Who pays me? How do I feel about that – and is that in service of life? What would it take to create an economy in service to life? A new What If Instead? conversation with B. Lorraine Smith.
Guest: B. Lorraine Smith, Writer, Advisor, & Coach
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/b-lorraine-smith-155a875/
Hosts:
Alejandro Juárez Crawford
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/alejandro-juarez-crawford
Miriam Plavin-Masterman
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/miriam-plavin-masterman
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Episode Introduction
On the newest episode of What If Instead?, B. Lorraine Smith reflects on her decades of experience consulting with companies with efforts to do some good. What would it take, she asks, to create an economy in service to life? For those of us aiming to do something for the planet, choosing to buy more ‘sustainable’ products can give us a sense of agency. But what if, to effect change, we need to change our model more fundamentally? Smith has developed a methodology for beyond the claims organizations make, when they say they’re going green. Called “Matereality,” (material + reality), it’s a detective’s guide anyone can use to figure out what companies and industries are really doing.
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Resources
Matereality: https://www.blorrainesmith.com/matereality
Joe Brewer’s Design School for Regenerating Earth: https://design-school-for-regenerating-earth.mn.co/
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For more podcast stories from What If Instead? Podcast with Alejandro Juárez Crawford and Miriam Plavin-Masterman, visit: https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/alejandro-juarez-crawford and https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/miriam-plavin-masterman
Who Pays Me? How Do I Feel About That? Is it in Service of Life? | A Conversation with B. Lorraine Smith | What If Instead? Podcast with Alejandro Juárez Crawford and Miriam Plavin-Masterman
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (00:00)
What is the you nerd out on? That's a question that for far more defining I want to be when I grow even what is my 10 -year goals, but what do I nerd out on? What's the thing I do when no one's telling me what to do, when I'm not thinking about what
my principal or my spouse or my parents or my community thinks I should be doing? But before we go to that incredible question, let's ask ourselves something that is related, but even goofier, which is, is there an activity? And I got to know,
where you actually love it and yet most people see it as a chore, as something to be procrastinated or What would that be for you?
Mim Plavin-Masterman (00:48)
So I'll go first and then I'll allow our wonderful guest to go. I really like folding my laundry and putting it away. I have one of those folders that makes everything nice and neat like you get at the Gap. And my stuff just all perfectly folded and sorted and put away and it gives me such joy. It's such a small thing, but it gives me such joy.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (01:14)
So let's just get this straight. do other people take advantage of this, Mim? Are they like, well, look at all these piles of laundry. Mim, do you want to come over this weekend? We haven't done laundry in like a month. And look, there's clean laundry all over our living room. What? This must be fun for
Mim Plavin-Masterman (01:19)
I'm afraid to say no because then they'll start.
I mean, the family occasionally asks for help. I don't offer my services. I'm not in a van driving around with my full turn. So,
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (01:37)
Mim will nerd out on your, you know, your handkerchiefs or something that you don't even expect to fold.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (01:49)
So, so what about you, Alejandro? And then I want to hear what our guest has to say.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (01:53)
It's not that interesting. like wordsmithing things, I have to be careful when I work on things with people because, for example, I care about line breaks. Like, it actually matters to me what starts on the next And I have this visceral hatred for devices that change the thing that I intentionally did.
that is unconventional with words. In fact, I'm going to sound like a doomsdayer right now, for me, the idea that what we have thought will be real -time conventionalized by the very machine we're using to transcribe or record or figure it out is Because I think
I believe that the one thing we've got as human beings is the capacity to say something that may be true in a way that is true for us for right now. In fact, I don't believe truth exists unless we're always saying it and experiencing it and feeling it and connecting around it in ways that are renewed and
Mim Plavin-Masterman (03:06)
Okay.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (03:06)
I'm Alejandro.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (03:10)
Okay, and our wonderful guest,
Lorraine Smith (03:13)
Well, thanks both. kind of like both of yours. I want to learn more about that folding thing because I think if I had that folding tool, first of all, stuff would be nicer folded. On second thought, might enjoy it more. Alejandro, I have such appreciation for real typography. think deep down, I am a typographic nerd and line breaks are everything. Widows and orphans. my God, leading and kerning. People don't even talk about it, right? Right up there with
Mim Plavin-Masterman (03:23)
You
Lorraine Smith (03:41)
you know, Forge, what do we call it? The Forge. And anyways, I could go on on the.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (03:45)
It's been days since I had a conversation about kerning and that's just, that's troubling. What are we talking about?
Lorraine Smith (03:50)
Right? It is deep. It is the apocalypse. What are we talking about? So, but I won't steal your your thunders of laundry and typographic essentials. I'll just confess that I really love washing the dishes. And let me just clarify the depth of this love because the last couple of places I have lived have dishwashers. And that's, of course, reported as an asset by the landlord. Like they want to, you know, proclaim all the great
things about this place and why you're gonna give them so much money. And I'm like, no, a dishwasher. So one place I lived, I just used the dishwasher as a drying rack. And when I accidentally let that slip for this current place, and bless you, Brendan and Maya, you are wonderful land people if you happen to be listening, although our time together is coming to a close for all kinds of good reasons. One of the downsides of living here was that I let it slip that I don't use the dishwasher and they...
are very thoughtful and really into good maintenance of their home, including the appliances. So they were quite concerned that not using the dishwasher would cause it damage. So in my lease, I had to agree, I suppose I could have fought it, but we really pick our battles. I had to agree to run the dishwasher at least once a in order to keep it good working order, which I had to put in my and be like, gosh, I gotta run this thing. gotta like go get the sofa.
I love washing dishes. I love taking the time to kind of replay in my mind the meal, the food, where it came from. I have quite a miscellany of pottery dishes. My sister's a potter, so I'm always on the lookout for beautiful pottery, vintage or otherwise. And it's just such a joy to put my hands in that nice hot soapy water. So, yeah, I don't even have a drying rack. I just stack them on the counter on a little towel, and it's one of life's great joys.
right up there with typography and typography too, but folding laundry, I can totally see the joy there.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (05:46)
I mean, I'd be willing to trade laundry folding services for dishes. I'm just putting that out there, you know.
