A strong, durable economy cannot remain uncoupled from social connectedness. Business and elected leaders understand this instinctively, if not explicitly.
The uncertainty of each executive is how to realign investments to meet shared long-term needs of Washington communities.
Current business models sometimes extract dignity and wealth from individuals seen as other – peoples we do not fully know and those long feared – including women, queer youth, recent immigrants, Black and Indigenous peoples.
Such models produce fragile economic cycles, disconnect us, and undermine the ecology upon which all life depends. Take three clear examples:
Fragile Economic Cycles
1. The 2008 financial crisis and ensuing national recession was rooted in predatory subprime lending that specifically targeted Latinx and Black families. The wealth loss resulting from foreclosures catalyzed the Great Recession that negatively impacted all of us.
Completing the cycle of extraction, this returned the Black and Latinx wealth to the high-wealth communities, in turn accelerating homelessness and exacting broad negative human and economic consequences.
2. Researchers for many years have been linking social media use to increased rates of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and eating disorders among communities of girls and young women.
The disconnectedness these users experience makes them more likely to spend money on cosmetic products and surgery, two industries that have enjoyed explosive growth alongside the rise of platforms like Instagram.
In this way, such platforms extract wealth from young girls and women at the cost of their mental health and wellness.
3. A staggering majority of measurable social ills are concentrated among Black and Indigenous communities. A century of codified discrimination in housing and education prevents these communities’ building wealth.
Today, it should be no surprise that, together, they experience 4x and 8x the rates of homelessness whites endure.[i] In the current models, unprecedented public investments are rapidly flowing into systems that deliver chronically and systemically mediocre results.
These models squander corporate and human potential. They catalyze and amplify disconnectedness. This affects us all.
U.S. Surgeon General Murthy reminds us that disconnectedness is at the root of costly challenges such as depression, addiction, violence, and anxiety.[ii]
Uncoupled from economic investments, many social service efforts to repair such self-inflicted ills unintentionally create more dependency rather than strengthening the social and economic substrate.
Business models must produce shared well-being as a first principle, not an afterthought.
Now - monetizing AI alongside U.S. industrial policy - is the time for leaders to imagine and rebuild what business and communities can be. Such models will strengthen the ecosystems upon which a healthy civil society depends.
Such models are within our grasp.
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The Approach
Just half a century ago, we saw the early workings of such a model, when Puget Sound residents committed science, local resources, and the common good to clean up what had become a terribly polluted Lake Washington. The targeted, integrated approach resulted in accelerated progress, clearing the lake waters well before expected. Water clarity improved from a depth of 30 inches in 1964 to 10 feet in 1968.
As the water cleared, so did two fundamental truths about successful collective impact:
· Momentum builds when forces converge.
· Solutions are often found in new configurations rather than in new tools.
The building blocks of the Lake Washington success were not pity or charity, but self-interest. Only when empowered to co-create lasting well-beingfor themselvescan others find shared dignity in the economic success of our region.
Only a solution rooted in such shared dignity can generate lasting impact at scale.
Current government-sponsored solutions do not produce durable gains. They often expend critical resources primarily to stabilize individuals in crisis. However, to produce lasting ROIs, they must also strengthen the economic substrate.
Now is time to build economic models upon a shared dignity foundation. Such models will:
1. Be integrated – Building cross-sector metrics, structures, and incentives requires the integration of good, but currently disconnected investments. Achieving measures of sustained health across systems will demonstrate that we have invested well.
2. Heal historical trauma – Healing is necessary to interrupt the transfer of internalized trauma, if other investments are to foster lasting impacts. Historical or intergenerational trauma is a critical contributor to our region’s public health problems. Healing this trauma must occur at the community level and include cultural stories and identity, therapeutic relationships, strengthened parent-infant attachment, and family and community aegis. When children begin school emotionally and cognitively strong, they will successfully participate in life-long learning, creativity, problem solving, and innovation to create and engage the jobs of the future.
3. Share power and wealth – Shifting and sharing power and wealth increases opportunities for mutual care while reducing opportunities for systems to propagate harm. It also reduces today’s unsustainable repair costs. Profitable institutions can share power (competence, connections, and capital) with feminist, queer, Indigenous, Black, and other affirming communities.
Only a discontinuous solution grounded in long-term self-interest of business will produce the durable social and economic health that has eluded past investments.
Learning to view communities currently targeted by predatory wealth extraction as fully human means deprogramming our fear of the other, and restoring
their agency, while unraveling the systems that limit them. Only then can our economy produce a more regenerative outcomes, stem costly recurring social harms, and build shared wellbeing.[iii],[iv]
Next Steps
To achieve this collective good, we must:
1. Embed within each brand, the value proposition of linked prosperity.
2. Reshape existing business models to serve the growing well-being of othered communities.
3. Partner with social service, gov’t, and foundations to couple investments in targeted markets.
4. Refine supply chains among aligned organizations.
5. Learn and share and from pilots.
Metrics
Evidence of progress in society will include:
· Empowered families and communities.
· Children’s curiosity and creativity are ablaze in kindergarten - due to healthy parent-child bonding and early learning systems
· Individual gains measured across five well-being domains for young adults.
· Social connectedness, assessed by bridging and bonding social capital (Robert Putnam) provides measures of regional health.
· Business gains include an increasing of Black and Indigenous entrepreneurs and post-secondary graduates at all levels.
Conclusion
If our region courageously confronts the intersection of these opportunities, drawing upon the power of the human spirit and intellect, we can model lasting value for all stakeholders and for the nation.
Together!
[i]The future of work in black America. (2019). McKinsey & Company.
[ii]Reducing Poverty & Inequality in Washington State 10-Year Plan for the Future. (2020).
[iii] Murthy, V. H. (2020). Together: The healing power of human connection in a sometimes Lonely World. Harper Wave.
[iv]The 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress
The above content appears in a report I produced earlier this year. A PDF version is available at this link.
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