Restoring the Value of People
We need a recovery plan for the middle and soon-to-be lower economic classes.
The “American Dream” is an ideal where opportunity is abundant and available to all Americans. The strength of America is the strength of its people; the nation’s value grows from resilience and productivity when people depend on each other and work together across the spectrum of class structure.
It is no secret that opportunity for most Americans has fallen for four decades. Without opportunity, hope dies, and without hope, nothing else matters. The gloves come off, and the doors to home-grown justice swing wide open.
The belief in market fundamentalism has been so intense; few appreciated its predatory consequences for most Americans. Few foresaw how the nation’s center of gravity would come to sit precariously at the top of an increasingly fragile base of support. In this unstable situation, everyone, including the wealthy, are vulnerable; corruption is inevitable.
The most urgent goal is to replace the justifiable anger permeating society with genuine opportunity for growth and success for the middle and lower economic classes. Authentic opportunity will restore hope and trust in each other and the communities we live within. No tree stands tall or long without strong roots.
These kinds of discussions usually move to revenue development, economic models, taxes, and income redistribution. However, whatever merit those ideas have, without a tangible means to implement and guide change, boondoggles are more likely than actual improvement.
Before investments can grow a more substantial base, we need accountable and effective system integration within local human services, not healthcare. There are several reasons.
Healthcare delivery sees only a narrow slice of the much bigger problem. The bulk of that problem is far upstream and beyond its reach. Moreover, healthcare’s massive and rigid system is a poor match for the extraordinarily complex and adaptive social environment of local human services.
Social determinants of health are essential, but other equally or more critical issues are squarely within healthcare’s mission and capability. The same social determinants of education are vital for schools, but the problem is much bigger than the scope of education, and the source is still far upstream. We need to see healthcare and education as stakeholders in a fundamental societal problem; neither education nor healthcare can make a substantial difference.
The entire scope of these circumstances is the responsibility of the government. But the government’s scale, its broad array of obligations, and its inherently rigid, slow-moving rules prevent it from adapting to the variety of fast-moving changes and the many unique circumstances of human need.
On the other hand, governmental initiatives can succeed when establishing, supporting, and optimizing markets directed toward societal goals. Public-private partnerships can bring the best of both sides to a solution if, and it’s a big if, we use new strategies appropriate for highly dynamic social environments.
These environments need adaptive networks of smaller independent entities, each specialized in achieving a specific goal. In multi-dimensional complex situations, complex adaptive networks deliver better outcomes and lower costs than large corporate monopolies. Moreover, keeping this model open to all accredited providers grows capability. The focus is achieving small incremental goals that, when aligned, drive real change.
Every system’s most potent point of leverage is purpose. A better system puts the desired outcome as its primary goal instead of the more typical profit. Finance is still a vital resource to manage, but maximizing revenue is not the system’s true purpose.
A community-managed hub is a lynchpin connecting the network’s participants. The participants include the clients it serves, which can be persons, families, or neighborhoods. Inclusion enhances the network’s capability. Stakeholders access a more competent human service system through the hub.
The hub promotes improvement through the orchestration of collaboration, mutual support, and strategic learning. Each introduces improvements and requirements for the system.
Collaboration is around each person, family, or neighborhood whose circumstances need change. This collaboration is intentional toward incremental improvement toward the desired outcome—each interventional network self-organizes in response to experience. This re-orientation keeps the plan on track. The system compiles experience to support ongoing improvement and learning.
Uniform vocabularies (coding systems) defining needs within each social risk or intervention category are necessary to communicate conditions and progress efficiently. Measures associated with incremental improvement show actual value creation. This value can function as an alternate currency in the same way user attention does within Facebook®. The measurable economic return on investment should justify value-based reimbursement and social recognition of success.
Mutual support includes information sharing and ecosystem-style competition. In a healthy ecosystem, competition creates new niches and diversity more than extinction. These processes maintain the robustness and resilience of the ecosystem. In the same way, local human services need mutual support and not competitive exclusion to grow stable and productive communities.
Strategic learning will result from day-to-day operations that track needs and the evolution of circumstances in real-time. The platform is a vehicle for developing a better understanding of causality and the dynamics of the human community.
We need to do better, and at least one better way is available.
We can restore productive local communities through the development of new opportunities and hope. We need more innovation and governmental support for transformational change. The epicenter of that support should be the Department of Human Services.
Governmental policy supporting current system-science-based local initiatives will make it easier to restore the American Dream and point the way to solving the rampant, systemic problems tearing the nation apart.