Lorraine Smith (05:54)
Yeah, I like it. like it.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (05:56)
if you had been a Luddite, the original kind, right, who were smashing machines of legend, because you would have been smashing dishwashers. You'd move into a place, all the amenities. I mean, do you have an issue with fridges too? Like, do you cutting blocks of ice? But I gotta my favorite part of what you just did, Lorraine, is that
You have to put in your calendar that day of self deprivation when you don't get to do the dishes, the fasting day, it's lent. It's, that's something else.
Lorraine Smith (06:26)
Yes.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (06:30)
It's impressive.
Lorraine Smith (06:30)
Well, can I just pile on for a second about the fridge? Because I think we, who knows where we get to go in the future of this conversation, but all joking aside, I actually believe private refrigeration is one of the most tragic elements of our current existence. And so I also sort of half joking said, as I was moving in here a little over a year ago, I might not keep the fridge plugged in because I think using a fridge,
I can say more about why I think, but I think it's not necessarily as advantageous as we've been trained to think. And that fell very flat. You're not meant to keep a fridge, but not use it to refrigerate. So I think there's tons to explore there and I'm happy to share more about that.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (07:13)
What I love most about all this,
Mim Plavin-Masterman (07:13)
love this.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (07:15)
is first of all that you're proving my point about nerding out so beautifully, right? Because I just wanted my points proven. No, seriously. I mean that you took the idea of refrigeration, which I was bringing up as just an example of where you probably wouldn't have gone. was like, no, actually I'd be not using that either if I didn't have There's a version of this podcast titled
Lorraine Smith (07:19)
No!
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (07:40)
the tragedy of private refrigeration, right? Which it sounds a little gothic or maybe it's a Nancy Drew Hardy Boys movie, the case of the private refrigerator. But what's amazing about this that's actually quite serious is, so I have one friend in the world who's like you and has described, his name is Chadosh, his love of doing the dishes. And I've had him as a multi -week house guest from.
Lorraine Smith (07:44)
yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (08:07)
overseas which I want to do as often as possible but his experience of the dishes actually changed he he changed my narrative and I Have to say, you know, I know I'm presenting myself as the reformed person here learning from you and Chadash but now sometimes I will do the dishes and I'll secretly and that's that's important because
Lorraine Smith (08:07)
you
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (08:31)
Many of the things we think we need to do, you know, drinking a bottle of Poland spring from a plastic container are just outlandishly grotesque, And yet they're normalized. So one of the things there's two big ideas I'm getting from just our kidding around that I'm hoping we get to speak about in the next few minutes. And everyone, it's funny that both Lorraine are like, what do we get to speak about? Well, whatever we want, right? But seriously, one is
Mim Plavin-Masterman (08:57)
you
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (09:00)
is actually these things that make us human. It's it's not the Colosseum where someone told me yesterday 400 plus thousand people were killed. these things. It's the thing that we love in a different way from someone else. And so when we start talking of your ideas, Lorraine, and economy and service to
you've made me think that that's not just that we all need to do some beautiful but that's we all need to be able to do our own thing in this way. Let's introduce you and we'll come back to some of these themes as we
Mim Plavin-Masterman (09:37)
So this is a very interesting segue because this idea of revisiting something that we take for granted is really a through line that runs through a lot of Lorraine's work. So Lorraine Smith joins us today and she spent decades as a consultant working with sustainability, working in ESG, working in corporate responsibility, but then making a shift to actually say, let's move in a different direction to get the outcomes that we want. And really talking about
the limitations of thinking about ESG and ESG metrics and ESG frameworks. And something Alejandro alluded to that we're going to spend quite a bit of time on today is this idea of the economy in service to life, not the other way around. And so these are some really big ideas she's encapsulated in a very sophisticated but very clean way. And we want to, we're very excited to have her here coming to us from Montreal, Quebec right now before a big move.
to another province in about a couple of weeks, not even a couple of weeks, right? But thank you for taking the time to join us today.
Lorraine Smith (10:41)
It's a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me on. Yeah, this is I wouldn't want to spend any other way with my time 11 days before heading out to Northern Ontario. This is the best thing ever.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (10:51)
You interrupted a luscious dishwashing experience, or maybe you were folding clothes, trying that on and experiencing the tactile glories to have this conversation with us. I'm Alejandro Juarez -Croffert. My co -host is Mim Plavin -Masterman. And we're on a mission to make nerding out and the experiments that come from it as normal
Lorraine Smith (10:55)
You
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (11:20)
watching some video on your phone. Welcome to What If Instead, the podcast.
Lorraine, I'd love to pick up actually where we already were and ask you a question what can we do to give more people the that is implied by what we started talking about. The permission to go really deep with the thing we want to nerd out on. The permission to navigate with those, the owners, the land, what do we call them?
the people who own the place where you've been living. And I loved that you were almost writing them this beautiful farewell letter. Our time is coming to a close. It's the first time I've ever heard anyone think about their landlord and landlady, that we can use those terms that way. But what would you do to expand this
Lorraine Smith (12:16)
Yeah, I call them my land people. I've always said that because I feel like maybe I'm a little stubborn or full of myself, but the idea that somebody lords over me, like, no, I'm just. No.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (12:25)
Yes, you saw me get stuck. was like, is there... But I started to say land people and I was like, it sounds, you know, these are a certain species of alien in Star Wars, the land people. I don't know.
