Upstream - A World Without Profit with Jennifer Hinton

Episode Date: April 5, 2022

“The pursuit of private financial gain is what drives inequality and ecological harm.” This is the perspective of Jennifer Hinton, a leading proponent of the not-for-profit business, which is differs in fundamental ways from a traditional nonprofit organization and, of course, from for-profit businesses. Not-for-profit businesses models are often invisible in the many movements to reimagine our economic system, but the idea is starting to gain momentum. Jennifer offers a vision of an entirely not-for-profit economy made up exclusively of not-for-profit businesses that de-emphasize profit and growth and instead prioritize businesses as a means for social and environmental benefit. Together we look at examples and operating principles of this model, we explore how it navigates the capitalism/socialism binary, and we ask what conditions would be necessary for this model to truly offer a bridge to a post-growth, post-capitalist world. Dr. Jennifer Hinton is a systems researcher, activist, and ecological economist who is a Senior Fellow at the Schumacher Institute and the author of two books: How on Earth: Flourishing in a Not-for-Profit World by 2050, co-authored with Donnie Maclurcan of the Post-Growth Institute, and Relationship-to-Profit: A Theory of Business, Markets, and Profit for Social Ecological Economics Thanks to Between Friends for the intermission music.  This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

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if you can, go there to donate. Thank you. I see for profit business and capitalism all of these things are just sort of blips in the long history of humanity. Modern humans have been around for 250,000 years, and profit didn't even exist, so this having this surplus at the topologist think that it didn't even exist before the agricultural revolution when we started having a bit of a surplus of crops, right? And even after that, that surplus was always distributed among the community members so nobody would go hungry. So actually pursuing private financial gain is a very recent phenomenon and organizing economic

institutions around that purpose is a very very recent phenomenon. Even though it's the water we swim in and it feels really normal to us. It's a very strange anomaly. You are listening to upstream upstream upstream. A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. I'm Dela Duncan and I'm Robert Raymond. The pursuit of private financial gain is what drives inequality and ecological harm. This is the perspective of the guest of this upstream conversation. Dr. Jennifer Hinton is a leading proponent of the Not-for-profit business, which is different from a traditional nonprofit and a for-profit business, and a model often invisible in the movement for a new economy, next economy, next system,

solidarity economy, etc. Jennifer offers a vision of an entire not-for-profit economy made up exclusively of not-for-profit businesses, putting profit, growth, and ultimately all money as a means for social and environmental benefit instead of end goals in themselves. Together, we look at examples in operating principles of this model. We explore how it breaks the capitalism, socialism, binary, and we ask what conditions would be necessary for this model to truly offer a bridge to a post-growth, post-capitalist world?

Dr. Jennifer Hinton is the Systems Researcher, Activist, and Ecological Economist, who is a senior fellow at the Schumacher Institute and the author of two books, How on Earth, Flourishing in a Not-for-Profit World by 2050, co-authored with Donnie McClurkin of the Post-Growth Institute, and Relationship to Profit, a theory of business, markets, and profit for social, ecological, economics.

Welcome Jen, so excited to speak with you today about this topic. I'm wondering if you can start by introducing yourself, how might you introduce yourself, and explicitly what led you to the field of economics and the particular area of economics that you're in? Sure. Well, thank you, first of all, Della, so much for having me. It's exciting to be on upstream because I have listened to you guys for a long time and I'm a big fan. So my name is Jennifer Hinton and I am an ecological economist and systems researcher. I've been working in the field of sustainable economy for basically 15 years or so. And okay, of course it's always a long story, right? How I got into this, but in a nutshell. So I am from the US.

I'm from a middle class family in Colorado Springs, Colorado. So I grew up in a fairly typical American family where people were pursuing the American dream. My mom and dad were sort of working really long work weeks to make as much money as they could so we could get bigger houses and better cars and all of this material American dream stuff. And then fast forward, I did my undergrad degree

at the University of Colorado in international relations. And I had focused on China. So I get this opportunity after I graduated to go to China to teach English. And I just let this agency place me wherever they needed me, and I ended up in this small village in the countryside in China. And I had been studying China and hearing about this miracle

of economic growth and development there that they were achieving double-digit growth rates, GDP was growing by 12% per year and it was this miracle of development because it was lifting everybody out of poverty. So I was excited to experience this firsthand and I ended up in this village and the reason I'm telling you this right is that this was a life-changing experience for me because what I experienced was that all of this, the economic growth was coming at a huge social and environmental cost. So the first thing is the factories to produce all of this stuff, you know, they were burning coal. And that was creating enormous air pollution. And so people were sort of getting sick

from the air pollution. And then the factories that again, we're making all of this stuff mostly for export, right? To like Western countries, we're dumping their pollution in the rivers. So by the time I had gotten to this village in Chandong Province, the river, all of the

fish had died. It was one of these rivers you've probably seen pictures of that just had this layer of foam on top of it. And the farmers nearby, they didn't have any other water to irrigate their crops with. So they were using this polluted water. So people were breathing in this polluted air using the polluted water for crops and also having to drink it many people So they were getting sick

