Wondering what happened to contributism? The short story is, we decided to go local. Last summer, shortly after we shifted our efforts from the pure writing project that was The Contributist Reader into something more community-oriented (and launched contributism.org and hosted a few events), a few of the writers here all serendipitously found ourselves moving to the Bay Area at roughly the same time. We took this as a sign and opportunity to engage on a more personal scale. Could we build community more effectively by engaging with our real life neighbors rather than connecting solely over the internet? In any case, wouldn’t it be more contributist that way?

Since then, we’ve met regularly locally, and spent some time thinking about how we want to engage with our community, and the world around us. We’ve refined our ideas a bit, and thought carefully about our messaging. Ultimately, we decided we wanted to start two initiatives: the Contributist Pamphlet Series, and Contributist Meetups.

The Contributist Pamphlet Series

As we noted in our intro series, contributism can be hard to describe, because, like capitalism, it encompasses a lot of interconnected things. It’s a descriptive lens that explains the ways people and societies operate, but also a prescriptive lens that advocates for new ways they should operate. It’s in tension with capitalism in some ways, but it’s not exactly opposed to it; in fact, some of us have come to describe it as a more efficient capitalism — it incentivizes productivity in much of the same ways, but it structurally cuts out the hoarders at the top.

Anyway, we’ve found that, instead of trying to explain the whole thing at once, it’s most effective to just tell one piece of the story at a time, through parable, essay, and illustration. So we’re writing pamphlets – little zine-sized booklets that each capture just one aspect of contributism, in about 10-15 pages.

We aim to write a couple dozen of these over the next year or so, in sets of three or four, each organized around a specific topic area or target audience. We’ve started with a three-pamphlet series called Contributism for Everyone. We’ve begun distributing them for free around Stanford’s campus and in Oakland.

On the back of each pamphlet is a QR code explaining how to find more pamphlets. The best way to do so is through a pamphlet swap at a local contributist meetup.

The Contributist Meetups

The other initiative we’ve started here in the Bay Area is a spin on community organizing called contributist meetups. These are public community events, in which we serve our community in some FARE (free, active, relational, and effective) way. This month, we have two events planned: we’ll be going fruit picking on Stanford’s campus and donating the produce to a local food pantry, and joining the Trash Falcons for a trash cleanup at Lake Merritt in Oakland.

After we serve, we’ll do a pamphlet swap, where you’ll give your pamphlet to someone else (if you have one) and get a new one to read. The purpose of every event is to build community while engaging in some form of giving — the ultimate humanizing act.

If you’re in the Bay Area and want to join either event, or a future one, find more details on our website: contributism.org/meetups. And if you want to be kept up-to-date on future contributist events and developments, join our Discord!

A few months ago, one of our authors wrote an article called “Giving can (and should) be easy,” which argued that each individual should give in the ways that come naturally to them. They wrote: “As individuals, we should feel more eager and less guilty about finding ways where it is ‘easy’ and natural for us to give, and as society, we should break down barriers that make it ‘hard’ to give.”

In this direction, we at the Contributist Reader have been considering what it would look like to challenge both ourselves and you, our readers, to begin to become intentional givers, in a way that both comes easily and is truly effective. Is there a simple way that we can change our behavior in our daily lives — seeing the world by a clearer lens, playing the game of life by a more generous, more winning strategy — that both brings more joy and meaning to our lives and makes our communities flourish?

The answer is yes — and it comes in our spending. There is a simple way to make your everyday spending a true act of giving, with all of the earned dignity, real impact, and joyful feeling that true giving brings: choosing to be a contributist consumer.

It can be hard to remember this, but spending is actually a form of giving. The reason this is hard to see is because, in our current stage of capitalism, most of our spending has become so deeply transactional (so emptied of its human and relational qualities) that it often feels much more like mutual taking.

But take a quick moment with me to reflect on what spending may have felt like in societies before our own. In a pre-industrial society, before most of your spending was mediated through large, unfeeling corporate entities, when you bought from the butcher or the tailor or the shoemaker, you knew exactly where your money was going. As you handed over a few shabby bills and/or assorted coins, you knew that they were going into the pockets of the workers who in turn gave you the product of their labor — the money would go to helping feed them and their families, or to procuring their own set of comfy shoes. These were members of your community, and when you gave your hard-earned money to them, you experienced the warm feelings associated with giving — with being a contributing member of a rich and complex community.

In today’s society, we don’t get to experience these feelings very often when we spend. The problem is not that our money doesn’t ever go to our community members; in fact, a large portion of our modern spending still does go to helping our community. Whenever you dine out, or buy groceries, or really, shop in-person anywhere, some of the money you spend goes to the employees you interact with, who are members of your community.

The problem is that we have become accustomed to the understanding that only a small portion of the money we spend goes to helping these workers. The bulk of it goes into the unfeeling corporate entity, and exits out the back to its wealthy owners, who we neither know nor trust, and who we vaguely suspect may even be exploiting those very workers who we would like to happily support. In other words, we have become disillusioned and desensitized in our spending. We have trained ourselves, through the repetition of thousands upon thousands of these unhappy transactions, to become numb to the human feelings of spending entirely. It is telling that one of the reasons we feel good when we tip is that we know that at least that money is actually going to the workers. Remember, that’s the feeling we were once rewarded with simply by making the actual purchase.

Although this picture of modern spending is pretty depressing, it also reveals an opportunity. If we can find a way to ensure that our spending really does go to helping the people of our community, then not only do we make our spending an effective act of giving to our communities (and an effective corrective to the growing problems of wealth inequality and oligarchy), we can also re-sensitize ourselves — we can begin to capture again the warm feeling of giving with every dollar we spend.