Lorraine Smith (12:37)
Yeah, I do say land people, but I think we're just old people. I don't know what they call me. Brendan, Maya, what do you call me? I actually really love your word choice there, permission. I'll say a bit about why and then I'll say what I think we can do to widen the possibilities of that permission. I love it because what I
what I often get as a question is what do we need to do to convince people, right? Or how are we going to get people to dot dot dot? And my immediate response to that is, well, if that's the plan, then we're screwed. Like I can't convince, maybe I can, but if I set out to convince you to change your mind, to behave differently, to do something else, to not do the things you do, a bit problematic as a path to walk. And I do believe actually that is a chronic
challenge within what we might call the mainstream sustainability movement, which is why there's a lot of really miserable, frustrated, tired, burnt out, exhausted, underfunded people and or people doing work that doesn't really work, but they get paid pretty well to do it or some combination in between. And neither of those routes to me feels like restoring ecological wellness or enabling humans to be well. So let me go into your permission zone and just
play with the words for a moment if we can nerd out. I actually don't know technically the word origin of permission, but what I'm hearing there, being through and mission, know, how do we go through our mission to make this And I'm making that up that that's what permission means, but I'm gonna go with it. And I'll tell you my number one guiding principle that as much as I can, I aim to fold into my actions.
to keep my vision, my own vision, handy. That vision is an economy that works in service of life. Well, why does keeping that lens handy help me with Two ways. First is it reminds me most of our current economic and industrial activity, so most of the, let's say, financialized ways in which we meet our needs and wants, we, like us three,
but also the wider communities around us, most of the world as we generally recognize it, is not in service of life as its core. There might be things it does to serve life, make, you know, we eat, we are housed, we do lots of things to meet our needs, but that's rarely the large industrial entities raison d 'être, it's reason for being. That is perhaps an outcome or one side essence.
but it's not the reason it creates the value it creates. The reason it creates the value it creates is to generate profit, to generate income, ideally more than it spends. And so when we look at an economy that works in service of life, it doesn't take much of a leap to say, because right now most of the economy is served by life. It's the opposite. We are extracting life to serve the economy, whether it's human labor, wellbeing, time.
ecological services, I don't even like calling them services, but the biological and mineral and sort of wider world more than human around us, the economy is sucking that up, using it and spitting out products, services and other things from the other side and aiming to do so in a When we turn the lens and say, what does it look like for any economic or financial or corporate entity to say, by definition,
I serve life, I make people healthier and I make them healthier within a more thriving ecology, what does that look like? Well, it raises all kinds of questions. when I think about that permission, the number one thing I'm aiming to do is just offer the opportunity to ask that question. Most industrial decision makers I've met have actually never had the thought. And so when they do, what happens when they go, yeah, economy and service of life, what?
What might that look like and what might my role in that be?
Mim Plavin-Masterman (16:44)
So I want to pick up on that for a bit, because to your original point of how we've been trained to think about the role of these industrialized decision makers, their job is to make as much profit as possible to return to shareholders, for publicly traded companies, at least in the US, and it's true in some other places, right? And so when you're asking them to say economy in service of life, how do they reconcile that with this
the shareholder primacy model that says we've got to just keep giving money back to the shareholders. Because I would think maybe I'm not even this, but I would think that you're going to give less money back to the shareholders if you run your business to be in service of life.
Lorraine Smith (17:27)
Yeah, it's a great question and a valid one. I have two answers. One is really simple and the other is the one that I spend more time trying to flesh out. So the simple answer we probably can't do that. We probably can't continue to return financial reward to mostly absentee owners. That's what I think of as shareholders, the folks who aren't doing anything other than having capital to begin with and then making decisions about what they do with it. No offense, but that's not really...
Mim Plavin-Masterman (17:44)
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Lorraine Smith (17:55)
real skill in the land of being well. And I am not aware of a version of the current model where we make some tweaks and then we're okay. So my short answer is, yeah, you're not naive. You're very well aware of how the current structures function. And that's, they're functioning well according to how they're designed, frankly. My longer answer is we are looking at
significant transformation from recognizing what a shareholder is and contrasting that with other terms that we see coming up. People talk about stakeholders, we talk about rights holders. I like to really widen the lens and ask more, perhaps philosophical, but I actually think they're much more practical questions. Like what if a company headquartered in say one of the major banks, I don't know, let's grab Citigroup.
They're headquartered in New York City. They own a lot of real estate. They move $5 trillion a day. At least they did the last time I looked at their numbers in a couple of years ago. They transact $5 trillion a day. Like that's an unfathomable number, right? I'm not even sure they can calculate that. I don't care what supercomputers they if their main shareholder the bird and bat species that had Manhattan in their flyway?
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (19:17)
kind of a return would those birds and those bats get on their allocated capital?
Lorraine Smith (19:20)
Exactly. Exactly. They would get the opportunity to fly freely without striking buildings and dying and walk around. don't know how much you'll be in Manhattan over the next few weeks. If you have a chance to rise early, like pre -dawn, and I'm sure there's an organization in Manhattan that does this. There are in most major cities in migratory flyways, you offer some volunteer time and you walk around the base of those buildings and you will find dozens, if not hundreds.
of birds, some still alive, who struck the buildings because Manhattan is in their flyway. So if, for instance, the primary shareholder was a collective of migratory species for whom Manhattan is part of the flyway, and or the primary shareholder was the Great Lakes basin and Atlantic shoreline,
in the year we currently based on our human numbering system would call 20 80. You know, what if those groups were the primary shareholders? And I don't mean give nature a voice at the boardroom table. I mean, no, no, they're the decision makers. They decide what is in service of our collective wellness because the birds don't, I can't really speak for them, but I'll do a little bit of interpreting and don't think they want all of us to die, but they don't want us to kill them.
Right? So what does it look like when we live mutualistically and in ways that enable the waterways to be healthy and full of aquatic life and the migratory birds to pass and do all the incredible things that they do in so -called ecological services terms and us humans carrying on. And then suddenly a bank's job becomes enabling frictionless transactions that serve life, not wealth hoarding. So that's the long
and really just beginning to scratch the surface answer MIM of what does that look like? Because that is not how Citigroup is structured. That is not what the SEC is requiring. It is not what most, probably even most everyday retail bankers, much less institutional investors and senior level bank executives are even daydreaming about, I don't think just yet.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (21:34)
if we take this model of the, the, the collective of the birds and bats in the flyways or the Great Lakes, has to be some, I'm going to oversimplify, but bear with me. There has to be somebody who represents their interests, who has the seat at the table, a person, a human we interact with somebody. And as I start thinking, okay, well, what's the fight to be that somebody look like?