So the ecosystems were being killed off people were getting sick And at the same time when I got there one of the positive things that I saw was this this village had community ties That I had never experienced growing up in Colorado Springs where you know every family is sort of just pursuing this American dream on their own trying to get more money. In this village, these families sort of all took care of each other. People took care of each other's kids in this way that I just never experienced. But that was rapidly getting eroded as well. Because in order to make more money, all of the working age people say between the ages of 20 and 40 or so, we're leaving the village, going to big cities to get jobs, probably working in factories with bad working conditions, low wages, and living in sort of bad

conditions as well. And so the kids in the village were growing up without their parents, not seeing their parents for years on in sometimes. So the community fabric was also being torn apart. And so this all together, this whole six-month experience of this, mainly question what development is. Is this really progress? Is this what we want in society that, you know, okay, we're growing the economy, but we're tearing apart our ecosystems, we're tearing apart our communities and people are getting sick? So then I ended up fast forward a little bit, I go through a sustainability master's program in Sweden and I ended up doing my master's thesis on the circular economy because this

was something that just kept coming to the service for me, is that this society measures success in terms of money, in terms of the economy. So a developed country has a bigger GDP than a less developed country. And I say developed with quotation marks. And yet that quote unquote development and economic growth have this environmental cost. So I really wanted to unpack this tension

and see can we have an economy that actually fits within the environment and can deliver human well-being? So I looked at the circular economy, but it was often framed in terms of, we need a circular economy in order to have green growth, or in order to have sustainable profits. And that always sort of settled me. And then I bumped into, after, shortly after I finished that Master's Program, I bumped into Tim Jackson's wonderful book called Prosperity Without Growth. And that sort of convinced me that, oh, we don't actually need economic growth. There's no natural law that says the economy has to grow and have all of these negative social

and environmental impacts. We could actually redesign our economies to not have to grow and meet people's needs within the environmental limits of the planet. And so that's sort of how the short and long story of how I got into post-growth economics. Yeah, thank you for your introduction and I'm just thinking of a podcast that I was on at one point It was called what radicalized you so I love hearing the stories of those moments when folks just start to question things particularly around economic issues like what is development what is progress and I also Appreciate that you brought in what is post growth and I'm reminded of a quote by Dr.

Havana tow the former program director of the Gross National Happiness Center in Bhutan, he said, we are attentive to what we measure. We are attentive to what we measure. It feels very relevant to this conversation, both in the macro level and in the micro level that we'll get into. So we're here to talk about not-for-profit businesses. And so maybe can you give us a definition of what is a not-for-profit business, and how is it different from a nonprofit,

and also just a regular business? So a not-for-profit business is basically distinguished from traditional nonprofits, which we can, I often call charity dependent nonprofits, in terms of not-for-profit business is seeking to be financially self-sufficient through the sale of goods and services in the market. So they're selling products and services on the market just like a business, but they're different from a traditional for-profit business in legal

terms. So this is a legal distinction. And I think of it in terms of the legal purpose and also the assignment of financial rights, which means who can get access the profit and the assets of the company. So not for profit businesses have to have a core social benefit mission. And that's sort of like the reason they exist.

And so all of the profit, all of the surplus money that's sort of like the reason they exist. And so all of the profit, all of the surplus money that's left over after a business covers its expenses. If it's not for profit, all of that profit has to go back into serving that social benefit mission, which can be anything from like helping kids with reading disabilities to protecting a local forest or helping people facing homelessness. There's this whole range of social benefit missions. A traditional for-profit business has a legal purpose of financial gain. And so, it's, you know, that's a lot of why people invest in those businesses is to try to make a return on their investment, right, to make more money.

And in service of that financial gain core purpose, the financial rights are private. So private owners and investors have a right to the profit of the business. So rather than going to a social benefit mission, as in not for profit businesses, for profit businesses distribute the profit at some point or another to their owners and investors to make them richer, which again is a matter of that purpose of the business. Yeah, so when I share this, I talk about something you bring up in your book, How on to say this is that profit is harnessed or redirected to social or environmental good in a business. So profit is profit and growth in some way is a means to an end, meaning a mission driven cause rather than an end in itself.

Exactly. And I mean, then when we're thinking about the post-growth economy, that's sort of the larger transition we need to make is we need to be seeing money, whether it's profit, income, or GDP, as a means to meeting human needs, rather than as an end in itself, and as a measure of success. Like a successful business is the most profitable or successful person is a billionaire. And one reason why I love this model is because it doesn't stigmatize or shame or even

dismiss anyone who is entrepreneurial or maybe has an interest in starting businesses or marketing even. It's just what is the purpose of that enterprise or what is the purpose of their efforts, their entrepreneurship. So it really directs even entrepreneurship towards social or environmental good and includes those folks as part of a healthy economy as well. Just want to add that as another thing I'm excited by about this. Yeah, exactly. excited by about this. Yeah, exactly. By wondering, why should we care?

