Sublime

I suppose at the end of the day, one of my motivators for talking about the absurdity of our economic and financial systems is that I believe business and work can be prosperous without adhering to the logic those systems run on. Just because a product doesn't "scale" doesn't mean it can't be sustainable or even wildly profitable.

First, rather than narrowly self-interested we are social and reciprocating. Second, in place of fixed preferences, we have fluid values. Third, instead of isolated we are interdependent. Fourth, rather than calculate, we usually approximate. And fifth, far from having dominion over nature, we are deeply embedded in the web of life.

Overall, I think most people spend either too little or too much time thinking about this topic. Probably more on the “too little” side, as evidenced by the epidemic of obesity and metabolic syndrome.

One business leader reflected on its value, “I am convinced that the world is not capable of feeding nine billion people in the second half of this century, in our grandchildren’s world.… We see the system cannot work. What the Sustainable Food Lab is doing has never been done before, this intersection of private and public institutions. This is

What if we treated secure access to food and shelter as a universal human right? How could we create a new world of guaranteed meals and guaranteed housing for all?

What we thus often end up doing is

Eating is an agricultural, environmental, and political act, not just a personal one.