Lorraine Smith (21:57)
Mmm.
I have very specific thoughts on that and I'm pulling something up so I have my stats handy because sometimes numbers fall out of my head. Let me give a couple guiding thoughts, I'll say, because I think answer would be too generous a term here. The first is that I will invite the possibility that what we think the table is, we just made it up within the construct of the current economic norms. So the idea that
we would even have to fight for a voice at the table, although part of me is like, yeah, that's kind of true. And that table is pretty narrow. There's not that many seats at it. And so we have some concerns about how we get the right voices at the table. That's coming from the current model that is command and control, linear mechanistic, know, shareholder primacy driven. And so I think I would encourage a wider question, which is what does it look like?
when that table doesn't need to be vied for to have a seat at. And that is a massive rethink, but I see examples where it's happening and I'll show an example of what it doesn't look like. So we're seeing this, I think, very promising and powerful move towards what might be called, like there's so many terms out there. So I caveat everything and Alejandro is wordsmith, please over time typographically render this in the most
digestible in effective way. But a term that's really lighting me up these days is bioregional restoration. And bioregional presumes we've stopped assuming geopolitical borders are meaningful in an ecological sense. And we've come to understand that things like river basins or mountain ranges or other more what we might call for lack of smarter English language, like nature -based
regions, interconnected systems, when we look bioregionally, we have a very different approach to those voices and that table. And that is happening in real time. There's very, very promising activity happening. I would say for any of your listeners interested in that, do a quick Google of Joe Brewer, bioregionalism, and you'll bump into some deeply rich resources and real life case studies possibly happening right where you are, especially in North America and in Columbia.
I want to push on notion that we have to vie for a at the table is already beginning from, no, but how would we do that? And nobody invited me. And what I'm beginning to recognize is like, no one's going to invite us. No one's going to invite the migratory birds.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (24:35)
and the hoops you need to jump through to get invited will eliminate everything you just said you were going to add. And then I actually want to pick up on two things you've said and kind of run an interesting direction with.
Lorraine Smith (24:38)
That's right.
It's easy to say we need nature to have a role at the table or we need to have nature -based solutions. And I'm seeing a lot of activity around that. Climate Week is coming up in New York. think we're going to, that nature -based, know, nature has a seat at the table. I think that's going to be like a drum beat. That actually concerns me greatly because that is us using our, we just need to put numbers and codify it and build it into the standards mindset, which really is part of what got us here in the first place. And so here's a very concrete example of where
I see these seemingly well -meaning broad initiatives that are just, if I may very critically say, either poorly thought out or if they are more thought out, they are not well intended. I'd like to think they're poorly thought out. Up here in Canada, we have an incentive for folks to purchase electric vehicles or at least zero emissions vehicles, and they will typically be an EB.
And it's a cash incentive and it ranges, but it's up to 5 ,000 Canadian, which give or take and sort of 4 ,000 US for buying a new net zero vehicle. And I want to just say, I'm not here to tell you what to drive or what is right or wrong. I'm just using this with the ecological restoration lens that is blinking as a signal in this policy environment here around incentivizing a transition to electric vehicles. So.
If you were to walk out the door and find the closest 12 year old who can have this conversation with you and say, hey buddy, we're looking at making the ecological integrity of this country stronger. What do you think we should you think that they would say, take billions, and I mean billions of taxpayer dollars and hand them to the country's wealthiest people who can buy new Audis, BMWs, Lexuses, Jeeps, Teslas.
and a few Chevy's, but some of the Chevy's are SUV's, right? Would they say take billions of taxpayer dollars and hand it to the country's essentially wealthiest people who are preparing to buy a new private net result have hundreds of thousands of new vehicles on the road? I don't think even the 12 year old with zero information about climate change, carbon accounting, frankly, anything.
would say, yeah, you know what we need to do? We need to give rich people billions of our hard -earned taxpayer dollars and put hundreds of thousands of new cars on the road. So when people say, how do we get nature to the table? I actually want to say, you know, we are nature. We are far smarter than that. We know what ecological restoration looks and feels like. It does not feel like incentivizing wealthy people to buy more cars, widening lanes of highway.
taking all the mineral and metal and everything resources that goes into making more private cars. And if that has to be perceived as an anti -car, anti -wealth attitude, then that's where I would say, please come back to Alejandro's permission, permission to spend a moment at least trying on the idea wait, the economy's here to serve life, not highways, not hoarding. And what does that feel like?
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (28:03)
Yeah. And it won't work if it's anti, right? You started off by saying, if I set out to convince you as the first thing I do, and forget about it, we know that when someone is trying to change a and if they're don't eat so much, don't smoke, the backfires. There's a lot of research that says that, right? And same here, plus it turns sustainability.
Lorraine Smith (28:12)
Right.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (28:28)
into kind of the virtues of misery. And so it's dead on arrival. It's out the gate. It's losing.
Lorraine Smith (28:34)
Just hair shirt, you no one wants to wear a hair shirt. It's, I'm a hand spinner. I spin stuff myself. Like you cannot make a not itchy hair shirt. They're no fun. Bad bad. Give me the Angora, give me the cashmere. It's nice.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (28:36)
you
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (28:41)
so so I Want to talk about three things first? this table we keep talking about and how that table is run and the Stakeholder token ism that I hear you Secondly, I want to get into the
Lorraine Smith (28:46)
Thank you.
