat the situation and relieve its effects. One such solution gaining traction in the market is the use of social impact bonds (SIB). As Sir Ronald Cohen stated “A SIB is an excellent tool for preventing different harmful matters and global issues”.”

The social impact bond blends public-private partnerships (PPPs), results-based financing and impact investing. Within a social impact bond, private investors provide up-front capital for social needs and are repaid by a measurable outcome funder dependent on the achievement of agreed-upon results which is similar model to a “green bond”. The COVID-19 crisis has presented significant challenges for the global economy, and society which has paved the way for the adoption and exploration of social impact bonds.”
See: https://www.arabianbusiness.com/comment/445960-lasting-bond-are-social-impact-bonds-the-solution-to-respond-to-covid-19

Cohen’s interview in 2016 explains how measurement toward actionable goals is key to making SIF work for investors and the public. The aspirations of the UN Sustainable Development Goals conveniently provide the substance of global set of targets for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investments that ought to benefit all “stakeholders.” Responsibility to those stakeholders requires “evidence-” or “science-based” policies that can demonstrate “transparency” and rule out “bias” in policy-making and ensure that no one is “left-behind.” The criterion of “science” is using raw data, measurement -as much of it as possible and in real-time- in the construction of any given policy. Continuous measurement tracks a program’s progress toward SIF outcomes, or success metrics, the achievement of which triggers a success payment – hence the phrase Pay for Success.

Like the fallout of 9/11, the response to Covid 19 has – under the auspices of “safety” – amped up the surveillance infrastructure that is needed for the transition to the Impact or Innovation Economy. Wearable technology, contactless digital currency, remote work (which brings corporate surveillance into private homes), and economic devastation that will force many businesses and homeowners to default on mortgages, leaving those properties ripe for social impact investors like BlackStone and BlackRock to restructure patterns of real estate and land use: toward the Great Reset described by Florida in 2010.

Make no mistake, C19 is not about a public health crisis at all. It is a controlled demolition of the global economy that paves the way for corporate investors and venture capitalists to “Build Back Better” by launching the social impact (engineering) economy.”

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/06/19/rebuilding-toward-the-great-reset-crisis-covid-19-and-the-sustainable-development-goals/amp/

Framing the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Inclusive Capitalism Video Series

Overview of the Framework of Inclusive Capitalism – Recorded Live

In this video series, I offer a general introduction to the Framework for Inclusive Capitalism, which is the plan for a new global, “sustainable,” economic system that is to be managed by a collaboration between businessess and government. I discuss how ESG investment metrics, human capital scoring, and track and trace technologies contribute to a culture of corporate control, the likes of which the world has not before seen. The Framework is an elaboration of the “Great Reset” plan, introduced in June 2020 by the World Economic Forum during the height of fear and speculation about the worldwide epidemic.

The version of the Framework that I use was written for the USA – its subtitle is “A New Compact Among Businesses, Government, and American Workers” – and it can be downloaded by clicking on the final url listed here. You can find your country’s plan by searching the web for “Inclusive Capitalism” AND the name of your country, or visit the Coalition for Inclusive Capitalism’s homepage for further info.

Special thanks to my friend Bryan Mayberry, who has generously gifted his time and talent to polish up this recording and prepare it for distribution here.

Helpful websites: https://www.coalitionforinclusivecapitalism.com/workers/

http://impinvalliance.org/inclusive-economic-growth https://www.epic-value.com/

https://www.weforum.org/press/2021/01/global-business-leaders-support-esg-convergence-by-committing-to-stakeholder-capitalism-metrics-73b5e9f13d https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0kWImHFXC0o&feature=youtu.be White House Intitiative on Inclusive Capitalism:

Document: The Framework for Inclusive Capitalism: A New Social Compact Among Business, Government, and American Workers

Overview of the Framework for Inclusive Capitalism, Part I: PIllar One Principles

 

