The vision should come before the obstacles
My previous post mentioned all the obstacles that erudite professional friends came up with. As George Kinder noted, it’s easy to leap to obstacles first, before addressing the vision that FIAT proposes.
Our dialogue continued.
DON: Eventually, after a long discussion with a lawyer friend who wanted to be as helpful as possible, we came up with the notion that what we’re getting at is that the head of a corporation should have, or publicize, a code of conduct consistent with FIAT that he or she wants employees to operate under.
GEORGE: Could be! (And I applaud your personal engagement with your friend! Bravo!) That’s kind of the sister approach of B Corporations. I do like the less authoritarian and more organic notion of each employee’s personal FIAT overlapping with a general company proposition. The evolution of standards of care has already begun with B Corps. I think we are continuing that evolution by adding democracy, truth, and a positioning of humane values over self-concern. Also, by not yet having such a rigid system of standards, we are giving organizations the possibility of evolving their own propositions in relation to the stakeholders and situations that they individually are facing.
But I keep wanting to bring us back to simply presenting and inspiring the vision, the What coming out of the Why of our system being awry. When the vision is widely and enthusiastically embraced, the energy of many people will bring all their creativity to solving each of these problems. They will not feel like problems, but places for our creativity and humanity and engagement to arise.
DON: Perhaps if we could also give some examples of situations and the desired conduct, it might make our intent clearer, as well as the contexts in which FIAT would be relevant. The actuaries’ quotes [in the previous blog post] result, I think, from too narrow a context – yet they all went to that context immediately and instinctively.
GEORGE: I think this is a great idea, Don, all in the context of spreading and inspiring the vision, rather than getting bogged down in obstacles. Oil companies and the history of our understanding of climate change and global warming. What should/would they have done when if they were subject to FIAT would be a great example. I wonder if Stefan [a member of George’s support group, to which I also belong] might get engaged around this one? His passion is strongly environmental.
Could take media/Twitter re Truth and propaganda as well. (Did I share with you my stab at a bell curve of truth? I still want to write an article around that subject.)
DON: Because of all of this, I have so far refrained from sending anything to the actuarial professions in Canada, the US, the UK and Australia (in each of which I know, or used to know, professionals) and any international actuarial organizations.
GEORGE: Your ambition here is huge and inspiring. I love it! Would be wonderful simply to get them to a place where it might be debated, be part of a conference etc.
DON: I’d rather wait to send them something there’s more chance of their agreeing with, than rush to get something to them as soon as possible. I take my actuarial friends’ comments as resulting from my exploratory soundings, like one-person focus groups.
GEORGE: Absolutely, Don! I still hearken back to my last email to you and wonder if it is time to take these single person focus groups all together on a Zoom call, where we hold to the question of How would it feel if FIAT were the law of the land? How would it feel if every institution you encountered was trustworthy in everything they did? (Please suspend all your doubts about its possibility. Explore the dream.) How would your life change?
Or is this better done one by one or in blog or email conversations?
However it is, this is well done, my friend, and inspiring. Love your tenacity on this!
***
Takeaway
Let’s take the FIAT notion further by engaging people (in my case, trying to engage the actuarial profession) in envisioning how it would feel if FIAT were the law of the land, with every institution trustworthy in everything they did.
Leave a Comment
I have written about retirement planning before and some of that material also relates to topics or issues that are being discussed here. Where relevant I draw on material from three sources: The Retirement Plan Solution (co-authored with Bob Collie and Matt Smith, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009), my foreword to Someday Rich (by Timothy Noonan and Matt Smith, also published by Wiley, 2012), and my occasional column The Art of Investment in the FT Money supplement of The Financial Times, published in the UK. I am grateful to the other authors and to The Financial Times for permission to use the material here.