Sacrifice the Numbers to Save the People
“Great leaders are willing to sacrifice the numbers to save the people. Poor leaders sacrifice the people to save the numbers. “ Simon Sinek
Whr my colleague lost his life 5 years ago in Ukraine, he was a pioneer of business for social purpose. Local activists acknowledged his commitment to Ukraine’s orphans. He’d taken considerable risks to speak out on child abuse and corruption, where children’s lives were sacrificed in the pursuit of profit.
“The author of breakthru report “Death camps for children” Terry Hallman suddenly died of grave disease on Aug 18 2011. On his death bed he was speaking only of his mission — rescuing of these unlucky kids. His dream was to get them new homes filled with care and love. His quest would be continued as he wished.”
15 years earlier, his activism over MIA Vietnam veterans earned him an invitation to serve as a volunteer on Clinton’s re-elcction committee where he delivered his treatise on people-centered economics. It had something to say about the relationship between numbers and human beings in the creation of profit:
“Modifying the output of capitalism is the only method available to resolving the problem of capitalism where numbers trumped people — at the hands of people trained toward profit represented only by numbers and currencies rather than human beings. Profit rules, people are expendable commodities represented by numbers. The solution, and only solution, is to modify that output, measuring profit in terms of real human beings instead of numbers.”
The fundamental predicate of people-centered economics is that no person is disposable. In other words, people are not sacrificed in the name of profit
He’d reiterate these points in his contribution to the international Economics for Ecology conferences at Sumy in 2009/10.
In 2004, when he arrived in London, he’d been interviewed about his past efforts in Russia and Crimea:
“Essentially, P-CED challenges conventional capitalism as an insufficient economic paradigm, as evidenced by billions of people in the world living in poverty in capitalist countries and otherwise. Under the conventional scheme, capitalism — enterprise for profit — has certainly transformed much of the world and created a new breed of people in capitalist societies, the middle class. That is a good thing. But, capitalism seems to have developed as far as it can to produce this new class of fairly comfortable people between rich and poor, at least in the West where it has flourished for quite some time.
“The problem is that profit and money still tend to accumulate in the hands of comparatively few people. Money, symbolically representing wealth and ownership of material assets, is not an infinite resource. When it accumulates in enormous quantities in the hands of a few people, that means other people are going to be denied. If everyone in the world has enough to live a decent life and not in poverty, then there is no great problem with some people having far more than they need. But, that’s not the case, and there are no rules in the previous capitalist system to fix that. Profit and numbers have no conscience, and anything done in their name has been accepted as an unavoidable aspect of capitalism.”
Terry had once served in the US military on a missile silo where his declaration that he’d not help push the button to launch a strike on Russia, earned him a discharge. He went there in 1999 to propose the Tomsk Regional Initiative.
When Mckinsey ran the Long Term Capitalism challenge a few years ago, I’d shared his activity on business which “takes the bottom line past numbers to people”, describing it as The New Bottom Line. I shared a quote from our 2007 ‘Marshall Plan’ proposal:
‘This is a long-term permanently sustainable program, the basis for “people-centered” economic development. Core focus is always on people and their needs, with neediest people having first priority — as contrasted with the eternal chase for financial profit and numbers where people, social benefit, and human well-being are often and routinely overlooked or ignored altogether. This is in keeping with the fundamental objectives of Marshall Plan: policy aimed at hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. This is a bottom-up approach, starting with Ukraine’s poorest and most desperate citizens, rather than a “top-down” approach that might not ever benefit them. They cannot wait, particularly children. Impedance by anyone or any group of people constitutes precisely what the original Marshall Plan was dedicated to opposing. Those who suffer most, and those in greatest need, must be helped first — not secondarily, along the way or by the way. ‘
70 years earlier, speaking at Harvard, General George Marshall had warned:
“Any government which maneuvers to block the recovery of other countries cannot expect help from us. Furthermore, governments, political parties, or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefrom politically or otherwise will encounter the opposition of the United States.”
Of the primary focus, childcare reform, the ‘Marshall Plan’ reasoned:
“While this section has strong focus on financial aspects for reforming childcare in Ukraine, these are just financial numbers to demonstrate that this can be done for an overall, long-term cost reduction to state budget. That is to say, simply, this reform program is at the least financially feasible. The barrier between old and new is the cost of the transitional phase.
“However, it is essential to not get lost in financial numbers and budgets. These are only important to show how this will work and will end up costing less money as the new program is fleshed out and the old program is closed. Most important is the welfare of each of these children. There are at this time, for example, numerous institutions across Ukraine where children die on a daily basis from little more than lack of knowledge about how to help them.”
A follow on appeal to USAID and the Senate FRC concluded:
“Thank you for your time and attention to this. I and others will look forward to hearing from you. I hope we continue to realize ever more fully that outside the box and inside the box have only a box in the way. We outside the box know quite a bit of what’s going on, many times in exquisite detail, perhaps in ways that those inside the box can’t quite as easily access if at all. We are grossly underfunded in favor of missiles, bombs, and ordnance, which is about 100% backwards. Now, with even the US Pentagon stating that they’ve learned their lesson in Iraq and realize (so says top US general in Iraq ten days or so ago) that winning hearts and minds is the best option, I and others shall continue to think positive and look for aid budgets and funding spigots to be opened much more for people and NGOs in silos, foxholes and trenches, insisting on better than ordnance, and who understand things and how to fix them. We can do that. We can even do it cost-effectively and with far better efficiency than the ordnance route. Welcome to our brave new world. Except it’s not so new: learn to love and respect each other first, especially the weakest, most defenseless, most voiceless among us, then figure out the rest. There aren’t other more important things to do first. This message has been around for at least two thousand years. How difficult is it for us to understand?”
His death in obscurity while “being the change” is a marked contrast with the Ted Talk on “Leaders Eat Last” which has attracted 29 million viewers. Where are they when it comes to supporting the practitioners?
Where are they who oppose those who “perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefrom”?
