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Class 2 Part 1 Historical Development of the Social Sector

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hello again everybody this is john glaser

glaser

in medieval european times

um the um

feudal societies that existed at that time

time

um were a network of reciprocal obligations

obligations

that people had to to each other and

those obligations

uh defined um uh our duties and our standing

standing

and our role um in common

life in in the shared world of the

society that we lived in

who you were and where you were born and

the circumstances of your life

determined all that for you wasn't any

you know sort of upward

mobility from being a peasant and uh

getting to be

you know a noble person

although there was a path from um being

a peasant to becoming

part of the clergy but at any rate it's

important to realize that

there are alternative ways of organizing

social life

um and in in these days um and during

medieval europe

land was the most important thing the

proclaimed sovereignty over the land and

in exchange for services

granted land to the nobility

and the nobility in exchange for services

services

um got the uh peasants and the

uh and the serfs to to actually work the

land and

and uh populate you know the armies and

and fight those wars and um you know be the

the

the foot soldiers in both uh production

as well as military adventurism but at

any rate

land rather than money was the

organizing principle

and it's interesting to note the history

of money

at this time is a fascinating subject

um from one point of view

um money was um

modern money was created and utilized

in order for the nobility to

privatize the costs of

war um war

was the main game of uh the nobility

and the quest for domination um

uh and power um you know came at a

at a bloody cost and the um

important than as it was as it is now

but creating a money a money system

and taxation was used so that people had

had the obligation to pay taxes

um upward in the hierarchy that means

that they had to have

uh cash they had to have money um and that

that

need for money was

only a need when

you needed it to pay taxes the rest of life

life

eating drinking living accommodations

were governed by a different set of

norms it wasn't as if

you bought your way through everything but

but

the invention of money and the use of

money during medieval europe

had a lot to do with how armies equip themselves

themselves

so i want to like point out a couple of

interesting factoids

and draw a quick conclusion from them

one is

that money didn't play the role

in medieval europe that it plays in in

our current

money had different functions land

obligations title um

family history uh governed much more

um the way people lived together of

and it was all held together with the authority

authority

of the church with the with the divine authority

authority

that um made this the prescribed order

of things

and god's uh ordained

um way of organizing the world the

divine right of kings for example

what made somebody say that they could

be king

and it was the blessing of the clergy

and the plaque proclamation that this

was a divine right

that the authority behind the hierarchy

uh came from religiosity came from

uh the organization of the of the clergy

you know was the bridge between

the secular and the and the sacred um

and those networks of relationships

is what uh prescribed how one lived

what one did what one owed each other um

and so one thing that you can conclude

from this

is real fast money is

an invention that is malleable

to the way humans want to shape it that

there's no preordained as it were

law of nature that makes money

an objective uh universal uh

force that has its own rules and laws and

and

always exerted them in the world no

money is a

human invention it's something we agree

upon with each other it's

part of our social contract and as such

it's open to change and has

changed in modern times

and we'll talk some about that but i did

want to point out

that history shows us that these things

are not

carved in stone that there's a human element

element

which means a degree of decision and

freedom it also means

an open question whose interests are

served by this

why it did the money system that emerged

emerge what was its true function

uh in terms of who did it benefit

and who did it not and those are

important questions

to understand the role of money today

are benefiting from the money system and

that the monetary system is

established to deliver those benefits

now there's ideology and belief systems

around that

that if you you know feed the investment

class if you

uh make the wealthy wealthier um then

you know investment will happen and

economic activity will trickle down and

all boats will rise and

the private sector will grow and the

private sector

is is what we need in order to live a

good life

uh there's lots of uh arguments and and

political points of view

that are wrapped up around that and a

couple of others that relate to the

issues of the

social realm um hunger

other than scarcity um what wasn't a

pervasive issue in the middle ages um

in times of scarcity hunger of course

was um very important but

you weren't hungry because you didn't

have money

you weren't hungry because you didn't

have a job

there were no jobs per se

in the middle ages wage labor

was an invention of the industrial revolution

revolution

and people's livelihoods were bound up

in their social networks

and the role that they had and the

good devout life they were trying to lead

lead

the obligations that they saw themselves

as under

and their contributions to their fellow citizens

citizens

or citizens might be the wrong word but

they're they're fellow

subjects of of god um and they're

um relationship upward so the peasants

from the bourgeoisie

