In the absence of private ownership, NFP businesses are also more able to operate with horizontal, networked and participatory management structures and to work in more collaborative ways. Aside from the exception of for-profit cooperatives, the for-profit firm typically necessitates hierarchy. The profit beneficiaries (shareholders, investors, and owners) are on top; below them is the the CEO or president, who's charged with maximizing profits and shareholder value; below that are the managers and employees that must carry out the CEO's strategy. This is inherent in almost all for-profit business structures, not just publicly traded companies, because they exist for private profit. A profit-driven business where just a few people benefit from the profit means it logically follows that those few people have the most power and influence when it comes to decision-making. Even for-profit companies that try to take on more participatory management structures will face hierarchy when it comes to financial decisions, because there is a select group of profit-motivated individuals that have more power in such decisions. Zappos, an online retailer owned by Amazon, made headlines when it started using the Holacracy management approach, which allows workers to essentially manage the business. But Brian Robertson, the inventor of Holacracy, says that Holacracy provides a set of core principles for shaping your business processes over time but it doesn't account for financial control or budgeting processes. 600 When it comes to difficult decisions, it's likely that Zappos' owners at Amazon will have the final say. Not-for-profit businesses, on the other hand, can much more easily be structured in a flatter, more participatory way, as there are no private owners and no one is expecting a portion of the profits. They especially have advantages when it comes to financial decisionmaking. It's no surprise that NFP cooperatives have led the way on this front and continue to be some of the most participation-oriented businesses in the NFP sphere. However, other kinds of NFP businesses are increasingly fostering a participatory work culture where employees are able to take part in decision-making processes. 601 The Sustainable Economies Law Center created a freely available presentation on Worker Self-Directed Nonprofits and how they use sociocracy circles as a tool for workers to manage the center. There are no bosses and, of course, no owners to worry about when making financial decisions. All of the employees truly co-manage the organization. 602 Enspiral is another NFP business that is workermanaged. In 2014, Enspiral created the online tool, Loomio, in order to facilitate discussions and decision-making. Now groups all over the world are using Loomio to make decisions more democratically. 603 Even the NFP enterprise with the largest number of employees in the world, BRAC, has a relatively flat structure and seeks to become even flatter in the future. 604 More democratic decision-making means that women are able to reach higher positions in the company. Nearly half of the members of the Spanish Confederation of Worker Cooperatives are women, 39% of whom have directorial positions in their co-ops, compared to 6% in nonworker managed enterprises. 605 And in Ireland, women's representation on NFP boards is 52% compared to 7% in the for-profit boards. 606 Likewise, 31% of NFP boards in the UK are women, while this number is only 14% in the for-profit corporate sector. 607 This makes sense in the historical context of the nonprofit sector, which has been a traditional stronghold for women's employment, so NFP enterprise is emerging from a different understanding of the power of women in business. That is part of the reason women continue to disproportionately favor work in the NFP sector over the for-profit sector. 608 The purpose-based nature of NFPs as well as the increasing prevalence of participatory decision-making in NFPs means that there is a higher likelihood that NFP businesses will have more wage equality. 609 This is because there's internal pressure in NFPs to keep salaries within a healthy range and a lower chance of employees allowing big salary gaps in companies that operate more democratically. Greater disclosure of executive incomes in NFPs compared to for-profit companies also contributes to greater wage equality. A study of NFP, for-profit, and government hospitals in the U.S. confirms this, finding that NFPs pay significantly higher wages to most paid positions. 610 In other words, NFPs' median salary is more, but because they pay less at the executive level, their overall wage costs are lower. This creates more pay equality and keeps the NFP business lean, because it's not losing money on inflated management salaries and it doesn't need to pay exorbitantly high salaries because NFP managers are more purpose-driven. More equal pay in turn helps foster collaboration and prevents the internal competition and resentment to which highly unequal pay can lead. More purpose at the workplace along with better working conditions, and more stable, equal wages naturally leads to lower levels of workplace stress and burnout. It also means lower levels of unwanted staff turnover. Purposeoriented employees tend to stay at the job for a longer period of time. 611 One study, for instance, shows that average executive turnover at American nursing homes is 7-11% lower at NFP facilities compared to for-profit facilities. However, it's not only the purpose motive, participation and pay equality that attract people to work for not-for-profit enterprises. There's also the opposite force at work; growing resentment and avoidance of for-profit work. Perhaps the most obvious sign of this is the growing resentment towards (and rejection of) exploitative, unpaid internships with for-profit companies. 613 A large number of young people in the U.S., Australia and Europe have gone through one or more unpaid internships, doing unrewarding work for free at a company that distributes profits to owners and shareholders at the end of the year, and perhaps retains intellectual property rights to their ideas, and most of them did not gain a paid position after their internship was over (Ref: Ibid). This is a rising trend.
And the people who have experienced this trend first-hand come away feeling used, resentful and angry. And rightfully so. An increasing number of people are growing tired not only of unpaid internships at for-profit firms, but also of the ever-longer work hours and worsening workplace conditions required by management that is seeking to squeeze profits from ever-declining margins (Ref: Juliet Schor?, Jeremy Rifkin?). As profits decline, companies cut costs by reducing wages, benefits and other 'amenities' that make work more enjoyable for employees. Remember that forprofit wages declined by 1% from 2001-2010, while NFP wages increased by 29% during that same period (Ref: Urban Institute). The average weekly wage for a worker in the U.S. nonprofit sector was $85 higher than in the for-profit sector in 2012. 614 In addition to having a greater sense of purpose in their work, most NFP employees also tend to make more money than their for-profit counterparts. In an era of increasingly purpose-oriented workers, NFPs are in an ideal position to attract the best workers. The advantages that NFPs inherently have as mission-focused businesses that attract more socially and environmentally conscious consumers as well as a more purpose-oriented workforce, also lead to financial benefits. Being purpose-based gives NFPs a significant headstart in terms of tax benefits, volunteer labor, not having to worry about dividends, receiving discounts, avoiding financially risky behavior and operating on a leaner basis more generally. The most obvious financial advantage that NFPs have over for-profits is tax exemptions and benefits. In the U.S. healthcare sector, for instance, tax breaks to NFP hospitals amount to billions of dollars every year. 615 Many policy-makers and economists have argued that taxexempt NFPs should be legally restricted in the amount and type of business activities they can engage in, because their tax exemptions give them an unfair advantage over for-profit companies in the market. 616 However, as we mentioned in chapter two, tax exemptions for NFPs are entirely justified and an advantage they deserve for being purpose-oriented, providing goods and services that benefit the community, having no private owners and forgoing the ability to privately distribute profits in order to stay mission-focused. Another financial advantage is that NFP managers and executives accept being paid less than their for-profit peers, because they get a sense of intrinsic fulfillment from their work, which they value more than making a lot of money. 617 This doesn't mean they are paid a less than adequate salary -just that there is no need to pay them excessively. In 2013, the median salary for NFP CEOs in the U.S. was just under $120,000, 618 compared to the average CEO salary among the S&P 500 companies of $13.8 million. 619 In 2014, JP Morgan's CEO was compensated to the tune of $27.7 million. 620 In contrast, the Bank of North Dakota spent about half of that ($13.8 million) on all employee salaries and benefits, including the president of the bank's salary, that same year. 621 In essence, NFP managers feel rewarded in non-material ways for the work they're doing, so there's no need for their companies to try to motivate them with monetary rewards. Despite the corporate gyms, ringside tickets, teambuilding retreats and sponsored trips to volunteer in the 'developing' world that many for-profits increasingly offer, they just can't compete with NFPs when it comes to the underlying purpose of work their employees do. Being able to pay managers less because they feel a deeper sense of purpose in their work gives NFPs a major financial advantage over for-profits that must spend money on financial incentives to motivate their managers. Another major financial advantage that NFP enterprises have in the market is that they are able to engage volunteers. Volunteers at NFPs can work full-time, 622 whereas for-profit companies can usually only have part-time volunteers in most countries (if they are even allowed to have volunteers at all). In the U.S., for instance, for-profit companies can't use interns as substitutes for paid positions, so interns are more often used for simple tasks like getting coffee, scanning documents and making photocopies. 623 In NFP entities, volunteers and interns can be given work with meaning; even formal positions can be covered by volunteers. 624 This can help make NFPs more resilient when finances are low. Even in cases where a for-profit can benefit from volunteer work, at a charitable event for example, it feels more comfortable to volunteer with an NFP than with a for-profit enterprise, because nobody is privately profiting from your volunteer work, there is a clear social mission, and there is a long history of NFP volunteerism. Globally, 971 million people engage in volunteer work in a typical year, contributing $1.35 trillion to the global economy. 625 This means that the companies and organizations that engage those 971 million volunteers (the vast majority of which are nonprofits) had lower costs and more outputs than they would have had without all of that volunteer work. This is a major financial advantage for NFPs in the market place and they are increasingly recognizing this. The YHAis an NFP company that provides recreation and accommodation services in the United Kingdom and claims that volunteer hours are a key financial advantage for them. In 2014, the owners of Scarecrow Video store in Seattle gave up their potential for private gain and turned the company into a not-for-profit. The company was struggling financially, but was able to keep its video library alive and to continue serving the community as a notfor-profit due to the ability to engage volunteers to help run the business. The previous owners said that if they had not made such a move, the business would have likely failed and the fate of the collection of over 120,000 videos would have been in limbo.
627 Because most NFP board members can't be paid, they are effectively volunteers, and NFPs (especially in their startup phase) are often able to draw on valuable expertise and wisdom from their volunteer board members in a very hands-on way. It's a win-win situation, because NFP volunteers derive a sense of meaning and joy from the contribution they're making to the social missions of their chosen NFPs -otherwise, they wouldn't be volunteering their time and energy. On top of this, because our world is more tightly connected than ever in both physical and virtual terms, volunteers are more readily able to contribute their time and energy to NFPs across geographical boundaries. Mozilla, one of the most well-known global NFP businesses, has over 10,000 volunteers spanning 87 languages who help with translation, user support, localizing the website, community events and more. 628 This is a huge resource that only purely purpose-driven companies can truly tap into. This is not to say that NFP enterprises are or should be dependent on volunteers. Rather, we are highlighting this as one of many advantages NFPs enjoy over for-profits. And, like tax exemptions, volunteer work is something NFPs deserve to benefit from, as they exist purely to meet the needs of the community and that is why people want to volunteer for them. People feel good about contributing to NFPs in these ways and an added incentive is that financial contributions are often tax deductible, meaning that people don't have to pay tax on income, goods, or services they've donated to a NFP. 629 This is a great advantage for NFPs, as their for-profit counterparts are usually on the other end of this, feeling social pressure to donate to charities. Not-for-profit businesses can also often get discounts for products and services precisely because they are NFP, largely because companies want to support the important social work that NFPs do. For example, Coastshare is an NFP company in the U.K. that only provides services to other NFPs at cost and tax free lii , giving their NFP customers immediate savings of 20%. 630 EGive, an Australian company, provides software to small and medium-sized NFPs to assist them with their fundraising, managing memberships, e-commerce, email, conference management, communications, and campaign tools. In the spirit of enabling them to do good work with as few financial barriers as possible, they offer these services for free or at a very low cost. Being an NFP enterprise itself, E-Give puts all of its profit into further developing and supporting its services as well as donating to Environmental Projects Australia, an environmental charity. 631 Not-for-profit discounts are also widely available when purchasing software licenses, website hosting, and even postage in some places. These discounts are so common and so helpful that there are even services, like www.discounts-for-nonprofits.com, dedicated to helping NFPs find offers on products and services. This means that NFP enterprises can often get the goods and services they need in order to run their businesses at lower prices than their for-profit competitors. And, again, this is for a good reason: their work explicitly helps the wider community. In addition to benefitting from tax exemptions, nonprofit discounts, volunteers and managers who accept lower salaries, the NFP ethic is aligned with the rapidly emerging open-source movement (networks of people who freely share their ideas and work, such as software programs). This allows them to tap into many free products and services via sharing networks. For instance, CiviCRM is an open-source contact management system specially designed for nonprofits. 632 It was developed because its creators believe that nonprofits shouldn't have to use for-profit, proprietary software that doesn't give them the independence or flexibility to modify it to suit their unique needs. There's even an open-source software package especially for credit unions, called CU-Centric. 633 Participating in the open-source and sharing economies also enables NFP enterprises to draw on existing best practices and cutting-edge ideas. Although many for-profit companies have also financially benefitted from using open-source software, the open-source community is recognising that the value created by their communities should be accessible on commercial terms for for-profit entities who are profiting from those contributing to the commons. 634 Such an approach could create financial flows to enable and sustain contributors to the commons who wish to move entirely out of the for-profit economy. As a result of holding community benefit at the heart of business, the NFP structure is also more conducive to collaborating and sharing with other NFPs. This includes NFPs offering each other special discounts, but it also means that they're more likely to combine efforts and share resources, such as physical materials, knowledge, money, and human resources, in order to achieve a common mission. Akhuwat in Pakistan uses places of worship to distribute microloans, cutting down on costs because there's less need for office space. 635 The places of worship are happy to lend their space because they feel Akhuwat is aligned with their own mission of helping people in need. And more NFP collaboration means more NFP innovation. Indeed, research shows that niche groups experimenting with cooperation-based economics are outperforming competition-based enterprises. 636 This sharing and collaboration also strengthens business viability in times of economic downturn, creating a lot of resilience in the NFP enterprise sector. In fact, one study done by the Australian government found that the economic downturn has spurred more collaboration between NFPs, because they must find a way to do more with less. 637 Although solvency is important for all companies, NFP businesses have a different financial baseline compared to most for-profit companies, because NFPs are never required to make a profit and they rarely feel any pressure to. Not-for-profit companies will never pay dividends or retained earnings to private individuals. The NFP non-distribution principle means that they don't lose money to anything that is not directly adding value to the company.
Shareholder financing has been important for businesses in order to raise investment capital, but dividends only serve as a drag on budgets in a future where shareholder financing is no longer necessary. After the initial injection of capital to start a company is paid back, dividends extract value from the company, as well as putting pressure on managers to focus solely on profit. Shareholders are also a source of more bureaucracy for companies to deal with, as they must allocate resources to keep track of dividends and shares. It is estimated that cooperatives are about 20% more cost efficient than regular companies, because they don't have third party shareholder obligations. 638 As some co-ops are for-profit, paying out dividends to members, this statistic is a conservative estimate. This means that, all things being equal, a co-op is more likely to survive an economic downturn than a regular company. It's easy to extend this logic to NFP businesses, given they have absolutely no obligation to distribute profits. For example, studies have found that NFP nursing homes and hospitals in the U.S. are more affordable and have lower administrative costs than their forprofit peers. 639 Accordingly, getting an NFP to a 'successful level' of business viability is easier because they don't need to make as much profit in order to satisfy foundational goals; they just need to pay wages and other operational costs. As NFPs have a lower cost structure due to lower requirements of return on capital, they have great potential to outcompete for-profit equivalents. 640 Even more altruistic, outcome-oriented for-profits hold competitive advantages over their profit-maximizing peers, because their preference for output allows them to price their products and services below average cost. This extra financial burden isn't limited to companies with shareholders. Obligations to deliver profits to owners can even cause financial drag and conflict in family-owned businesses and other business partnerships. Not-for-profit enterprises don't encounter such issues. While many traditional nonprofits are heavy and bureaucratic, NFP enterprises are often super-lean. They generate their own revenue and one hundred percent of their financial surplus is reinvested into their mission. It is truly circular -nothing is lost. They take care of their operating expenses and every extra dollar is put back into doing what they do. This is a big advantage compared to for-profits that must constantly expand to compensate for dividends extracted from their profits. Some for-profits even create a lot of extra risk by paying out dividends on a frequent basis, generating expected demands on their cashflow. If the company has a high-revenue month, big payouts are made. Then if the market suffers a downturn for three months, the company may find it is struggling to manage expectations about the shareholder returns. Even though we see it as a financial advantage that NFPs can't take speculative investment, this has been one of the most prominent arguments against using nonprofit legal forms for business. The argument is that NFPs can't attract sufficient investment, because profit-hungry investors have little to gain from them. However in the market of the 21 st century, the nondistributional aspect of NFPs means that they're less likely to take on risky debt obligations and that they are more able to grow slowly and mindfully. They have to build themselves more on proven, real value, which means that in challenging economic times, they will be less likely to fail. Plus, a community that's benefitting from their work will tend to support such a company, whereas a venture capitalist is likely to cut their losses and run when things go downhill. Prioritizing social outcomes over profit margins, NFP businesses are less likely to 'leverage'. They take on less external debt or credit to finance their operations and are much less likely to take big financial risks in seeking financial returns, as for-profits routinely do. 642 This means that they are also less likely to go bankrupt or insolvent due to debt. Furthermore, because NFP board directors are generally not paid for that role, their decision-making tends to be more objective and less guided by personal interest, paving the way to more strategic decisions and less exposure to speculative financial risk in the stock market, securitized trading and asset markets. An illustration of this is that U.S. credit unions have less risk on their balance sheets than for-profit banks and are also more careful lenders, approving fewer risky loans. 643 Perhaps that is why in 2009, while big for-profit banks drastically slowed their lending due to the financial crisis, American credit unions actually increased lending, especially to small businesses, keeping the wealth circulation pump going. 644 Critically, taxpayer funds have never been used to bail out a credit union in the U.S. 645 Likewise, the Bank of North Dakota never got involved in financial derivatives and weathered the economic storm of the early 2010s much better than its for-profit counterparts. 646 There's also a mindset of 'doing more with less' in the NFP sphere. Because these companies are motivated by a deeper sense of purpose, not profit, they have a strong desire to find ways to fulfill their mission no matter what. Many NFPs have had to make do with limited resources and as a result have developed flexible, innovative ways of thinking about financial challenges. Because NFPs traditionally have had leaner budgets, they are more adapted to finding and creating value at lower cost. As Chase Rynd, President of the National Building Museum says, "What serves a lot of nonprofits and museums well is that it's pretty rare for a nonprofit to ever be totally flush. We are used to having tight budgets and still producing great results. I have never, in my entire career in museums, had the staff size that I am supposed to have. There is never any fat sitting around, so when we come to a challenging time, we're already disciplined." 647

The NFP structure also gives businesses advantages over for-profit peers in terms of innovation.
