The Betterness Manifesto

Wow. Constantly amazed at how Umair Haque keeps making such amazing observations and good calls on what really needs to be done for the future. Love this post on The Betterness Manifesto.

Here’s the score. The global economy faces a series of tectonic structural shifts. The great gears of this vast machine must be reset over the next decade. Consumption must fall. Savings must rise. Investment must be more productive. Incomes and wealth must be shared more broadly. Borrowing from tomorrow must slow. The rate at which we value the future must grow. Growth itself must be revitalized.

Think of it as a great reboot of prosperity itself. How will it happen? Who will reset these great gears? Institutions are the ‘dials’ that tune the gears, that set the rates. Exurbs, corporations, arms-length exchanges, industries, resources, ‘profit’, and ‘GDP’. All that’s the stuff of the industrial era. Yet those are the institutions that still surround us today. A better kind of prosperity demands a new set of institutions. New kinds of cities, companies, communities, markets, capital, contracts, growth (to name just a few).

It’s up to each of us to build them. Want betterness? Betterness doesn’t begin with Ben Bernanke, Lloyd Blankfein, or Anderson Cooper. It begins with you. Creating a better 21st century means choosing to stop living in the 20th century.

It’s not just a call, he also has eight concrete things you can start doing. to make it start happening now: Invest, Allocate, Cut, Work, Live, Civilize, Support, Reflect.

I have to say I think his point about Reflection is one of the best ones I’ve seen yet. The 20th century was only built for work, not reflection. Claw back that time for yourself if you do nothing else.