Why is this something that we should even have a conversation about? This specific business model called the Not for Profit Business? Yeah, exactly. So good question. The reason we should care is because the dominant business structure in an economy, so the type of business structure that is most prevalent in an economy has system-wide effects. So it causes system-wide dynamics. So the fact that our economies right now, and you know, we can just talk about the global economy, is predominantly made up of four profit

businesses, means that financial gain is at the heart of the way this economy functions, and profit is accumulated by a handful of private owners. And all of this drives ever more consumption and production, which has environmental consequences. But of course, it makes more profit for the companies, which then they can use to make their owners rich. And then as the owners get richer, you know, they're accumulating wealth. And these businesses have an inherent incentive to keep wages low because higher wages mean less profit. And so,

we've got owners accumulating wealth, we've got wages being suppressed and that drives inequality. So, really, the way that I see it is that the for-profit business structure is driving both environmental crises and inequality crises. So it's a core driver of all the problems we're trying to tackle. So the not-for-profit business model offers a way out of this conundrum because it's got social benefit at the heart of it. The social benefit is sort of the engine of this business structure,

but then if we can imagine shifting the entire economy away from for-profit structures to not-for-profit structures, we could have social benefit as the engine of a not-for-profit market economy. And then with all of the surplus of that economy, getting circulated back to where it's needed most, guided by, yeah, the government, but also guided by a market full of not-for-profit businesses that are set up to meet people's needs, and especially many not-for-profit businesses focus on the most disadvantaged. So then it's really using the surplus to meet the greatest needs rather than accumulating it in the hands of a few owners who don't need it.

Wow, Jen, I just love hearing the systems thinking beneath the way that you're speaking. It's obvious that you're a systems thinker. And I know that if we were doing this conversation via video or in person and we had a presentation, we'd be seeing lots of systems diagrams. So I just want to invite us to imagine one that's related to this this idea that we're speaking about. You have this one image where you show and the economy and you have kind of the the economy of our needs and our work and then you have a way that there is wealth being siphoned from it and going to an elite economy. So it's almost that you know wealth

is being siphoned or taken out of our economy and going to the elite economy. So it's almost that wealth is being siphoned or taken out of our economy and going to the elite economy or the 1%. And then you offer that the not-for-profit economy is more of a closed loop system, meaning the wealth or profit is circulating. So it doesn't actually leave the system. It stays within it and helps to flow to where it needs to go and helps us to meet our needs.

So can you talk a little bit more about that diagram in particular and give us a taste of this systems thinking idea? No, exactly. Yeah. So in the book we talk about the siphon and the pump. And so in the for profit economy, there is like you just mentioned the siphon that sort of sucks wealth out of the common economy that most of us are part of into this elite economy and there's a bit of a pump action circulating wealth in there but it's not as strong as it could be or should be

so if we have a not-for-profit type of economy we basically stop that Siphon, we take the Siphon out and we just have a pump circulating the wealth to where it's needed most. And so, yeah, that means also importantly, so it's not driving inequality in the same way, it's not driving consumerism and environmental degradation, but it's also a system that doesn't systemically have to grow. The for-profit economy has to grow more and more all the time because it's driven by financial gain. The purpose is actually expressed in terms of growth. And so you constantly have to be selling more products, convincing people to buy

more stuff that they don't really need just in order to deliver that profit and that financial gain. And that's not part of the not-for-profit economy model so. Let's make this really tangible for folks. Give us an example, an example or two, of a not-for-profit business that we can just imagine in our minds. Right. So there are so many. It's difficult to choose just a couple. I think so, Brak is one of my favorite examples,

just because it's an interesting example, and it's older, example and it's it's older so it was started. Brack is a company in Bangladesh started in the 1970s after Bangladesh gained its independence from Pakistan. There was sort of a civil war and so the founder of Brack decided that he wanted to use business as a way to help meet the education on healthcare needs of rural Bangladeshies. And so instead of relying on philanthropy and grants and donations, Brak actually operates businesses in order to provide healthcare and education to people in the

country side of Bangladesh. So it has a few different businesses. One is a dairy, so they operate a dairy, producing and selling dairy products. And then again, all of that profit goes to helping make education and healthcare more accessible to people in the countryside. They also do some banking services, so providing micro loans to people who are again trying to start up their own little businesses, maybe having hard time getting some money to do that, and they have some retail shops and quite a few different businesses. So that's one of the way it makes it so interesting to me is one thing is it's in Bangladesh, so it sort of breaks the stereotype that a lot of people might have that this is only a western phenomenon in rich countries. The other thing is that it's running so many different kinds of

businesses. Another interesting one more recently that I've got next I'm excited about is called Radically Open Security. So again, just to break some stereotypes, this is a cyber security company that is not for profits started up in the Netherlands by this awesome woman named Melanie Rebeck. So they do cyber security security stuff obviously, but she's also gotten so passionate about this not-for-profit business structure that she started up alongside a radically open Non-profit ventures is what it's called and it's a not-for-profit business incubator. So she's helping other people to use that entrepreneurial spirit to start up their own not-for-profit businesses. So there's all kinds of exciting stuff happening out there. Yeah, and some that I usually speak to as well, I was having tea the other day and I was a Newman zone green tea and I thought said 100% profits to charity. And that's another example of