In an effort to capture more short-term profits, many for-profit boards have increasingly made decisions to cut funding for basic research and bringing innovation to scale because they are not seen as core compentencies and are not central to profit-maximization. 648 Compared to for-profit companies, NFP employees and managers have greater flexibility and are less fearful when it comes to innovation because they don't have a vested interest in the financial outcome, at least not beyond their ongoing employment. This means they're generally more willing to take risks, experiment and innovate, in terms of organizational structure, technology, and strategy (in fact, many of them have had to, because they are not awash with cash). They're not as afraid of failure as for-profit companies, where owners, shareholders and investors are putting pressure on managers to make sure things work out for their benefit. The for-profit approach is to only invest when the prospect of financial return exists. This means a significant lack of needed innovation where there is no foreseeable financial gain in the for-profit economy (it's why certain diseases, such as Leishmanaisis which affects about 1 million people, have been neglected for so long). This lack of innovation is very visible when it comes to social and environmental problems, and is a large part of the reason why there are still about 800 million chronically malnourished people in the world, 649 yet each year millions or even billions of dollars are poured into innovating better drugs for things like male sexual enhancement or curing baldness. What we really need is investment in innovation for the sake of addressing serious health, social and environmental issues. And this is what NFPs are able to do. The world leader in home appliances Bosch is 92% owned by its NFP foundation, making it mostly NFP. Bosch seeks to honor the spirit of its founder by demonstrating social and environmental responsibility. 650 About 40% of Bosch's sales are products that specifically aim to minimize environmental impact and resource consumption. 651 Half of its research and development (R&D) budget is invested into these products, with Bosch investing nearly double the industry average into its R&D, more generally. It attributes this ability to be so innovative to the fact that it doesn't have the obligation to distribute surplus that its for-profit competitors have. The Mayo Clinic, a world-renowned hospital in the U.S., has been heralded as one of the greatest innovators in healthcare. 653 It is no coincidence that it's an NFP business. It can afford to invest in things like its Center for Innovation, where employees are encouraged to engage in unofficial activity (i.e., play around and experiment with ideas). There are no owners or investors asking how they will gain from such investments, and that gives The Mayo Clinic and other NFPs a degree of freedom that most for-profits in the health industry can only dream of. And that degree of freedom often translates into greater innovation; some that's profitable and some that's not, but all of it addresses major issues. Not-for-profit businesses can also better maximize what has been called the 'cognitive surplus'; the innate human urge to create and produce. Generally, in a for-profit company, your boss is only interested in your ideas if it can be shown that they either generate revenue or reduce expenditures. But in an NFP, you can suggest any form of internal or external innovation and expect a much more appreciative reception, often irrespective of costing. The fact that there's not a profit-maximization mandate creates a lot more space for out-of-the-box thinking and expression of ideas. This includes more space for employees to question if the goods and services that the business is producing are truly beneficial to society, whereas there is much more of a "if you don't like it, then leave" attitude in the for-profit sphere. Imagine employees at a for-profit corporation's staff meeting openly questioning whether the company's products are doing more harm than good to society. In terms of companies whose mission is to innovate, it's much easier to stay focused on the innovation itself when you don't have shareholders, owners and investors hovering over you, asking about the bottom line. In the early 2000s, a man named Joe Justice started Wikispeed, a car manufacturing company in Seattle, with the mission of creating the most fuel-efficient, user-friendly car in the world. By 2011, Wikispeed had actually manufactured a street-legal car that goes more than 100 miles on a gallon of gas (42.5 km per liter). 654 Predictably, his invention attracted a lot of attention, especially from potential investors, but when he started meeting with the interested investors, he felt very uncomfortable with their terms. As a result, Joe decided to establish Wikispeed as an NFP. Joe says, "Becoming a not-forprofit was a self-defense mechanism so we could focus on what we were trying to do. Shifting to NFP improved our competitiveness by honing our focus. Half of my time was spent listening to venture capitalists pitch. All of them had abusive terms. If the venture capitalist got cold feet they could shut down the project and keep all the IP (intellectual property). Nonnegotiable. I wouldn't accept a personal loan on those terms. Another example of the NFP freedom to innovate is The Fred Hollows Foundation disrupting the eye-glasses industry in the 1990s by innovating an intra-ocular lens that cost 3.5% of the average industry price. This innovation led to high-quality, low-cost lenses being more widely available throughout the world. 657 Research shows that businesses with clear, motivating missions tend to be more innovative. 658 And this makes sense. How many of the world's greatest innovators were in it for the money? Probably very few, if any. Leonardo Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, James Watson, Francis Crick, Marie Curie, Nikola Tesla, Jonas Salk, Buckminster Fuller -the best innovators in human history were not driven by the profit motive.
Although intellectual property and proprietary knowledge are often seen as drivers of innovation, providing the incentive for investment based on the potential for a return through licensing fees, the rise of the purpose-motive and open-access to knowledge is rapidly becoming an even better driver of innovation. Kickstarter, arguably the world's most successful crowdfunding platform, also sees the value of keeping private profit out of innovation (despite being a for-profit corporation themselves). When explaining why Kickstarter would not be moving to an equity-based investment model for the way people can support projects via its platform, CEO Yancey Strickler said, "We believe the real disruption comes from people supporting things because they like them, rather than finding things that produce a good return on investment." 659 It can also be argued that because NFP entities have a more motivated workforce, this translates into enhanced performance in terms of innovation. Contrary to the popular notion that performance and innovation stem from good management, studies in 2011 found that high-performance organizations were distinguished from low-performance organizations by high scores in fairness in the work place, job satisfaction and wellbeing. 660 Based on all of the advantages described above, it's arguable that NFP businesses are better able to meet all of the criteria for high performance. As NFPs can more readily benefit from lower costs in terms of goods, services and wages, and because they have no one expecting a cut of the profits, they can pass these savings on to their customers. This is another part of the reason NFPs get tax deductions -in order to make their social services as accessible as possible. These discounts and lower costs allow them to offer lower prices, which in turn enables them to compete in the market with for-profit equivalents. Customers of public utilities in the U.S. pay 14% less than customers of private utilities. 661 This makes sense, considering that CEOs at for-profit utility companies are paid 25 times as much as CEOs at public utilities, and because public utilities are NFP and purpose-driven, they pass those savings on to their consumers. 662 Credit unions in the U.S. also consistently offer lower fees, lower rates on loans and higher yields on savings than their for-profit competitors and can afford to do so because they are NFP. 663 The Bank of North Dakota likewise has proven to be safer for depositors and has enabled public infrastructure costs to be cut in half. In the U.S., for-profit colleges charge far higher tuition than comparable NFP and public colleges, but spend much less on instruction for each student. 665 This is because they usually spend more on marketing than on teaching, in an effort to maximize short-term profit for owners. 666 Many NFPs already use this advantage to advertise. Ebico, the UK's first not-for-profit energy provider, states "Ebico Ltd aim to offer a competitive, fairer deal for domestic electricity and gas to British households." 667 Groupe SOS in France states that because it is an NFP, the company is able to provide an efficient healthcare program based on the needs of individuals and communities, accessible to all, regardless of income. 668 Public Performance Partners, an American firm that aims to help public services function more effectively and efficiently, say on their website, "Public Performance Partners is a notfor-profit enterprise because it allows us to provide first rate services to public entities at greatly reduced rates." 669 Even in cases where NFP prices are higher than those of for-profit competitors, NFPs are generally able to attract more loyal customers (including government agencies) who are willing to pay a higher price, given they know any financial gains go towards better wages, more reliable products, and strengthening communities, rather than shareholders' pockets. Another important strategy that NFPs use to ensure accessibility is sliding-scale fees through cross-subsidization. Sliding-scale refers to a pricing strategy wherein the customers who can afford to pay more, do pay more, enabling the company to offer lower prices to people with lower incomes, who can't pay quite enough to cover the basic cost of a product or service. If an apartment costs $400 per month to maintain at a housing co-operative, a person who has more money might pay $600 per month which enables another person to rent a similar apartment for $200 per month. This approach is already quite common in NFP enterprises. 670 Essentially, because they are mission-driven, NFP enterprises find ways of making sure that their prices are affordable for the people who need their products and services the most. What the story of interconnectedness, the changing business preferences and the increasing advantages in the marketplace point to is the possible emergence of an entirely new economic era. The demand for transparency, accountability and trust-worthiness is moving well beyond the social sectors. As for-profit scandals and stock market bubbles continue to fill the headlines, and as inequality worsens, species disappear and the climate changes, the demand for more ethical modes of doing business will continue to rise. This gives NFP businesses a clear advantage over for-profit competitors. Not-for-profit forms of business will be more competitive in the 21 st century because that's where demand is heading, and that's where social and environmental limits are pushing the economy. As the world makes a transition away from the profit motive and towards the purpose motive, we can expect even more social innovation to occur in terms of NFP financing, capitalraising, ownership structures, and types of businesses. This innovation will only serve to further solidify the NFP advantages in the market. Of all the amazing things being done in terms of building a healthier economy in which we can all thrive, one critical piece of the puzzle is almost always overlooked or underestimated.
People working to build up new economic alternatives often point to the fact that many great things are happening -our shared stories are shifting, technology is improving, communities are coming back together, environmental awareness is growing -but we still lack a blueprint or a framework for how the economy can be organized in a fundamentally different way. What has been missing is not agreement on core values, but rather agreement on a core operating model. In 1946, American director Frank Capra made a classic film about the importance of caring for one's community. Initially dismissed as simplistic and idealistic, It's a Wonderful Life tells the fictional story of George Bailey, whose family runs the local 'Building and Loan', a not-for-profit financial institution which uses member money to provide affordable housing loans in the small town of Bedford Falls. But the bank is under constant threat from wealthy business mogul Herbert Potter, who seeks control of the housing market through his local, privately-owned bank. In an unfortunate turn of events, Bailey's uncle misplaces a large sum of the Building and Loan's deposits, leaving the company on the verge of bankruptcy. With a despairing Bailey about to take his own life, an angel visits him, showing what Bedford Falls would be like, had he and the Building and Loan not existed. Now called Pottersville, the town is suffering from high unemployment and homelessness, while its economy is based on shady activities, like… Gone is the thriving community Bailey and his bank helped create. Shocked by this vision, Bailey chooses to live, although he remains unsure how to pay the bank's debts. The film ends with the community's generosity ensuring the Building and Loan stays afloat. Pottersville speaks to our modern reality. Driven by the ethos of maximizing private gain, our for-profit system is failing, with faith in trickle-down economics misplaced. While capitalism, in all its forms, has certainly delivered stunning infrastructure, and numerous scientific and social advances, the underlying principle of accumulation has reached its expiry date. Further economic growth cannot deliver widespread social and ecological wellbeing. It's a Wonderful Life highlights a counter-narrative that has existed within the capitalist story all along. Bedford Falls was able to share the wealth generated by communally-backed banking activities because there were no private owners extracting the company's profits. In Bailey's town, prosperity meant nothing unless it was shared. The Building and Loan highlights the restorative power of not-for-profit banking within a market economy. It begs the question: what if not-for-profit businesses were at the heart of the economy? The NFP World involves an innovative market economy, centered upon not-for-profit forms of business and the not-for-profit ethic. In the NFP World, wealth and power is decentralized, yet the system operates with interconnected efficiency. Individual choice and freedom are privileged, yet the greater good prevails. Social services and safety nets have expanded, but government and taxation have contracted. Entrepreneurialism and competition help drive gains in innovation (along with innate human creativity and problem-solving), but businesses are less ruthless and aggressive. Institutions are highly accountable to the wider community, and there is a deeper sense that not everything that matters can be counted. Leisure and wellbeing have increased, but per capita consumption has reduced. Idealistic? Yes. Removed from our present reality? Indeed. But we'll soon explore the four mechanisms that underpin the magic of the NFP World model and how the transition to this world is not only more simple than we realize, but could already be underway. Paradoxically, free market and state-led economic thinking heavily influence the NFP World model. Yet our approach is not merely an iteration on the mixed economy, or a new 'third way' 671 . Rather, the NFP World transcends the centrality of both private and public ownership. And while a diverse range of familiar structures remain in the NFP World, and strong variations between approaches are expected across geographies and cultures 672 , the NFP economy has a fundamentally new base: not-for-profit business and a thriving community economy, which refers to the goods and services gifted and traded between community members without the use of money (including family life and the unpaid caring economy). Alongside the community economy, NFP businesses provide the biggest contribution 673 to the NFP economy. Including start-ups, established organizations, subsidiaries, joint ventures and a range of cooperatives 674 , NFP businesses cover all sectors, from retail to manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and tourism. They are largely locally-based and most are small to mediumsized. Many are 100 percent financially self-sufficient, sometimes choosing to avoid 671 E.g., 'third way' or worker-owned 'cooperative economy', which can still be profit-motivated. Certain existing proposals come close to addressing both of these concerns. See, for example, the solidarity economy, Distributism, Third way -e.g. Poland -worker coops (focus on unions); Commonwealth pluralism (Alperovitz). These are often presented as alternative economic models, but in all of these models, profit-maximization and private ownership of business, often through worker co-ops, are still a possibility. 672 The NFP World acknowledges that human nature is complex, that economies can and should take different shapes according to different contexts. For example, some countries may be more state-focused, choosing to publicly fund more services via taxation. Religious states or monarchies might also deal with this in different ways. 673 Measured in terms of outcomes enhancing social and environmental wellbeing. 674 Purchasing co-ops, for example, largely act on behalf of NFP clients, rather than for-profit producers in the NFP World. charitable status and, therein, federal tax exemption. For those NFP businesses that are 'charities', some draw on philanthropic support, grants and government assistance to supplement their income-producing activities 675 . Complementing the market, the community economy continues to make a significant social contribution 676 . Sharing is a natural cornerstone of family and community life, from peer-topeer production, to collaborative consumption, bartering, and mutual support networks. Along with domestic labor, unpaid caring work continues in an expanded form, with its contribution to wellbeing more appropriately acknowledged.
In this sense, there is an increase of nonmarket activity in the NFP World. While sole traders 677 and NFP services remain available to assist with tasks such as childcare, cooking, cleaning, and tutoring, families have less need (or desire) for paid support, given adults have more time available to participate in caring activities themselves, because employees work fewer hours at formal, paid jobs. This is strengthened by labor saving innovations as well as more supportive community and extended family arrangements. The grey economy of 'under the table' payments forms an insignificant portion of the community economy, given how freely wealth circulates in the NFP World. The public sector maintains important roles in the NFP World. The state continues to run services such as government, the judicial system, the police and fire brigades. Healthcare and education are also generally publicly funded (although NFPs may run these services). Government has also developed its entrepreneurial capacities, participating more fully in the NFP market. However, government is smaller and more decentralized, with many functions having been transferred to NFP businesses, municipalities, or de-marketized, reducing the state's influence over daily lives. Traditional nonprofit activities continue, but their contribution is relatively small. These include donor-or grant-dependent activities that are without a business model or subsidization via other income-generating activities in areas deemed of public importance that people are willing to fund fully, such as research centers. Nonprofits may also exist for activities that don't require funding at all, such as organized rallies, or unincorporated associations that pursue shared interests with minimal cost. As it remains legally possible to operate as a for-profit company, there is also a relatively small, for-profit component to the economy. Privately-owned small businesses, including sole proprietors, artisans, freelancers, and small family-owned companies are generally viable forms of business, integrated into the NFP World 678 . However, it proves financially and socially advantageous for incorporated entities of any significant size to be NFP, because profit margins are so low and society demands the transparency and mission-driven aspects of NFP business. Worker cooperatives (and to a lesser extent employee-owned businesses) are a broad exception, having remained somewhat competitive with NFP businesses. There is still for-profit trading in precious metals, bonds, and housing, but it is greatly reduced and less 675 If this sounds like too much dependence on outside financial help, recall that many for-profit companies are supported by subsidies of various kinds in our present economy, such as corporate tax breaks. 676 Although many of its contributions can't and shouldn't be measured in economic terms. 677 Also known as self-employed and freelancers. 678 Via what Sarah Horowitz from the Freelancer's Union calls 'the new mutualism' <REF>. socially acceptable, given heightened awareness of interconnectedness and the detrimental effects that speculative trading can have on the entire economy. One area not shown as a contributor to the economy in the diagram above remains nonetheless: the exploitative, black market. This includes the trade of drugs, alcohol, weapons, counterfeit items and pharmaceuticals, migrants, organs, illegal gambling, sex trafficking, loansharking and money laundering. However, it is waning. Alongside the rise of associated rehabilitative programs, most addictive substances are now decriminalized and law enforcement increasingly relies on highly effective crowdsourced data. The tighter family ties and community connection allowed for by the NFP World economy, as well as a greater sense of purpose at work and more leisure time mean that feelings of isolation, alienation and emptiness in society have decreased, which leads to lower rates of addiction and crime. It is also easier and much less taboo to seek help for mental health issues, which can go a long way to stopping addictive and criminal behaviors before they start. Relationships exist between the various contributors to the NFP economy. Governments enter joint ventures with NFP businesses, bringing new meaning to the term 'public-private partnerships'. Small-scale producers are members of NFP producer cooperatives. Local communities assist in managing state-owned natural resources, and community members support NFP or nonprofit projects through volunteering. But the NFP World is much more than a shift to not-for-profit forms of business. While the separate parts that constitute the NFP economy are familiar, together they form a fundamentally different operating system, focused on advancing human and ecological wellbeing. This guiding ethic is reinforced by new narratives, values, and ways of organizing economic activity. It involves a whole new baseline for business and a new standard for the economy. The NFP ethic enables business practices to align with values like generosity, justice, compassion, caring for nature, and human rights. We believe an NFP World is possible by 2050. Our overarching assumption is that an effective, post-capitalist economy must ensure:

1. systemic efficiency (i.e., minimal or no waste); 2. wealth circulation and decentralized access to resources; and 3. human wellbeing within ecological limits. The NFP World possesses these three characteristics in the forms of the lean society model, the wealth circulation pump, and the cycle of wellbeing. Combined, these characteristics form the foundations for how finance, the corporation, the market, the state, and global relations function in the NFP World. Let's explore the first of these four characteristics, the lean society model. In manufacturing, lean refers to making obvious what adds value to the whole system by reducing everything else. In the NFP World, only parts of the system that produce value (defined as social and ecological health) remain. The market should be effective and efficient. Not efficient in terms of for-profit outcomesbasically just the high-speed churning out of consumer goods -but rather efficient in terms of doing more with less (known as eco-efficiency or closed-loop production). In this way, the NFP market also gears work towards activities that create real value. The market is more integrated, collaborative and efficient (e.g., closed-loop). Demonetization removes the inefficiencies associated with market transactions, also known as transaction costs (e.g., time, travel, middlemen, interest, and taxation). Let's take a look at the for-profit economy to better understand this point.