Part I: Introduction and Overview of Pillar One – Principles

This was supposed to be a 15-min overview of Inclusive Capitalism buzzwords, but it became an hour-long overview of the 4 points of the First Pillar of The Framework for Inclusive Capitalism.
This was my first live set-up for something like this, and I had a hard time seeing what viewers could see and figuring out the dashboard. Also, unlike a Zoom call, you can’t see the faces of viewers during a fb live recording. I found this to be very disorienting – we cue off each other’s faces for so many features of communication, after all – so please forgive me for the rough spots. I have a couple of ideas to fix that for future talks. Of course, the social engineers know how awkward these formats are, and that’s why media design companies are creating software packages that claim to humanize digital communications through augmented reality features and “immersive experiences.” Remember that “sustainable economic growth” happens in the cloud – when our lives are moved to digital worlds, lived through computer-brain interfaces. Hard to believe? Look up SuperWorld, which is selling virtual real-estate. VIRTUAL REAL estate = word salad.
Also, check out GoldmanSachs whitepaper on the Great Reset (=Inclusive Capitalism) and “sticky learning.” These guys KNEW that most human beings would recoil at the prospect of a permanent shift of work, education, healthcare, commerce, worship, etc to digital formats. We stubborn humans wouldn’t voluntarily learn to use these tecchnologies – we’d go on “gathering” in person, claiming (rightly) that in-person activities are more fruitful and better for the bottom line, too. Hence the need for a pandemic – to “accelerate” our acceptance of these dehumanizing “innovations” AND to force the obsolescence of anyone not able to “adapt” (via sticky learning) to the new abnormal. “Adaptable” = “Resilient.” Remember, they WANT to cause economic collapse so that labor and skills supply chains can be re-engineered. So they are happy to hurt the bottom line and to undermine productivity. This creates an impact “Opportunity” for measuring outcome improvements, and that is the basis of the new impact economy.
 
You can also see that the old economic system is referred to as “the gathering economy,” whereas the new econ system is the “impact economy.” One example:  https://www.bondbuyer.com/future-of-cities
So I’m going to grit my teeth and try my hand at a little Resilience (haha!) and figure out how to make these talks smoother and to condense them for easy viewing.

 

Overview of the Framework for Inclusive Capitalism, Part I

Part II: Continuing Pillar One – Recommendations

 

This video is Part II in a series in which I offer a general introduction to the Framework for Inclusive Capitalism, the plan for a new global, “sustainable,” economic system that is to be managed by a collaboration between businessess and government. Part II continues the examination of Pillar One: “Create More Opportunities for Workers [to enter and remain in the workforce],” turning to the specific Recommendations for Businesses and Government that are designed to keep Workers working.

The Recommendations outlined in the Framework are suggestions (in name only – these policies are already being implemented) for Businesses and Government to adopt in order to “Create More Opportunity for Workers” to enter into and remain productive in the Workforce. In the video I try to explain what the buzzwords like Resilience, Sustainability, Employee Wellness, etc. mean for the “American Worker” who will be unhireable if he or she does not embody them 24/7. Labor surpluses (which are forming as a result of growing automation and robotification many jobs) will create a “race-to-the-top” situation in which employment is contingent upon a “worker’s” demonstrated “commitment” to the values and policy program set out in the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The reason why the SDGs are so important is that they are directly tied to a corporations access to investment capital. The SDGs are the starting point for ESG Investing Metrics – a new set of social / corporate responsibility indicators that are supposed to give mission-oriented, purpose-driven impact investors the information they need to select which companies in which to invest. Impact investors will be looking to invest in corporations that have the highest “S” metrics, which are the measure of how the corporation ranks on Social indices. Here, a company’s Human Capital Assets (the worth of its workforce) are greater if the company’s employees are good 21st century global citizens, They turn into liabilities if a company’s employees aren’t sufficiently socially responsible, as defined by the SDGs and demonstrated by digital record created by the Internet of Things,

Knowing thiat their investors demand the highest degree of social responsibility, the corporations will be careful to hire ONLY those individuals who are top-rated in terms of their do-gooding. But what if you didn’t start volunteering when you were a toddler? Or if you don’t agree with the transgender agenda, or if you forget to recyble that plastic fork one day? Two words:: You’re screwed.