This is both the theory and the promise behind contributist consumption. Your spending can become again an act of giving, a simple and direct way of being a contributing member of your rich and complex community. In order for this to be the case, you simply have to be confident that you are spending at businesses that are themselves contributist. This just means that they are contributing positively to their communities, and are supporting their employees well. (Our ongoing “Reclaiming Business” series gets into some detail about what makes organizations contributist, and why that makes the difference between them having a long-term positive or a long-term negative impact on their communities.)

This is simpler than it sounds. To make it easy to determine whether a business is contributist, we’ve developed something that we call the Community Stewardship Test, which is a simple, three-question measure that you can use to evaluate whether a business is contributist in a few seconds, or at most a few minutes. Here’s the test:

If a business meets two of the test’s three measures, you can consider it partially contributist, and if it meets all three, you can consider it fully contributist.

We don’t recommend that you attempt to make all of your purchases at contributist businesses. Instead, we recommend that you make an intentional commitment to shift some of your spending to partially or fully contributist businesses. With every intentional act of spending at a business that you know meets these measures, you reclaim your spending as an act of giving — both becoming a contributist and reaping, alongside your community, the rewards.

We’ve landed on three recommended tiers of commitment, ranging from super-easy to super-committed, which we describe on the Contributist Consumption page of our new website. (We’re also working on a directory of local contributist businesses!) If you’re interested in what it might be like to be able to spend joyfully — and with a clear conscience — go check it out!

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You may have noticed that there hasn’t been a new article on the Reader since February. The reason isn’t that we’ve abandoned contributism — in fact, it’s exactly the opposite.

If anything has become clear in the last few months, it is that we are in urgent need of exactly the sorts of things that contributism aims to bring to society: dignity and belonging for all individuals; culture and policy built on a framework that rewards givers rather than takers; strong, robust communities held together by mutual care and responsibility; an economy aligned to the needs of society rather than a society held captive by the needs of its most powerful economic actors.

As our small community has grown — and as the state of American society and politics has become ever more precarious — we’ve realized that it’s time to move beyond simply writing and reading about these sensible, hopeful ideals. If we truly want them to come to fruition, we have to begin to make them our reality.

So, we’ve been hard at work building out the next phase of the contributist movement, and we’re ready for you to come start building it with us.

You can find out all about our movement at our new online home: contributism.org. There you can read (among other things) our core ideas, our positions on policy + politics, our declaration, what it means to be a contributist, and most importantly: how you can get involved.

If you’ve been struggling to explain contributism to your friends, we now recommend you send them there instead of here; we hope it gives a much more direct and concise picture than what the Reader’s “online journal” format can provide. (Though we still recommend the intro series for those who want an in-depth understanding of contributism).

And if you want to get involved, come join us at our first biweekly online contributist meetup! (Or, if you live in San Diego or Detroit, join us at one of our in-person local contributist meetups, which will be starting in May.)

Of course, we’ll keep writing and publishing articles here at The Contributist Reader — there’s a lot more to be said about contributism, and this remains the best place to say it. But the Reader is no longer the center of contributism, because the new (and true) center of contributism is not online at all. It’s in our communities and our actions; it’s out there in the real world.

— Pablo Parabola

I was raised in the evangelical church, and something that my parents and their church stressed was the need to care for others, that one of the most important virtues was to care for the poor as Jesus did.

So I became an aid worker, first working for a small nonprofit overseas, and then working for the US government. I worked with farmers struggling to grow enough crops to keep their children fed and in school, and doctors taking care of the dying with limited equipment, and volunteers trying to make sure sick newborns were taken care of. And the whole time, though I left evangelicalism, I carried with me the words of Christ:

‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

(Matthew 25:37-40 NIV)

About a month ago, one of the first actions of the new US administration was to try and completely abolish my agency. One Monday morning, we thought we could work as usual, and by Monday afternoon, we were prepared to be gone tomorrow. They left tens of thousands of Americans and international workers without jobs. They abandoned thousands of people mid-clinical trials, leaving them with experimental devices and drugs in their bodies. They have likely left millions of people without food, vaccines, and lifesaving medicines.

They seemed to think it was funny.

There has been nothing in my life that has made me understand the Old Testament so much as the past month. The Bible verse I have repeated to myself over and over again — like Job, like King David — is “why do the wicked prosper”?

How long, O Lord?

Good and reasonable people can disagree on the size of the government, amounts of foreign aid, levels of immigration, and so on. You can’t work effectively in foreign aid without making common cause with people very different from you, who have beliefs that you deeply disagree with. I have worked to end poverty and disease with many, many men who think that I am lesser because I am a woman, because you cannot work to end poverty in this world without such allies, and because I do not want to make the same mistake as them.

Good and reasonable people do not delight in traumatizing other humans, do not make memes of suffering, do not call good evil and evil good. It’s usually easy for me to see the humanity in people, so congratulations to them, I guess, for so delighting in evil that it eclipses their souls. I said a prayer for their souls but I wondered if it was more for my own.

I hold out hope, though, that most of my countrymen are not evildoers, that they did not know what they voted for.

I hold out hope that if they saw a starving child in Sudan they would give him something to eat, if they saw a thirsty woman on the side of the road in India they would give her something to drink, if they saw a man sick with malaria or HIV they would give him medicine and look after him.

I hold out hope that in the world closer to theirs, that they hold sympathy for the veterans who have been cruelly and illegally fired after work hours, for hard-working people who have been cheated and lied to, for the fathers who can no longer afford healthcare for their families.

There is still time.

Principle 2: Maximizing Value Rather Than Profit

What does a contributist business look like in action?