The for-profit economy's systemic waste comes from needing the existence of nonprofit and public institutions, as well as high levels of taxation, merely to counteract the negative externalities (especially inequality) created by enterprises driven by profit maximization. In this system, competition for grants and philanthropy by nonprofits are a major waste of resources. In fact, the wealth used to apply for grants might sometimes be more than the final amount allocated. The NFP economy's systemic efficiency comes from having no 'for-profit middle man' between capital flows and meeting social needs 679 . By eliminating the siphon, we actually eliminate a huge number of inefficiencies that existed in the system, including market inefficiencies. By reducing the waste in the system, by reducing the redundant, cross-cancelling activities (and making social and ecological value creation more central), there are massive efficiency gains. This results in saved resources on many fronts. For example, the battle against environmental policies by for-profit companies in the current economy wastes a lot of energy that, put to social outcomes, could be really powerful. Imagine if all of the money and time that companies currently spend on lobbying against taxes and regulations (in order to cut their costs and generate more profit) was instead spent on taking care of forests, cleaning up beaches, or even helping people find work that gives them a sense of purpose. The NFP economy's saved energy comes from merging entrepreneurialism and social outcomes through business structures that circulate wealth throughout the real economy, thereby avoiding the social disruption that comes from wealth extraction via profit-seeking. The NFP World model is also simpler in this way, because there are fewer conflicts of interest. The NFP World is a lean economic model that seeks to find the most efficient ways to meet needs, so superfluous aspects of the economy that either don't aid this mission or actually hinder it (like speculation through financial markets) do not survive long, as they're potentially harmful to the whole system and they're simply not needed. Modern economic theory is built on scarcity. In capitalism, scarcity-based thinking justifies the wealth extraction siphon and the narrative of 'never enough'. But it's rare for us to consider what happens to an economy built on abundance and the notion of 'enough'. In doing so, we discover that, when scarcity is removed, health is restored to the economy's critical organs: finance, businesses, the market, the state and international relations. How is this possible? In the NFP World, the circulation of wealth, derived from purposedriven economic activity, is self-perpetuating. In other words, distribution is built into this market system. The restricted ability for private gain, via the predominant NFP form of business, means that everyday economic activities fuel the wealth circulation pump. When you purchase goods and services in the NFP economy (including from a for-profit subsidiary of a NFP), your money goes in two directions: internal operating expenses and profits. Internal operating expenses, include payments to external providers who are also NFP, thereby fueling the wealth circulation pump, as well as wages. Wages also fuel the wealth circulation pump, because: 1) the extractive impact of owners is absent; 2) wages more accurately reflect the contribution of workers; and 3) companies operate in more participatory ways that maintain limits on wage disparities. Wages then either go towards spending, saving, or philanthropy. Spending fuels the wealth circulation pump, even through activities such as purchasing insurance, luxury goods and services, or participating in public lotteries. 680 As for savings, people invest their money in a NFP bank, the bond market, or assets. Money that is saved in an NFP bank enables the bank to provide both commercial loans and personal loans. Commercial loans strengthen the NFP infrastructure for the wealth circulation pump and personal loans enable the fulfillment of individual and family needs. Money that is invested in the bond market provides capital to governments or NFP companies. Upon maturation, these savings are available for further spending or investment, making another round through the wealth circulation pump. And money that is invested in assets -such as houses, vehicles 681 , and other property -allows individuals and families to create a sense of physical and financial security. When people spend into philanthropy, then the money is directed towards social purposes through nonprofit and NFP organizations in ways that once again prime the wealth circulation pump. In addition to wages, other operating costs that an NFP enterprise has to cover might include: taxes, which of course go to support things that society deems important such as infrastructure or pension funds, and other forms of social security for employees. They might also need to invest in more machines, furniture or other physical capital, which they would buy from other NFPs. All of these operating costs keep the wealth circulation pump operating. One operating expense that might not contribute to the wealth circulation pump is the rent that some NFPs have to pay for their space. A private person could own and rent the space out. In the current economy, private real estate ownership is a major source of wealth for some, so this is an important concern. However, in the NFP World, most commercial space is owned by community land trusts, non-equity housing and building cooperatives, and by NFP businesses themselves, which means the rent paid would also contribute to the wealth circulation pump. The second thing that might happen with the money you spend at an NFP business is that it contributes to the business's profits. Financial surplus can be used by an NFP business to:

a. further its mission, including the creation of publicly accessible capital and infrastructure, as well as supporting socially-beneficial 682 goods and services; b. keep as savings, with a NFP financial institution; c. invest, directly or indirectly in other NFPs; or d. give as philanthropy to other nonprofit or NFP entities.
As you can see, whenever an NFP business spends money on operational costs or uses its profits for any of the above activities, it helps generate real value in the economy. Through the majority of possible interactions, wealth circulates, rather than accumulating in an elite economy. Value creation stems from the expansion of individual and community assets necessary for living, greater wellbeing, developments in tangible and intangible social infrastructure, and enhancement and expansion of the commons. Without private business ownership, wealth can circulate in service of greater wellbeing for everyone. The power and efficiency of this wealth circulation mechanism can be seen in parts of the existing, for-profit system that are increasingly run by NFPs. A recent assessment of the yearlong impact of NFP credit unions in the U.S. State of South Dakota, for example, found that $15,775,244 was returned in direct financial benefits to the state's 251,140 credit union members -the equivalent of $63 for each member or $120 per member household. This means there was $15 million more circulating in the economy, from $21 million in profits. This amounts to a lot more than would have been paid to the state via business tax. 683 And it 681 Of course, widespread access to safe and efficient public transportation is an important part of any sustainable society, but some people might still need to invest in vehicles. 682 Again, the government decides what constitutes 'social benefit' in its legal descriptions of NFP business structures. These definitions can and should include ecologically-beneficial activities. 683 <REF>. means that the $15 million was not extracted to the hands of a few wealthy owners. It contributed to more equality rather than more inequality. Thus, a distributional mechanism is built into the very DNA of the not-for-profit economy, leaving very little need for redistribution. It is not an afterthought or a strategy to compensate and mitigate the undesirable side effects of a for-profit market. The wealth circulation pump doesn't require trickle-down economics, government stimulus, or the belief in an Invisible Hand that mysteriously turns self-interested accumulation into social good. Any form of consumption drives wealth around the system. But this is different to what Keynes advocated because the pump is based on existing needs, not manufactured demand. This means there's less need for neo-Keynesian intervention (prices/incomes) and monetarist policy (interest rate adjustments). The wealth circulation pump in the NFP World changes everything by introducing abundance and real liquidity into the system. It is worth noting that not all wealth circulates freely in an NFP World; some aspects of the economy continue to have a siphoning effect. Some forms of capital gains still exist. These include earned income via small business and sole trader profits, royalties, patents, license fees and trading in areas like commodities. Unearned income stems from interest on loaned capital, rents on land, and asset appreciation (such as property or collector items). When inheritance involves very large amounts, or is passed down to those who are already wealthy, it can have an accumulating effect within the economy. Fraud and exchange through the black market present other avenues for wealth accumulation. Additionally, a number of factors reduce the threat of these stagnating forces in the NFP World. To begin, the combined size of the forces that centralize wealth has been drastically diminished in the transition to the more equal NFP World. As the NFP story took hold and rampant accumulation of wealth went from being exhalted as a sign of success to being socially unacceptable 684 . In fact, the NFP World would not exist without a strong foundation of social norms, values, and shared goals, grounded in the NFP story of social-ecological wellbeing outlined in the previous chapter. This means that the rich now have less capital for investment. There are also significantly fewer avenues for capital accumulation, now that securing business equity is not an investment option. And the financial returns on lending capital as debt are contained via social pressures, the abundance of investment capital, and, in some cases, legal restrictions (for instance, on the amount of interest one can charge on a loan). Similarly, wealth from asset appreciation is less of an issue, thanks to reduced inflationary possibilities. And, given there is no elite economy in which accumulated wealth can circulate, those with greater wealth in the NFP World more readily spend it back into the real economy (and of course there is much less inequality in the NFP World due to the wealth circulation pump, so the wealthier households only have a small factor more wealth than poorer households). Moreover, with an ethic of enough having replaced the fear-based, scarcity mentality, and in a condition of greater socio-economic equality, individuals don't feel compelled to accumulate for accumulation's sake. Rather, their focus is on converting financial prosperity into greater wellbeing, their own, the wellbeing of others, and the wellbeing of the planet. Public beneficence, not private accumulation, is now the celebrated form of individual and business success. And if that isn't enough to discourage hoarding, capital accumulation via capital gains is financially disincentivized via taxation. In practice then, the NFP World maintains healthy levels of equality because its circulating forces are greater than its accumulating forces (see table above). Thus, the return to a highly unequal world is unlikely, because there's widespread awareness of the siphoning effects that create an elite economy and the damage that kind of economy does to people and planet; and thus there is much attention placed on minimizing the siphon and counter-balancing it by enhancing the circulation of the wealth circulation pump. The wealth circulation pump acts universally (both within and between countries), equalizing the lack of freedoms and the fulfillment of the conditions for a healthy, happy life. This acceleration of wellbeing is most noticeable on the level of local economies. Countless communities had been negatively affected by the globalized wealth siphon of the for-profit era. These local economies see the greatest improvement in the NFP World because wealth now stays local.
National and regional taxation ensures certain communities don't become exorbitantly wealthy. With millions of NFP enterprises and the NFP ethic running the economy, we expect to see a lot less war-profiteering, inhumane working conditions, and exploitation of poorer people. Yet, of course, some international and domestic inequality remains. There is ample time, plenty of money, low stress, and an easier life thanks to greater systemic productivity in the NFP World. This is how its underlying wealth circulation pump plays out. It starkly contrasts with the experience of the scarcity-driven for-profit world and its underlying wealth extraction siphon: no time, not enough money, too stressed, and lost jobs due to profit-maximizing measures and labor-displacing productivity gains. In the NFP World, prosperity is defined as a high level of wellbeing, rather than material and financial wealth. It is of course acknowledged that material and financial wealth can be means to achieving high levels of social-ecological wellbeing, but they are seen as a means rather than an end. This means that there is a level of not enough material wealth, which is not good, but there is also a level of material wealth that can be detrimental to social-ecological wellbeing. Actors in the NFP World, whether individuals, households, businesses, cities or nations, seek the level of material and financial wealth that provides for optimal human and ecological health. As such, the 'work-watch-shop' spiral of despair has been replaced by the 'work-rest-zest' cycle of wellbeing. The cycle of wellbeing stems not only from what the NFP World actively creates, but also from what it simply doesn't do. The NFP World doesn't systematically create inequality. It doesn't encourage ecological destruction, war, exploitation, workaholism, and consumerism in the name of profit (as described in chapter 3). It doesn't tear communities and families apart for the sake of productivity and competitiveness. In the NFP World, businesses rarely market their goods and services in ways geared towards making people feel inadequate. We are no longer exposed to thousands of ads per day. Items don't break so easily (and intentionally). Fewer maxed-out credit cards are offered at cash registers. And fewer bad loans are lent. Basically, there is drastically less pressure to buy products and services we don't really need or want. In the absence of the detrimental impacts of the for-profit world, beautiful things are given the space to blossom, driving the virtuous cycle of less work, more leisure and greater wellbeing. There is less work that needs to be done in the NFP World. Greater localization and sharing means that needs are increasingly met outside the market, reducing the need for money and formal employment. Businesses no longer manufacture 'needs' to keep their profit margins (and the economy) growing. Rather, the needs that can't be met outside the market, are efficiently addressed through the socially-oriented market. Thanks to the lean society model, the efficiency with which NFP enterprises respond to social and environmental challenges reduces the negative externalities that are often created by inefficient processes. Increased attention on environmental wellbeing leads directly to greater human wellbeing, improving conditions such as air, water and soil quality, ensuring more livable environments and nutritious foods. Many NFPs produce goods and services that emphasize beneficial, long-term outcomes, which in turn, reduce the amount of work required by society. In healthcare, for example, there is a greater focus on preventative medicine, rather than the allopathic approach that dominates the for-profit healthcare model. This sensitivity to long-term considerations sees ecological design become the norm, as witnessed by extended product lifecycles through built-in resilience in manufacturing, and a focus on energy and waste reduction. This is a major shift from the short-termism of the for-profit world685 , and leads to significant, longterm cost savings as well as significantly less of a need for work 686 . It also results in a totally different experience for salespeople, increasing their wellbeing and intrinsic motivation when they sell goods that are durable and serve a deeper purpose, versus those they know will soon break and serve profit maximization. In the NFP World, less work increases wellbeing rather than undesired unemployment. In the for-profit world, less work equals an unemployment problem. No need to create useless jobs in the NFP World to prop up employment in the market, because of the wealth circulation pump and needs being met outside the market, through community and family connections. In the NFP World, capacity of production is purposefully underutilized. While this will undoubtedly shock all kinds of economists, it's less shocking when you realize why: it's to ensure greater leisure and healthy ecosystems. Unemployment from labor surplus is a pronounced problem in systems based on scarcity. In the NFP World, the workweek is much shorter, so paid work is more easily spread out among the population and everyone spends less of their life doing paid work. 'Full employment' is less critical (a term that has often been used as a smokescreen for socially and ecologically harmful policies). While work remains an important mechanism for advancing social and ecological wellbeing and priming the wealth circulation pump in the process, the pump itself ensures people no longer need to work just to survive. Costs of living are lower. There's more average wealth, thanks to more equal pay and no wealth extraction siphon. But there's also greater security, training and support for the unemployed. In the NFP World, every person's basic wellbeing is looked after, not just because of the moral imperative, but because the economy is built around it. There is enough work (although the amount is always falling). In particular, there is enough meaningful work (and adequate employment opportunities) to satisfy anyone seeking to be employed. The legacy of the for-profit world's destruction means that there is a great deal of generative work that needs to be done, socially and environmentally. That said, the full-time workweek of 25 hours687 continues to fall over time, due to rising labor productivity.
Combined with a shorter average working week of 15 to 25 hours688 , the NFP World offers enough work for full-time employment and adequate incomes689 , but not so much that work proves overwhelming. With wealth staying in local communities, jobs are more local. There is less travel time and less migration (due to less of a need to move for work), and thus less pressure that work-related travel puts on services and infrastructure. Importantly, people want to work longer into their lives (rather than retire as early as possible) because they derive a sense of purpose from their work as almost all work supports a social mission. Also because the working week is shorter and they've had more leisure time throughout their career (as compared to now), there's a more balanced approach to work throughout one's lifetime (rather than having to front-load one's life with too much work and retire from work all together later in life). In essence, people no longer feel burnt out by paid employment by the time they reach 65 years of age. Furthermore, because they've been living in a society that ensures optimal health, people tend to be in better physical and psychological shape in the later years of life, as compared to what is currently the norm in for-profit societies. With less work needing to be done, the elusive goal of greater leisure is finally reached. The quality and amount of leisure increases because the NFP World creates the space needed for human flourishing. Working less gives us the freedom to be and to do. Given the chance, and when basic needs have been met, people embrace this freedom, prioritizing quality time with family, friends and oneself over buying more stuff, and working more. 690 As the Peckham experiment shows, when we are stress-free, we have no shortage of crafts, hobbies and sports with which we enjoy engaging. There is time to explore healthy ways of meeting needs, outside the market, thereby reducing the need for work. We also have more time to connect with nature, with the NFP World allowing us to truly appreciate the incredible gift of life and biodiversity on this amazing planet. With less work, we have more time in our lives for self-reflective processes. We have time to think about what is really important to us, what we value, what we prioritize, dream about, desire and need, and how we can best manage these considerations. Less work gives the space for us to learn and to follow our hopes, aspirations and passions. This raises the chances of finding meaningful work. And as experiments that provide all members of society with a basic income have shown691 , people still choose to work even when they don't have to, given the intrinsic rewards associated with contributing to something greater than yourself and the extrinsic rewards when that value is publicly acknowledged and celebrated. Income still serves as a motivator of work, but it's not at all the only source of motivation. Overall, we see a more satisfied and insightful population, which drives productivity gains both in the workplace and in communities. There is also more time to be creative. Being an artist isn't restricted to just those who can find some way of making money from their creativity. Rather everyone has the time to undertake creative endeavors, such as writing, drawing, painting, sculpting, woodwork, designing, dancing, playing music, and acting. These are all important forms of expression that contribute to higher levels of mental health. Less work also creates space for us to connect, collaborate, help each other and understand our interdependence more deeply. As there is a lot less fear of being dominated, people experience and explore human connections more richly. We have more time to share our daily struggles with each other, and to receive the support we need to enable our ongoing personal growth. Importantly, we have more time for our loved ones. More time, energy and financial security exists to raise children and provide care for family members, accompanied by greater community support and the assistance of friends and extended family. In the NFP World, the community ensures that babies are fed, held and loved, and elders are honored, respected and cherished. And with people having more free time and the purpose-driven culture encouraging them to contribute to the greater good, the NFP World has higher rates of volunteerism, which loops back to relieve pressure on the market. The better balance between work, rest and play creates improved physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing 692 . But the reverse is also true: greater wellbeing improves the quality of our work, leisure and rest. When the for-profit pressures fade and the NFP era flourishes, most people will feel relatively deeper levels of life-satisfaction, joy, selfconfidence, empathy, compassion, security, autonomy, connection, purpose, gratitude, and empowerment -in essence, a zest for life! With improved physical and emotional wellbeing, we relate more positively to others, making work and leisure more enjoyable for us all. We are more able to act in cooperative, empathic, mindful, and creative ways that contribute to the whole. But greater wellbeing also reduces the amount of work needing to be done in the first place. Combined with financial equality, greater physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing minimizes homelessness, mental and physical illness, addiction, violence, crime and incarceration 693 . This reduces the burdens on society, such as the costs associated with running rehabilitation and correctional facilities as well as homeless shelters and safe houses, and therein the amount of work that needs to be done. At the same time, having greater widespread health and wellbeing increases the available labor force, ensuring even less work per citizen, to achieve desired social outcomes. Greater wellbeing reinforces contentment, based on an ethos of 'enough', allowing us to feel more deeply fulfilled. As we'll soon explore, this reduces our levels of consumption and, therein, the amount of work needing to be done to match market demand.