a of a business, if you know, salad dressings or many other products, but that 100% of their profits go to charity. And it really seeing that 100% go to charity is such a difference than the 1% for the planet, which is another thing that I'll see, you know, let's say on a beer bottle or something else. So super interesting. And then the YMCA is another example that I give where there's the business of the gym membership, but then the gym membership profits go towards after school activities for low income youth. So these are just a couple other examples. And once you start to know about them, if you can see them more and more. And you know, one question is, could we in the transition go both ways, where could a nonprofit just create some income

or revenue generating activity that would unhook them from the nonprofit industrial complex and their reliance on donations and grant funding and kind of liberate their money? And can we go the other way where you have an enterprise, like a business, decide we're going to put 100% of our profits towards a mission driven cause of our choice. Can we go both directions?

I think that's also another helpful way of seeing what is a not-for-profit business and what isn't. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, that's where we're seeing a lot of not-for-profit businesses come from. So a lot of not-for-profit businesses were originally charity dependent nonprofits, but then for one reason or another, I mean, a lot of this shift happened in the global financial crisis of 2007, 2008, where, you know, the donations and the grants sort of dried up for them. So they had to go into business just to survive. But there's also data and interviews showing that a lot of these nonprofit organizations

sort of found freedom and a sense of self-sufficiency in going into business and being able to better follow their social benefit mission the way that they want to rather than the way their donors want to, for instance. So there's a lot of interesting stories there. On the flip side, like you say, for profits can transition into not-for-profit structures. So one way, like you say, is to start giving 100% of the profit to a charity. So Newman's own, I think, is technically a for-profit, but then that's just their legal structure, but they give 100% of the profits to the charity. A really quick and easy move that they could make to become legally not for profit and sort

of lock that in for the long term is for that charity to take over Numan Zone. And there are a lot of charity-owned companies that you wouldn't even know that they are charity-owned from the face of them, But then it's just that's their parent organization and all of the profit goes to that parent organization. That is a charity working for social benefit. So yeah, there's a lot of interesting ways and pathways are avenues to move. And one topic that comes up related to this is enoughness. Because if one were setting up this type of business, one might say, okay, well, the profit is what is after expenses are paid. So investment back into the business

wages for the folks working there and any supply chain costs. So, you know, how might one even determine, well, what is enough in terms of paying everyone's wages? What is enough in terms of creating ethical, local, sustainable supply chains to even have a profit? Right? So can you talk a little bit about that? Because what if somebody was to say, well, enough for me is a million dollars a year?

You know? So how is enoughness a part of this model on the micro and the macro level? No, and that's a really good question. So I think enoughness is sort of, there's a bottom limit and an upper limit, right? If we're talking about it enough. So to get workers over that bottom limit to make sure that everybody has a living wage, I think, you know, that's already happening in policy shifts, making sure that there is a living minimum wage, so that can be part of ensuring that. I think also doing things in a more democratic way, so there are worker directed, not for profit businesses, and then you have workers actually deciding what the wages will be in

those businesses. So that's perfectly feasible and it does happen. There is also data showing, so for instance, there's comparisons of for-profit and not-for-profit hospitals in the US, which is one of these sectors where there is good data on the difference between for-profit and not-for-profit businesses. And the not-for-profit hospitals actually have a smaller pay gap between the lowest paid employees and the highest-for-profit hospitals actually have a smaller pay gap between the lowest paid employees

and the highest paid employees. And they did some interviews to see why. And part of it was that the managers were willing to accept lower salaries than the for-profit managers so that they could pay the, for instance, the janitors and the cafeteria workers, higher salaries. So there's also something that we said just for the ethos that is embedded in the social benefit centered, not for profit model. But then, you know, there is also an important role for policy, minimum wages, in the degrowth movement, they also talk about maximum wages, you know, the government putting a cap on how much income somebody can make,

what their salary can be per year. I'm not opposed to that. I think that might be a good idea. And then entirely not for profit economy. I don't know if it would be necessary, but sure why not? So I think there's different ways of tackling that. Yeah. And when I think about this not for profit business in the new economy space, it's pretty ignored, or it's not really talked about as a solution, really interestingly.

And in your book, Relationship to Profit, one of the things you bring up is the solutions that we have right now, or the solutions do not solve the problems. And those solutions being traditional worker cooperatives, benefit corporations, social enterprise, small local independent family businesses. These are all things that in the new economy spaces, solidarity, next economy spaces, one might really say our solutions and even really systems changing initiatives. And there are many benefits to all of them.

But I think this angle around focusing on profit really shifts what is the solution and what isn't in the post-growth framework. And this is something that Robert and I really kind of uncovered or realized when we went to Mondragon and studied the the Basque region of Spain's cooperative ecosystem there, the Monteregon Corporation, and we found so many benefits to it, including the decrease in the pay wage gap and worker sense of solidarity and all this. But we did find a growth imperative and a desire for competition and capitalism and maximization of profits that took form in a few different ways, like having subsidiary factories abroad that were not worker cooperatives and having a tiered system which included contract workers who were not members of the cooperative.