Consider the below excerpt from a 2005 New York Times article describing Costco’s business strategy under its then-CEO Jim Sinegal:

Combining high quality with stunningly low prices, [Costco’s private-label dress shirts] epitomize why some retail analysts say Mr. Sinegal just might be America's shrewdest merchant since Sam Walton.

But not everyone is happy with Costco's business strategy. Some Wall Street analysts assert that Mr. Sinegal is overly generous not only to Costco's customers but to its workers as well.

Costco's average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Sam's Club. And Costco's health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish. One analyst, Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco "it's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder."

Mr. Sinegal begs to differ. He rejects Wall Street's assumption that to succeed in discount retailing, companies must pay poorly and skimp on benefits, or must ratchet up prices to meet Wall Street's profit demands.

Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, he said. And Costco's customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like that low prices do not come at the workers' expense. "This is not altruistic," he said. "This is good business."

I recommend reading the full NYT article, which details how Costco continues to outperform its more profit-centric competitors, and how Wall Street analysts continue to oppose its generous strategy despite the evidence. Although Sinegal, who started his career as a grocery bagger, argues persuasively that his business model is more sustainable in the long run, you can tell that what truly motivates him is providing value to his customers and caring for his employees (his dual responsibility).

In other words, the difference between Sinegal and his competitors and critics is not simply about business savvy, or shrewdness. (And he’s certainly not a careless spender — the article describes his cutthroat negotiations with suppliers, and his unwillingness to overcompensate executives.) The true source of controversy here is his business’s contributist orientation.

But wait, you might be thinking. You can’t call Jim Sinegal a contributist! He’s almost certainly never even heard that word. Isn’t he basically just a different kind of capitalist?

He certainly might describe himself that way. But I would argue that one of the key first steps to developing better ideas is to start using more precise language. And Costco’s business strategy is strikingly different from its competitors; I think this difference is something worth naming.

So, humor me. For the sake of this discussion, let’s use a somewhat more precise definition of capitalist: a person who operates according to the principles of capitalism, chief among which is the profit motive. A contributist is someone who instead operates according to the principles of contributism, chief among which is the right to give — to participate in society by contributing to it.

In practical terms, this means that the capitalist business aims to maximize the profit that they can sustainably extract, while the contributist business aims to maximize the value that they can sustainably provide. As Costco’s example shows (and as I’ll get into more detail on below), this means that contributist businesses tend towards increased quality and lowered prices as compared to their capitalist competitors.

To be perfectly clear, when I say the capitalist does this or the contributist wants that, I’m talking about the perfect capitalist and the perfect contributist. In messy reality, no one is a pure capitalist and no one is a pure contributist. But we are capitalists insofar as we choose to let the concerns of capitalism guide our behavior. And we are contributists insofar as we choose to be guided by the concerns of contributism.

By my understanding, most of our business leaders actually fall somewhere in the middle — encouraged, perhaps, by their communities and their consciences to be contributists, but ultimately guided by the current prevailing ideologies and corporate structures to become capitalists.

Also, I’m focusing here on primary motives. Of course the capitalist wants to create a good product, but this goal is secondary to their goal of achieving profit. When improving their product is helpful for increasing profit, as it often is, the capitalist will improve the product. But when the two goals are in conflict, they will always choose a better profit over a better product. The contributist, on the other hand, will strive to make a profit when it helps them to provide a better product. But when the two goals are in conflict, the contributist will choose a better product over a better profit.

My goal in this article is to show you why I think the contributist business’s orientation is better than the capitalist one, both holistically and economically. Because while maximizing profit may appear to be in the best interest of the business, it only looks that way from a very short-sighted perspective.

What Is a Good Business?

According to capitalist economists, a good business is one which is able to maintain low production costs while maintaining high consumer prices. The difference between these two amounts is called the margin, and it is what the business takes as its profit. Capitalist businesses will tend to increase their prices to the point of maximum profit — that is, the highest price point at which consumers will still buy the product. In a capitalist economy, prices will settle here, having reached what is called an equilibrium — each party having maximized the value they can extract from the other.

But not all businesses are capitalists, nor are all economists. Alongside the economists who designed the capitalist models that have now become normative (John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, etc.), there have always been those who saw deep inefficiencies within capitalism. Henry George, whose book Progress and Poverty was reportedly more popular than Shakespeare in the early 20th century, coined the term economic rent to refer to the practice of charging more for a good or service than is warranted based on its cost of production. He saw this practice as the primary cause of poverty in developed societies, and famously argued that a tax that effectively recaptured economic rent (specifically from land-owners) and redistributed it across society would be sufficient to eradicate poverty entirely.

The contributist is more Henry George than Milton Friedman — though reasonable contributists might disagree on the proper role of taxation. In any case, from the contributist perspective, maximizing margin is not a hallmark of a good business. Instead, the contributist sees maximizing value as the best business strategy.

Remember the NYT excerpt from the beginning of this article? Here’s another excerpt from the same article, explaining Costco’s approach to profit margins:

He also dismisses calls to increase Costco's product markups. Mr. Sinegal, who has been in the retailing business for more than a half-century, said that heeding Wall Street's advice to raise some prices would bring Costco's downfall.

"When I started, Sears, Roebuck was the Costco of the country, but they allowed someone else to come in under them," he said. "We don't want to be one of the casualties. We don't want to turn around and say, 'We got so fancy we've raised our prices,' and all of a sudden a new competitor comes in and beats our prices."

At Costco, one of Mr. Sinegal's cardinal rules is that no branded item can be marked up by more than 14 percent, and no private-label item by more than 15 percent. In contrast, supermarkets generally mark up merchandise by 25 percent, and department stores by 50 percent or more.