Benefits stemming from the cycle of wellbeing are magnified by various factors. The strongest is productivity gains, stemming from logistical improvements, technological advances, social innovations and enhanced workforce skills. Whereas improved efficiencies in the for-profit world often spell labor displacement and unemployment, in the NFP World, increased productivity multiplies the positive shifts already occurring through the cycle of wellbeing. When productivity gains drive wealth circulation within a relatively equal society, it makes paid work and volunteering more efficient (creating more time for leisure); caregiving can become a little easier, and leisure more pleasurable694 . Society benefits, as a whole, from high levels of ongoing education; open source design; mapping, geocoding and the Internet of Things; certain technological automation695 ; increased built-in resilience; and greater reuse, repair, and recycling via closed loop manufacturing. Associated job losses are counteracted by a safety net that has been strengthened by the additional wealth circulating through the system thanks to the productivity gain. What's more, with stronger, connected communities, people are cognizant of steering work towards their neighbors who might be recently unemployed, knowing this benefits everyone. The rebound effect 696 and efficiency shifting is minimized, because people are more aware of environmental impacts and ecological limits, and there's also less personal and social drive to use disposable income to fund mindless consumption. As the global population naturally declines, from its plateau of 9 billion or so people, more space is made for gains in personal and ecological wellbeing to accelerate. This is in direct contrast to capitalism, in which the necessity of economic growth demands a constantly expanding population (consumer base). Thanks to modern medicine and the cycle of wellbeing, the population continues to age, however, this doesn't add pressure to the demands on the labor force, thanks to: gains from efficiency, savings being shared, better circulation of financial surplus in the common economy, livelihoods that depend less on money, and people wanting to work well into old age in purpose-driven positions. Our environment remains under pressure. Even in a less consuming NFP World, 9 billion people demand a large throughput of resources. People in the NFP World experience the catastrophic impacts stemming from ecological overshoot during the for-profit era. This undermines the cycle of wellbeing to some extent, but the NFP World also gives us a greater chance to ensure the conditions for the countless species with which we share this planet to flourish. The absence of the growth imperative allows efficiencies to actually increase. Overall, the planet has more breathing room to heal, and for other species to flourish. As such, the NFP World also creates the space for ecological stewardship and sustainability. But doesn't increasing wealth and leisure result in greater consumption and even more damaging environmental impacts? With more money to purchase things, don't humans use more resources? At first, this might happen to some extent, as part of a 'liberation effect' as societies achieve more economic equality (we will explore this in Chapter 6). However, in the longer term, the shift from an economics of scarcity and 'never enough' to one of abundance and 'enough' actually increases our ability to thrive in a world with biophysical constraints. This is the paradox of enough: in an economy in which wealth concentrates, society consumes more but most people feel like they do not have enough material wealth. In an economy in which wealth circulates, society consumes less but most people feel they have enough material wealth. The main reason that per capita consumption in the NFP World enables a non-growing economy 697 is that the conditions that previously drove overconsumption have disappeared. Thanks to the end of the wealth extraction siphon, the economy no longer requires constantly expanding economic output or debt to compensate for the removal of wealth from the real economy. For the first time, our economy operates in harmony with the natural environment, rather than behaving as if we have infinite resources. With needs met in highly efficient ways, there is actually less overall economic activity. As we'll soon discover, the money supply is much smaller than in the for-profit economy, with an end to the superfluous, manufactured activity that is required by the creation of the money supply by for-profit banks. The wealth circulation pump has reduced social stratification, envy, widespread economic insecurity, and hoarding, which enables the cycle of wellbeing and spreading a new story of prosperity, in which people experience the contentment associated with enough time, money, and rest. Under such conditions, people have the psychological, social and economic freedom to choose to buy less. They understand that endless consumption is not only unfulfilling, but has also been very harmful to social relations and the natural environment. Instead, they seek endless personal and interpersonal development. People appreciate what they have, rather than focusing on what they don't have. There is a sense of having enough material stuff. Businesses reflect this understanding in their practices. Greater transparency about the ecological impacts associated with products and services further spurs conscious consumption. Building on the trends of the early 21 st century, people increasingly want to know the origin of the products they are purchasing, with re-localized production having assisted in significantly reducing environmental impacts. Manufactured needs, wasteful production, and mindless consumption are things of the past. Without profit as a goal, doing damage to humans and other species is unjustifiable, so 'economic externalities', like air pollution, are more naturally internalized. Even if a company does not automatically take its full ecological impact into consideration, when it learns of its mistakes from its stakeholders, community and public officials, it is much more willing to change its ways to align with optimal ecological outcomes than the for-profit businesses of the past. This is because harm to ecosystems eventually harms humans, too, so it does not help NFP businesses to achieve their mission.
In other words, businesses in the NFP World have a lot more reason to think about their near-, medium-, and long-term ecological impacts than businesses in the for-profit economy, simply due to their purpose and missions. The market also no longer seeks to commoditize everything, because there is a widespread realization that many needs are best met in non-material ways, including stronger personal relationships that allow for greater rates of re-use and sharing. The willingness of the market to trade economic growth for the fulfillment of needs also facilitates more closed-loop systems design, reducing the ecological impacts of trade by slowing resource throughput, thereby enabling a steady-state, non-growing economy. When the paradox of enough combines with the lean society model, the wealth circulation pump and the cycle of wellbeing, we see the makings of a new economy. But when it gets to the details of how the NFP economy actually works, what we discovered in this regard was nothing short of breathtaking. When we first began developing the NFP World model, we thought that the emergence of NFP business would make many of our existing structures obsolete. Nothing could be further from the truth. Almost everything that is unhealthy with our present, for-profit economy, becomes healthy under NFP conditions, from fractional reserve banking, to compounding interest, debt, advertising, lobbying and even corporate bailouts! We begin our deeper exploration with what sits at the heart of any economy: finance. When all banks are not-for-profit 698 , something profound happens with money creation, debt and interest. Recall that, through for-profit banking, money is constantly extracted from the real economy to the elite economy. Thirty-five to forty percent of the money we pay for goods and services goes to bankers, financiers, and bondholders via interest 699 . The scarcity this creates in the real economy demands an ongoing expansion of debt by the average citizen (and government), who can't afford to fully service their loans without taking on further debt 700 . 698 The range of banks considered NFP include: credit unions, savings and loans associations, building and loans associations, community banks, central banks and public banks. No matter what form they take, though, all NFP banks share the same core traits: they exist solely to meet their customers' or members' needs; they must reinvest 100% of their profits into that mission; and they are without private ownership (in the sense of appropriation rights). 699 <REF: Ellen Brown>. 700 Known in economics as the 'impossible contract'. However, when all banks are NFP, then any financial surplus in the banking system (stemming from fees, interest on loans or returns on external investments), returns to the real economy via the wealth circulation pump. Because average levels of household, community and government wealth are much greater in the NFP World, debts are more easily and quickly reconciled, similar to what happens in It's a Wonderful Life701 . And in a world focused on addressing social-ecological needs, with more needs met outside the market, the reduced costs of living make taking on debt less necessary in the first place and, with higher rates of socioeconomic equality, debt is also easier to pay off. Combined, these factors create financial abundance, removing the expansionary imperative that debt creates in a scarcity-based, forprofit economy. The method by which money is 'created' doesn't change in a NFP World. Not-for-profit banks loan money into existence, as debt, just as all banks do in the current for-profit economy. But while debt remains an undesirable, albeit more temporary burden for the indebted, private and public debt is positive in the NFP economy. Not only does it promote financial liquidity and the ability for households, communities, businesses and governments to finance the servicing of needs, it also represents social assurance, trust, interdependence and community confidence in the economy and the ability of debtors to repay their loans. Fair interest on loans remains an important component of a healthy, NFP banking system. Compounding interest discourages reckless borrowing and encourages the borrower to repay loans efficiently. Interest also rewards the lender for taking a risk (like a fee for the service of providing the loan), and compensates for any inflation within the economy, although, as we'll soon see, this holds less relevance in the NFP World. Yet, the motivation to gain personally from interest payments disappears when the bank isn't shareholder-owned. Rates are calculated to account for administrative costs (including wages of bank employees), levels of risk, and the development of capital reserves. Nothing more. No profit-maximization and no wild speculation, with the hopes of getting rich at the expense of debtors. Along with the abundance of capital available for investment, as well as market competition to provide the highest quality services to customers, the NFP approach to banking makes unfair interest rates unlikely. But, if needed, rates can be regulated for upper maximums, as in many U.S. states, where it is illegal to charge more than 10 percent annual interest on consumer loans. 702 Furthermore, because NFP banks only exist to provide high-quality financial services to their customers, they are responsible lenders. With stronger ties to the community and borrowers, they're able to assess risk and work out terms and policies that ensure lower default rates. Not-for-profit banks don't intentionally give bad loans and this can be seen in our present economy in which credit unions offer fairer interest rates and were not nearly as tied to bad mortgages as for-profit banks in the 2008 crash 703 . And their not-for-profit ethic ensures NFP banks don't sneak in new fees or seek to extract as much wealth from customers as possible. No one would benefit from unnecessary fees but the customers, when they get a rebate at the end of the year, so it makes no sense to charge them in the first place.
Combined, these features restore banking to its naturally valuable function: providing households, businesses and governments with a secure place to store savings, and with the loans to start projects and businesses or address personal needs. An entirely NFP banking sector keeps the circulation of financial resources moving throughout the economy, for the benefit of all. When banking is entirely NFP, many of the critiques of the modern money system fade. There is no need to create a moneyless society (e.g., the Resource-Based Economy proposed by the Zeitgeist movement), or shift the money creation process from banks to governments (as proposed by organizations like Positive Money). Or even to see an end to central banks, such as the U.S. Federal Reserve. Nor is there a need to return to the gold standard (Bretton Woods system) or develop a 100% reserve banking system. And there is no need for negative interest rates (like demurrage currencies proposed by Charles Eisenstein and others), non-interest banking (as practiced by JAK Bank), or an end to compounding interest. In the NFP World, money is restored to its original purpose as a store of value and a medium for exchange. Fiat money (money with no physical resource underpinning its value) enables widespread trading. The fractional reserve banking system provides valuable liquidity. And compounding interest on loans ensures the efficient servicing of debts. When the interest is used to benefit the wider community, it is not a bad thing. That said, alternative approaches to finance can happily co-exist within a NFP system. The JAK Member's Bank in Sweden, for example, having successfully conducted interest-free, full-reserve banking since 1965 704 would operate just as fine (and might gain even more members) in an NFP World. And interest-free, Islamic banking (Sharia compliant) can continue just as it is presently practiced in much of the Islamic world, as long as there is no private equity involved. Indeed, the NFP banking system is complemented by a suite of approaches to monetary transactions. Bitcoin and its ethical counterpart, Faircoin, may be long gone by the time we have an NFP World, but their descendent crypto-currencies enable an important aspect of the economy, with technologies emerging from the block-chain that provide a highly secure and transparent ledger for many forms of economic transactions. For communities that have difficulty attracting or retaining adequate wealth, community currencies like the Brixton Pound offer a practical way to enhance connections within the community, while encouraging local production and consumption and, thus, building resilience into the local economy. And the Local Exchange Trading System (LETS) continues to offer residents effective ways to exchange goods and services with their neighbors. In fact, most new economy ideas and innovations that exist today are compatible with the NFP World model, because with the shackles of profit-maximization and private business ownership gone, purpose-driven innovation is embraced and allowed to flourish. Inspired by leadership in Germany, Brazil, Russia, India and China 705 , public banking is one such innovation that is crucial to the NFP World. Public banks are financial institutions run by governments at the national, regional, county or municipal levels. While variations exist 706 , most public banks have similar functions:

• they offer a repository for government revenue;

• they provide the government, or specific industries with low cost capital to develop infrastructure; • they have a mandate to lend counter-cyclically, i.e., when there is a block in liquidity; and • their profits offer a substitute for tax revenue. Recognizing the value of a diverse, decentralized banking system, public banks work in tandem, not competition, with private-sector NFP banks. As public banking specialist Ellen Brown notes, public banks help collateralize community bank loans and assist with regulatory compliance. The U.S.'s only public bank, the Bank of North Dakota, Brown says "…directly supports community banks and enables them to meet regulatory requirements such as assetto-loan ratios and deposit-to-loan ratios… [I]t keeps community banks solvent in other ways, 704 (Ref: Wikipedia article and emails with JAK). 705 As of 2016, approximately 40% of all banks in the world are public banks <REF: Ellen Brown> 706 See: http://republicirelandbank.com/?page_id=2 lessening the impact of regulatory compliance on banks' bottom lines." 707 An ecosystem of NFP entities managing money creation minimizes both the statist problem of concentration of power and corruption, as well the capitalist problem of for-profit banks expanding the money supply to extract greater wealth for owners through lending. With public banks playing a supportive role, and the wealth circulation pump ensuring financial liquidity, central banks are less necessary. However, their newfound independence 708 makes them a valuable check and balance for the wellbeing of the NFP economy, and they remain the lender of last resort for large, private-sector NFP banks and public banks. But, rather than focusing on how to boost consumption and GDP growth, their mandate for ensuring liquidity is driven by the desire to improve social wellbeing. In this sense, they still assist with inflation rate targets by helping to manage the money supply and setting central interest rates 709 , but they do so with a different end goal. Deflation is certainly less of a concern in the NFP World. Higher wages, adequate employment opportunities, non-marketized ways of meeting needs and the ongoing impacts of the wealth circulation pump (and absence of the elite economy) make deflation highly unlikely in the NFP system 710 . But aren't the conditions we've outlined a recipe for inflation? Here, the overall reduction in the money supply (debt) changes everything. Due to economic abundance, a bank's creation of money, as debt, only increases the money supply temporarily. This is because this debt can be efficiently serviced, often without the need to create more debt in the process 711 . And when the economy doesn't have to incessantly grow, there's less need to expand the money supply via quantitative easing and other such measures 712 , reducing the possibility of inflationary pressure.