Overview of the Framework of Inclusive Capitalism, Part II

Related video from Facebook: Testing, Resilience, and Job-Sharing: https://www.facebook.com/100035517380537/videos/1344680149301657/  

 

 

In the elite circles of big philanthropy, Tulsa, Oklahoma has earned quite a reputation.

In 2018, the mid-sized city located in America’s heartland received the Readers’ Choice Award for “Best City for Philanthropy” in a poll conducted by The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and this was not the first time Tulsa received national attention for its generosity. In 2012, local NPR-affiliate KWGS-Tulsa reported that Tulsa ranked in the top 20 cities in the nation for philanthropic giving, according to a national survey. When one envisions charitable giving in Tulsa, a number of familiar names come to mind. However, none is more prominent than that of George Kaiser, the billionaire banker, tech-investor, oilman, and the man behind the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF). Not only is GKFF a behemoth in its own right, it is also the major donor to the Tulsa Community Foundation (TCF), which, according to a 2016 report, was the second-largest community foundation in the country by assets.

Earlier this year, U.S. News and World Reports published an article entitled “Oklahoma Relies on Philanthropy for Basic Services”, which raised serious concerns about the magnitude of philanthropic influence in Oklahoma, a state that has seen “among the most significant [public] disinvestment” in the nation. “Without public oversight, [philanthropic] foundations can fund the work they care about without any of the decision-making power transferred to ordinary citizens.” In other words, when philanthropic foundations provide the financial or administrative resources for public programs in education, healthcare, the justice system, recreational offerings, or even records administration, they more or less get to establish the terms regarding the operation, delivery, and guiding principles of those services. The users of public services, the voting public, and taxpayers often find themselves with little choice but to accept the terms of service that have been set by the wealthy, politically-unaccountable philanthropists who fund them.

In Tulsa, Mr. Kaiser’s GKFF funds a portfolio of public service initiatives that include focus areas in education, health and family well-being, criminal justice, and promoting a vibrant and inclusive Tulsa. TCF, which was established under Mr. Kaiser’s leadership and receives substantial support from GKFF, directly supports initiatives in the following areas: information technology services, emergency disaster relief, professional development and funding strategies, medical-related financial hardship assistance, planned giving services, regional affiliate programs, and education. TCF also supervises over 250 Partner-Agency Funds. Given the reach of GKFF and TCF, one can hardly underestimate the scope of Mr. Kaiser’s influence in Tulsa. Lindsay Jordan, a Tulsa philanthropic adviser, told U.S. News that, “Those of us in philanthropy call [Mr. Kaiser] the ‘benevolent overlord of Tulsa.’”  

“O.K., let me start by describing the logic that got me to where I think we all are — that sensory stimulation at the earliest possible point in life is the most important thing we can do to provide equal opportunity in our society. I have felt for most of my adult life that we all got where we are by dumb luck, that we have a moral obligation to share our random advantage with those who didn’t win the ovarian lottery and that the purest form of charity is one which intervenes in the cycle of poverty at the earliest possible stage through improved nutrition, healthcare, housing, etc. Of course, the truly purest form of charity would also be anonymous and applied in areas of much greater need like southern Africa or Bangladesh so my self-bestowed halo is a bit tarnished.”

George Kaiser,
Speech on Early Childhood Education, 
New York Times, Feb 2007

 

In this series, I consider how Mr. Kaiser’s philanthropy affects the people of North Tulsa. In this first part, I examine Mr. Kaiser’s strategic approach: the social impact model of philanthropic giving. This approach aims at “social impacts”—benchmarks of success that are trackable, measurable, scalable, and, ultimately, profitable. Importantly, these social impacts are discrete outcomes (for example, improved performance on a reading assessment) rather than a holistic vision of thriving that would render further philanthropic interventions in North Tulsa unnecessary. Mr. Kaiser’s social impact philanthropy benefits from relatively recent trends in public administration, especially “Social Innovation Finance” (SIF).  SIF combines “Pay for Success” (PFS) contracts, Public-Private-Partnerships (P3s), and a new financial instrument, the Social Impact Bond (SIB), which enables securities investors to speculate on the success, or failure, of programs designed to result in specific social change outcomes. These mechanisms set up a structure for transforming philanthropic investments in under-resourced communities into profits—into real, financial gains as well as valuable human data. Because profits are tied to specific outcomes, social impact programs have an added incentive to implement a system of nudges, or social controls, designed to ensure maximum program compliance. Mr. Kaiser’s social impact philanthropy sets up the conditions for a cycle of future wealth- and data-extraction from the residents of North Tulsa, the Black community in general, and the people living in poverty who rely on Kaiser-sponsored social services.

