By: Bill Campbell
In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond describes histories of societies that hit ecological catastrophe. Over and over, the lesson was: they got the social economics wrong. Over and over, he is able to show how other societies hitting similar stress, avoided catastrophe by changing the social economics to get them right.
Collapse’s fundamental thesis is what we call Diamond’s Law –
When collapse is threatened, (when ecological systems hit their carrying capacity): financial wealth, and ecosystem and social health, MUST create, sustain, and enable each other – or within a generation or two you will lose them all.
We see Diamond’s Law playing out in the news:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/opinion/trump-iran-climate-change.html
This kind of story reminds us of our fundamental purpose and mission. Long term, resilient, integrated, at scale, people-centered investing, built with a learning humility, works by generating great returns to our investors – and that’s our job to deliver. But those returns are a method. The purpose is survival.
The linked article reads like one of Diamond’s “bad chapters.” If we do this right, we can write – and show others how to write – lots of good chapters, and hopefully together a book with a happy ending for our grandchildren’s grandchildren.