A naturally declining population, less speculation, more socio-economic equality, and the drastically smaller size of the global economy (in terms of both money and production), also means less vulnerability to irregularities or market failures, further offsetting inflationary pressures. Dramatic boom-and-bust cycles end because asset values don't have a natural tendency towards over-valuation. Additionally, the steady circulation of wealth, along with considerable re-localization of manufacturing and trade, greatly reduces the volatility of prices and market demand. With a reduction in the overall number of hours employees work to earn an adequate paycheck, and NFP companies caring more about employee wellbeing as an internal aspect of their social missions, employment and wages are more stable, contributing to reduced variability in costs. This means inflation is contained, and deflationary and inflationary spirals are extremely rare and less severe in the NFP World. 707 <REF>. 708 As for-profit banks disappeared, so too did their influence over central banks. In any system, the independence of central banks is crucial, primarily because monetary policy is more reliable when it is able to be distinct from the fiscal policies of an incumbent government. 709 Yet central banks have less influence over public banks, given public banks rarely have liquidity problems and, therefore, don't often borrow from central banks. This makes the central bank less able to guide interest rates within a nation. 710 Especially given that the wealth extraction siphon and the scarcity it created, no longer exists. 711 There are fewer delinquencies, fairer interest rates, and better payback times. 712 Via, for example, a central bank buying securities in the open market, lending new money to NFP banks or buying assets from NFP banks, or a government selling bonds to spur growth. In the NFP World, social entrepreneurs and governments still pitch proposals for investment. It is still 'make or break' for many projects, with pressure to generate revenue as soon as possible. Yet, less overall investment is required in the NFP World, given the economic growth imperative has disappeared, and capital requirements for most forms of business startup are incredibly low (relative to today's levels). Debt has replaced equity as the primary vehicle for financial investment 713 . Loans and bonds with fixed rates of return continue to drive new NFP business development, expansion and working capital, given individuals can't hold equity in an NFP 714 . Government bonds fund public works and community development, while private lending provides individuals and families with money to meet their needs. In the NFP World, the ethic of enough is connected with the desire to do good. Understanding of the 'circle-round' effect has replaced faith in the 'trickle-down' effect. People now seek social returns on their investments much more than profit-maximization. Because NFPs are purpose-driven and most are able to offer tax deductions on donations, people are generally comfortable providing monetary and in-kind support to help a new NFP business start if they're convinced that the organization will serve the community's needs; all without the desire for a financial return on investment. That's not to say people don't invest to ensure a more financially secure, comfortable future for themselves and their families. They do. It's just that, in the NFP World, the need for personal wealth creation from investments (and savings) has decreased dramatically. In retirement, for example, less savings are needed due to the reduced costs of living. Retirement is more affordable in the NFP World. Fewer activities require money because of the increased prevalence of caring, sharing, and collaboration in the community (de-marketization). Communities and families have a greater capacity to care for one another free of charge (with less time spent working for pay). As community ties become stronger in the NFP World, the wider community is more prone to look out for its elderly members. There is also less of a need for money because there are much lower levels materialism in society to drive unnecessary consumption. Retirement is also cheaper because healthcare, medicine, medical equipment, and other basic necessities are priced for accessibility rather than profit-maximization. There is greater access to public and private services; an increased number of not-for-profit organizations offer services specifically for the elderly, at accessible prices. On top of less of a need for money, people want to work longer into old age in the NFP World, because they work for businesses and orgs that they believe in. They are not feeling burnt out from working all their lives at jobs they don't really enjoy or care about, as is a common occurrence in the for-profit economy. Another aspect of the NFP World that reduces the need for savings is that the elderly are generally healthier because they've enjoyed their life's work, they've led a more balanced 713 Equity-based investment can still happen through personal investment in physical assets and small businesses/sole proprietorships. 714 Because they are not-for-profit institutions, rather than private individuals, governments, nonprofits and NFP enterprises, can have equity in other NFPs. And NFP banks may use equity as collateral for loans; but, if there is a default on the loan, then any equity will be held by an NFP institution (i.e., the bank). life, they've likely had a better diet and more time to exercise, and they've had less debt and less stress. The healthcare system is focused on prevention and healthy lifestyles rather than medication. Through the NFP system, gains in automation and technological efficiency have translated into real increases in quality of life, particularly support for the elderly (e.g., real time remote monitoring of health, connected to tele-medicine). So while people may live longer, they'll be less of a burden on the healthcare system. There is also a stronger public safety net and more volunteerism, because of the purpose motive, the not-for-profit ethic, the story of interconnectedness, and people having more free time. Volunteers can play a big role in meeting the needs of the disproportionately large elderly population 715 .
In terms of investment, lending (as compared to equity-based investment), generally offers long-term stability for borrowers and the economy, given it is a source of fixed income and is less prone to speculation. While a spectrum of risk remains 716 (allowing those less concerned about the certainty of their long-term savings to support more risky ventures that may have a higher rate of return), destructive speculation is largely absent; and the spectrum of possible returns is narrower. This is especially due to the abundance of investment capital and because, overall, most ventures are averse to reckless risk-taking, now that profit-maximization is no longer the purpose of business development. In fact, with the average individual having more money, a 0% interest rate on savings at the bank becomes justifiable, given less debt in the system means less overall lending. Future security through investments, however, has a new ally: the triple dividend. Imagine you invest in an NFP that is developing a new retirement village in your neighborhood; three kinds of returns accompany that investment: a fixed financial return, either from revenue associated with the village's development, or from other streams of revenue the NFP uses to service its loan; a social return, where you feel good about strengthening services for the elderly within your community; and a personal return -in your older age you can move into the village. The Triple Dividend Investment in the NFP World 715 For example, 'Meals on Wheels' (with this company, in Australia's NSW, cross-subsidized by its own insurance agency). 716 There are obviously still levels of risk associated with investment in the NFP World (a loan or bonds may be issued for a heavily indebted company, a company losing money very fast, a company entering a risky market, or an otherwise poorly managed company). But most things are less risky and more insured in the NFP World. In lending to an NFP, investors are truly invested in the outcome (ensuring high levels of local investment in the NFP World). That is why, in the NFP World, people are more likely to match their financial investments with contributions of time and energy. Indeed, businesses and governments regularly connect with and provide updates to their investors, in part because these people are often wonderful patrons and ambassadors for the projects in which they are invested. However, for NFP projects in which an investor's stake is purely financial, the investor's ability to influence decision-making is legally restricted 717 . This is in stark contrast to our present, for-profit world, in which the owners of capital often have voting rights and a greater ability to influence a company's direction than the workers or the company's board (with shareholder decisions and expectations typically favoring profitmaximization at any cost). Thus, in the NFP World, investment capital is restored as a tool, rather than a master. If your investment in an NFP does not go well, it's a totally different situation to when that happens with a for-profit investment. This is clear when one thinks of the good that might have been achieved in the process as well as the fact that your money went to other NFPs (and didn't get extracted). In the NFP World, "I lose, we win!" replaces what we're so used to "I lose. I LOSE!". Ironically, while the money supply is smaller in the NFP World, savings are more widespread. And while younger people still need to borrow more than the older generations who, in turn, provide most of the capital for lending, it is much easier (and maybe even common) for average people to transition to being a lender, rather than a borrower, as they grow older in the NFP World. The wealth circulation pump provides citizens with a greater capacity to save, particularly due to higher 'take home pay' and reduced costs of living. With greater average wealth, governments have greater reserves, and more people can afford small to medium-size investment risks on projects with social outcomes. And, thanks largely to the legacy of the digital revolution, the power of investing is widely dispersed. Through what mechanisms do investments in communities, public goods and NFP businesses occur? As part of the community economy, lending circles, such as the Tanda in Latin America 718 , remain a widespread, informal means of lending for small-scale personal and business loans. But digital lending platforms, like Kiva Zip 719 , are now pervasive, making peer-to-peer exchanges fast and simple. These digital platforms, especially those intersecting with cryptocurrencies 720 , make the pooling of micro-investments possible, such that you might lend just a few cents to hundreds of organizations, with the simplest of instructions. Other, standard avenues continue to exist, including microfinance and smallscale lending provided by NFP financial institutions, and foundations offering program related investments 721 . At the larger end of the direct lending scale, commercial banks continue to use customer deposits for personal lending and business investment. Crowdfunding is commonplace, whether it is the use of online platforms to raise funds for projects, loans to a cooperative from its members, or Community Public Offerings722 that enable non-accredited investors to support local NFP ventures. Collaborative approaches for seeking investment such as collective impact, whereby NFP businesses raise money as a group by demonstrating how they will collectively address a social challenge in an integrated way, are the norm. Given the absence of individual ownership in companies, bond markets have replaced stock markets. Primary markets (the place in which a company firsts lists for trading), assist NFP corporations and federal, state, county and municipal governments to raise capital723 for expansion. Such markets simultaneously disperse risk while giving investors a chance to discern which socially-and environmentally-focused businesses they'd like to see flourish. Secondary markets (where bond trading happens), provide citizens and NFP companies with additional fixed-income opportunities. While some physical infrastructure continues to support the regulation of trading, most activity happens through online markets.
Many aspects of the financial world that have been labeled as undesirable or unethical since the great crash of 2008, are actually integral parts of a healthy economy in the NFP World. This includes things like investment banking and derivatives. Lambasted for driving insatiable greed in the for-profit world, investment bankers have a social function in the NFP World, assisting NFP companies to raise capital, managing fixed-income investments for clients, and brokering mergers and acquisitions between NFP corporations. Without stocks as an underlying asset, derivatives (especially futures and hedging) not only become less dangerous, they actually provide a stabilizing force in the NFP economy. Take, for example, the funding mechanism for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). In a CSA arrangement, members pay the farmer for their produce before the crop is sewn. If the farmer's harvest is bountiful, members reap the rewards via large produce boxes. If the crop is small or destroyed, the customer suffers a small set-back, receiving reduced or no produce (although the market provides many substitute options). But the farmer, who might otherwise have gone bankrupt, keeps the pre-payment and can afford to sew crops the following season. While there is a speculative aspect to these kind of futures, they add great value to the NFP economy, providing a form of insurance for businesses whose processes rely on risky variables and the need to budget for fixed costs724 . To ensure that derivatives remain primarily steered towards this beneficial function, regulators ensure that any underling assets can be assessed for their real market value. While debt is the main instrument in NFP financial markets, private accumulation can still happen via equity investment in derivatives, currencies, commodities and land. However, with the NFP World meeting people's social needs and replacing the cultural narrative of 'never enough' with 'enough', the profit-motivated, speculative behavior that we currently witness in financial markets is no longer common or socially acceptable. And the wealth circulation pump ensures private gain is more readily returned to the real economy. With a new ethic, most currency exchange happens due to need, not speculation, such as hedging currency risk for an NFP business. The residual ability to gain from differences in currency (i.e., arbitrage) has shrunk significantly, due to:

• reduced overall international trade;

• a global reserve currency;

• reduced currency differentiation and fluctuation;

• the rise of global digital currencies and reduced exchange costs;

• greater regulation of the foreign exchange markets, including a high-frequency trading tax; and • banks and other companies that offer exchange services being NFP. Commodity trading tells a similar tale, with one key difference: open-source distributed manufacturing, utilizing locally-sourced substrates for production, sees a major reduction in international commodity trading. Local agricultural farms and seasonal diets are more common, due to increased awareness of environmental problems, as well as taxation and transport costs. Reduced speculation is most visible in the mainstream approach to private property. Thanks to the wealth circulation pump and purpose-oriented ownership frameworks (e.g., community land trusts, numerous NFPs providing assistance with housing affordability, and NFP banks providing more affordable mortgages), home ownership is widespread and property ownership as a purely speculative investment is minimal. Land, including commercial real estate, is increasingly owned by NFPs and the state, ensuring accessibility while reducing speculation in property markets. And because there is dramatically less speculation in the housing market, prices are more stable, better reflecting real value, rather than the inflated (or deflated) expectations of investors. Given everyone is seen as interconnected and part of a greater whole, private land ownership and belonging to the rentier class is a lot less popular. The majority of people view the private profiting from rent as socially unacceptable, but the rental market still seen as fine, especially when property is owned by NFPs. With less speculative asset investment, renting becomes more service-based, and remains an important step for many to home ownership (or for others, it offers more choice in their lifestyle), and there are social movements that put pressure on people or NFPs who are charging exploitative rent. Housing affordability brings a lot more status and admiration in the NFP World than holding onto the land and living off the rent. Where necessary, there are also rent controls. In the for-profit world, taxes are needed to pay for the burdens the market can't, and often won't, bear. The NFP market meets many needs in much healthier ways, allowing for a true partnership role between the state and market. Public finance benefits from important new efficiencies in the NFP World, and the costs to government of addressing for-profit business externalities, such as cost-cutting layoffs or environmental pollution to maximize quarterly earnings, are also greatly reduced. Closely linked, the subsidies to these companies have disappeared while, as we'll soon discover, costly government bailouts of companies 'too big to fail' are much less likely and become a totally different equation in the NFP World. With not-for-profit businesses at the heart of the economy, there is less pressure on governments to fund (and provide) public goods, especially in the social services field. Networks of efficient, decentralized NFPs have replaced the heaviest, most inefficient government-run programs in the NFP World, and they address all segments of the population, leaving few gaps in the market. As a result, fewer people rely on public services, and the taxes that governments previously levied to fund nonprofits are no longer as necessary. The privatization 725 and marketization of certain services that were previously considered public goods is possible because more people are able to pay, with mechanisms for accessibility built into NFP businesses themselves to assist those with limited financial means. And governments still serve the important role of keeping NFP enterprises accountable and making sure that they provide essential services in an efficient manner. But governments are also more enterprising in the NFP World, using self-generated revenue as a means to reduce the level of taxes required to fund public services.
This revenue is often generated within a service that may involve sliding scale models for fees 726 ; for example, cafeterias within public hospitals, gift shops in public museums, or laundry cleaning by staterun prisons. However, cross-subsidization is common for services where extensive revenue is harder to generate directly, such as policing, fire services, the military, and the management of national parks (although each of these involves greater community volunteering and management). Key revenue sources for governments include public banks; municipal utilities 727 such as water, electricity, gas, Internet, phone, waste and sanitation; cemeteries; gas stations; housing and commercial real estate 728 ; cafes, pubs and restaurants; liquor stores 729 ; and car sharing programs. These come in addition to more traditional forms such as parking meters and road tolls; business licenses, permits, fines and penalties. 725 NFP privatization, of course. 726 In most systems you have to show proof of income because it is assumed that nobody wants to pay more than others for the same product. That's the voice of Homo economicus again. It's actually surprising how many people are happy to pay a bit more when they know it will allow less fortunate people to also have access to something. This has been widely documented in participatory pricing case studies (Ref: Norms, Moods and Free Lunch; Shared Social Responsibility). 727 "In Los Angeles, for example, the Department of Power and Water contributes about $190 million per year to the city's revenues." <REF>. 728 U.K.

A smaller role for government as a service provider means less money is needed to support government bureaucracy. And with many of the processes that government oversees, such as taxation, penalties, licensing, medical payments and transportation, the automation of systems has reduced costs dramatically. Reduced costs translate into less need for governments to take on debt, which means less taxation is needed in order to repay debts. The cycle of wellbeing makes the burden on the public purse much less costly. The burden on the healthcare system, for example, is greatly reduced when people work less, have more leisure time, and the food, health, and education industries are run by purpose-driven companies. With wealth circulating through the economy, NFP insurance can provide a strong private-sector safety net. Low levels of unemployment also improve public health. There is also much greater security, training and support for the unemployed in the NFP World, through both NFPs and the government. Overall, the taxes required to fund welfare payments is massively reduced. The expanded community economy also removes significant pressure from government in areas such as childcare, where families and communities are more able and willing to look after children, reducing the need for subsidies and tax credits. While in the present economy, there are many social services that the for-profit market can't or won't bear because they aren't profitable enough and those fall on the state or charities to provide. In the NFP World, these social services are readily taken up by the purpose-driven NFP market or are supported by the financial surplus of NFP businesses via philanthropy to charities. Thanks to the wealth circulation pump, most people have more money with which to pay taxes. Consider, for example, that inequality costs the U.K. Government up to £32bn, annually, in welfare payments 730 . Approaches to taxation continue to vary greatly between nations. Adequate liquidity in the system enables governments to more easily discriminate with taxation policies. However, the general shifts in what gets taxed are almost universal. Tax exemptions remain for NFP businesses, with tax on for-profit activities maintained to discourage profit-maximizing behavior, and encourage NFPs to have mission-driven subsidiaries 731 . Thus, given most companies are NFP, revenue from business taxation 732 is reduced, although employment taxes on all businesses remain (e.g., social security payments, healthcare levies and worker's compensation in the U.S.). that may have particularly large environmental impacts (and are not basic necessities). Environmentally-oriented taxes are often earmarked to fund sustainability education, training and innovation, and programs that reduce, reuse and recycle. Internationally, high customs duty taxes assist in incentivizing local trade and minimizing inefficient international exchanges. There will be a range of government approaches to public funding; the NFP World allows for significant diversity in national economies. It's feasible, but not necessary, for countries in which democratic socialism is already working quite effectively and efficiently, to keep taxes high in order to maintain functional public services (e.g., health, transport, housing, education), but countries with less of a socialist culture can maintain a low tax structure, with NFP enterprises filling the gaps. It's a matter of what the citizens feel most comfortable with. It is feasible for governments to provide for a lot of their citizens' basic needs in the NFP World; but it's not necessary, as the NFP market can also take care of these needs very well. Fiscal policy (i.e., what government does with its budget) becomes less important in the NFP World. This is another way that central governments' power declines in the transition to an NFP economy. In the for-profit system, the only reason deficit budgets are applauded is because they pump money into the for-profit market with the belief that wealth then trickles down via job creation, productivity gains and taxation. But in an NFP system, government deficits help drive the circulation of wealth, taking us beyond the debates of Hayekianinspired austerity or Keynesian-inspired stimulus. When NFP banks and companies buy government bonds, this primes the wealth circulation pump, rather than the wealth extraction siphon. Yet, since the goal of economic growth has been replaced with the goal of having an economy that maximizes positive public health outcomes, governments have less of an appetite for debt, especially given they are no longer expecting growth to enable large debt repayments. Surpluses are still good because they can represent an efficient state, but there's not scarcity in the real economy's money supply or leaching to the wealthy via debt repayments anymore, so public debt is not a major issue. Funding certain services fully is not only possible in the NFP World, it also makes a lot more sense.
