Welcome to Work+T! This month we highlight some of the innovators of financial lending along with spotlighting ideas of exiting traditional ways of thinking about finance entirely. The path to transformation may not be linear, so different approaches have been highlighted.
Borrowers and lenders relating with love
In the money world, debt is either a burden to pay off or a leverage to make more money. Either way, it is undergirded by opacity and utilitarianism. There are now increasing examples of groups bucking this trend, inviting relationship and caring into the process and changing the very nature of debt. This article by Yes! Magazine speaks to the details. In a world that is increasingly unable to pay these obligations under the current paradigm, these transformative approaches may hold welcome ideas for broader adoption.
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Walking off Wall Street
Being a part of a broken system means the very water we must swim in contributes to the issue. In the world of money, this is magnified as each dollar we pull out of our wallet is tinged with the actions of Wall St traders and policy makers who can change what that dollar is worth. In this reflection by CEO of spirit-based money non-profit, RSF Social Finance, he outlines the limitations of our money system along with a few suggestions of concrete action and places to learn more.
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What is Gross National Happiness?
While the concept of happiness being worth measuring more than GDP continues to gain steam, the question of how to measure happiness remains. This review by The Guardian focuses on Bhutans GNH framework and how it came into being. In addition to tracking environmental and social metrics, the country also asks about the inner development of their people, including the personal resilience of being able to experience happiness consistently without favorable external conditions.
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Inequalities in Well-Being
While the world of global development focuses on economic development at the bottom of the pyramid, the New Economics Foundation is asking the question of well-being development. They are asking what good it is to move people from $1/day to $2/day if they must shift from relationship-orientation to transaction-orientation. If they must monetize their ecology. Consequently, the focus here is to grow well-being, specifically where it is less present currently.
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