As the battle between austerity and growth mindsets threatens to freeze into a brittle gridlock, it seems time once again to simplify and repeat some painfully obvious observations.
1. Human, social, and natural capital make up at least 90 percent of the capital under management in the global economy.
2. There is no system of uniform weights and measures for these forms of capital.
3. We manage what we measure; so, lacking proper measures for 90 percent of the capital in the economy, we cannot possibly manage it properly.
4. Measurement theory and practice have advanced to the point that the technical viability of a meaningful, objective, and precise system of uniform units for human, social, and natural capital is no longer an issue.
5. A metric system for intangible assets (human, social, and natural capital) is the infrastructural capacity building project capable of supporting sustainable and responsible growth we are looking for.
6. Individual citizens, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, corporations, NGOs, educators, health care advocates, innovators, researchers, and governments everywhere ought to be focusing intensely on building systems of consensus measures that take full advantage of existing technical means for instrument scaling, equating, adaptive administration, mass customization, growth modeling, data quality assessment, and diagnostic individualized reporting.
7. Uniform impact measurement will make it possible to price outcomes in ways that allow market forces to inform consumers as to where they can obtain the best cost/value relation for the money. In other words, the profit motive will be directly harnessed in growing human, social, and natural capital.
8. Happiness indexes and gross national or domestic authentic wealth products will not obtain any real practical utility until individuals, firms, NGOs, and governments can directly manage their own intangible asset bottom lines.
See other posts in this blog or the links below for more information.
William P. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
We are what we measure.
It’s time we measured what we want to be.
View my research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1090685
Read my blog at https://livingcapitalmetrics.wordpress.com.
See my web site at http://www.livingcapitalmetrics.com.
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