Healthcare means a widely contributing workforce that is contributing to the wellbeing of all (rather than inequality of the wealth extraction siphon). When all jobs are NFP, free tertiary education makes sense because it is the public investment in training people to serve public needs. This is in contrast to the current situation, where it's largely a subsidy for the wealth extraction siphon -training people to deliver private profit to owners. It just makes sense to fund public research when it is truly for the public good. Social safety nets remain an integral part of the economy, so any individuals who are adversely affected by bankruptcies or other unfortunate events will have state support. Paid parental leave via social insurance is also much more possible. While funding for certain services can come fully from government, the delivery can be a mix of public and private sector (NFP). Since a significant percentage of the education sector is composed of NFP enterprises, in addition to public schools, there is a lot of diversity in education styles, but educators can still be held to local, national and international standards. While many nonprofit organizations rely fully on charitable support, some nonprofits selfgenerate a portion of their revenue. The reverse is also true -while many NFP businesses are fully self-sufficient, some receive a percentage of their revenue from philanthropic sources. Now that the elite economy has been absorbed by the real economy, private family foundations are less existent, and government grants are a minor contributor to philanthropic support. Corporate philanthropy has been maintained, with NFP firms seeking to strengthen the good work of others by sharing their profits. But most financial support comes directly from the public with adequate wages and the wealth circulation pump allowing employees and all community members to be more philanthropic. Tax deductions remain an incentive for donations, with the donor base more widespread and engaged. The benevolent are celebrated as heroes, given philanthropy has become purer, with less potential for conflicts of interest, now that profit-maximization doesn't underlie the economy. With the story of international development focused on public health and wellbeing, rather than economic growth, and the wealth circulation pump having rectified many inequalities worldwide, international aid is steered towards activities that build on existing strengths in order to achieve self-determined outcomes. Support is commonly for small-scale entrepreneurs, NFP incubators, NFP enterprises and government programs, each exhibiting deepened forms of community accountability. Along with finance, the corporation has undergone a fundamental transformation. In the for-profit system, corporations rule the world737 . Their ability to influence policies, politicians, governments and the media, is compounded by abuse of the legal rights they are extended 738 . With 'limited liability' protection, corporate owners can behave recklessly, such as knowingly dumping harmful waste into the environment, and use bankruptcy as a business strategy rather than a last resort. Yet, how could we expect any different from a system focused on self-interested financial gain? The scenario changes completely in the NFP World; the corporate form is restored to its original intent as an important driver of responsible innovation 739 . In addition to other proactive government measures 740 , the limited liability of an incorporated NFP gives social entrepreneurs the protection and incentive they need in order to take risks in starting a business or scaling an existing sole proprietorship 741 . Given an NFP corporation can trade as its own legal entity, enter into contracts, buy and own assets, and sue others, 'corporate personhood' is now a force for good, rather than a means to control and dominate. A successful company in the NFP World is not necessarily one that has the highest profit margins and produces the most goods, but one that produces the best social outcomes and has the most positive social impact. Inspiring trust and confidence in business, customer engagement has become truly genuine. Take banking, for example. Because an NFP bank's top priority is to meet their customers' needs, they are significantly more likely to do what is in the best interest of the majority of their customers, such as lending responsibly, charging fair rates on loans, being responsive to customers' feedback and changing needs, and investing financial and other resources in projects and businesses that benefit the community. The NFP ethic guides these banks to be sensitive, accountable and transparent, compared to the for-profit ethic which guides banks to be greedy, tricky (disguising loan terms and interest rates to look nicer than they actually are), and, in some cases, downright devious 742 . Or consider what happens when the media is entirely NFP. There is much less of a tendency for the concentration of media management in a few hands, so it has more space to be decentralized and diverse. In this system, the distributors of media are NFP too, so there is less editorial pressure from advertisers, which makes them more accountability-focused (accountable to their social missions which would have to do with the fair and honest dissemination of information for the benefit of society). With wealth flowing through the economy, and the absence of the profit-maximization ethos, companies respond to client needs that were previously deemed 'too costly'. For example, goods and services are now commonly designed for use across a wide range of abilities. Businesses can afford to make their products and services truly simple and user-friendly, designed for practical use, thanks to the lean, open approach. Technologies can be taken apart, fixed and reworked, rather than being designed for the dump in order to sell more. Companies can use decentralized design and manufacturing capabilities that enable local creation and wide disbursement of technologies that serve the greater good.
Because businesses can be more sensitive to local needs and cultural norms, designs are more easily 739 When 'corporations' were first formed in Britain and the US, they had to be granted a charters by the government, which required a statement of their benefit for society (Micklethwait & Wooldridge, 2003) 740 For example, tax breaks and grants. 741 For example, foregoing steady wages to start a new business, whether it be a childcare facility, a homeless shelter, or a bakery, as well as the risk of personal liability (including access to personal assets) for any debts incurred in the growth process. 742 For example, when Wells Fargo tricked thousands of their customers across the U.S. into signing up for bank and insurance accounts (and fees) they did not want and, in some cases, signed them up without their consent at all (Ref: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/02/541182948/who-snatched-my-car-wells-fargo-did). customized for local needs (e.g., forking in software development). Through the participantdriven lean development model, innovators seek to incorporate multiple perspectives and multiple uses in their innovations. Manufactured needs have disappeared, enabling agreement on what constitutes 'social purpose' to be more participatory. With more widespread funding, what gets funded is also much more diverse, and based on community needs. The ecological impact of goods and services is more readily factored into corporate decision-making. Companies are more inclined and able to make sure their goods and services are benign or benevolent towards humans and the environment. Technological design is more systemic and interdisciplinary, ensuring innovators think about technologies not only in terms of direct effects, but also in terms of indirect effects and unintended consequences. Open innovation provides greater public scrutiny, and using the precautionary principle743 is now much more possible due to relief from the pressure to innovate and sell at all costs. That is why not-for-profit enterprises create more durable products, and more innovation is geared towards helping reduce harm to the environment and aiding ecosystem recovery from existing damage. Remember, the NFP economy has stepped beyond the triplebottom line, with profit now only serving outcomes for both people and the planet. Businesses are motivated to design products in a way that the parts can be re-used, re-purposed, or at least fully recycled. This is a purpose-maximizing business strategy, not a profit-maximizing one. Companies in the NFP World also look for ways to be closed-loop and zero-waste, by forming contracts with other companies, wherein one company's waste is used as a feedstock for another company's production 744 . And an expanded number of NFP projects actively drive environmental remediation, through efforts such as improving soils, protecting ecosystems, and planting trees. But even NFPs without a direct environmental focus are more ecologically sensitive. Although sometimes NFPs don't take into account indirect damage they cause, very rarely do they intentionally try to profit from damage, as so many for-profit companies currently do. And with profit no longer a goal in and of itself, there is little incentive to dodge environmental standards. To the contrary, NFP business leaders are more likely to embrace environmentally-oriented policies, treaties, taxes and agreements, be they state-regulated or industry self-regulated. The NFP World enables ecological stewardship because not-forprofit business and the environment are fundamentally allied, rather than at odds with each other. With enterprise models to support their social missions, NFPs have developed more accountability to both beneficiaries and customers (frequently one and the same). The market emphasis has brought a deeper level of professionalism to organizational decision-making, especially regarding business risks. Responding to market demands, both customers and beneficiaries more readily participate in the design and monitoring of goods and services. This blending extends to the high portion of the general public who now serve on NFP boards as a part of their civic contribution. Boards fulfill a governing role in most NFP companies 745 , strengthened by the vesting of greater powers in the workers 746 . The shift to member models, involving stakeholders (not shareholders), and limited term policies for board members, adds a further layer of accountability, with the possibility of board member replacement and scrutiny at the company's annual general meeting. And with regular communications expected between organizations and their members, there is improved accountability, as well as increased avenues for representative feedback. Systems for measuring impact prove more effective without the profit motive. They build on initiatives developed in the for-profit world, such as the Global Reporting Initiative, the Ecological Footprint Analysis for business, and the Common Good Balance Sheet. However, greater accountability in the NFP World is paradoxically accompanied by greater acceptance that not everything needs to be measured in the precise manner that was demanded by the forprofit world; good judgment is often relied upon for decisions regarding matters where outcomes may be intangible or hard to measure. Given there are no business owners 747 , the corporate structure is 'flatter' in the NFP World than experienced in the for-profit world. NFPs disperse power among operational units, rather than concentrating it within senior management and governance boards. Drawing on cooperative ideals, most firms in the NFP World are directed by the workers themselves, using new tools and practices to facilitate democratic decision-making 748 . Budgets are often created by the entire organization 749 , typically include the listing of salaries, often include input from outside stakeholders, and are generally accessible to the entire company. Annual financial reports and board meeting minutes are shared with the public, as is already common practice by nonprofits in the for-profit economy, for purposes of transparency and accountability. Most workers in the NFP World seek to contribute to the greater good, while having a high level of autonomy, self-expression, creativity, and skill development in their job. This is possible when work is created based on a combination of society's needs, and the strengths and needs of employees and organizations as a whole.
And it is supported by a partial reversal in the division of labor -less hierarchically-structured companies employ multi-skilled workers, ensuring greater organizational resilience and enabling semi-autonomous teams to be constantly assembled and reassembled for project-specific work. Labor unions and worker ownership have traditionally provided a crucial counterbalance to the destructive workplace tendencies of for-profit systems, fighting for and ensuring worker rights in a world in which workers are seen as a means to generating profits for owners. 745 Their independence relates more to the absence of a financial conflict of interest; they may well be recipients of the NFP's services. They may remain more hands-on/managerial in smaller start-ups. 746 Via, for example, provisions in a company's bylaws that provide for worker self-direction of the nonprofit <REF: SELC>. 747 In the sense of appropriation rights -there may be nominal or symbolic member-owners, but their ownership rights are limited to control rights (see Chapter 2 'Ownership and Assets' for more detail). 748 For example, sociocracy/Loomio. 749 Or representatives from all different departments of the organization. However, in the NFP World, labor unions, collective bargaining and worker ownership are largely obsolete because organizations are more accountable, participatory, and considerate of worker wellbeing by nature. NFP enterprise is actually a major evolutionary step for worker rights. Worker wellbeing is seen as inextricably linked to the greater social wellbeing NFPs seek to create. Leading the way is more equal pay 750 . In addition to wealth being more equally distributed in the NFP system, companies generally ascribe to voluntary salary ratios between 1:1 and 20:1 751 , depending on the nature of each company 752 . Competition and worker selfgovernance, along with an abundance of highly skilled labor, maintains downward pressure on upper wages. Minimum wage laws remain, but prove less necessary in the NFP world. And in the absence of wage suppression (and lobbying against raising the minimum wage) by profit-hungry owners and managers, which is commonplace in the for-profit system, the minimum wage is always a living wage in the NFP World. Worker hours are highly flexible, and many workers (with jobs that can be fulfilled remotely) work part of their hours from home or in local co-working environments. To avoid romanticizing things, many people still work overnight shifts, 'on call' jobs, overtime, and holidays to ensure the economy functions, despite certain processes and services having been automated, and companies regularly using workers across time zones to ensure around the clock service provision 753 . Physically demanding, and even unpleasant jobs remain in many sectors. However, thanks to the cycle of wellbeing, people spend dramatically less time working. So much so that, for logistical reasons, annual leave policies in most countries remain between 2-4 weeks. However, globally, paid parental leave is much more generous. While it is often largely government subsidized, it is rarely government mandated. Indeed, it has become one of the most competitive aspects of the market, with many companies offering between 6 and 18 months of full time equivalent paid parental leave for each parent. Because the average workweek is only 20 hours in the NFP World, it's not as difficult to compensate for an employee who takes leave. Workers may even choose to absorb the hours for their absent colleagues. Or the company might hire a temporary replacement. Many new parents might even decide to keep working 10 -20 hours per week because the workweek is much shorter and more enjoyable. If not, job protection is guaranteed throughout. And the shorter workweek and more flexible working hours means that full employment (or near full employment) is much easier to maintain on the aggregate level of the economy. As mentioned before, people often choose to work longer into their lives, given work is more purposeful and people's physical health improved. This is completely unlike the for-profit economy, in which work is largely seen as nothing more than a means to earn a living (which is cashed in upon retirement 754 ). 750 Gender inequities in pay have largely been resolved due to the shift in societal values and more attention paid to all kinds of inequity. 751 Good research on pay ratios here: http://b.3cdn.net/nefoundation/15c112d0bb14368496_ukm6ib653.pdf. Plato's Laws for the new republic suggested an income ratio of 4:1. 752 E.g., $10hr -shelf stacker/$200 -CEO of a large grocery store 753 e.g., Lifeline. 754 Roosevelt's covenant. In the NFP World, automation is no longer seen as a threat to employment and people's livelihoods. This is because the robots and AI that take up work in the economy are owned and operated by NFPs, which use the surplus generated by automation to help the community through their social missions. Finally, the benefits of automation can be enjoyed by all. With a different approach to workers and work, innovation in the NFP World proves both faster and more sensitive to human and ecological needs. Innovation that is primarily driven by purpose, rather than the prospect of financial gain, often comes with a more of a spirit of openness to collaborate and share, which leads to much more efficient innovation processes. Thanks to the 'open revolution' 755 , knowledge (about logistics and supply chains, technological advances, and social innovations) is shared freely, along with the source code for most forms of software. 'Copyleft' has replaced copyright -meaning that most work is shared without restriction or with a creative commons or other form of peer production license 756 . This saves a lot of time, energy, and resources that might otherwise be spent reinventing the wheel. Thanks to the collective, overarching mission of greater social and ecological wellbeing, public research institutions and private NFP companies work collaboratively, ensuring that publicly-funded research translates into NFP market goods and services where appropriate, and society at large benefits. Online platforms continue to facilitate the flow of information from citizens and service-users to companies and governments, ensuring efforts to improve social and ecological wellbeing are informed by wisdom from the public 757 .
This is indicative of the now widespread lean development model, in which technological and social innovations begin as the simplest of prototypes testing their riskiest key assumptions through a process of ongoing user feedback. In the for-profit economy, much social innovation from outside the market has gone unnoticed for a long time, as highlighted in Chapter 4. This kind of innovation flourishes and is better acknowledged in the NFP World. The formal market benefits from the innovation introduced via 'backyard' tinkering by individuals, like hackers and 'pro-ams'. And more people have the time to do such tinkering and experimenting, due to the shorter workweek. In the for-profit world, a faster speed of technological innovation equates with less ethical and environmental scrutiny 758 . But in the NFP World there is greater sensitivity to human and ecological needs. When designing products or services, innovators ask themselves, "How does this benefit society?" not, "What can I create that will generate the greatest sales?". In a related way, marketers ask themselves, "How do we ensure greatest access to and knowledge about these innovations? ", not, "How can I convince people they need these products and services?". Crucial here are decentralized control, participatory development, open innovation, and the associated 'purpose motive'. This motive is highly effective when it comes to accelerating innovation 759 . As witnessed with open source software in the for-profit 755 Price, D. "Open". 756 E.g., https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Peer_Production_License 757 What social theorist, Clay Shirky, calls the cognitive surplus. See, Shirky, C , "Here Comes Everybody". 758 See, for example, 'beware the nanoethics divide'. 759 Dan Pink. world, 'reputation' can be a powerful currency. And in the NFP World, industry and public appreciation is greatest for those who innovate most openly and selflessly for the greater good. In a milieu of less desire or need to own and protect ideas, the securing of intellectual property (IP) rights, especially patents, is greatly reduced. Some people might still file patents, but the practice is considered socially unacceptable for private individuals. And, in a crucial development for IP law, innovators are unable to patent a design that has been released by the original creator on an open-access basis. But the primary role of IP has also transformed from offering innovators a financial incentive to ensuring quality control in the marketplace. In the NFP World, patents and trademarks play a valuable role for governments and NFP companies seeking to reinforce their reputation for delivering high quality goods and services. In this sense, IP rights are considered valuable for their ability to enhance social outcomes, and to keep the community from being misled by imposters. An NFP may also patent an idea to recoup invested capital, via license fees. But, to safeguard against a company patenting to purposefully eliminate competition, most nations have reduced the standard twenty-year patent term to just a few years. Moreover, given patenting is generally motivated by better serving society rather than making a profit, the costs of licensing an NFP's innovations prove affordable to most companies seeking to enter the NFP market. For the most part, concerns about piracy and IP theft have faded, because piracy is essentially a for-profit problem. People are willing to pay for freely accessible products and services when they know their money benefits the community, not just a few business owners 760 . But more importantly, there is less drive to make as much money as possible from digital information because there's a healthier respect for the collective value of the commons. As long as an NFP can cover its operating costs, greater free access to its products (digital or otherwise) is actually considered a very positive thing. Reduced costs are the final factor driving the increased efficiency of innovation in the NFP World. For large projects that remain capital intensive 761 , government bonds, social impact bonds, crowdfunding, and Community Public Offerings remain viable funding mechanisms. However, innovation generally proves less costly, due to: a) increased availability of free information and ideas; b) participation from volunteer users in product development; c) greater sharing and collaborative use of resources; d) improved systemic efficiencies 762 ; e) decreased license costs; f) lower material and energy costs 763 ; and 760 Think of any sort of pay-what-you-wish scheme, or even just donations to churches, public libraries, radio stations, and public parks, whose services are freely available. 761 For instance, despite more collaborative approaches to innovation, the development of new medicine remains extremely expensive due to long testing cycles and extensive regulatory requirements. 762 Increased lean product development approaches. Clear focus on social and environmental needs (no conflicts of interest between profits and purpose). Greater efficiency with logistics and supply chains. maintain in the NFP World, where people only need to work 15 -25 hours per week in the formal economy). The same is true when an NFP business has achieved its mission and is no longer needed by society. It dies out and the employees move on to greener pastures in other jobs. Due to the shift in what society values, as well as the widespread fulfillment of basic needs, the focus of the market moves away from the production of new goods based on raw material extraction, towards a service-based economy. In the NFP World, what companies are supplying has changed. The business sector in the NFP World focuses on providing access to goods, rather than ownership, and providing services, rather than consumer products (including product service systems, which refers to businesses maintaining and lending goods rather than selling them). The very role for primary producing companies is reduced by the dramatic rise in sharing of goods and services, the open-sourcing of designs, the shifting of production to the de-marketized community economy (e.g., material production via homebased 3D printing, repair through local makerspaces, food growing in community garden, and DIY and DIO 766 ), and the takeover of certain fields by 'the commons'.