they had obligations to local landlords

local landlords had obligations

to the nobility that controlled the

lands and the nobility had obligations

to the

sovereign that provided them with the lands

lands

and that was the principle that

organized things so as a result

in the middle ages it's not the case

that if you didn't have a job you didn't

eat yeah

it is the case now if you're

if you're on unemployment because of the pandemic

pandemic

making rent and paying food bills and

getting health care are all at risk

because you lack money

not true in medieval times there were

obligations that people had towards you that

that

you benefited from and that you were a

part of and that you owed things back in return

return

but it wasn't based on money and

there's a notion a concept that's very

much at play these days

that was much bigger during medieval europe

europe

and that's the notion of the commons um

what is it in our world that resists

private ownership that resists

concept of property but instead

is a you know divine gift to

to humanity um for us to steward

uh well and according to to dictate

um but not to control

and exclude people from it was the commons

commons

it was the shared uh part of the world

land was very much a part of the commons

which is why it could change hands

at the whim of of uh yeah nobility

um so the world that we shared together

the common world that benefited us all

was much deeper and richer during that time

time

than today today one perspective

is that the commons what we share

in our in our world um has been monetized

monetized

has been privatized uh belongs to

somebody now

um in the past you didn't have to pay

in order to eat um you ate because of your

your

your standing in the community in which

you lived

now there's a line from a springsteen

don't you know these days you pay for everything

everything

and it's true more and more of what used

to be

part of the commons is now monetized

and needs to be paid for um

think of you know living in a in the

middle ages where

you could retrieve water from a common well

well

well now you gotta pay for water or you

don't get water um

where you could you know eat at a common

table where if you were visiting from

one community to another

you knew you had a place to stay and

food to stay alive with

um because of your participation

in a larger whole so and in many ways

the the social sector is up against some

of the challenges

of the shrinkage of the comet with the

industrial revolution and the rise of

the middle class

and the increasing dominance of the

bourgeoisie and

and certainly with the industrial

revolution the economic hierarchy

that we now live with uh has emerged and

and has become part of our historical presence

presence

and you guys know these sectors you know

there's the private sector the public

sector and the social sector

and we talked some last time about the

ways in which they overlap

about the ways in which they can work

together about the opportunity for

for creative alliances and

collaborations public

private partnerships are an example of that

that

but if we take a quick look at the

economic hierarchy we'll get some

insight into the

language that fills our public discourse

and the

way in which we approach issues

and wonder what sector does that belong to

is that a private sector problem or a

public sector problem

those are questions that wouldn't arise

under a different

um you know social organization

and so having the the anthropologists

point of view

on our own culture reminds us that those

constraints that

we take for granted as you know brick

walls that we bump into

really are human inventions um and the

real question is

um what are the purposes that they serve

and are those the purposes that

they ought to serve so there's a lot of

value questions there

but anyway the private sector clearly

they undertake

private action for a private game to enrich

enrich

um shareholders there's a

famous book called rich dad poor dad

and it's about the difference between how

how

the wealthy raised their kids and how

um the the working population raised

their kids

and you know if you're wealthy

you try to get your kids to understand that

that

wages salary working for money is not

the way to get rich

instead you want to build wealth you

want to own stuff

you want to have shares you want to have

stock you want to have

ownership you want a stake in activities that

that

will pay you from the work of others and that

that

getting a job that's well paying good

for you that's a good thing

but at the same time to build wealth

means to build capital

to accumulate capital to own

capital to control it and not necessarily

necessarily

you know to to have a successful uh

job whereas if you're the kid of a

working class

family it's all about you know getting a job

job

being reliable being loyal doing a good

work taking pride in what you do

the the values that um a

working class family tries to

provide to to its kids are

from a money standpoint different from

the values that

the the elite um try to install in their kits

kits

and so um sometimes entrepreneurship

is all about that sometimes um

you hear an entrepreneur say things like

i don't want to work for anybody else

i want to work for me now sometimes they're

they're

um they got a fantastical idea

as to what that means um i often respond

and go

yeah i get it man that's real freedom

you can pick whatever 80 hours every

week you work

you don't have to work the the 40 hours

for the man

you don't have to put in your time and

go home and do something else

you just need to devote yourself you know

know

80 90 100 to what you want to do but it's

it's

there's a lot of work involved so being

your own boss

uh isn't necessarily um you know

the image of uh being able to

do what you want in fact it's quite the

opposite and also it's a mistake too

