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"There is this pervasive belief in our
society that NUMBERS hold all the answers. And so we use numbers to make our most important decisions.
But numbers do not respect our VALUES or even our survival as a species - an inconsistency that most of us are
blissfully unaware of. Combine this with the ever-growing influence of corporations - legal entities that
are exclusively based in monetary value systems - and the result is a VALUE CRISIS.
This VALUE CRISIS is at the root of both our Environmental Crisis and our Financial Crisis. What is needed is
a fundamental recognition of non-numeric values at the individual level, and a return to
having human values effectively represented at the group level." - Andrew Welch, author
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The Value Crisis is a timely book that proposes a new way to think about some of the greatest challenges on the planet.
Why does money figure so prominently as a measure of value?
How did we get so far into the current environmental and financial catastrophes?
Why does it seem so difficult for big business and industry to do 'the right thing'?
The Value Crisis is a unique perspective on the inevitable conflict between commercial/scientific values (which are entirely
number-driven) and human values (which evolved without numbers). This is not a condemnation of one system or the other;
rather it is a discovery of how their often unacknowledged incompatibilities affect everything from our personal everyday
choices to the global challenges facing our planet.
The book explores human needs and motivation, the power of numbers, and the role of value systems throughout
our society. Through socio-economic models, personal anecdotes, new theories, and provocative insights, Andrew Welch
takes the reader on a thought-provoking and thoroughly readable journey towards a new comprehension of how we think
and act as a species.
"I began this work as a series of essays, exploring Money, Value Systems, and Corporations. As the writing progressed, more
fundamental themes emerged. Humans have a unique ability to dramatically change their environment through conscious
decisions. Decisions are based on value systems - we make choices based on what we think is best. The Value Crisis
presents the case for the existence of two conflicting value systems that rule our decision-making - one based on our innate human
values, and one based on numbers. It is that conflict, largely unacknowledged, that gets us into trouble."
Chapter Summary
PART 1 – PERSONAL VALUES
Conflict and Crisis - How my journey into value systems and money began
The book begins with some personal stories about how I first came to think about these
concepts and what led me to dig deeper into some of the challenges faced by myself and
everyone around me.
The introduction of money in human interactions will often result in behaviours and
outcomes which run contrary to other established human values.
Why We Do What We Do - An introduction to human needs, motivations, and values
My research started with defining my terms and reviewing the work of Abraham Maslow. Even
at this early stage, it quickly became clear that our human value systems, that have evolved over
millennia, make no use of numbers or mathematical operations. Yet these concepts and
operations now play a pivotal role in our personal value systems.
The higher a monetary value scale is prioritized in a
personal value system, the more you will see mathematical principles being applied to
that person’s value judgements.
Money, Math, and Motivation - A history of the concept of money and its ability to motivate
The intersection of values and numbers is money. To understand the history of money, and how
it continues to move further away from the 'real world', is to understand why our value systems have
become more and more distorted and confused. We are forced to think in terms of numbers, but
that is clearly not how our brains are wired.
Tangible -> Representative -> Conceptual
Wealth has evolved from something you needed for survival, to something which
might get you what you needed for survival, to a belief that you could
get what you needed for survival.
What Your Time is Worth - Money as a measure of workplace value
My personal relationship with money, both as something to be earned and something to be spent,
is somewhat unique. I have often struggled with the paradoxes that I perceive in this
relationship. In this chapter, I look at why we 'work' and the role that compensation
plays in that motivation.
There is no such thing as a universally fair compensation scheme. In fact,
all common schemes can easily be shown to be unfair in some way.
The Crack in the Foundation - How monetary and human value systems are incompatible
Having come to the conclusion that we live with two incompatible value systems, I wrap up
my exploration of personal values with a review of precisely how these systems are in conflict
and what the impacts of that incompatibility are.
Any monetary-based value system’s definitive reliance on and integration with the
principles of mathematics, makes that system inherently incompatible with any
human-based value system.
PART 2 – GROUP VALUES
Coming Together and Coming Apart - How we define values and make decisions as a group
The more I thought about personal value systems, the more I saw a connection to the way we
make decisions as a society, and what the effects might be. I began to see possible
explanations for some important challenges facing us. Before taking this further, we step
back in this chapter to lay down some basics of value systems operating at the group level.
The three objectives of modern group decision-making systems are decisions that are:
fair, effective, and defensible – and not necessarily in that order.
The New Dominance of Money - The rise of a new ‘species’ above us on the food chain
Publicly-traded corporations present a very unique specimen for an exploration of value
systems. They are independent 'legal persons' that are, by definition and law, exclusively
governed by the principles of a monetary value system. It turns out that this convincingly
explains why their actions are sometimes comdemned as 'evil', although in reality they are only
doing precisely what they are programmed to do.
Publicly-traded business corporations are effectively a separate ‘species’, with
a distinct value system, making independent decisions, and exhibiting characteristic behaviours.
Maslow Incorporated - A pyramid model for corporations
Having started my exploration of personal values with Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs, and
having proposed that corporations are effectively a separate species, I began to wonder if there
could be such a thing as a Corporate Hierarchy of Needs. I propose one in this chapter,
and it turns out to be a potentially very useful new model.
It can be cost-effective to go ‘green’, but that is not the scale that one should
be using to evaluate, choose, and justify the sustainable options.
What To Do Now - Are these value conflicts resolvable?
Although my goal at the outset was not to propose solutions, certain conclusions became
unexpectedly apparent as my exploration continued. Borrowing the concepts of Consumer,
Investor, and Citizen from Robert Reich ("Supercapitalism"), I outline some key principles
for dealing with the Value Crisis - including some conclusions about the public sector
which actually surprised me.
Sustainability can only be achieved by effective polarity management – recognizing
and adapting to cycles of conflicting forces that create a dynamic equilibrium.