How is it possible that this strategy works for Costco? Because contributist businesses see business strategy differently. Although extracting maximum value from the consumer might increase the capital controlled by the business in the short-term, the contributist takes a more expansive view, and sees that this isn’t necessarily the best outcome for anyone involved, holistically or economically.

Maximizing Profit Hurts the Human

First, let’s look beyond economics. The profit maximization strategy may look good when we maintain a purely economic lens, but if we take a more holistic perspective, it becomes easy to see that seeking to maximize margin is not an optimal way of being for the business leader.

Giving is the act of providing value to another that might otherwise be kept for oneself. This act humanizes us and provides us with dignity. In an act of giving, the giver and the receiver see one another, and thereby enter into a true human relation; the giver both becomes and feels valued by their community. For business leaders, these benefits only multiply as a business scales — a business leader whose business provides value to a large swath of society becomes a person of immense dignity.

But when a business leader’s goal is to set the price of their goods or services at the highest point that people will pay, they forfeit all of these benefits. They are no longer giving, because they refuse to provide any value to the consumer without full compensation. And they are perhaps even taking, if they manage to get the consumer to pay more than the product is credibly worth. What could have been an act of giving instead becomes an act of unfeeling transaction at best, or cold exploitation at worst, from which both parties leave hardened, their relation and their dignity unimproved, and perhaps worsened. No one sees the other in these transactions, because both parties are too busy being oriented towards themselves. The result is that, regardless of the economic picture, the society itself is worse off, each transaction ever-so-slightly loosening the social bonds that hold it together.1

Economic welfare is not equivalent to social welfare. A society which teaches itself capitalism — which insists that it is economically necessary to maximize what we can take rather than what we can give — ultimately leads itself to social disarray, regardless of the economic robustness of the capitalist position.

Maximizing Profit Hurts the Economy

That said, it is still worth emphasizing that the capitalist position is not economically robust. The problem with profit maximization extends beyond our dignity and humanity — it is also an economically suboptimal business strategy. By capturing as much excess value as possible, the capitalist business actively limits the generative economic potential of its own capital.

To understand this, let’s put on, for a moment, a “purely economic” lens — putting aside all the talk of dignity, holistic welfare, and social good — and delve a bit further into the boring stuff: economic theory.

From a purely economic perspective, the core problem with the capitalist argument is that it under-appreciates the consumer’s role in economic markets. In reality, the consumer is just as important to economic markets as the producer. By choosing how and where to spend their money, the consumer guides businesses to make products that better meet their needs.

In other words, the consumer’s buying power is what creates economic competition. It is what incentivizes businesses to create better products — so that the consumer will choose to spend money on their products rather than those of their competitors.

Because the consumer’s buying power is capital, it is fungible — this means that it can be used to buy a wide variety of different types of goods and services that a person might need or want. When consumers have a lot of buying power, they spread that buying power all across the economy — increasing competition in groceries, car manufacturing, housing, movie-making, pottery, video game development, and so on and so forth. As a diversity of consumers employ their buying power across the economy, every industry gets a small slice of this benefit, and the whole of the economy improves, making the quality of goods increase over time. Everyone in the economy, even the business owners, benefits from this wholesale economic improvement.

But the inverse is also true. When consumers have less buying power, they do less to generate economic improvement. When consumers can’t afford much more than their basic needs (housing, groceries, transportation, etc.), they become less quality-conscious and more price-conscious — rather than seeking the best product, they begin to seek the lowest price. This changes the incentives for businesses, as they find that the penny-pinching consumer actually prefers a worse product if they can get it for dirt cheap. So, output remains high, but the quality of goods and services decreases over time. And just as the benefit of strong consumer buying power is spread across every industry, so is the impact of weak consumer buying power. Everyone in the economy, even the business owners, lives in a society that is increasingly populated with worse stuff.

Here’s where we begin to see the problem with the profit maximization strategy. A business’s profit doesn’t come from nowhere — it comes directly from the consumer.2 The economic relationship between the business and the consumer is (again, from a restricted economic viewpoint) zero-sum. Every dollar above cost that the business takes from the consumer (economic rent) is one less dollar of buying power that the consumer is left with. That is, it is one less dollar leading to the overall economic improvement of society.

At this point, anyone who has ever run a business will likely have a host of concerns with this line of thinking, and may already be preparing counter-arguments: Don’t businesses need to make a profit to improve their product and to outperform their competitors? Don’t business leaders need to make a profit in order to be incentivized to keep innovating? Aren’t business owners also consumers whose buying power can stimulate the economy? Don’t businesses re-invest some of their earnings back into the economy by paying their employees?

The contributist answer to all of these questions is: actually, yes!

The difference between the contributist business and the capitalist business is not that the capitalist seeks to make a profit and the contributist avoids making one. Rather, what distinguishes the contributist business leader is that they are oriented towards giving. When they do seek a profit, they do it in service of their goal of providing further value with the resources they take. This means that a contributist business leader aims not to take a single dollar from a consumer except that they are confident that the dollar will go to good use.

Note that Jim Sinegal didn’t set Costco’s margins to zero. He set them to 14 to 15% — a number significantly lower than his competitors, but presumably, the number that he believed best accounted for all of the questions above.

This is an entirely different orientation than the capitalist’s orientation, which seeks to maximize profits. The capitalist doesn’t ask the questions above — at least not in good faith. They’re not truly interested in performing a cost-benefit analysis about whether this or that amount of profit really provides the best value to society. Strategically, they’re working in the opposite direction — they’ll provide only as much value as will allow them to make the maximum profit.

The difference is that contributists enrich their communities, while capitalists accelerate their decay.

Maximizing Profit Hurts the Business

But still, isn’t it in the best economic interest of the capitalist’s business to seek to maximize profits, even if it is not in the best interest of society? Even if society is worse off overall, can’t the shrewd capitalist business leader extract enough benefit for herself and her company that she still comes out ahead?