because um uh of the role of capital

um if you're an entrepreneur and you

want to be your own boss

the minute you take capital the minute

you get financing for what you do

you got bosses um the

um suppliers of capital

um are the ones that really are your bosses

bosses

and can fire you um and take away your

your uh can't take away your stock in

the company

um but can certainly take away your your

role in it um i've had many

conversations with ceos

where they were the founders

and the investors came to the conclusion

that they were no longer the right

person to take this company to its next level

level

that they were great as founders they

were great as inventors

way to go you you grew your company this far

far

um but it's time to pass on

uh control um to somebody else um

and that's a hard conversation to have

with an entrepreneur

whose business is their baby and that

they were growing on their own

but at any rate the private sector

is private action for a private game and the

the

private gain is all about who owns it

it's all about shareholders it's all about

about

um the folks who um

have bought or earned a stake in your company

company

the public sector these days

is is being emptied right i mean they're

more and more

public functions are being privatized

the current debate in the news about the

future of the post office

um a venerable historical institution

that um you know meant a lot

and provided a lot in our history is um

you know on the block um could be privatized

privatized

highways now the transportation system

um many of them have turned into

private hands and there's of course powerful

powerful

move from the public sector

to the private sector what used to be

and though in that movement thinks of

itself as

selling that public good in order for

them to achieve private gain

well those are dynamics and some of the

issues of our times

the social sector is the hybrid

the social sector undertakes private action

action

for public good the social sector

tries to fill in the gaps um if there's

something needed for the public good

and there is no effective government

program that's that's addressing that

for whatever reason whether it's you

know political or economic

or whatever and there's not enough money

there to to provide the profit motive

for a private enterprise to enter and

try to you know pick up that slack and

do what needs to be done

then the social sector

often steps up and says let's organize ourselves

ourselves

and create this social value let's try to

solve this problem together nobody else

is doing it

and it needs to be done and here

we often focus

on the mission side of of the social

sector for sure

and so we should our role is to remind us

that without money there is no mission

got to throw that in there

alan proctor wrote a book called

mission and money so he knows this stuff

but at any rate um social sector

are private actions social sector are

individuals and

and entities and communities organizing themselves

themselves

into non-profits in order to try to create

create

that public or social value but they are

private actions

they're not um you know government

actions they're not

public actions and it's important to

again put this in historical perspective the

the

um social sector emerged

in uh western civilization uh

as a part of um actually there were two

independent paths that all came together

often related to each other and overlapping

overlapping

and um primarily it was communities of faith

faith

it was um religiosity it was

um the people who saw

in their personal lives um

and in their obligations you know sort

of related back to the

medieval world where where the

where those were the forces that

organized him and blessed everything and

was the source of of authority behind it all

all

um well it continues to exert an

influence on people

and education and healthcare in particular

particular

were two areas where communities of faith

faith

really put their resources behind it to

get it done

and the other parallel path

for the emergence of the social sector

were the robber barons

was the concentration of wealth

that the industrial revolution and the

private action for private gain um

brought about

um the wealthy got wealthier there was

an accumulation of capital um

wealth became outrageously

um uh uh under

the control of a single family

a rockefeller but the the names of our major

major

national foundations derive their corpus their

their

investment money from the wealth created

during the industrial revolution and post-industrial

post-industrial

revolution you got the gates foundation

being a

major major part of the the social sector

sector

and it too is a giving back on the part of

folks who who gained wealth from the system

system

and perhaps their motivations for doing so

might be religious might also be

um you know evoke ideas of those commons again

again

um you know the world that you guys

created enabled me to be successful

i need to contribute back my share

to the world that made me successful and

so i am

you know um contributing to the commons

and and building our our social life together

together

using the wealth that i accumulated uh

through private gain well anyway those

two different

economic and religious hierarchies

are different ways of organizing

our our social life together and the

private public social are the key

sectors of of the current time

that the private sector is designed

to respond to human needs and desires where

where

you know there's a free marketplace

where you can charge a price and get

paid for doing it

and the social sector addresses human

needs and desires

that aren't served by those free market enterprises

enterprises

fills gaps by creating and delivering

social value

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YouTube Transcript:
Class 2 Part 1 Historical Development of the Social Sector