A World Without Profit with Jennifer Hinton

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Apr 5, 2022

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Jennifer Hinton

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ANECDOTE

China Village Eye-Opener

Jennifer Hinton describes living in a rural Chinese village and witnessing pollution, dead fish, and community breakdown during rapid industrial growth.
This experience made her question whether GDP growth equals real progress and pushed her toward ecological economics.

INSIGHT

Profit Locked To Purpose

Not-for-profit businesses sell goods and services like regular businesses but legally lock profits to a social mission.
Their legal purpose and non-distribution constraint prevent private owners from appropriating surplus.

INSIGHT

Structure Determines Systemic Outcomes

The dominant business form shapes systemic incentives like consumption, wages, and inequality.
A not-for-profit economy would replace profit-driven extraction with circulating surplus directed to social needs.

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"The pursuit of private financial gain is what drives inequality and ecological harm." This is the perspective of Jennifer Hinton, a leading proponent of the not-for-profit business, which is differs in fundamental ways from a traditional nonprofit organization and, of course, from for-profit businesses. Not-for-profit businesses models are often invisible in the many movements to reimagine our economic system, but the idea is starting to gain momentum. Jennifer offers a vision of an entirely not-for-profit economy made up exclusively of not-for-profit businesses that de-emphasize profit and growth and instead prioritize businesses as a means for social and environmental benefit. Together we look at examples and operating principles of this model, we explore how it navigates the capitalism/socialism binary, and we ask what conditions would be necessary for this model to truly offer a bridge to a post-growth, post-capitalist world. Dr. Jennifer Hinton is a systems researcher, activist, and ecological economist who is a Senior Fellow at the Schumacher Institute and the author of two books: How on Earth: Flourishing in a Not-for-Profit World by 2050, co-authored with Donnie Maclurcan of the Post-Growth Institute, and Relationship-to-Profit: A Theory of Business, Markets, and Profit for Social Ecological Economics

Thanks to Between Friends for the intermission music.

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