Mm.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (29:04)
structures really the details of how we run existing tables versus the alternatives and really Expand on something you've raised with an eye toward Looking at pragmatic realistic versions of the alternatives and then if we have time like to circle back to virtue and
finding ways to make sustainability sound as Fiore, right? This is a Fiore gesture, if I'm saying it right, as drill, baby, drill, right? It sounds so, right? Whereas in fact, it's just misery for most of us. So let's start with, and I'm gonna actually expand each of those things a little bit and then hand it back to you. So number one,
When we're looking at alternatives to expensive EVs being our main thrust, those alternatives are out there. We've had the Solshare founder, Sebastian Crow, on this podcast talking more rickshaws, more electric rickshaws, right, on the road in South then there are, these are three -wheeled vehicles, then there are Teslas on the road.
and the challenges of making those financially sustainable and renewable and the ways in which they can power building. So the notion of alternatives, I want to get us away from the idea that it's just, as you've said, not having a Tesla. But that brings us to the debate you two had about shareholder capitalism and shareholder primacy. And I just want to unpack that for a moment in point two, which is,
Lorraine Smith (30:36)
Right.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (30:48)
We know, you mentioned Citigroup, that when this is working for Citigroup, which is the world's largest new fossil fuel exploration, according to the 2024 Banking on Climate Chaos report data, we know if it's working for them, is a casino table where you can get your seat and you're gonna lose money, right, as it were. So we know that it's structured the wrong way, but...
I wanted to ask you, and this is a real question, whether turning all of life into a joint stock company, as the only way, is the paradigmatic, the way we run everything, means we need to throw out the importance of the value of return on capital, or whether we need to add to that.
concepts like stewardship. And when we talk about a concept like stewardship, I just want to inject here that it sounds maybe crazy, you know, the bats at the table, but tens of thousands of years of human history involve human beings organizing to be stewards of something, right, in nature or some other thing that is we decide is the life that we value or the many kinds of life that we value. So in short,
the big question there is, is it that we've exaggerated life as joint stock company, right? Or is it that, wait a minute, capital has always had a function, right? And by that, I mean, at least since, human agriculture became dominant where capital is just drawing resources to something. And if we could write, if we could turn that function into something more balanced, along with the stewardship that it should exist to underwrite, maybe we don't have to
I'm not trying to say let's keep things the way they are. Point one is let's change how the table is run. Let's build a new friggin' table. Point two is don't we at that table need to rethink each of these things together?
Lorraine Smith (32:48)
Yes to everything. think
I think you're pointing at something I keep bumping into that I wish I weren't. So I'll be as transparent as I can on this without really knowing what I'm saying. I think there's a lot going on that we have no access And no matter what really cool ideas you and I come up with here, I'm making some assumptions about you we haven't met in...
real life, I'm not following all your money and your footsteps all day long and all your relationships, but I'm just gonna go out on a twig and say, we're not in And whatever cool ideas we come up with that we could prove without a doubt would be better not going to happen unless there's real shifts in three key questions that I see again and again. I think if my five years ago self were here, she'd be like, no, no, come
now, you know, we all have agency, you know, we just got to keep trying. And I still believe that but now I believe it with these questions in mind. First, who is in charge? And I don't think that's one person or two people or you know, six. I don't think it's a cabal. I don't have this sort of, I'm not going to name names kind of thing.
But like, let's be honest about who ultimately makes decisions in relation to these things we're talking about. And in some cases, I think it's quite disparate and unconscious. as far as I'm aware, there hasn't been a, you know, council or referendum deciding should migratory birds be in charge of Citibank.
Last I checked, no. So it's not like there was actually a decision on that. But let us be honest about the fact that some folks have more deciding power than others. And to my awareness, none of them were so -called democratically elected. So we are feeling our way a little bit in the dark in a decision -making circumstance where not only are folks not asking us to make a new table, like there is no table, right? So I just wanna be really honest about what's
happening there as much as we can sense it. And the second question there is, what are their incentives? And incentives, think, cascade across like layers and dimensions. I'm incentivized by lots of things, you are too. But the folks making major decisions, I mean, like the billion, trillion dollar decisions across time, generations, regions, scales, what are their incentives? We could say what are their motives?
And I don't know that. It's perhaps not knowable for me, but I think we need to keep at least some conscious awareness of why do people do what they do? And it isn't, I don't think necessarily just sort of random. I think we are incentivized to behave certain ways, just like those EVs. Folks are getting $5 ,000 put in their pocket to buy a new car.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (35:32)
Can we try a version of the motives out on you? So, Mim and I were WhatsApping, I think, yesterday, and we were talking about the, the we don't need no education theory of liberty, right? And, you know, where the Elon Musk's and the Peter Thiel's and their cousin by the name, I think sometimes that there's this vision of life where there's just the kids and the
Lorraine Smith (35:35)
Duh.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (35:56)
and the teacher has been oppressing us and the teacher is anyone telling us not to do whatever we And so this version of liberty emerges, right? Where anyone telling me not to do whatever I want, I'm gonna sing Pink Floyd back at them and be like, we don't need no education, we don't need no thought control. And I'm not saying that's the only motive, but I do think there's a powerful paradigm, which I think it was the Pink Floyd paradigm, that is extremely,
Lorraine Smith (36:10)
Hmm.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (36:25)
extremely popular amongst certain tech libertarians and of course what's wrong with that paradigm, right, is that it's not just a world of the kids being controlled by the teachers. As soon as we have that though as our metaphor, then get rid of anything in my way and neglects the fact that some of the kids are bullies and some have gangs and actually it's an empty playground, not a free one when no one is inhibiting those bullies and those gangs.
Lorraine Smith (36:26)
Yeah.
Yeah, well it's funny you say that, Alejandro, because my third question, the first is who's in charge, second is what are their incentives or motives, and the third that I was going to ask is, and what are we trained to think is good? So I feel what you're asking, I have a slightly different spin on it, which is, first the profound irony when you look at the numbers, the dollars behind Pink Floyd, and also when you actually follow, in particular Roger Waters is the one band member that I've paid a little more attention to what he's saying, like he's
I think he's really trying to say like, people, we really want you to pay attention to this question. And what I mean by that is, education is a very vague word. And so what if we sit for a moment and look at what did we learn? I think we learn lots of things that are relevant. I feel very honored and proud of my public school education in Canada.
