Dear reader, 

The most wicked design problem of this era is how we will transform society. We need to figure out how to design a society that generates prosperity and wellbeing for its members, while at the same time averting climate catastrophe, a rapid concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, and the growing redundancy of most work, due to technological acceleration. 

Society is facing a challenge that is similar to the challenge of a startup: We need to figure out this new operating model before time and money run out. 

This blog is part of a series of blogs on societal change. In this series, I want to explore society through the lens of Behavioural Design. Previous blogs in this series are: 

• Why our Obsession with Identity is a Problem 
• The Behavioural Design of Cities
• Why Government Spending is about Designing Behaviour

As always, I hope you enjoy reading Behavioural Design Digest. Don't hesitate to share your thoughts, suggestions or remarks at tom@sueamsterdam.com. 

Tom de Bruyne
Co-founder SUE | Behavioural Design

PS:  Want to learn Behavioural Design Thinking? Attend one of our Behavioural Design Fundamentals certification course live in Amsterdam. You can of course still subscribe to the virtual class in August. 
 

The two problems with the concept of growth 

We're trapped inside an economic frame

As long as we keep thinking that our first principle to design society is to manage growth, we'll be on an inevitable path to societal and environmental catastrophe. The end goal of free-market capitalism is unrestricted access to resources and complete automation of labour. 

And yet, this idea of growth is a mental virus that has taken possession of the way we think about politics and governing society.

The Belgian Psychology Professor Paul Verhaeghe, one of the most exciting thinkers on the impact of culture on our unconsciousness, talks in a recent essay about the economist Karl Polanyi, who wrote the book "The Great Transformation" back in 1944. In this book Polanyi argues that the central problem of society is that in the last two centuries, the role of society and economics changed position. Whereas 200 years ago, the economy was embedded in society; today, society has become embedded in the economy. The primary goal for governments is no longer to govern a thriving society but a flourishing economy. Hence, we have started to think about the crucial components of a great society as a cost, rather than an investment: Healthcare, education, elderly care, public transport, etc. 

Governments are - often to their own frustration- trapped in a race to the bottom, to please to the never diminishing appetite of multinationals. In the process, they have created laws that allow these companies to trample workers rights, pollute the environment, and dodging their responsibility to pay their contribution in the form of taxes. Meanwhile, they gradually create an ever-growing cohort of people who have the frustrating feeling that their role in society is meaningless. 

This is today's problem in a nutshell: As long as we think that the role of governments is to manage the economy, we are on our way to create an economy that is more and more undermining the very essence of a society worth living in. 

The Job-to-be-done of politics.

I think the vision of the society we would like to live in, needs to be back at the core of politics. Growth has lost its value as a metric for progress. As Bas van Bavel demonstrates: The share of capital in the production of GDP is steadily growing, while the share of labour is diminishing. Therefore: The economy grows, but society isn't. If liberal parties keep insisting that we're doing a great job because we're amongst the wealthiest countries in the world, then we're blinded by the data.

Meanwhile, right-wing populists are doing a fantastic job at tapping into a feeling of uncertainty, failure and anger that is emerging from this system. (BTW: This is the central thesis of the fantastic book Angrynomics by Mark Blythe. I talked about Blythe in one of my previous blogs. 

We need to put society back at the core of our discourse. Policymaking shouldn't be about producing wealth, but about designing a qualitative society worth living in. The challenge is not to figure out how to generate more wealth, but how to harvest more societal dividend from the enormous amount of wealth that is already out there. We need to start talking about the growth of healthy communities, the growth of opportunities to start a new business, the growth of our ability to produce our energy and food ourselves, the growth of empathy and care for children, elderlies and those who are left behind. Growth of our capacity to learn and to innovate. (Kudos to Klaas Dijkhoff for suggesting this re-framing of growth)

We need to get rid of growth as the key metric to govern society. We need to stop thinking of citizens as nothing more than consumers who can be pacified into consent by buying stuff. If we don't do this, we will lose the battle to those who reject this empty and meaningless society. No matter how much we might not like far-right politics, at least they are trying to envision an archaic romantic version of what society could look like. We need to start selling a roadmap towards a society we all would love to live in.