So it was kind of like the veil was lifted for us around worker cooperatives. And again, worker cooperatives are beautiful and very helpful in many ways. But in this frame, they're not solving the problem. So talk more about what that means, why a co-op, a benefit corporation, a social enterprise, ethical companies, small family-run businesses, why they're really not part of the solution in the post-growth framework that we're talking about. Right. And I would say those are all a step in the right direction from like a shareholder

transnational corporation. And it's good to go in a B-corp social enterprise worker cooperative direction. It's a step in the right direction, but it's not far enough. It's not a full solution because, as I mentioned before, it's the pursuit of private financial gain that drives both environmental degradation and inequality. And all of those models still allow for the pursuit of private financial gain, and some of them are even very much tied to it.

So, you've mentioned worker cooperatives can still be very much driven by private financial gain. Even if it's more democratically distributed, it can still be very profit driven and work for just enriching those owners. So we have to get that core purpose out of business and out of the market, replace it with a healthier purpose, which is to meet needs, these different social benefit purposes that not for profit businesses have. And then, you know, have the legal structure that supports that, and that's why they're not for profit structures. So important is because it has this legally binding element

called the non-distribution constraint. And the non-distribution constraint just means that these not-for-profit businesses cannot distribute their profit to private individuals. All of that profit has to go back into the social benefit purpose. So that really sort of locks this in an important way that's missing from those other models. We'll be right back with the second half of our conversation with Jennifer Hinton, co-author

of How on Earth, flour'm not a fan of you I'm not a fan of you, I'm not a fan of you I'm not a fan of you, I'm not a fan of you I want to make you feel the same, okay? We stay, oh, can't we stay the same? You really never leave my bed I wanna make you feel the same, okay? You try feeling what you say Kinda like a maybe you could stay

No one makes me feel this way Save it for the only time Cause I'll fuck it up with you, stuck in a test, let's start and move Only one person, my heart breaks in, I'm just real afraid So I think we should stay, but can't we stay the same? No, we didn't know who hit my friend, I want to make you stay the same? No, really never give up I wanna make you feel the same Okay, we stay the same

No, can we stay the same? No, really never give up I wanna make you feel the same Okay, you like holding me to the hands No, I'm trying like me in that way I can't be the one to say Okay I'm just reaffirming I think we should stay Oh, can we stay the same? Oh, we'll never be my burden Oh, I make a feel the same

Okay, we stay the same Oh, can we stay the same? Oh, we'll never be my burden Oh, I make we stay the same? You really never leave my bed. I want to make you feel the same, okay? That was okay by between friends. And now back to our conversation with Jennifer Hinton. We talked about the invisibility of this model. What about the history of it? Was there a time before for profit businesses?

Is there an emergence right now? Would you say there's a trend of these not for profit businesses? What would you say in terms of the historical analysis? And I want to uplift what, quote, from your book, you said, as capitalism took hold through the industrial revolution, personal gain acted as the main motivation for conducting and expanding business activity. The profit motive was born. So talk a little bit about the history

of maybe capitalism and profit and just economics and profit and where this emergence of the not-for-profit business model is right now in history. So I see for-profit business and capitalism, which you can easily sort of demystify by calling it the for-profit economy, so capital's economy is a for-profit economy. All of these things are just sort of blips in the long history of humanity, right? So we've been around for, well modern humans have been around for 250,000 years, and profit didn't even exist. So this having this surplus, and the apologists think that it didn't even exist before the agricultural revolution when we started having a bit of a surplus of crops, right? And even after that,

that surplus was always distributed among the community members, so nobody would go hungry. So actually pursuing private financial gain is a very recent phenomenon and organizing economic institutions around that purpose is a very, very recent phenomenon, only in the last couple of hundred years, and it's a very strange anomaly. Even though it's the water we swim in, and it feels really normal hundred years and it's a very strange anomaly even though it's the water we swim in and it feels really normal to us it's a very strange anomaly if you think about traditional markets you know markets have existed for a long time but it wasn't about getting as rich as you can competing for others to get more than everybody else it was about

oh let's let's bring our goods to the market. Be part of the community, exchange money for goods so we can all get our meats met in different ways. And money was not the end, but money was the means to meeting our needs through the market. And then I think that, yeah, not for profit businesses are on the rise. There's not great data about that because data hasn't been collected just for not-for-profit

businesses as its own category, but we can see within the nonprofit sector globally, there has been an increase in generating revenue through business activities. So we know that the nonprofit sector is going into business more, and then just with the rise of social enterprises, which tend to be not-for-profit for. And then just with the rise of social enterprises, which tend to be not for profit for the most part, and the rise of more consumer cooperatives and these sorts of things, I would say there is a general trend for not-for-profit businesses

to increase these days. Absolutely. And that's exciting. Yes. So you're one of your books. How on earth, the subtitle is something like, you know, a not-for-profit world by 2050, I believe. And, you know, so I just want to invite folks listening to close your eyes if that feels comfortable and something you're able to do and just