I went to a small, what you guys would call liberal arts college in the Maritimes called Mount Allison University. I had brunch the other day with my Spanish professor from 1992. She was in town and you know, so I feel the connections through my education in many let us be again real about
some of the realities that come from that education. And we've all had different ones. So I'm going to generalize a little bit and point out things like we are trained to memorize some things, but not others. are told about some things in history, but not others. And I don't mean that in the conspiratorial sense. I mean it in the, there's real gaps. And when we all go into one classroom and then the next one, the next year, and the next one, the next year, and the next one, the next year, what happens to us through this kind of,
Prussia heritage education system is we lose our intergenerational learning and then it becomes kind of quaint that we spend time with grandma on the weekends, you know, or kind of haphazard or maybe even bailing us out a bit that one of our aunts or elder siblings does some looking after because mom and dad are too busy at work, right? Whereas once upon a time, it was just normal that you learned from lots of people in your community and they knew stuff. They knew what the plants were called. They knew what the birds were called. They knew how to get around. They were very resourceful people.
And I don't mean we should go back to the Stone Age. I mean, what we call education does not necessarily teach us the very basics of what it means to be alive and well. And that's why we have people with multiple letters after their names who are whiz -bang geniuses and incredibly talented, smart people who cannot name a single interaction ecologically around them. They do not know the names of the trees, the names of the birds, or forget the names. The names are just...
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (39:12)
Mm -hmm.
Lorraine Smith (39:30)
letters we've strung together, they do not know the relationships and why those relationships matter and how they relate to them. And so even if the nicest people in the world are in charge and they love everybody and they want the world to be great, and even if their motives are, let's say, well intended, if we have a cohort of humans, and I will go on public record and say we do have a cohort of humans who are growing up thinking success equals a high paying job,
a private home, extra money to go on a vacation, maybe even go on an eco vacation, where you go where there's lots of trees, where you go and listen to lots of birds, and isn't that the greatest thing? And have not been given the permission to ask, other than a kind of philosophical, documentarian kind of way, what is life for? What makes it wonderful? And then Netflix, whatever show they're watching, before it's even run the credits, has served up the next one.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (40:05)
Hmm. Hmm.
Lorraine Smith (40:27)
They don't really need to sit with that question for too long, much less notice that sitting is a posture that is brand new to the human form and causing us great physical distress. Like we're so separated from what is truly healthy that we don't even know that we have not been taught. So I would say we don't need an education, which by the way is a massive industry. If you want to look at the publicly traded companies who earn for their
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (40:27)
Hmm.
Lorraine Smith (40:56)
shareholders through education, but that is really, what do we call it, testing, standardized testing. It's the sale of textbooks, right? It's the production of content. That is not education. So yeah, I love the question and I don't think it's bullies. I'm not the least bit worried about big, you know, about the Musks. I'm worried about the Joneses and the, you know, the every days who
Mim Plavin-Masterman (41:03)
The standardized test providers. Yep. The textbook people.
Right.
Lorraine Smith (41:25)
don't know haven't given themselves permission or who are beaten into the everyday bill -paying hamster wheel that they aren't asking the question.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (41:36)
did a bad job of introducing the we don't need no education thing. I didn't actually literally mean anything to do with education, though you've taken it in a place I think we should go. I just meant that one of you said, you know, what are we trying to think of as good? I meant there's a version of what I think of as good, which is nobody ever being able to tell me what to do. And I think we've confused many of us, many of the people in those decision making positions you talked about have
Lorraine Smith (41:52)
Hmm.
Mm -hmm.
done.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (42:06)
Developed an ideology where the good is no one Teaching them what to do and I meant to pick a polite song only as That my whole way of looking at the world is don't get in my way You've described that you've taken in a more interesting place and you've described I call it life as a first -person shooter game like one of those video games or you're going through the world shooting people and maybe you're doing something more constructive But it's still you just kind of going through this world doing your thing
Lorraine Smith (42:20)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (42:35)
And what I love that you did is it's like, what about all the relationships in the background? I do want to say to Ana Echivarria and Suma Iguina that if either of you is listening to this, I too want to have lunch with my Spanish teachers from 1992. But Mim, let's pick up now on where you have taken this, because I think this is about to get very rich.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (43:02)
Okay, so I have an observation and then a question. So when you think about this, who's in charge, what are their incentives and what are we trained to think of as good? I still come back to this, this increasingly split between public and private companies, at least in the US, because, I'll give you a couple of examples before I get to my question. So when you have these public companies and you have the top decision makers incentivized by things like stock price, they're going to make decisions that
are in line with their incentives and their motivations. But then you have companies like Patagonia, a privately held company that actually two years ago set up a collective that's a nonprofit to fight the environmental crisis that they now own Patagonia as a privately held company. So you have this interesting thing happening where the companies who want to do the things you're talking about can't do it in the publicly traded stock market world. So they're not playing in that space.
Right? The companies are private. These private companies are in this position of trying to have this economy in service of life because they're not beholden to multiple different kinds of shareholders that are all absentee. question is really back to this idea of the public private split of like these things I hear you saying to me are these constraints of the public stock market piece of it.
I am concerned that if you lose the public stock market piece of it, you lose the transparency into what people are actually doing. So while I love what Patagonia is doing, because they're private, nobody can ask them real questions about it. Nobody gets to look at the books. Nobody gets to see, you know, what's actually happening. my question to you is when you think about these trade -offs of how important is transparency to you?
Lorraine Smith (44:30)
Mm -hmm.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (44:50)
in terms of what they're actually doing and how important is this sort of public versus private mentality to you when you think about this.
Lorraine Smith (44:58)
Yeah, well, thankfully, one of the things I love doing, maybe even more than the dishes, it's a tight competition, is going deep on ESG disclosures. And that is certainly easier to do with publicly traded companies, although some private companies are quite transparent.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (45:04)
Hahaha
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (45:15)
Make this situational for us. The dishes, you had the warm water going. What is it about going through ESG reports? It's just so delightful. Help us.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (45:19)
No, no, no.
