Economic growth has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and improved the lives of many more over the last half-century. Yet it is increasingly evident that a model of human development based on economic progress alone is incomplete. A society which fails to address basic human needs, equip citizens to improve their quality of life, protect the environment, and provide opportunity for many of its citizens is not succeeding. Inclusive growth requires both economic and social progress....Economics is about efficiency of means and policy is about effectiveness of means to achieve prioritized and integrated objectives. An economy is the material life-support system for a society. The economy exists for the society and not vice versa.
Project Syndicate
Why Social Progress Matters
Michael Porter | Professor at Harvard Business Schoo and chairman of the Advisory Board to the Social Progress Imperative.
5 comments:
Tom - Tangental, but thought you might be interested:
http://www.voicesonthesquare.com/essays/2012/08/09/what-do-when-liberal-scotus-justices-think-corporations-are-people-too
Interesting but I don't have much to say about it. That's just the way that America is set up institutionally, and why I think that only a total overhaul will fix this.
But that would require a major shift in the public mindset, which is not going to happen before the wheels come off, and eventually they will come off, regardless of incremental fixes like a constitutional amendment reversing Citizens United.
For example, as long as America is perceived as #1 in the eyes of the population at large, there will be no significant systemic change. Should America slip behind in the view of many Americans, or the American dream slip away from the middle class (defined as the middle three quintiles), then there would be impetus to rethink America.
Is this telling us something that other indexes aren't (such as the HDI, Gini, and others)?
Thanks, Tom. I always learn something from you that helps me keep my eye on the big picture.
That is why social progress is more important than economic progress, for example, measured in terms of GDP per capita. Most people aren't as concerned with national wealth as standard of living and their own quality of life. Of corse, that is in part, and even large part, related their own finances and financial security.
What's important is that standard of living and quality of life be stable and not declining perceptibly, both in terms of the present generation and expectation for the future. There may even be issues if the acceleration of social progress slows and even through things are improving more gradually, many people perceive themselves as being stuck.
Societies are entangled webs (networks) of factors, including social, political and economic. These factors are not parallel networks as the names may suggest but overlapping, interactive, interdependent, and continuously shifting. This determines changing context.
Pretty clearly, a document conceived in the 18th century and institutions dating from that time either have to adapt considerably or changing context will render them obsolete.
A huge issue affecting traditions such as this today is technological innovation. In the 18th century of the US and world were still largely in the agricultural age, just entering the industrial age. Now the world is in the post-industrial age entering the digital age.
This has wrought huge shifts in context wrt social, political and economic conditions and capabilities. Time to rethink and overhaul regardless of this involving sacrificing sacred cows on the altar of progress, especially social progress.
The capacity to generate a more utopian world is now in humanity's hands. That will involve replacing the obsolete and attending to the obsolescent. This will be painful for many owing to sentimental attachment in the form of adherence to traditions and conventions that are so deeply engrained as to seem "natural."
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