try to imagine, what would it feel like? What would it look like if we were in a world without profit, we were in a post-profit world, where there were no for-profit businesses. Just trying to imagine that is really inspiring to me and one thing that you bring up in that imagination activity is that everyone would go to work feeling that their work was meaningfully contributing to society. And that alone is huge. And I want to ask you what the other ramifications you would imagine would be in that realm. But I just want to bring up this quote that you say in the book. You say it was from the Brookings Institute of,

it was a study, and it said that 64% of millennials would rather make $40,000 at a job they love instead of $100,000 at a job they think is boring. So just bringing up that idea of What would it look and feel like of this not-for-profit Economy in terms of our work, you know everyone having meaningful, everyone feeling that they're meaningfully contributing to society. What else would you add? How else would we feel differently, or what else would we see that would be different in that not-for-profit world? Yeah, no, it's a great question.

So I think one of the things to start with is what the not-for-profit world doesn't do. And that's one of the key differences, is we wouldn't be surrounded constantly by advertising, trying to convince us to buy stuff. We don't need telling us that we don't look good enough, that we're not wearing nice enough clothes, that we need a nice car, a bigger house, or whatever it is. Right now, it's hard to even fathom

how much we're surrounded by that pressure to consume. So that's one of the things that I think would loosen up a lot. We would have more room to breathe, planned obsolescence. Right now, companies are designing products and services to go bad before they even have to, just to get us to buy more. So all of that sort of pressure, just to consume more, so that companies and their owners can make more money money could go away. That would allow us to have more breathing room.

Another thing that we talk about in the model is that because this is not a growth driven and profit driven economy, we would be able to have shorter working weeks. We wouldn't have to constantly be working more to get more money to buy more stuff and you know this sick treadmill of consumerism and the debt that is such a big part of it today. Instead, we could have you know, 20 hour working weeks doing like you said work that is really deeply purposeful to us. But I sort of think about okay if I woke up in the not-for-profit world tomorrow, what would it be? You know, I'd be able to maybe sleep in a little bit. I'd be able to wake up, go out,

see my little vegetable patch where I'm growing food because I actually have time to grow my own food. Then go to work doing something I love, knowing that the company is helping people or helping the environment. Work for what three or four hours a day, and then be able to come back. It may be do some more work on my little vegetable patch or maybe like learn how to play the guitar

or spend time with loved ones go for a walk in nature. So one of the beautiful things about this model is it really puts the economy and work in their proper place, which is means to an end and allows us to meet our needs in much healthier ways through connecting with ourselves, through reconnecting with the people around us, reconnecting with nature and leaving time and space for the stuff that really makes life worth living. Another thing I'm thinking about is for folks who are either looking for a job or young folks contemplating where they might work, the question of what is your purpose or what issue

in the world breaks your heart or concerns you would be much more important and actually vital because it would help determine which business you might work for because that social or environmental mission would be central to the work that they'd be doing. So even just investigating that and working towards those causes that one cares about would be much more important to the conversations and trainings, which is another thing really inspiring.

Yeah. And that's so different from today where you're a young person entering the job market. And it's more about like, what job can I get where I can make a decent living, you know, just get enough to survive. And also where I don't feel like I'm actually proactively harming people through the company I work for, or proactively harming the environment through the company I work for. That's a really difficult decision for a lot of young people today, because so many of the companies that offer a living wage are doing so much harm. Absolutely. So one thing you write about or speak about in an alignment with this topic is that the not-for-profit economy breaks us out of the binary between seeing a choice only between state communism or state socialism and capitalism. That this not-for-profit economy is something different.

It's a different way, a third way. And this is interesting to me because even when I was hearing the Brake example, the Bangladesh example, one thing that came up for me was, well, should it be that healthcare for these Bangladeshi, rural Bangladeshi folks is still dependent on the market, even if it's a not-for-profit market economy.

So let's talk a little bit about the state and how the state would be in relationship with this economy in a healthy way, and also how perhaps there's a way that we could meet all of our needs, not have to be solely reliant on profit-generating activity, that how might we decide that there's some collective needs that we actually do want to meet through taxation and through state projects, such as healthcare or education. So talk to us about the state and what you mean by this breaking this out of this binary

between state socialism and capitalism. Yeah, we've been stuck in that binary for so long. I think, you know, from the Cold War, it's like, we're stuck with capitalism, guys, because we know that the only other thing doesn't work, but luckily there isn't only one other thing. The state. So the state in the not-for-profit world model. So we see the state as sort of being a partner state to the market, which is very different relationship from the relationship that the state and the for-profit market have in the

current global economy, right? So right now we have this for-profit economy that sort of drives inequality and environmental problems and all kinds of social problems. And then the state is supposed to somehow compensate for that and regulate it and make sure it doesn't do too much damage, still allows for enough quote unquote, wealth creation. So there's this almost antagonistic relationship or there's supposed to be between the market and the state. Of course, we know that there's like also a high level political capture right now where the largest market actors have actually been able to capture policy making for their own profit motivated purposes.