Lorraine Smith (45:20)
You
Yeah, well, here's something that even folks deep in sustainability and ESG often miss because they're very busy and overworked on projects that keep them very busy and So much of what we're talking about here, the impact companies have, the decisions, how they're made, et cetera, it is right under our noses. It's crazy how much information is available. So let me give you a really specific, concrete example, totally public, anybody can find this. And so by the way, this is...
I'm joking about the dishes and loving doing this, but this is my work. This is what I do. I'm like an ESG disclosure ninja. I just dive in and out of publicly available data almost exclusively, although I'm kind of interested in what's in the news. I find the news or the public media, you will, distracting, often very biased or cherry picking, looking for this or that or the hooks and the clicks and the whatever. Why not go straight to the horse's mouth? It's been signed off by their legal counsel.
Like it's probably true and incredibly comprehensive. So I just find that a much better resource.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (46:31)
and you're gonna nerd out on it, give us a word for listeners before you actually go to where you're about to go on if one wanted to become an ESG disclosure ninja. One of our listeners, where do they find these disclosures? How do they get into it the way you do?
Lorraine Smith (46:43)
Mm.
It's so easy. So let's take Google, for example. You it's a verb. You probably did it earlier today. Many of us did as well. It's also one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world, which in a way makes it one of the largest economic entities in the world, right? Some of these companies are so big, they sort of eclipse entire nations. And
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (46:56)
I've been trying to give it up, but it's,
Lorraine Smith (47:13)
It is a publicly listed company, Alphabet, of course, is the parent company. And so they are required by law in the countries and jurisdictions where they operate to publish stuff, including an annual report that meets SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission requirements about types of disclosures, depth of disclosures, cadence of disclosures, et cetera. So I find the easiest as in most logical, it's complex and they're long with a lot of pages, but easiest.
pathway in is the annual report. And so what's in the annual report? They say what the company does, they talk about their risks, and then they say how much money the company earned, usually at least somewhat separated by business unit or area of business. It does often kind of run aground there where if you really wanna know super details about exactly which business unit, which region, which product, that can get a little tricky, but it's usually there.
So why do I find this earth shattering? It's so painfully simple that miss it. So I'm gonna tell you something. It's so obvious you already knew it, but you weren't probably holding onto it and going, wait, this thing, this thing. Companies state their purpose and then companies do things. And anybody who's involved in systems thinking will recall that the purpose of a system is what a system does, right? It's not the words it put somewhere.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (48:22)
Mmm.
you
Lorraine Smith (48:35)
It's not the leading and kerning on their marketing material. It's what the system actually does. And one of the highest leverage points of intervention to make change in a system is to change the purpose. It's not the highest. That's why we want decision makers to have the possibility to imagine the permission to imagine an economy working in service of life. But let's just stay where we are right now. September, 2024, Google's purpose is to make the world's data accessible to everyone everywhere.
They stayed that purpose. written down. It's evolved over the years, but here we are today. Their purpose is to make all the world's data accessible to everyone everywhere. We could have opinions about that purpose. My general opinion is I like that purpose. It's pretty cool. There's, you know, perhaps risks and pitfalls there, but I like that. How does Google make money? They do a few things, but the vast majority of their revenue is through advertising.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (49:20)
Thank
Lorraine Smith (49:25)
So let's go back outside for a moment to our friend Buddy that we were talking to earlier about, know, if you were going to restore the ecology, would you give rich people money for more private cars and then put hundreds of thousands of cars on the road? So Buddy's pretty good at like common sense because he's 12. He hasn't had it beaten out of him yet. So we're going to ask him, hey, Buddy, we met this company whose purpose is to make all the world's data accessible to everyone
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (49:41)
Hmm.
Lorraine Smith (49:50)
Also, the way they make money is they sell advertising. And can you just tell me, are those the same? And buddy's like, I'm sorry. That's the dumbest question I've ever heard. Like, no, they are not the same. And I went that what backs up on one, sometimes me there is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but they got to make money somehow. Like, okay, I'll humor that statement. Although there are lots of
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (50:00)
Hahaha!
Lorraine Smith (50:16)
things that go on that are amazing that don't make money, by the way, that's not what they're there for. Google did not begin this way. And I did. So I did this, I have this methodology, it's free, open source, anyone can use it that compares a company's purpose with what they actually do, and then with what the world actually needs. And the very first time I prototyped it, and I call it materiality, but
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (50:19)
on.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (50:31)
You
Lorraine Smith (50:35)
Any of your ESG or environmental, social and governance exposed listeners will know that ESG has a methodology called materiality. I changed the spelling a little and I put reality in it and I ran the experiment on Google. And I had some amazing conversations with folks. I interviewed a number of people, including somebody who spoke on behalf of the Atlantic forest in Brazil, the Mata Atlántica, who happens to be more tree than human, Ricardo Karjim.
listeners who are interested in pocket forests and incredible ecosystem restoration going on in Sao Paulo and the Mata Atlantica. All to say, honest about what public companies are doing, the level of transparency is more than Where we're missing a trick is in being clear on what it is we're trying to do. So in the Google assessment, I looked at their beginning business model, which really was about making all the world's data accessible to everyone everywhere. They were a search engine.
And you see the moment and it's in the assessment and it's public. And if it's useful, I can provide this link so people can take a look. And you see the quotes from the founders from the beginning to the moment they publicly list, which I believe was 2004 to more recently. And they even call out when they publicly list, there are real pitfalls in bringing advertising into this business model. And they name the risks. They don't name them as extensively as we now experience with this kind of surveillance capitalism we live in. And Google is one of the greatest
benefactors of that surveillance approach. But if we're serious about purpose, if we're honest about purpose and impact, then publicly listed companies are so well positioned to journey into that because the information is all right there. Can I give one more really concrete example? It's a really recognized household name in the US. I just did an assessment recently on Scott's Miracle Grow.
the worm and fuzzies, right? Potting mix and nutrients for my host plants in my garden. And they present and are sincere in saying, I believe they're the largest lawn care company in North America. And for reasons that I won't go too far into other than discovering that they were behind the product that killed a lot of my compost worms. And I'll just come out and say, nobody messes with my compost worms without consequence.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (52:27)
Hmm.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (52:46)
So.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (52:47)
Yeah, they get a seat at the table or more even. Yeah, okay. Now we're talking.