This perspective is short-sighted for multiple reasons. First, we must remember that the economic lens is itself limited. Even when a business leader comes out ahead economically using the capitalist business model, they generally do so at the cost of their own dignity, and they usually find that they have sacrificed much of what they valued most along the way.

Second, the economic benefit of the capitalist business model is always precarious, because any effort to help oneself at the expense of society is inherently a product of short-term thinking. Despite their endless efforts at shoring up personal economic security, the capitalist can never truly insulate themselves from their detrimental impact on broader society. Economic gluttony ultimately catches up to all of us. Our global economic system has experienced multiple severe crashes due to the profit maximization model, and it will happen again. Meanwhile, humanity faces the existential crisis of climate change as a direct result of the capitalist business model, and instead of helping to solve this problem, the wealthiest capitalist businesses continue to lead us headlong into it by investing billions into technological cold wars with worrisome impacts on our climate. And lest our government regulate us into a better trajectory, these same billionaire capitalists are now “shrewdly” working to turn it into an oligarchy that can be expected to serve only their short-term interests, even to the long-term detriment of the survivability of their own planet.

Finally, profit maximization is simply less effective than value maximization, because it is less attractive to consumers. As Costco shows, contributist businesses can outperform capitalist competitors because consumers simply prefer to buy from businesses that provide them with great value while aligning with their values. At the time of that article’s publication twenty years ago, it was the fifth-largest retailer in the world — now it’s the third, while maintaining its strict limit on profit margins.

It is worth noting that Costco exists in as free a market as any of its competitors. There is no regulation forcing Costco to restrict its profit margin to 15%. It chooses to do this not because its freedom is restricted, but exactly the opposite: because its leaders realize that they have the freedom to do so.

Conclusion

So why, then, does it seem that the most successful businesses today are not the most contributist ones, but actually the ones that are the most ruthlessly capitalist, sacrificing the consumer’s interest whenever profit and product are in conflict? Fully explaining this phenomenon is beyond the scope of this article, but there are multiple reasons which are worth mentioning.

First, as discussed in our 800lb companies piece, our society has adopted a distorted view of what it means to be successful. Perhaps if we scrutinized our criteria a bit more, we would notice that many of the businesses we see as successful are actually in a state of constant crisis — plagued with mistrust and discord internally, and fighting tooth-and-nail to maintain their narrow competitive advantage externally — while many that we see as less successful are actually highly productive and secure.

Second, consider the role that education (both cultural and formal) plays in the development of new businesses. The most authoritative voices in our culture tend to assert that the capitalist mindset leads to the best overall economic growth and efficiency. But they usually assert this without having first seriously considered the alternative that contributism provides. There are no contributist business schools. (At least not yet!) If we teach our business leaders that the only way to succeed is to become capitalists, then we should not be surprised when the vast majority of them do, even if it isn’t true.

Finally, capitalist companies have long held control of government policy, giving themselves unfair advantages in markets in which they cannot naturally win. This is touched upon in The Capitalist’s Secret from our intro series, and even more effectively described by Katherina Pistor in The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality (and in this excellent podcast episode, for those who prefer to listen).

All of this has led us to the position we are now in. But the fact that capitalism dominates the business world now does not mean that this will always be the case. Societies do not simply develop into the best versions of themselves on their own; they become so when we choose to make them so. And since our business leaders are the social leaders of our society, they play a more critical role in its direction than we tend to acknowledge. To a large extent, the orientation of our business leaders becomes, over time, the orientation of our society. Let us hope that more of them choose to be oriented towards giving.

Enough theory — let’s discuss practice. What does it look like to run a contributist business rather than a capitalist one?

In many ways, it looks largely the same. The contributist is not looking to reinvent the wheel of business — they only want to change the direction in which the wheel is rolling. The general principles of entrepreneurship and business strategy do not change when we shift from a capitalist orientation to a contributist one; what changes is the ultimate impact our work has on the world around us. As we discussed in Part I of this series, the differences between the capitalist and contributist business mindsets are subtle, but highly consequential — they are what determines whether the role a business plays in its community and broader society is ultimately generative or extractive.

These differences stem from a difference in understanding in three areas: the business leader’s role, the business’s orientation, and the business’s decision-making (ownership) model. Businesses which take a contributist mindset in these three areas (as described below) are contributist businesses, whether or not they have ever heard of the term. By their very design, these businesses have a holistically-positive impact on society, and even some strategic and economic advantages over their capitalist competitors. A careful, discerning observer can recognize that these businesses are categorically different from those businesses which embody and perpetuate the worst tendencies of capitalism. To the contributist, these businesses are not enemies, but crucial partners and friends.

With this in mind, below are the three principles which, together, make up what you could call the contributist business model. Each is described in its own short article, and they will be published over the next few weeks. The first, published today, is The Dual Responsibility.

1. The Business Leader’s Role

2. The Business’s Orientation

3. The Business’s Decision-Making Model

There is no perfect contributist, as there is no perfect capitalist. In reality, our organizations are as complex as we are, and they shift between modes and motives constantly. But every business, and every business leader, has a story of themselves — a self-understanding of who they want to be and what they are pursuing. The contributist business leader is simply one for whom this story is contributist, and who is driven by the principles described above rather than their capitalist counterparts. This is true even when (as is true in most cases) the implementation details are constantly in flux.

By the same token, any organization which follows the contributist business model is a contributist organization in practice, even if its leaders have never used or heard the word “contributism.” I suspect that many organizations would look at these three principles and find them familiar, if not downright obvious. This is because contributism is not some complicated new frame that must be imposed on us, but something more inherent to us than capitalism, which can arise quite naturally in the absence of a dominant capitalist frame, or which can even arise as a healthy form of rebellion against capitalism.