But in the not-for-profit world, these things sort of change. So we have a market that sort of becomes a safety net in itself because it's a market full of not-for-profit businesses that are all trying to do as much social good as they can. And like I said, before a lot of their social benefit missions are aimed at helping the most disadvantaged people in society. So the market in itself becomes a bit of a social safety net rather than just undermining social integrity like it does now. And the state then can become sort of a partner.

And these two, the not-for-profit market and the state can work together to make sure that everybody's needs are met within the planetary boundaries. And so there's a much more cooperative relationship there. At the same time, so I think that's just a process of negotiation and dialogue between these actors. Every place will want to have a different balance of a not-for-profit market and state. I'm a big proponent of universal healthcare, so I'm really happy with the universal health care system here in Sweden where I live, but you know you could also have not-for-profit healthcare providers that can come in and help out with those needs. So I think it's just up for a democratic negotiation in different places and seeing what fits that

context. Another player, maybe to bring in here, is sort of the comments. And you know, so not just the market, not just the state, but there's this whole other sphere of society outside of the market of state that you can think of as the comments. And how that can also be really important for meeting needs. So like, you're sharing resources with neighbors and family and friends and gifting and all of these other means of exchange and support that happen in the comments.

So I think those three sort of pieces come together in a really beautiful cooperative way in the Not-For-Profit World Model. And I love that even as you're speaking, I'm reminded of your systemic analysis and systemic view. Of course, you would not come onto the the show and say, the not-for-profit business model is the answer, the only solution, right? But you're really localizing it in an ecosystem of the changes that would be necessary for

this just transition. And related to that, you say in the book that the not-for-profit business is needed but not guaranteed and necessary but not sufficient. You bring up, again, this partnering. Can you talk a little bit about what else would be needed alongside this transition of moving us from businesses and traditional nonprofits to not-for-profit business models. What else would we need in that transition? So, a few different things. I think in environmental terms, we need some, like, caps on resources that we're using,

and we need to really understand the environmental limits that we've got right now. The not-for-profit world model wouldn't necessarily take those into account. So we do need some sort of science policy feedback there that guides the Not-for-profit economy to stay within the environmental limits, sort of keeps track of how many resources we can use safely and how much pollution, because all of this economic activity will always have environmental consequences. Question is how can we minimize those and minimize our economic activity while always have environmental consequences. Question is how can we minimize those? And minimize our economic activity while still meeting needs.

So that's one thing is we sort of need that outside check on the market. I think on a deeper level, we need a lot of healing. We need a lot of healing. We need redistributive justice. A lot of damage has been done on the developmental pathway of capitalism, the history of colonialism, and the historical and ongoing forms of exploitation and domination have really traumatized so many swathes of people, so many communities. So I think part of that transition has got to be redistributive justice through things like reparations and other redistribution mechanisms.

And, you know, also, I think there's an important role there for truth and reconciliation commissions, just to help enable that healing and acknowledge the wrongs that have been done and try to somehow find a better pathway forward. Yeah, thank you for adding those, absolutely. And I'm reflecting on the theme of this show, going upstream, going from the challenges that we face today, whether they're the description of the river that you described in China with the foam and the dead fish or the eroding social cohesion there as well. And then the planned obsolescence and the

inequality and the impact on the global south, the globalization and traditional development models have taken. So all of that, you know, those downstream problems. And then when we go upstream, this whole conversation is very upstream. I'm hearing interrogating and investigating the profit motive as an upstream element root cause of what were the downstream problems that we're seeing. And I'm hearing invitations for really rethinking that paradigm shift around enoughness, really befriending enoughness, claiming enoughness, normalizing enoughness,

systemically and personally, and then also really acknowledging and being aware of the limits to growth and the ecological limits and being in harmony with nature, in relationship with nature. And then of course seeing money and profit as a possibility for means to an end, the end being social or environmental good and not an end in itself. So just anything else you'd add by way of the upstream metaphor in relation to profit and this conversation. Yeah, I think that if I was to go even further upstream from the profit motive and the for profit economy that we have, it would be with re-enisers work on domination cultures and the domination systems and the spectrum of sort of domination systems

to partnership systems and how the for-profit economy is very much embedded in this larger domination paradigm where everything you know that's where all of these supremacisms come from. It's all about domination so we get things like male supremacism and white supremacism and the development narrative that we have now, or high GDP countries are more developed than low GDP countries and all of this. So I think like there's this deeper system, like a value system and norms and beliefs that underlie the economic institutions that we have now. So this got to be part of the shift is we start moving away from these domination oriented values and norms and beliefs to these more partnership based values and

norms and beliefs, which goes hand in hand with what we said before about seeing money as a means to meeting social needs and meeting ecological needs. So I think that's just important to point out that there are these deeper shifts that need to happen in society. It's not just the economy. I love that you took us even further upstream. That's wonderful. Thank you. So I want to close with invitations for folks listening. And in the book, you give this great list of invitations in different ways. You say as individuals and collectively, you even say emotionally or, you know, in terms of paradigm or worldview shift. So I really, I really want folks to, I

