Systemically going beyond the “public private divide”

Let us work through a thought experiment — What if:

1. The state does not automatically represent public interest — in fact a good case can be made of Government increasingly representing the interest of the electing minority demography (pensioners, political party funders, the interest of nationals as opposed to the global long term public interest).

2. “Private” interest does not represent purely private interest; increasingly it is having to understand and factor a reality, that private interest is infact not isolatable from societal, system and environmental interests & risk— be they climate change, global pollution, political risks or a dependency on our global system of finance. This tangible interdependency is increasingly making the “private and isolatable” value proposition untenable and increasingly an visible as the illusion it is.

3. The time has arrived, where the prevalent and indoctrinated polarising model of State as the actor for Public goods and the public interest and the corporate as the actor for advancing private interests may have outlived their systemic usefulness in an interdependent and emergent world.

4. In a world of recognisable and materially attributable interdependency — public good may now need to be recognised as a product of massive multi-stakeholder mesh/system of actors — and no longer the privilege and responsibility of the few but the many. In this world view Public good cannot be the sole responsibility of the Government in power nor can corporate actors ignore their responsibility towards public good if they are to preserve their Thrive-abilty.

Of course, these are a very counter-intuitive set of ideas, given the systematic transfer of wealth we have witnessed to the very very few over the last few years. But the reality is the state is increasingly struggling to maintain an open contestable space for multiple stakeholders, either due to its capture by demographic blocks or it inability to actively represent or regulate conflicting interests in a complex and emergent world.

Therefore it is increasingly apparent — nostalgic “solutions” focused on the rebirth of the 1960's vision of the Public Interest State are unlikely to either materialise [due to a combination of our polarised politics, the systemic politicisation of state governance and our structural demographics] nor are individual states sufficiently empowered to drive the change necessary to protect, preserve and enhance our Global system of Public interests & goods.

Given this reality — we really do need an alternative perspective to State good and private sector bad or vice versa — a new way forward which recognises that most of our institutional forms, are only really designed to preserve “community/club goods” [as beautifully articulated by Carlo Jaeger in Zurich] be they shareholders or pensioners — the public good as an ideal and a necessity is largely under considered and we increasingly need an updated institutional infrastructure to advance it…. one which requires us all to embrace our collective public good responsibility from and with a systems perspective..

Ending with some questions..

In this world view, how can we enhance the public good — what does corporate Goverance look like through this lens; what is the role of the state, government & beyond the last 20 years of market failure fixing; how can we grow a multi stakeholder system of governance for public good? How can we avoid this emerging reality crystallising into a new cartel of state and corporate actors preserving the power and wealth for the few and not the many (including current and future generations) — a genuine global public good.