The value of adopting new language like contributism is that it provides clarity and precision for those things which are already in our minds, but are muddled and suppressed, and it allows us to better evaluate our own decisions, actions, and motivations, as well as those of others.

Principle 1: The Dual Responsibility

A contributist business leader understands that their primary responsibility is not to endlessly increase their own wealth or that of their shareholders, but to steward their business’s contribution to its community. More specifically, this core responsibility can be understood as having two parts:

1) Effectively managing their business’s unique contribution to society.

2) Enabling their employees to participate in that contribution (to give).

They, of course, also care about their own wealth and that of their shareholders. But they recognize that economic well-being is not equivalent to holistic well-being, and they know that doing something useful for their community is what will ultimately generate the greatest benefit for everyone involved.

The capitalist, on the contrary, sees this responsibility to provide a valuable product and care for employees as secondary to the responsibility to generate wealth for themself and their shareholders.

To be clear, the capitalist mindset still allows capitalists to do some good, because in many cases, the goals of contributing to society and increasing shareholder wealth are aligned. But when these things come into conflict, the capitalist is oriented more towards the extraction of wealth than the generation of value — they will usually choose to cut corners in their pursuit of their business’s mission or their responsibility to their employees before they will abandon an opportunity to increase their profits.

The contributist business leader sees this as backwards. Their goal is to give something of value to society, not to extract value from it.

Managing the business

Consider, for example, when Facebook’s internal researchers found that their product’s algorithm was polarizing its users, pushing them away from agreement and towards heightened division and extremism. This ran directly against the business’s unique purpose, as represented in their mission: to "give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together." The researchers warned that, if allowed to continue, this problem would only get worse and worse over time. But on the other hand, they also found that the divisive content increased engagement, which in turn brought in more advertiser dollars, and shareholder wealth.

If Facebook’s leaders were contributists, they would have immediately directed their engineers to find a way to solve this algorithmic problem. Regardless of the impact on shareholder wealth, they would be opposed to offering a product that did the exact opposite of what it was intended to do — harming society rather than contributing to it. Failing to accomplish the business’s mission would mean failing to effectively steward their business’s contribution to society, and thus failing their role as business leaders.

But Facebook’s leaders were not contributists. They were capitalists. This means that they understood their primary responsibility to be the generation of shareholder wealth. When that responsibility came into conflict with the business’s effectiveness, their capitalist mindset led them to choose profit over effectiveness. Facebook’s leaders chose to bury the findings, and to leave the algorithm as it was.

When a business chooses profit over mission, as capitalist businesses often do, a contributist would say that that business has become less effective, not more.

Giving employees “the right to give”

Equally important to the contributist business leader is their responsibility to ensure that the humans under their direction can spend their days participating in joyful, dignifying, meaningful, and productive work.

With respect to their employees, the contributist business leader is operating on the second level of social involvement — they are not only concerned with their own right to give, but with providing that right to others as well. This is the special role of the employer, and it is the main reason why business leaders are some of the most important members of society. When they are effective, they give the rest of us the opportunity to find our place — to have a role to play in the continued thriving of our communities.

This means more than simply providing employees with a set of responsibilities and a salary.

In order to be truly enabled to give, we must not just have the opportunity to give, but also the time, resources, and energy to do so. Additionally, our work environment must also be one that we can gladly participate in — we must not feel that we are exploited or coerced, or else we are not giving; we are being taken from.

The contributist business leader understands the complexity of this responsibility to their employees, and works to ensure that their employees’ needs are met (financial and otherwise), so that they are able to give freely to the business, rather than being exploited by it.

This has many important consequences for employee well-being. For example, while a capitalist business leader might happily lay off an employee if it makes their business more lean or efficient, the contributist business leader understands that this is ultimately a failure to uphold their core responsibility. Even though it may help them meet one side of the dual responsibility (ensuring the effectiveness of their business’s contribution), it comes at the direct expense of the other (enabling their employees to participate in that contribution).

The contributist employer would instead do all that they could to protect the employee’s right to give (including attempts at reskilling or upskilling) before laying them off. And if they find that there is truly nothing that can be done to ensure that a current employee is able to give effectively to the organization, they would at least do what they could to help the employee find a new role elsewhere.

Even what the outcomes are ultimately the same — sometimes the market is unforgiving, and people simply must be laid off — this difference in the employer’s motivation has a profound impact on the experience of the employee. Capitalism has become so deeply entrenched in our society that some of us have come to believe that its cold and antagonistic employer/employee relationship is a necessary part of business. It is neither necessary nor natural. Contributism restores the dynamic between the employer and the employee from one between economic actors to one between humans.

For more on this dynamic, read Olivia’s Remorse, the second part of the short story series The Contributist and the Capitalist, which traces the diverging trajectories of a successful contributist business and a successful capitalist one.

This first principle — the dual responsibility — recasts “business success” from the brutal and unfeeling profit motive that is encouraged by capitalism, to something more human. And although finding ways to satisfy both responsibilities isn’t always simple, the contributist business leader strives to try, because this effort is precisely what makes their work meaningful.

The business leader sits in a complicated position in contemporary American society. On one hand, running a successful business is seen as one of the most prestigious and valuable things an American can do. The leaders of small businesses are often praised for their industriousness and entrepreneurial spirit, and the leaders of our largest businesses have long been idolized by many as the modern heroes of society.

But on the other hand, to many of those within the growing share of our society that is critical of capitalism, business leaders are seen as the embodiment of its anti-social impact (in fact, the term “capitalists” is often used colloquially to refer to business leaders) and therefore as the ultimate enemies of societal good.

