ਇਮਨਦੀਪ ਕੌਰ | Imandeep Kaur@ImmyKaur
It’s time for my monthly and annual thread that nobody will read or action, lots of people will say, but I’m going to do it anyway because who knows right. So, a lot of us agree at varying degrees of what’s next that the goals of the current economy, and how we attribute value, or what we value is not fit for purpose. Right, so we know we need to move beyond financial return as the main metric, we know we need to go beyond GDP, we know we want to return and retain as much wealth of all capitals at the scale of the community, street, neighbourhood. We have all the right language of knowing something very different is very urgently needed next. Now, the what and the how, well there is lots of what’s, and what comes next won’t look precisely like any of them, but a bit like a lot of them, and you won’t really be able to attribute it to one thinker or model.
So even ‘the what’ has a fair deal of framing, models, detail now. There is A LOT more of ‘the how’ that needs to be discovered, right and that’s what the long, large, regenerative money needs to go into, lots and lots of the discovery of the how, in lots and lots of experimental, deep and rooted ways. Plenty and plenty of people who are primed for that, who are scrabbling around in a 20th century model of giving, not discovery of the next systems we will need to craft, shift, disrupt, build out of utter crisis. Land is a huge part of what so many of those people need, but many other types of assets too, to build out demonstrations, to discover the how of the next economy, next systems, what comes next basically — whatever you feel best calling it.
Now, the really ridiculous thing is everyone doing that is being pushed back into the same business models, the same need to create business plans, and the same ideas that got us into this mess for any investment at all. Which is counter to how we discover those next pieces, but people are obsessed that this how they understand investment, risk, how to move money. This means that those trying to do any of that future work, are having to stop anything interesting to satisfy 20th century models, create business plans they know will not work in the cascading crises the next two decades will bring, to persuade people who will see it all as risky.
So, it can’t be emphasised more, that those doing this work need to be deeply trusted, and expanded rapidly and encouraged to move out of the safe zone that investors and funders force them into, because they only working within the existing frame of risk, and what is possible. So, if you are worried about what’s happening, what’s coming and don’t want to wait until utter crisis, and you don’t want to make progressive work, stop, create old dependable plans, that are basically not fit for purpose for the future — and waste more time and energy, of people trying to force through and break out of the shackles of now. You know you need to invest differently, we don’t need 100 more reports, round tables, programmes, blogs. Here is a reminder of a number of high impact easy to do things in 2024, I know at this stage you’re all sick of me saying the same stuff but here we go:
1. 10 year funding, double average revenue of last three years, so they can build, discover, and have a bit of a buffer.
2. Discovery capital investment, so next models can be demonstrated, give at least 10 year payment break so that there is time and space to implement and build the models proposed out, that you often don’t believe are possible.
3. Buy up the land and assets, and get them out of the extractive development market, without endless business plans that follow old models and patterns, force people don’t pointless journeys, and in the mean time they lose the assets, to that market, and waste all their time and energy, fighting a fight they can’t win, telling a business plan story, that is nonsense for what is coming.
These are very simple things. Do it in 20-30 places with people working on transition ..