 

Title from 2019 TulsaStar publication.

 

 

 

 

 

SOCIAL IMPACT INVESTING AND PAY FOR SUCCESS

 

The relationship between big philanthropy and social accountability is a topic that has become increasingly salient as the gap between America’s wealthiest individuals and the bottom 90% continues its rapid expansion. For those in the lower wealth percentiles, the gap has enormous consequences on the ability of individuals to provide for their most basic needs.  As a Forbes article put it, “the poorest 50% of Americans are literally getting crushed by the weight of rising inequalities.” Though 2019 confronts us with circumstances that make this question urgent, the question is not new. Even in the early days, the power of big philanthropy gave rise to concerns about the erosion of public oversight. One historical sketch cites a 1912 warning about the power of the Rockefeller Foundation, whose “domination” was “being rapidly extended to control the education and ‘social service’ of the Nation.” 

Thomas J. Tierney, an expert on philanthropic strategy and co-founder of the Bridgespan Group, explained that what is relatively new, however, is “social impact” philanthropy, a business-model approach that seeks to increase both “impact and financial returns by continuously striving to achieve better results with the same or fewer resources.” In 2007, he called on the philanthropy sector to appropriate practices widely used in business. This came after The Annenberg Foundation released a report in 2002 that showed only mixed results for its Annenberg Challenge, a landmark campaign to transform public schools across the country. The takeaway from the Challenge and the report was that the problems facing society are so massive that they must be addressed according to the business principle of “disciplined, quantifiable, and financially centered bottom-line thinking—crunching numbers and keeping score.” Data—lots of it—is key: “Mountains of solid data combined with thoughtful, rational decision-making are essential to achieving results. The right numbers, correctly crunched, provide a source of competitive advantage.”

Although results-based philanthropy might be more effective at tackling massive social challenges, it carries its own host of problems. One danger of a quantitative, outcomes-oriented approach to setting and evaluating social impact benchmarks is that the philanthropic organization becomes a business de facto, albeit one with tax-exempt status. Moreover, in an increasingly complex and connected world, the input-output effectiveness assessments of specific social interventions become valuable in their own right. Funded by the deep pockets of big philanthropy and capable of touching almost every aspect of clients’ lives, these assessments can achieve remarkable levels of precision and comprehensiveness in collecting the data used to develop the next round of “changemaking” strategies. When the assessment data becomes more valuable than the mission-specific outcome of the intervention, what is to prevent a service organization from dropping the philanthropy mantle altogether and wholly embracing the business model?

This brings us to the business of “impact investing,” which, in a 2016 article, businessman and social entreprenuer  Jim Sorenson describes as “leveraging private capital for social good” through decisions made on the basis of the growing body of research on the connections between social spending and specific outcomes. Sorenson, who made his fortune in media technology and biomedical data management systems, and serves as an advisory board member at the technology investment fund, Epic Ventures, observed that impact investors look to fund initiatives that are aligned with their values and are well-managed, but that explains only part of their motivation.  In addition, he writes, “impact investors are motivated by double or even triple bottom-line opportunities to earn a financial return while also doing something good for society. Securing a financial return helps ensure that the organization generates measurable impact that is scalable and self-sustaining over time. 

