Wednesday, October 01, 2003

I don't know why I haven't thought about it in these terms before, but the work of non-profits, which seems so ambiguously measurable, is even more concretely impactful precisely because much of the work is outside the measures of the marketplace. The for-profit world exists because people purchase goods and services at a certain price. If a business no longer exists, people will find another business to purchase from, another business will come along to profit from those needs. In the non-profit world, largely, organizations exist to meet the real needs outside the profit-motivated world, which are, as the market arbitrarily measures them now, not saleable products, such as housing the homeless, motivating poor young girls, mentoring children from single parent homes. Whatever the product or service, the investment is for a greater good, not a concentration of capital, the work is for the profit of the community, rather than the profit of an individual or group of individuals. If that organization or agency or a sector of services ceases to exist, there isn't another place where those services can be "purchased" - with few exceptions, no other "business" will appear in its place. Clients served by those services will likely become more expensive to the system later on, as less productive human beings, living in a less environmenally, less "human" oriented world, but our money driven system doesn't have those types of measures in place. I've spoken with my Dad about how ultimately arbitrary the values our society associates with money are, and how it doesn't seem to be too much of a stretch to establish a market of human values, so that investors buy stock in companies that perform for the greater good, rather than private profit. I still think it's possible to eventually have a different human evolution, one that is more socio-biologically sound than might makes right. But it's not going to happen overnight, and what I see as an aberration over the last 20 thousand years or so, especially more recently, may be the way we operate to our own demise as a species. Which would be a great shame, I think, for all the beauty we have yet to bring to the universe, all we have yet to explore. 12:24:23 AM