stephenhinton

Representing Real Capital in Asset Liability Equity tables

Applying ALE tables to the material world: an introduction.

You’ll need to be familiar with the concepts of real capital and systems dynamics from previous posts, if you are not already.

The Assets – Liabilities – Equity (ALE) accounting method is a fundamental approach used in financial accounting to record and report the financial position of an organization. It involves the classification and measurement of an organization’s resources (assets), obligations (liabilities), and owners’ interests (equity). This method is widely appreciated by businesses, non-profit organizations, and governmental entities as it provides a comprehensive and transparent overview of an organization’s financial health.

The approach therefore, is favoured by economists advising policy makers. However, not just money, but physical resources – their function, availability, capacity, etc. are vital to the workings of society. This dimension can be lost when looking through an economics-heavy lens. What is needed is the robustness of the ALE method applied to the material world. Let us present it here:

Decisions made just on economic grounds? Real Capital holds the alternative decision basis

A more holistic way of thinking about value. A truly thriving society is built on four key pillars.

Natural Capital
Built Capital
Social Capital
Human Capital

We need to first understand our culture before we can change it

To be part of developing our culture towards peace, it is vital we all gain an awareness of what our culture is. And why we need to be actively involved with its evolution. This article presents culture as a group’s way of living that emerges and adapts over time. We will seek to explore, in coming articles, how we as individuals can influence our culture towards peace. For now, let us explore this concept of culture. It has many dimensions that interact with each other. We may find places we as individuals, or as the groups we are involved in, where we can intervene to orient our way of life more towards peace.

AI summarizes my circular economy work in 13 minutes

I’ve been at it a long time. Working on the circular economy. From advising the Swedish Circular Economy Delegation, to working on the circular region at the university in Gävle, Sweden, to creating an online education for county administrators. Thinking to put it all in a book, I started collecting fragments into Google’s experimental NotelbookLM. Of course, it offered to do a podcast summary of it all.

Experiments with prototyping a municipal dashboard.

Readers will recall we produced a proposal for indicators for municipalities. A dashboard would help local politicians understand how the built infrastructure was affecting the living environment and how the environment was affecting society. The first proposal is illustrated below.

Does AI “get” peace? Listen to the AI generated podcast before you make up your mind.

Development of AI tools is progressing at breakneck speed. One tool we have tried is Google’s NotebookLM. The tool works as the name suggests, you create a “page” of a notebook about a specific subject, and load up “sources” of information about the subject. Sources are pdfs, web pages, etc.

Pattern language is useful in communicating alternatives that work.

Pattern language is a concept that describes a structured method of solving recurring problems in a specific context by using standardized solutions, or “patterns.” Each pattern is a tried-and-tested solution to a common issue that can be reused across different situations, forming a “language” of solutions.

All over the world, alternatives to the fossil-addicted way of living are up and running. However, these alternatives are rarely featured or communicated as they are drowned out by predominant paradigm of industrial capitalism.

Real Capital Framework: a deep dive podcast

For those readers who have followed the articles in the category Multi Capital and its focus on Real Capital, you’ll have probably seen me attempting to get to a framework with which to create decision basis for policy. A decision basis that does not rely on economic information alone.

Time for banks to join the sustainability transformation

When we think about buying a home, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? For most of us, it’s the price. How much does the house cost? How much can I afford? Will it be a good investment in the long run?

But what if we shifted our focus slightly? What if, instead of getting caught up in bidding wars and paying far above the asking price, we thought about how we could actually invest in the house itself? And we’re not talking about expensive countertops or high-end appliances. We’re talking about investing in the home’s environmental performance.

What is a municipality to do? Abandon “progress” would be a reasonable strategy.

Does a good life entail pursuing progress? As a local politician my focus is turning to adapting society to extreme weather. And a supportive, inclusive culture. Kindness is good for a feeling of well-being.

As a local politician I’ve been involved in dialogue around strategy for 2025. The process will result in a plan to be agreed in September this year (2024) for next year. My group is responsible for the built environment – in Sweden the municipality has a monopoly on built environment planning as well as domestic waste, which brings great responsibility with it. Faced with the fact that warnings from the IPCC have gone unheeded, (use of fossil fuels has increased year on year) we concluded that our #1 priority is to prepare for the consequences of 1.5 degrees. Ideas on pursuing “progress” seem so last century. But how do you put a management system in place to achieve preparedness? How do you ensure a place is good one to live in? Can we have prosperity as our aim?