In essence, thanks to better sharing and mapping of individual offers and needs, there is a state of hyperaccessibility to basic goods and services. This trend means that, in the NFP World, a lot of production happens at the periphery of the market or outside of it altogether. Whereas the forprofit economy is trying hard to figure out how to privatize the outcomes of peer-to-peer production through the market, the NFP ethic and goals of the NFP World celebrates this demarketization. Without the drive to continuously create jobs and profit margins, much of the production in the NFP World is actually the refurbishment, repair and recycling of secondary goods, and programs that seek to enhance energy and material conservation (reduce, reuse, recycle). In general, the market dynamics of the NFP World lead to the efficient satisfaction of needs (at least those that can be met through the market). When needs are real, rather than manufactured, market value aligns with social values (it's no coincidence that we use the word 'value' for both of these things). This shifts behavior of the economic actors and, thus, the outcomes of their aggregate behavior, making the prices of the things deemed 'valuable' for social-ecological health more affordable and things deemed 'not so valuable' or even 'destructive' for social-ecological health more expensive. In a world of reduced competition and demand-driven advertising, monetary values more easily align with our true values about what is worthwhile. The things society truly needs (the goods and services that maximize health) create purpose-driven competition that ensures greater affordability (supplemented by sliding-scale models), and less needed items and things that are explicitly destructive, like fossil fuels, become costlier, as they are not valued as conducive to wellbeing. When the goal of the economy and businesses change from financial gain to social purpose, activities like war-profiteering are much less enticing, far less socially acceptable, and a lot less common. Rare commodities remain expensive, due to their physical scarcity and the internalization, via taxation and fair trade practices, of previously unaccounted for costs. In a healthy market, competition is functional, not fierce. It allows for the generation of the goods society wants (now more synonymous with 'needs'), in the quantities society desires, and at the prices society is able to pay. It remains a key driver of high quality outcomes, innovation, and price discovery, as well as employment stability (with the most successful businesses surviving), but it does so in a collaborative context. In the NFP World, competition occurs within a greater context of cooperation (in order to achieve positive outcomes for society). This contrasts greatly with the for-profit economy, in which collaboration only happens in service of beating out other competitors, and your collaborators might turn against you at any moment if they find a better partner to collude with. As with ecosystems, competition in the NFP market is based on who can best serve the needs of the community, rather than who can accumulate the most for oneself. The NFP World encourages cooperation, because it is based on the purpose motive and the story of interconnectedness. We're all in this together and it's better for everyone if we collaborate. When the relationships of interdependence are based on who can accumulate as much wealth and grow as big as fast as possible, the whole system is unstable. But when interdependency is based on all actors working for the common good, it keeps everyone focused on their social mission and how their actions impact the wider system. Competition returns to its original etymological root 'competere' -to strive together. For instance, the NFP tendency to share ideas and resources at all stages of a project's development creates a totally different dynamic in the market than the current for-profit tendency to privatize, protect, and hoard information and resources in order to effectively compete and survive in the dog-eat-dog market. This process of cooperating and competing in the market to deliver positive social outcomes drives social innovation and, thus, diversity in the marketplace. Because different companies try a variety of strategies to meet needs more effectively, there are constantly new ways of managing and running NFPs. New NFP business models constantly emerge. We see new pricing strategies, as well as new and improved ways of handling supply chains, of tracking success and measuring progress, and of ensuring accountability and enhancing transparency in order to gain long-term trust and loyalty from customers so that they can achieve their social missions. The price discovery mechanism remains central to determining what's fair for parties in an exchange. Pricing in the NFP World doesn't mean sacrificing one's own wellbeing for the wellbeing of others. It means figuring out what is fair for everyone involved, which isn't far from how price discovery works now (what people are willing to pay and be paid). It's just that Homo economicus encourages people and businesses to be dishonest (or at least not very transparent) about their needs in the current system (i.e., try to get as much as they can, not just enough or what's fair). Thus, there is often a lack of trust and a resulting sense of insecurity in the price discovery process in the for-profit economy. Economic actors in the NFP World enjoy more trust and security when negotiating prices, due to a widespread ethic of enough. And the whole economy benefits from more accurate pricing as a result, again leading to better access to essential goods and services. The digital revolution, combined with the NFP market ethic ensures better information in the geo-coded, reputation economy. Marketing is much less deceptive, because reputation is everything now that people can share and verify information faster, leading to faster blacklisting of fraudulent or misleading companies. As a result of the reduced pressure to make profit, you don't need to market as aggressively. This is a networked market, with the ability for appropriate information to reach people more effectively via online means, which helps demand to drive supply.
Knowledge is much more available to the producer and consumer, alike. NFPs can die (creative destruction remains), but it is seen as a valuable part of the business cycle. There's now a real composting, as should happen with any natural cycle. The end of businesses is an important part of the innovative economic life cycle. Businesses are allowed to fail, go bankrupt, and dissolve, just as for-profit businesses are in the current economy. Just as employees of a dissolving firm find work in other NFP businesses, so are assets reinvested in other NFPs, allowing them to be put to good use. And this helps to ensure that the NFP market is efficient and effective in meeting society's needs. There are three main ways NFPs die in the NFP economy. Firstly, they fail as a business for the same reason that businesses fail in the present market -a poor business plan, poor timing for market entry, poor management, inefficient use of resources, a damaging lawsuit, etc. Secondly, they collapse due to lost confidence, via mission drift and an associated lack of public support (e.g., they don't receive enough philanthropic support to plug the gap for the shortfall in their revenue generation activities.) Finally, NFPs can voluntarily choose to dissolve, especially if their social objective has become obsolete (or another company has shown its ability to address the need much more effectively). Ideally, many NFP businesses have this end goal in mind when they commence their operations; how they will dissolve once they achieve their mission or what they will do next, if anything. They addressed the need they aimed to address. It could happen that a company has been putting its resources into producing high-quality washing machines, but now that market is saturated because the washing machines last so long that people don't need to buy a new one very often -a good thing, meaning there will be less waste and social and environmental damage as a result of producing more washing machines. Instead of seeing that as a threat to its business, the company can now pivot or dissolve. If it pivots, it turns its energy to something else that adds value to the community, perhaps repairing and maintaining those washing machines. The whole point of starting an NFP company is to meet society's needs. Some needs are constant, like the need for high quality food. But some NFPs seek to fulfill needs that we all hope will become history, like homelessness. When an NFP goes into business to resolve an issue like homelessness, it will have a plan for what it will do when it achieves that mission. Otherwise, the company's identity depends on the existence of the very problem it's trying to resolve. The notion of there being an endgame goes back to the ethic of enough that is embedded in NFP enterprise. This ethic allows for a point at which a company has done enough. And with less social ills, less wasted energy, and less consumption in the NFP economy, employment is not framed by the scarcity mentality; it's easier to find a job to compensate for 20-hours of work per week than 40-hours of work per week. Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) still occur. By a financially stable NFP, they provide a route to avoiding bankruptcies while maintaining service provision. They're less about centralizing power, and more about a functional decision to ensure ongoing (or even expanded or enhanced) service delivery. A business that is failing, but still has a reliable workforce, a strong social mission, or a large amount of physical assets (like office space, a factory, or computers) might be seen as an ideal opportunity for another NFP business to diversify by acquiring it. When M&As are in the service of meeting social needs, they involve greater consideration than profit-motivated M&As. There is a need to consider the social mission and welfare of the workers of the NFP company being acquired. One present-day example of this is when Baylor, Scott and White Healthcare in 2013 acquired another NFP healthcare company, "motivated by a number of factors, including economics of scale to reduce cost, access to capital, access to covered lives to control risk in population health management and to maintain industry influence." 768 There is no shareholder to benefit in this kind of acquisition. This means that there is a much higher likelihood for NFP companies to take into account the ideas and feelings of the managers and staff of the NFP that they are acquiring or with whom they are merging. In contrast, for-profit mergers and acquisitions can often be ruthless and very dismissive of the needs and concerns of the staff of the acquired company 769 . This is another area in which the difference in purpose and goals has an enormous impact on how business is carried out. Companies that can't stay financially viable, whether due to generating insufficient income, using resources poorly, drifting from their missions, overleveraging, or engaging in corrupt behavior, may go bankrupt. Liquidation processes in which debts are amortized with company assets. The asset-lock in NFP business models also means that nobody can privately gain from an NFP's assets upon its winding up. When an NPF business closes down, all of its assets must be donated to another NFP, so assets are also cycled back into the real economy in order to meet society's needs. Depending on the terms of the loan, individuals and NFP businesses that had lent to the NFP can be compensated with assets in the liquidation process. With all financial surplus being constantly circulated back into the real economy, any unpaid debts can be absorbed by the market more easily than in the current economy. Cooperation and mutual support between NFPs helps lenders take any financial hits that result from bankruptcies. (And there's a bigger pool of wealth and resources available for retraining of the workforce, as well as a more viable safety net for those out of employment).
In nature, two trees grow in competition and one dies, because it is weaker and there is not enough water or sunlight for both. The one that dies becomes compost to feed the other. Similarly, NFP companies that cannot effectively serve the community die out, just like the weakest organisms in an ecosystem. The closure of a community enterprise after a number of years may not necessarily be deemed by all stakeholders as a 'failure' 770 . It will usually leave behind an important legacy of social benefit as well as more publicly accessible materials. For example, members may go on to develop other enterprises and contribute to community building in other ways. 'Dirty' industries, like fossil fuels, tobacco, and weapons were taken over by NFPs with the mission of eradicating their use. In the case of fossil fuels, for instance, coal mines and oil companies were bought up by NFP businesses who used the profits from the sell of the fossil fuels in order to build up renewable energy infrastructure and train their employees in this new field. In this way they paved the path for a smooth transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Likewise, NFP businesses and state enterprises bought out big tobacco and weapons manufacturing companies with the purpose of minimizing their use in the first place. To this end, they advertise the negative impacts of their products and tobacco and alcohol producers and retailers use their profits to offer rehabilitation for addicts. Their aim is to end addiction altogether. Social problems like addiction, alcoholism, violence, and war have not been eradicated, but they have been shrinking in prevalence and, at the very least, no one is financially profiting from them any longer. The state has transformed and is significantly smaller in many places. The rise of NFP enterprise, the wealth circulation pump, and the resulting positive effects on ecological and public health translate into less need for the welfare state, taxation and the associated bureaucracy. Incentives exist to make oneself redundant in order to move on and do more impactful things. There is greater automation and productivity. Many of the state's functions have been automated (e.g., census, voting, taxation, referenda). But government is also more decentralized. There is widespread support for the principle of subsidiarity, strengthened by NFP enterprises, which are generally local. In accordance, greater power has been disbursed to local, municipal, and provincial governments. Bioregions, areas defined by their natural biophysical traits, now play a key role in defining governance structures. In this context, the state's role is to support the fair advancement of social-ecological health, in partnership with the market and civil society. In the NFP World, the state is fully divested from driving economic growth, and is instead fully invested in helping maximize public health, in all of its dimensions. It continues to provide local, regional, state, and national services and represent its people in the international arena. It manages key physical infrastructure that is best centrally governed. And there are still different national approaches to what should and should not be centrally governed. In Australia, for example, there are very clear distinctions in roles -the federal government doesn't deliver health services, rather the states do. But federal government does manage health insurance. This kind of government offers legislation, fiscal policy and infrastructure that seeks to maintain the lean society, prime the wealth circulation pump, encourage the cycle of wellbeing, and reinforce the ethic of enough. As mentioned in a previous section, the state is also more entrepreneurial. So it funds its services not only through taxes, but also through a greater amount of revenue earned through the sale of goods and services (which most people are much more able to afford, due to the wealth circulation pump). Throughout, the state seeks to empower communities and create the conditions for the non-marketized fulfillment of needs. The government recognizes and incorporates the immense contribution of the community and family to satisfying needs in non-monetary ways. States see their role as providing a base of support for NFPs, communities, families, and 'the commons', more generally 771 . Without employment, it's still possible, although rare, to not be able to meet your basic needs without state intervention, so the state is also an important last resort form of support, providing essential safety nets for people who have nowhere else to turn 772 . The state is generally less corrupt and there is less political capture. When NFPs or peak professional bodies lobby government now, they do so with a healthier mandate. The profitseeking trends of corporations lobbying against taxes and regulations, using tax havens to hide income, threatening to move offshore in order to get subsidies or tax breaks, and using revolving doors between regulation agencies and industry have all greatly reduced. Perverse, counter-productive subsidies and other forms of market manipulation are uncommon, and while there is wide variation between countries, all government subsidies are generally minimal, allowing healthy competition to run its course in the NFP economy. But of course, governments continue to provide tax advantages for certain NFPs, giving extra help to those that might have a harder time generating revenue (e.g., homeless shelters, ecological conservation, etc.). The NFP World is, of course, not an entirely free market (no modern market has ever been). The notion of 'free' markets has been debunked and superseded by 'functional' markets. Even with the corporation having become a force for good, and although the state is less interventionist, there is a need for ongoing market oversight and regulation, especially when it comes to environmental issues. The government still serves to regulate and check market forces, as it does in the for-profit economy. In fact, using fines and legal measures to ensure the integrity of NFP businesses is a very important role that the government must play. Given the absence of the profit motive (and associated political capture and corruption), regulation proves highly effective.
Regulators and state agencies work closely with the judicial system to make sure that NFPs and government enterprises alike adhere to basic environmental, health, and workers' rights laws. Without the profit motive influencing legislation, these laws are based on state-of-the-art knowledge and are sufficient to maintain basic levels of socialecological health. Governments must enforce these legal standards and encourage transparency and accountability. The regulators (like the tax agency) also continue to play an important role in holding NFPs accountable to their stated missions and annual financial auditing has become a common, streamlined process. Testing agencies, like the Food and Drug Administration in the US, remain. There is also tight regulation of the debt markets to ensure minimal levels of speculation for the sake of economic stability. Credit rating agencies are NFP and independent. One ongoing problem with the state is that it can use its revenues (or borrowing) to subsidize inefficient service delivery. But two factors minimize the significance of this problem: 1) more transparent budgets, and 2) NFPs provide a competitive benchmark for costs. If a government is spending a lot of taxpayer money on health and education, in an inefficient way (compared to NFP competitors), citizens can pressure governments for change, or increasingly support the (perhaps costlier) NFP option, where quality will likely be higher, given the expected correlation with flexibility and efficiency. Although, anti-trust and market competition laws are less needed, given more decentralized local markets without monopolistic tendencies, such laws remain in an NFP World to restrict the formation of cartels and prohibit other collusive practices regarded as monopolistic. They restrict mergers and acquisitions that could substantially lessen competition. And they prohibit the creation of a monopoly and the abuse of power by large NFP businesses. But these laws have been revised to accommodate for greater collaboration between organizations, as long as it is clear how collaboration will benefit society and help the NFPs involved fulfill their purpose. Another crucial role of the government is to continue to be a key steward of the commons, such as land, air, water, and space. This involves maintaining vast swathes of land and water for nature protection and conservation, as well as for public use (as is commonly done by government around the world in the for-profit economy). Although NFP businesses will surely be more environmentally-friendly, in response to ongoing ecological crises, and the NFP World is a non-expansionary economic model that leaves space for overall material consumption to shrink significantly, there is a need for governmental agencies and other civil society organizations to work on keeping track of the big picture in terms of economic flows and ecological health. Environmental regulation agencies work with the Earth system scientists and ecological economists in order to monitor and set standards for ecological health, and governments work together to monitor domestic and global stocks and flows of energy and materials. Sustainable resource use is enforced via strict resource and emissions caps and thresholds. Use of resources and emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases can also be discouraged using environmental taxes, although such financial incentives and disincentives are less necessary in the NFP World, where people no longer consume for consumption's sake. Unfortunately, this does not resolve all ecological issues, because there may be serious feedback loops from the legacy of the for-profit system, but it does allow global human society to eventually move back into the 'safe operating space' for life on Earth. The rule of law is central to running the NFP economy and with greater equality, mental health and worker wellbeing, there are drastically less abuses by the state in terms of inappropriate police force. Indeed, much faith has been restored in the government, largely thanks to a deepening of democracy. The state is more independent and representative due to less political capture. But there are also more structured means for direct democratic participation, like participatory budgeting for spending 773 , and more forums for public discussion. This has evolved because people now have the time and an increased interest in participating more fully in their political systems, due to a shorter workweek, lower levels of stress, and less time spent trying to assuage the stress (e.g., the work-watch-shop treadmill). Perhaps the most exciting means by which the state is truly representative of the people is the different progress indicators that have been adopted. While some countries use set variations of more traditional indicators, such as the Genuine Progress Indicator 774 , many are citizendefined, as happened in the Bhutanese metric for Gross National Happiness and the Oregon Shines index. 773 E.g., . http://projectrobinhood.budgetallocator.com 774 With a lot less weight on GDP (which is, afterall, still a useful measure for knowing the tax base). The global economy is a network of highly integrated, yet localized NFP economies, in which people buy most of their products and services from local suppliers and the production (including manufacturing) of goods takes place much closer to where they are bought. Longdistance trade happens a lot less in the NFP World, but it is still important for essential items that are found only in certain geographies. For instance, if a certain raw material for building photovoltaic panels only exists in a few places in the world, it will of course be shipped long distances in order to build photovoltaic panels locally. Yet, the overall volume of physical trade in the international market is significantly reduced. There are five main reasons for this: reduced consumption, circular economy, dematerialization, relocalization, and full environmental cost accounting. Firstly, there is decreased consumption and production. As mentioned before, this is partly due to a shift away from materialistic values and consumerism and partly due to more sharing and collaborative consumption. Second, products are designed for the circular economy. That to say that goods and services are designed in a way that makes their components and basic materials easy to repair, refurbish, reuse, repurpose, and recycle. In the absence of the profit motive, planned obsolescence no longer makes sense.