How is it that social impact investments generate a financial return for socially-conscious investors? In order to answer that question, one must look to the work of University of Chicago economist James Heckman, whose “Heckman Equation” is notable for demonstrating how investments in early childhood education programs may generate up to a 13% ROI, as a Center for High Impact Philanthropy whitepaper explains, or even up to 15%, as reported by Forbes. Alison McDowell, a respected blogger and public lecturer on the subject of impact investing, has extensively researched and written about this process in her blog, WrenchInTheGears.com. She explains that Professor Heckman’s insight into the financial benefits of targeted social interventions, pitched in combination with a business strategy for scaling developed by the tech-oriented venture capitalist and Illinois politician J. B. Pritzker, can persuade policy makers to replace traditional public services with private high-impact programs. In other words, strategic investments in social programs that have a proven record of meeting certain benchmarks yield substantial economic benefits for those served by the programs, for governments, for investors, and for society at large. This proven record of economic gains can serve as a selling point to government service providers who might be persuaded to outsource public services if a private service provider (backed by high-impact investors) can virtually guarantee a certain set of desirable outcomes. 

Goal-oriented philanthropic investors have seized upon the social impact investing model by forming large consortiums of like-minded, super-wealthy social “change-makers” in order to combine their investment resources and drive large-scale, innovative responses to pressing social concerns. One example of such a consortium is Blue Meridian Partners, a conglomerate of super-wealthy impact investors, including former New York mayor and founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies, Michael Bloomberg Michael Bloomberg. Blue Meridian’s website states, “We make big bets, up to $200 million, on each of our investees. Scaling plans are at the heart of Blue Meridian’s large-scale investments.” To that end, Blue Meridian’s investees receive flexible, upfront growth capital and annual payments for successful completion of performance milestones. 

Blue Meridian only invests in programs that can demonstrate successful outcomes. Any program receiving Blue Meridian funding must carefully monitor its work and share the results with a Managing Director assigned to their sponsored programs. This investment gives Blue Meridian access to the stores of data about the populations who receive assistance from these sponsored programs as well as data linked to the success rates of specific interventions. This data may become a valuable source of information for developing commercial strategies in unrelated business ventures. In other words, impact investors, like Blue Meridian, receive a very valuable benefit from high-impact philanthropy: a virtual goldmine of “human data capital”—information about how people make choices, what external factors may be applied to individuals for the purposes of altering behaviors, how certain populations might differ from others in key respects — all of which provides high-impact philanthropists with the tools they need to effect the social change that they wish to see.

SOCIAL INNOVATION FINANCE AND SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM

In the past decade, economists and businessmen have figured out a way to monetize the success potential of social impact programs by analyzing the human behavioral data collected by social impact philanthropy and using it to speculate on social-innovation-finance-agreements futures.  The Social Innovation Finance (SIF) model is a new funding mechanism designed to facilitate the large-scale implementation of successful results-oriented social interventions in a way that poses little financial risk to taxpayers. SIF combines two instruments: 1) a performance, or “Pay for Success” (PFS), contract that stipulates the specific results that constitute program “success,” and 2) a privately-issued “Social Impact Bond” (SIB), or operating loan, to cover the upfront costs of delivering the service intervention. According to The National Conference of State Legislatures:

 

Source: National Conference on State Legislatures 

Social Impact Bonds (SIBs), a type of pay-for-success funding agreement, work by allowing private entities to provide upfront capital that government can repay later. This makes SIBs essentially a contract between a private entity and the public sector. The private party commits to pay for a program that leads to improved social results and public sector savings. The private investors are then repaid when contractually agreed upon objectives are achieved.

The SIF funding mechanism is often referred to simply as PFS financing or SIB financing and its popularity is growing. A 2019 report by Nonprofit Finance Fund, a leader in PFS program development and financing, states that, in 2018, 25 PFS were programs implemented across the country in multiple policy areas and supported by both state and federal legislation. Consistently, advocates highlight the potential of PFS projects to bring about necessary social innovations based on evidence-based practices that are effective and free of partisan or personal bias.

 

Because SIF pays for results achieved “outcomes” rather than “outputs,” the private funders who cover the up-front costs of service delivery have a financial incentive to ensure that social service providers know and employ the most effective methods for meeting performance expectations. One way to do this is to collect as much human behavioral data as possible in order to develop very accurate predictive algorithms. The SIF system encourages social impact investors to extract as much human data as possible–data about experiences, thoughts, choices, feelings, preferences, and any other factors that help investors predict and modify human behavior. This data may be collected from things like surveys, reports, camera and audio surveillance, access badges, web-based learning or record-keeping applications (such as educational technology and training programs), even video games. It is analyzed not simply to understand how or why people make the choices that they do, but also to determine how some choices may be encouraged and others discouraged. It has the potential to create a lucrative cycle of impact protocols that not only promote the mission-oriented outcomes that social impact investors support, but also generate an ROI for the social impact investors.