Lorraine Smith (52:50)
they are the table. Like, I'm sorry. Decomposition, there is nothing more profound and essential to our existence than decomposition. And the worms are some of our best teachers there. And they killed my compost worms. So I had to take a look. Who are these people? What are they really doing? Well, SMG, ticker symbol, a publicly listed company, about three and a half billion US in revenue a year, gone down because they've been having some trouble in their commercial cannabis line and a few other issues.
When you get to 107, page 107 of their annual report, and this is normal by the way, financial, the really juicy important financials are like so deep into these reports. But people who don't mind opening a document, and by the way, you won't find financial stuff in the table of contents. You have to read, read, read, but after a while your eyes get good at picking out the tables that you need. I did write all this up, it is behind a paywall, but happy for people to pay me for it.
But I'll give you the punchline, which is they say their purpose is to grow more good. say that so much that they trademarked a misspelling of the term, grow more good. It's one word, there's no W, et cetera. Grow more good What does growing more good look like? Well, growing more good looks like selling toxic agrochemicals. So their potting mix is actually artificial fertilizer and then some. It is the same stuff that your cashcroppers are dumping on their corn, soy, et cetera. So it's agrochemical.
And Pete also see also real biodiversity concerns with the devastation happening in Pete Boggs. And that's what they're known for, right? That's their like warm and fuzzy. Then you go a little deeper. What else do they do? What is one of their major revenue segments? It is that they are the domestic marketer, not the industry, but domestic retail marketer of So they own Roundup for the consumer marketplace in North America.
It's really easy to hate on Monsanto, right? But Scott's Miracle Grove, come on, they got that cute little logo. And then there other big growth area, except it's tanking, but maybe if the laws change enough, and they're of course advocating for challenges around the legal framework for cannabis, but they are a major player in commercial cannabis hardware, growing mediums, et cetera. And I say all this neutrally to your choice of plant medicines or how you keep
the grounds around the home where you live. And more just to say, can we be honest that growing more good does not look like encouraging human beings to sink their hands into toxic stuff, dump it on their lawns. yeah, I skipped over the other area of concern. One of their big products is what they call controls. Controls means pesticide, fungicide, that are literally designed to kill biodiversity.
prioritize the rows, do not let the other stuff thrive. And so this comes back to that question three, what are we trained to think is good? We're trained to think a well -kept lawn is good. A lawn is a legacy of the British aristocracy where we think we have an estate, but we actually live in a postage stamp and we pay our land people. So why do we think that's good? And why are we okay paying for it? And why are we dumping poison on it? And why are we allowing absentee shareholders to aggregate wealth by doing that?
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (55:43)
Hmm.
Yeah. Lorraine, I feel as if you've given us first and foremost the permission to call what's crazy, crazy.
Lorraine Smith (56:13)
Hmm
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (56:13)
to look at things and say, really? Secondly, though, you've given us this call to action to do the detective work.
Lorraine Smith (56:22)
Hmm.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (56:23)
And then thirdly, you've challenged us to reimagine what and whom we're working for.
We will post these links you've mentioned below this episode so that listeners who would like to act on the permission Lorraine Smith is giving us to call what's crazy crazy, to do that detective work, and then to reimagine what and whom we're working for and living for can do, can act on what you said to us today.
Lorraine, I can't possibly thank you enough for making us think, making us laugh. Thank you so much, Lorraine.
Lorraine Smith (57:08)
It's a pleasure. Can I invite a parting invitation to your listeners? One of the questions you snuck in that I probably didn't effectively answer was around, you know, how do we make this not something that we bash people over the head, but more of a beautiful invitation, because we're not going to convince anybody of anything. And not everybody I know really wants to get to page 107 of the publicly listed report.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (57:24)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lorraine Smith (57:32)
So there is no one easy answer, but I do have an easy phrase that I keep handy just as my own personal reminder or challenge, which is this idea of earn well, spend well. Because the only things I can really directly influence are how I earn a living.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (57:47)
Mm.
Lorraine Smith (57:53)
and what I do with my own money. And so I've made a commitment to myself after over 20 years in mainstream ESG, done some work with some of your tall towered neighbors that way, to only get paid to do work that I believe is more likely to serve life. That's my own decision and I feel kind of challenged to do that, but I feel like I have agency. Who pays me? And how do I feel about that? And is that in service of life? And then how do I spend that money?
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (58:09)
Hmm.
Lorraine Smith (58:22)
And not in a beat myself up way, but in an invitation to earn well, spend well, and maybe bring us home to your wordsmithing Alejandro, well used to mean the same as wealth. They're the same word. When we are well, we are wealthy. Our wealth is our wellness. Can I earn into being well? Can I spend into being well? Earn well, spend well.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (58:48)
Let's make this actually a challenge that we put out there. If I have any, if I'm at the point where I'm earning enough to survive, then challenge I've heard Lorraine Smith give us is to only get paid by those who do work in service of life. As soon as I have a choice. Thank you.
Lorraine Smith (59:10)
you always have a choice. You always have a choice. final word, and then I'll stop lathering, because I know we got to move on. We got dishes, we got laundry, we got wordsmithing. Most people able to pay right now, i .e. companies, are not there. We are in a state of transition. The question isn't if transformation will happen. It is how quickly, how elegantly, how peacefully, how gracefully, and what is each of our role in it.
So we can't force the other to be a certain way, but we can invite ourselves to act into that. So I'd say don't despair, but do choose as best you can. And that's how the change happens.