Which side is right? Well, in a way, both are. As is almost always the case in disagreement, each side recognizes a core truth, but they diverge in their conclusions because of differences in information and perspective.

The reality is that business leaders are best understood as social organizers who play a critical and necessary role in stewarding the spaces, resources, and efforts of our society. But the prevailing guidance of modern capitalism has taught many of them to perform that role badly. By taking on a contributist lens, we can understand what business leadership should look like, what has gone wrong, and exactly how we can do better.

The True Role of a Business Leader

Businesses are at the core of a community’s ability to meet the needs (physical, social, emotional, spiritual, etc.) of its members. I use the term business expansively here — roughly, I am referring to an organization made up of a group of people who spend the majority of their time working towards some productive action. Commonly, people use the term business to refer specifically to for-profit organizations, while excluding non-profit and public (state-run) organizations. That distinction is helpful in some contexts, but is not so helpful when we are taking a contributist view from above, making an attempt to consider the ultimate value and purpose of things, rather than thinking from a capital-first lens. Whether a business’s owners keep most of its profits or reinvest them in the business, or whether a business is affiliated with the government — these are important considerations, but they are secondary to the core idea of business: a group of people organized towards productive action. This is why individuals can move between the public, private, and non-profit sectors, and although the cultures may differ, the basic sense of their role remains the same — they “go to work” every day; they have an “employer”; their organization has a mission, values, and objectives; they get paid at regular intervals for their labor; and so on.

Businesses are the means through which we collectively create much of what is good in society. They create and maintain the shared spaces where we come together and fill our lives with meaning — our coffee shops, our restaurants, our dance studios, our wedding venues, our places of worship. They develop and manage the infrastructure that allows us to function and connect — our water and sewage systems, our roads and airports, our electricity, our internet. They even enable many parts of our lives that we consider deeply personal — they provide the materials for our artistic pursuits; they print the books we love to read and they distribute the music we love to listen to; they build our homes; they provide us with medicines when we are ill and the personal care products that keep us well. Through the effective organization and division of labor, businesses enable us to thrive in ways that we as individuals would never be able to on our own.

The role of a business leader is to organize and direct a group of people to work together to provide one of these societal contributions. This is why business leaders are at the core of society, and why they are best understood as social organizers. If we take a bird's eye view — setting aside, for a moment, the complex details of contracts, capital, wages, etc. — what a business leader does is provide direction for the day-to-day lives of some of the humans in their community, giving them the resources they need to participate in the business’s contribution to society. A good business leader is one who performs this role exceptionally — who enables the humans under their direction to spend their days participating in joyful, dignifying, meaningful, and productive work, and whose business’s output meaningfully improves society beyond what those individuals could have done on their own.

This is all very simple — you might even call it common sense. Unfortunately, one of the most consequential problems with our capitalist lens is that it tends to lead us away from our common sense, driving us to forget simple realities in favor of distortions that come in the guise of rational economics. This is perhaps nowhere more true than it is in the case of the business leader. Rather than encouraging them to take seriously their position as social organizers — and its potential to help improve all of society — our capitalist milieu tends to encourage our business leaders to abdicate this responsibility, and to believe that the primary purpose of their position is instead to extract wealth for themselves and their investors.

This self-centered belief is not inherent to the business leader; it is taught to them. Consider that many, perhaps most, effective business leaders initially go into business or entrepreneurship not because they are selfish, but because they are enterprising and ambitious. They have a knack for directing labor to productive use — whether their own or that of others — and they are uniquely passionate about it. Often, so passionate that they are willing to pursue entrepreneurship at some personal risk, rejecting stable employment to devote themselves wholly to their ambitious vision. This makes them unlike most of us, who are more comfortable participating in good work that comes with some structure and direction than we are initiating and leading new ventures on our own.

In contributist terms, these passionate leaders, when successful, have found a way of giving to society that is, for them, free, active, valued, and effective. Because of this, their labor is accompanied by a natural reward: it provides them with dignity, meaning, and a place within their community. It is also generative (as all true acts of giving are): by effectively providing a service that meets a demand, they naturally improve the overall quality of their community.

In this way, the business leader’s natural orientation is towards contributism — the desire to provide value to their community through their unique and critical contribution (to give) — and this has positive externalities for the whole community.

But instead of appealing to this natural, sensible orientation, our society’s dominant capitalist lens counterproductively appeals instead to the business leader’s selfishness. It points them to the wealthiest business leaders (rather than the most fulfilled) as its exemplars of success. It encourages them towards decision-making frameworks that are aimed at multiplying numbers in their bank accounts, rather than ones that are aimed at allowing them to live the best lives and inhabit the best society. It warps their mindset, leading them to maximize capital returns to themselves and their fellow shareholders (read: gluttony and greed) rather than maximize their contribution to society (sustainability and health). In sum, it makes them short-sighted, leading them to forget both their responsibility to society, and their own dependence on it. This comes at the detriment of their own dignity and well-being, the dignity and well-being of their employees, and the positive impact they might have had on all of society.

The Problem Lies in the Orientation

What is important to understand is that the problem identified here is not the concept of business itself or even business leaders — both are critical to society. Business leaders are not the “enemies of societal good” naturally; they only become so if they choose to abdicate the core responsibilities of their role as business leaders — organizing people towards providing societal value — in order to instead focus on extracting capital from their communities.

But the problem is also not profitability in itself. Good labor is nearly always generative in some way, and when labor produces surplus resources, it is important that the laborer benefits along with the rest of society. Every laborer — even business leaders, whose labor is leadership, strategy, and organization — requires capital resources to live a good life, and it is only reasonable that they are allowed to source these resources from the fruits of their labor — otherwise their work would not be sustainable.