In her recent book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Harvard professor Emerita Shoshana Zuboff explains how companies like Google and Facebook harvest data from users, often without their consent, in order to develop products that are able to predict and control behavior. In an interview with The Harvard Gazette, Zuboff stated: 

 

The competitive dynamics of surveillance capitalism have created some really powerful economic imperatives that are driving these firms to produce better and better behavioral-prediction products. Ultimately, they’ve discovered that this requires not only amassing huge volumes of data, but actually intervening in our behavior. The shift is from monitoring to what the data scientists call “actuating.” Surveillance capitalists now develop “economies of action,” as they learn to tune, herd, and condition our behavior with subtle and subliminal cues, rewards, and punishments that shunt us toward their most profitable outcomes.

The competitive dynamics of surveillance capitalism have created some really powerful economic imperatives that are driving these firms to produce better and better behavioral-prediction products. Ultimately, they’ve discovered that this requires not only amassing huge volumes of data, but actually intervening in our behavior. The shift is from monitoring to what the data scientists call “actuating.” Surveillance capitalists now develop “economies of action,” as they learn to tune, herd, and condition our behavior with subtle and subliminal cues, rewards, and punishments that shunt us toward their most profitable outcomes.

Although she is referring to for-profit commercial activities, the dynamics of surveillance capitalism apply to social impact philanthropy as well. Quoting from Zuboff’s book, an article in The Guardian explains that “prediction products are traded in a new kind of marketplace that I call behavioural futures markets. Surveillance capitalists have grown immensely wealthy from these trading operations, for many companies are willing to lay bets on our future behaviour.” Social impact bonds, or pay-for-success contracts, become the stuff of behavioral futures markets for which investors and financial speculators may take a “short” or “long” position in the same way they would with any other type of financial instrument. Only in this case, the course of an individual’s life is the object of speculation. In this way, social impact philanthropy makes a commodity of the vulnerable people whom it claims to serve through their social programs. Program assessment data–the data harvested from the recipients of philanthropic social interventions and which is used to quantify impact–contributes to the development of more sophisticated and effective social interventions. It gives financial speculators a strategic advantage in selecting behavioral-futures investments positions (and these might be on the side of success or on the side of the failure of some interventions) that are most likely to generate maximum profits. 

What does this complicated system of high-impact social changemaking have to do with Tulsa? A lot, actually. Tulsa relies on Mr. Kaiser’s philanthropy for the provision of many basic social services, such as education, housing, and healthcare. Mr. Kaiser is one of the principal members of Blue Meridian Partners, which has a special regional initiative in Tulsa. Mr. Kaiser also serves on the Leadership Advisory Council of Too Small to Fail with J.B. Pritzker, whose work with Professor Heckman has contributed to the Social Impact Bond market and, as a result, to the hyper-growth of surveillance capitalism. Mr. Kaiser’s ties to the Silicon Valley Tech industry, the world of big philanthropy, and the human data capital markets touch the interests of all Tulsa residents. One source reports that Mr. Kaiser has been called “the godfather of Tulsa philanthropy.” His influence is wide and deep and continues to expand. GKFF, in fact, was the major supporter of Oklahoma’s first PFS program, the Women In Recovery prison diversion program, which went into effect in 2017.  Moreover, the State of Oklahoma recently enacted the “Pay for Success Act” on November 1st of this year (Oklahoma Statutes, Section 9010.2 of Title 62), which encourages greater reliance on public-private-partnerships and PFS programs to tackle social policy issues. The ways in which this situation affects the lives of North Tulsans who depend on the public services administered by Mr. Kaiser’s social impact programs–and how this, in turn, affects the flourishing and political power of the larger North Tulsa community–will be the subject of my next piece in this series.