mean, a closing invitation I have is for folks to notice not for profit businesses in the world. Really just start to see them notice when they are there and feel how they feel in terms of being very different. But yeah, what are the qualitative differences there? And then uplift them in this transition, in this new economy, next economy space. So there's that piece, but also an invitation to imagine, to vision, what would it look and feel like

to live in a not-for-profit economy? Where you wake up and there's no for-profit businesses, and this is on all levels on the economy scale and the business scale and also on the individual scale. There's no pursuit of personal financial gain. There's no pursuit of personal financial profit, right? So what would that look and feel like? And I just invite folks if that's inspiring to guide us towards different actions together, but what actions might folks take? Personally, collectively, emotionally, that would help us move in this direction of this not for profit economy. So I think there's sort of three main strands or categories of things people can do here.

So one is to raise awareness, and that can be done through sort of hosting discussions and debates about these ideas, spreading the ideas, and then holding the space for people to explore them together, just even holding a debate about the role of profit in sustainability or something that's simple, or the role of profit in sustainability or something that's simple or the role of profit in our lives. I think that this can be especially powerful if you're already involved in social movements or grassroots initiatives and networks, bring these ideas into those social movements because what we need for this transition to happen is a really broad-based social movement

that's pushing for this transition, guided by this concrete vision of a better economy that we can actually have. So raise awareness. Second category is to identify and support the not-per-profit businesses around you, like you just mentioned. So one great thing to do is sort of create a local directory of not-per-profit businesses around you. Go and sort of snoop around the businesses in your community. You might find many more than you would expect to find.

I was in Bristol in the UK for just a couple of months, a couple of years ago, and I was just going around. I found all kinds of cafes in that town that are not for profit, and the cinema that is not for profit. So just do a little digging. The key question there is, are you allowed to distribute profit to private owners? If they can, then they're for profit. If they can't, they're not for profit.

And if they say that they're for profit, but they donate 100% of their profits to a charity, great, right? You can also look at social and solidarity economy maps on the web. There's a good start. They might already have some of the not-per-profit businesses around you So then identify them make a directory buy from them support them push for policies You know whether as an individual or part of a social movement push for policies that can make it easier for not-for-profit businesses So policies that can you know give them seed funding easier funding to get started that can give them seed funding, easier funding to get started,

that can offer them legal services and support incubation programs for not-for-profit businesses, and also public procurement policies. Our governments buy so much stuff that if they were to prioritize buying that stuff from not-for-profit businesses instead of for-profit businesses, that could actually shift things to a great extent as well. And also, some policies could develop programs to help for-profits transition to not-for-profit structures. And the last sort of category is to withdraw support from the for-profit economy, starting with the largest transnational corporations, right?

So start shifting consumption habits away from the largest companies like Unilever and all of that. Hopefully you're already doing that because you didn't need to hear about not-for-profit business to know that, shift your money from a for-profit bank to a not-for-profit bank or a credit union or a mutual company. And if you can, if you do have actually money that you're investing and you're looking to invest, invest in social enterprises and not for profit businesses, instead of putting that investment

in just like the stock market or something. Thank you so much. And I'm gonna add one more as you said, that investment piece. If anyone listening is a consultant or a coach or any sort of entrepreneur teacher or business teacher to plant the seed of this model for folks who want to start a business, right? And what would it look and feel like to have consultants who helped

either nonprofits transition to not-for-profit businesses, therefore, liberating funding to really address their mission-driven cause, and also the other way, consultants and coaches to work with existing businesses to harness or siphon or to redirect 100% of their profits towards a mission-driven cause of their choice. So I just want to add that to you as another leverage point of change. Yes, exactly. So we need those consultants on board too.

Wonderful. So how can folks get in touch with you any invitations for learning more about this work and also about building on this knowledge? Like what are we co-creating here by way of community of practice around this? Yes, so I recently set up a website called www.relationshiptoprofit.net, so it's relationship hyphen to hyphen

profit.net, and you can find all sorts of resources there under Learn More. I'm sort of in the process of trying to set up some events and some networking activities to bring people who are enthusiastic about these ideas together so that we can start co-creating those pathways. But there are already people who are really active on this level, so again, you can get in touch with Melanie Reback who's doing this nonprofit ventures work in the Netherlands. The Post-Gridth Institute is also doing some important work on that level and just watch this space because we are organizing and we are planning on

creating more and more connection and more and more of a movement for change. You've been listening to an upstream conversation with Jennifer Hinton, co-author of How on Earth Flourishing in a Not for Profit World by 2050, and author of Relationship to Profit, a theory of business, markets, and profit for social ecological economics, both freely available at RelationshipToProfit.net. That's Relationship-To-Profit.net and in our show notes. Thank you to Between Friends for the Intermission Music. Upstream Thee Music was composed by Robert. Upstream is a labor of love. We distribute all of our content for free and couldn't keep things going without the support of you, our listeners and fans.

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