For the purpose of maximizing social-ecological health, frugality and leanness make sense. So, in the example of the photovoltaic panels above, the rare raw materials would not need to be extracted or shipped very often because those materials will be reused, repurposed, and recycled locally until it is no longer possible. Only then will there be more demand for more raw materials. With a circular economic system, the material economy can become quite circular as well 775 . Third, consumption has dematerialized and miniaturized. The economy has become even more digitally-based, with electronic exchanges replacing physical exchanges. And products can be made with fewer material and energy inputs, thanks to innovation. Although digitalization and miniaturization will never be enough to absolutely decouple economic activity from material flows, the trend of relative decoupling continues to lessen the material and energy requirements of economic exchanges. Fourth, the market has re-localized. With the drive for a more democratic and sustainable system, there was also a push for local control of NFP businesses. Due to the crises of the forprofit system, people increasingly came to understand the importance of maintaining local jobs and production. Technological platforms enable distributed production (e.g., open source design and 3D printing), minimizing the benefits of economies of scale. With smaller global socio-economic disparities and greater wage parity, there is less 'offshoring', as well as less labor migration and 'brain drain' 776 . People don't feel they have to leave their families and homeland in order to have a high standard of living, which is also good for socialecological wellbeing (coherence of families and local communities). As a result, it is lot easier and more natural for people to value their local traditions, culture, and landscapes than it used to be, without the constant undermining of the for-profit story, which told people from non-Western cultural traditions that they're 'backwards' or 'behind'. This also allows indigenous cultures to survive, less impacted by globalized Western lifestyles. There's still migration in the NFP World, but there's not the same pressure for people to leave their home countries to just make money to send back home, as remittances. Also, to ensure imports don't undercut local markets, there is a revival of state-driven trade protectionism for nascent markets in low wellbeing regions/countries. This includes import tariffs, capital controls (to guard against the flight of capital), and limitations on foreign ownership in order to avoid predatory competition from abroad, as well as tax credits for local business to give them a leg-up. The final trend that contributes to lower levels of international trade is that energy and transportation costs have gone up. Environmental taxes on fossil fuels have made longdistance trade less feasible and desirable. This is on top of the crucial impact of high oil prices in a peak oil world. Eating bananas in Norway, for instance, is a lot more expensive in the NFP World than in the current economy 777 . This ensures that banana growers and all of the workers involved in harvesting and transporting those bananas are paid fairly, that no harsh chemicals or radiation are used to keep the bananas 'fresh', and that they were grown organically. But for the most part, food systems rely much more on the local and seasonal growing conditions. As a result of all of the points above, business and tourism-related travel has decreased. In the tourism industry, slow travel (involving longer traveling times and stays) has replaced the jetset lifestyle that had become the norm in the era of cheap fossil fuels and highly subsidized for-profit airlines. The shift to more functional, domestic and local economies has been embraced, along with a simplification of the global value chain. As a result of less trade and shorter supply chains, trade imbalances no longer carry the importance they used to. This adds yet another element of stability and resilience to the economic system. Reformed international institutions, whatever institutions (whether they continue to exist as the UN, WIPO, IMF, World Bank, or Asian Development Bank or not), no longer have a growth mandate. The free market, Washington consensus style approach to these institutions is long gone, and unjust free trade agreements have been rolled back. Their new mission is to maintain balance, reduce distortions and undue influence in the international market, and offer viable loan rates to states who need an external financial boost. For instance, the World Trade Organization rules have shifted from non-discriminatory to needs-based. Of course, such loans are less necessary now that businesses are primarily NFP and locally controlled for the benefit of the community. And there's a lot less foreign ownership to extract wealth from local economies in the Global South. In the for-profit world, protectionism in the Global South risks leading to reduced foreign investment and innovation. But in the NFP World, these two issues don't matter so much because wealth and knowledge are both circulating freely. The evolution of international markets and international relations is largely guided by the developments in domestic economies. There is an open dialogue between national governments about their needs and how they might be able to help each other improve the wellbeing of their people, always taking into account the ecological health of the planet as well. They share knowledge about better ways to monitor public health and Earth system functioning and how to achieve better outcomes. Of course, there are still ideological clashes about how best to do this, but without the influence of the profit motive, discussions can be much more fruitful. With the global economy and national economies focused on positive social outcomes, rather than dominating the global market, the competition to out-trade and out-wit each other (a current race to the bottom) no longer really exists. Along these lines, there has been an end to the belief that the maximization of trade based on comparative advantage is desirable, and so we no longer see competitive devaluation of currencies. In this economic context, international relations are vastly different.
There are more trading and political confederacies to add a layer of negotiation and knowledge-sharing that might be more focused on a certain region or characteristic of states (e.g., confederacies for small states or island states). Regional groupings like the EU work better in the NFP World. This is due to fewer regional disputes over trade, migration, currency stability 778 , and power games 779 . A global reserve currency system remains, managed by a supranational agency 780 . The most prominent of changes is the application of the belief that collective prosperity ensures individual prosperity. Due to the shift in beliefs and values, the NFP World enables the kind of international cooperation of which the for-profit economy is incapable. There has been a major transformation of foreign policy (no longer driven by private, for-profit interests) from 'the national interest' to 'the international interest', and multilateralism (i.e., focused on interdependence 781 ). This means less dominating political strategies in order to maintain control and more partnership strategies to create shared social-ecological prosperity on Earth 782 . Guided by the story of interconnectedness, politicians no longer see countries as disconnected, competing entities. The NFP Era politicians see an ecosystem of many different cultures and economies interacting with each other in order to deliver the highest levels of wellbeing for the greatest number of people, for the long-term, globally. As a result, there are less disruptive elements like wars and terrorism, and international peace-keeping forces have replaced some standing armies. This atmosphere of trust has allowed for countries that previously spent the most on defense to shrink their militaries. Greatly reduced opportunities for war profiteering have had a lot to do with this development. The latest form of the UN has been significantly transformed and strengthened by its member states as an international arbiter, with widespread domestic translation of international law reinforcing this newfound trust. But it is only the sum of its national parts. The possibility for unilateral and multilateral embargoes and sanctions remain, but there is less unilateral action generally, because national leaders have a lot less reason to suspect that other nations are trying to dominate them. The hard lessons of pillaging other countries for resources and cheap labor only to find that the resulting damage to people and planet affect us all have, for the most part, been learned. Corruption, tax evasion, and other illegal activity still occurs and both domestic and international criminal courts still enforce the protection of human rights and provide safeguards against corruption. Additionally, they enforce the protection of the natural environment. The main difference is that there is less motivation to commit such 778 Less pressure on currency exchange, with localized economies, sharing, and barter now a greater share of trade. 779 Think of the economic motivations that Russia had for invading and occupying Crimea. 780 As proposed here: http://www.un.org/ga/econcrisissummit/docs/FinalReport_CoE.pdf. 781 Even now, politicians are increasingly coming to see that when one country is doing poorly, like Syria or Somalia, it affects the entire world and other countries cannot do well. 782 I.e., Rianne Eisler's partnership versus dominator cultures. crimes in the NFP system, it's more difficult to get away with such crimes (due to increased transparency and higher expectations and accountability from society), and the wealthy cannot so easily buy their way out of being punished for crimes. But just as the NFP World succeeds capitalism, so is it merely a stage in our ongoing economic evolution. While it may be necessary, it certainly is not sufficient. In any case, the picture of the NFP World painted here may seem so different from the current system that it is impossible to achieve. And it is true that the kind of transformation this kind of vision demands is enormous and it runs deep -it goes all the way to the core beliefs held by society about what it is to be human. However, we believe it is possible. The following chapter outlines just one way such a transformation might realistically unfold in the coming decades. A Not-for-Profit World is possible Known as the mother of the modern Civil Rights movement, Rosa Parks is a household name in the United States. On December 1, 1955, Parks was riding on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, when the bus driver told her she had to give her seat to a white passenger. Under the discriminatory laws of the time and place, Parks was arrested by the police for her nonviolent refusal to surrender her seat, an action that gained considerable publicity and set off waves of protests across the South. Parks is rightly remembered as a hero, but why did her simple action of defiance have such a lasting impact? Likewise, why did Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent resistance lead to Indian independence from the British Empire? And why did Nelson Mandela's release from prison spur the end of Apartheid in South Africa four years later? It is because their actions occurred in contexts that were ready for change. When people can no longer tolerate the dysfunction of an antiquated system, when there's a compelling vision for a better way forward that draws on the best of human nature and contemporary trends, and when enough people become aware of and collectively act on a vision, change can occur surprisingly fast. The present global context is rapidly moving toward an economic shift. A growing number of people can no longer countenance our dysfunctional capitalist system. The seeds of a postcapitalist future are being sown. And we now have a vision of how, in theory, an NFP economy could create material security for all while ensuring we flourish within ecological limits. Because our economy is such a dynamic, complex system, we cannot accurately predict where it is heading. In any complex system, everything is in a state of flux, with all aspects of the system coevolving. Seeking to specify precisely the steps required to reach the NFP World is therefore futile.
Thus, what we offer in this chapter is a story of transition-a blueprint whose order of events matters less than its shared characteristics. We seek to inspire and influence, suggesting trends and possibilities worth strengthening as well as those worth weakening. We are sure to overestimate some outcomes, underestimate others and not foresee many potential consequences. Indeed, given the vast number of factors involved in any economic transition, we will be forced to limit our focus to explaining how the key components of an NFP system might emerge. These primary aspects include: the rise of NFP enterprise within the economy; triple crises of inequality, well-being, and ecological devastation; and emergence of the lean society model, wealth circulation pump, cycle of well-being, and paradox of enough. Since the first human societies began, economic paradigms have evolved rather than suddenly supplanting the status quo. 783 Thus, there won't be a discrete day on which we can say we shifted from capitalism to the Not-for-Profit World. Rather, as NFP businesses take center stage in the economy and the social ethic shifts, the economy will increasingly become less extractive and more generative, and there will be a complementary trend toward greater equality and ecological restoration. This shift will be gradual at first and then will speed up as feedback loops in the system strengthen. Significant upheaval is a standard component of economic evolutions. The collapse of irrelevant tenets and institutions paired with the birthing of new ones from what remains is a necessarily chaotic process. Indeed, modern capitalism developed out of the chaos and horrors of the eighteenth century. Accordingly, we have resisted the temptation to idealize the transition process. Social change on such a grand scale inevitably faces unintentional inertia and intentional resistance. The inherent nature of economic evolution involves two simultaneously occurring transitions. The evolution to an NFP World will require the simultaneous decline of the for-profit system and rise of the NFP system. The current for-profit story of isolation will fade as the story of interconnectedness emerges, just as happened when capitalism overtook feudalism in Europe. Whatever the economic system and its ideology, it is always embedded in the caring economy, which is always embedded in the planet's biosphere. The limitations of profit maximization are becoming more visible to those living to see how the capitalist system is bumping into economic, social and ecological limits to growth. At the same time, purpose maximization is becoming more appreciated for its ability to respond to the new needs, demands, and challenges of this century. As these consciousness grows about how dependent the economic system is on social systems of caring and on ecosystems, we will increasingly see the rejection of the ethic of "never enough" and the embracing of "enough". At the outset of the Civil Rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." We believe the arc of the economic universe bends toward justice as well and our economy is destined for greater fairness 784 , but it is largely up to us to define the speed and nature of its emergence-and ensure it happens within our lifetimes, for all our children's sakes. Although many of us may not feel it in our day-to-day lives, the for-profit system is in a state of rapid decline. This is transpiring due to the culmination of an array of global trends, including escalating inequality, thriftier consumers, the declining rate of corporate profit, asset bubbles, financial speculation, unsustainable levels of debt, environmental crises, resource shortages, and, as a result, the end of economic growth. As we have shown, the for-profit system requires constant growth to compensate for the money being extracted into the elite economy. This doesn't simply mean the economy requires strong demand-it means ever-increasing demand. In a for-profit system, a lack of economic growth spells disaster; as theorist Serge Latouche argues, "There would be nothing worse than a growth economy without growth." 785 There is an internal contradiction at the heart of the for-profit capitalist system: the economic growth it relies on ultimately ends up undermining its further growth as well as creating widespread social and ecological crises. This contradiction is the reason our economy is presently imploding. The evidence is stark. The global rate of economic growth has been steadily slowing for the last half-century. 786 , 787 Even the economies of China and India are experiencing a "premature" decline of growth rates. 788 Average Annual World GDP Growth From 2010 to 2016-a post-crisis period during which the global market would have been expected to return to strong growth-the International Monetary Fund has been forced to downgrade its global growth forecasts six times. 790 Accompanying the fall in global market growth is the worldwide decline in corporate profits. 791,792 This pattern confirms Marx's claim that the rate of profit tends to fall 793 , with an overall downward trend occurring since 1855 794 . World Rate of Profit 795 Marx foresaw internal contradictions of accumulation driving a series of worsening crises that would lead to political revolution. 796 While other economic philosophers weren't so extreme in their predictions, many also envisaged an end of sorts to the capitalist economy. Adam Smith, for example, thought the system would reach a plateau when the accumulation of wealth became "complete," bringing about a deep and long economic decline. John Stuart Mill believed a "stationary state" would evolve when accumulation ceased and capitalism gave way to a form of socialism. John Maynard Keynes postulated we would need a "somewhat comprehensive socialization of investment" in the future. And Joseph Schumpeter anticipated a kind of managerial socialism taking shape. Each of these philosophers predicted some aspects of the presently emerging decline. Yet as we swiftly approach the end of economic growth 797 , the full extent of the factors driving capitalism's demise is becoming clearer. We now understand social and ecological causes are synchronized.
We call this phenomenon of deflation in the common economy and inflation in the elite economy (de)inflation. Rather than balancing each other out, (de)inflation reinforces the rising inequality caused by differences in income, reducing the key driver of economic growth: mass consumption. It does this by wiping out the disposable income of the consumer class-including in emerging economies 803 -through further stagnation of wage growth (justified by reduced consumption and profit margins), thereby ensuring asset ownership and material security are harder for people in the common economy to acquire. 804

Technological innovation is also driving the end of economic growth. 805 Historically, laborsaving productivity gains (especially automation) have undermined middle-class wealth and purchasing power in the for-profit system by driving unemployment, wealth extraction, and deflation. This is because resources formerly invested in labor are shifted into new technological infrastructure. The digital revolution is particularly relevant to the end of growth. We are heading toward what economic and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin calls a near-zero marginal cost society. Rifkin's hypothesis is based on evidence that, across many sectors, the price of producing an additional unit of a good or service (the marginal cost) has fallen dramatically, challenging industries in which revenue models are primarily built on individual sales. The music and publication industries are the most obvious examples: the cost of producing additional units of an album or book is close to zero because users can simply stream digital versions or download an electronic file onto their computers. Combined with the advent of online sharing, companies in these sectors can't sell enough of their traditional products (like music CDs, magazines, and newspapers) to cover their costs. Economic theories predicated on scarcity are becoming less relevant as it is obvious we are running a digital economy on an outmoded marginal cost operating system. 806 The impact of the digital revolution extends to all sectors, with offline access to goods and services made increasingly possible through online platforms (e.g., Craigslist, Airbnb, Freecycle, and Uber). While tension arising from the privatization of such platforms 807 is indicative of the larger tension between the for-profit and NFP ethics, the disruptive impact of such models on traditional, for-profit notions of control over market interactions is undeniable. As a result, hierarchical organizational models and "vertical" industries are being replaced by networked models and "lateral" industries. Perhaps most importantly for the long-term decline of the for-profit system, falling costs of production combined with distributed manufacturing methods like 3D printing are enabling more distributed production and competition. In addition to sharing with and shopping from each other, people can increasingly make their own physical goods in cost-efficient ways 808 , 803 The growth of consumer markets in emerging economies cannot continue indefinitely; mainly because of the impending liquidity crises. After the financial crises in the US, Brazil and Europe, and a painful economic slowdown in China, many people are reluctant to choose to take on further debt to buy superfluous products or services. which enables more people to opt out of the market 809 and thus put downward pressure on corporate profits. Shifts in production have coevolved with shifts in consumption. A counterculture of conscious and ethical consumption has rapidly emerged, largely driven by the failings of the growth-obsessed economy. Collaborative forms of consumption focused on access rather than ownership are accelerating the drop in mass consumption. These factors combined with the powerful effects of customers seeking suppliers less obsessed with growth at all costs mean the for-profit system is taking a hit. In addition to falling profits, astronomical levels of debt, financial speculation, and a declining consumerist culture, sustained economic growth is threatened by environmental factors. In economic terms, the most obvious of these factors is society is running out of cheap, easily accessible natural resources. The growth system has relied on massive quantities of cheap energy. The era of cheap energy is now ending. With the low-hanging fruit having been picked, we are entering an age marked by shortages of resources vital to our present systems of industrial manufacturing. 810 Companies founded on the fact that fossil fuels are cheap and easy to extract are discovering the opposite will be true in the twenty-first century. 811 Extraction of fossil fuels like oil and natural gas is already more costly due to the geological challenges presented by most remaining reserves. 812 The energy returned on energy invested (EROI) for the global production of oil and gas by publicly traded companies appears to be declining, with crude oil having peaked in 2006, according to the International Energy Agency. 813 Alternatives to traditional fossil fuels-such as tar sands and oil shale-have contributed to a temporary glut 814 and lower prices 815 , but they deliver a miniscule EROI 816 . And while new technology and production methods are said to be maintaining production, they are insufficient to compensate for the depletion of conventional oil. 817 Indeed, oil would need to be priced prohibitively high to justify drilling in the Arctic and ultra-deep-water reserves because those are such expensive operations. We know from the 2008 crash that the market has sensitivity to oil prices exceeding a certain point, so such drilling is not financially feasible. 818 Oil companies are already struggling to distribute profits to shareholders. 819 In April 2016, Exxon Mobil, one of the biggest oil companies in the world, reported its lowest profits since 1999, and the company is in jeopardy because its overall debt is now greater than its annual profit. 820 The data on coal is more limited, but researchers Charles Hall and Kent Klitgaard report that "the energy content of coal has been decreasing even though the total tonnage (mined) has increased." 821 Some of the largest coal-mining companies in the world recently declared bankruptcy. 822 And keep in mind much of the world's transport of coal, and therein its pricing, relies heavily on cheap oil. An Oxford Economics study estimates that, by 2036, energy costs will be 166-percent higher than in 2005.