The problem is also not the for-profit sector. For-profit businesses can be good, non-profit organizations can be bad, and government organizations can be just as self-serving and detrimental to society as the worst for-profit businesses (as we in Trump’s America are currently finding out).

The true heart of the problem that so often makes capitalist business detrimental to society is motivational. The issue posed by capitalism has very little to do with what sort of work a capitalist business leader does — in fact, capitalism has generated an enormous amount of practical value to society in this regard, by helping us to better understand markets and better organize our labor. Instead, it has everything to do with why he or she does the work.

Is the business leader oriented towards organizing people to effectively provide value to their community, or are they oriented towards effectively extracting value from that community to enlarge their personal stockpile? Is the business leader oriented towards giving to society, or towards taking from it? This difference in orientation is the whole sum of the difference between contributism and capitalism. From this orientation flows everything else: business practices, ownership models, leadership styles, contracts and wages, etc. And because business leaders are the core social organizers of society, the overall orientation that a society’s business leaders take largely determines whether the society bends over time towards increasing the prosperity of its people, or towards ultimately dismantling itself.

The LA wildfires have brought climate disasters front of mind for many people in the US, and following from this, many are wondering how they might be able to live to contribute to a more sustainable future. As we consider how small we are in the wake of a devastating fire, it can be overwhelming to consider what we might do. Contributism gives us a framework to think about how to live as interconnected individuals in a society that has problems beyond what any of us individually can solve, but that we can all make a contribution to. As individuals, we should feel more eager and less guilty about finding ways where it is "easy" and natural for us to give, and as society, we should break down barriers that make it "hard" to give.

I am a vegetarian who takes public transit almost everywhere. Since both of these things are a bit unusual in the US, people who are very into climate or pollution reduction or animal ethics are often impressed by this; or when they find out, they immediately start apologizing for eating meat or driving a car.

However, I don’t make these decisions based on climate or any noble goal; I make them because they are actually what I prefer in life.

I am someone who does not like the taste of meat and does not like driving. I would legitimately rather eat falafel than gyros and wait for a bus over getting behind a wheel.

Being a train-taking vegetarian to me, to quote, “isn’t a bug, it’s a feature!” It also just happens to have the happy byproduct of being good for the climate.

In fact, I don’t really make all that many decisions based on giving back to the climate, although I am trying to make more. I’m writing this from a plane from the US West to East Coast – it’s estimated that me taking this trip alone would emit almost 1.5 times the carbon as a journey of equivalent distance in a car – the carbon footprint of my round-trip flight is roughly 1.4 metric tons of CO2 emissions. This suddenly makes me feel much less ethical. I take this trip multiple times a year. I also take long showers, don’t compost, and do many other things that are suboptimal for the climate and in which I should do better.

Vox’s Sigal Samuel, in “Should I go 100% flight-free for the climate?”, addresses just this in terms of balancing different ethical concerns: “Yes, protecting our planet is a crucial value. So is, say, nurturing relationships with beloved family members and friends who live abroad. Or developing a career. Or learning about other cultures. Or making art. So, even though minimizing how much we fly is a virtuous thing to do, some thinkers would caution you against treating that as the only relevant value.”

For most people in the US, this complexity goes beyond philosophical commitments: under a capitalist system, they must own cars to make money to survive.

Having grown up in the Northeast U.S. a 10 minute walk from a train, I experienced a bit of this while trying to take public transit in Northern California. To get to my office in the city center from one location, I had to take an infrequent bus to an infrequent subway; the entire journey took about two hours, when it would’ve been one hour by car. From a second location, I had to walk 300 meters along the shoulder of a highway to a bus stop to catch a bus that came once every hour. As I sat on an eerily empty subway for hours and waited in the middle of nowhere for an infrequent bus, it was no mystery to me why most Americans prefer cars.

I am sometimes too hard on myself, tending to take the stance that virtue only really counts if it’s hard for you. It’s not really virtuous, I think sometimes, for me to be a vegetarian or to avoid driving if it’s easy — if that’s actually the state of being I enjoy more. However, it’s undeniable that eating lots of meat or taking lots of planes has negative effects on our climate. We are now witnessing this most directly in the unpredictable weather patterns that are currently affecting people in LA, but we should remember that the devastation is global — fires, floods, typhoons, and hurricanes are all becoming more intense, and their global impact falls primarily on people who never take planes and who do not have the savings to cover their devastating losses.

So despite my misgivings, easy giving still matters, because all giving matters. And the types of giving that come naturally to us as individuals have some advantages over those that don’t:

• Because they are easy, we are more likely to engage in them — and to keep doing them — than harder forms of giving, so they may end up resulting in more practical value.

• They often feel natural to us because they are more in line with our other important ethical commitments. Harder forms of giving are often hard because they are costly to our other values, like those quoted from Samuel above.

• Giving that comes natural to us is more contributist, because it is more free. We are better givers when we give freely, rather than out of coercion. And if we get into the practice of giving freely — where it comes naturally to our unique selves — rather than giving out of guilt — only giving when it's "hard" — we set ourselves up for joy and dignity, rather than generosity-burnout and its accompanying shame.

• Finally, by giving where it is easy, we train ourselves to live in an orientation of giving, which makes us better prepared to give in more difficult circumstances as well.

The fact that some forms of giving feel easy does not mean that they are necessarily worse. Although giving must be oriented towards the other — it cannot be primarily about personal benefit — it also can, and should, be joyful. So how can we make living a different lifestyle to benefit the climate (or any other goal beyond oneself) easy, natural, and perhaps even better than life otherwise might’ve been?

I think there’s both an individual angle here and a societal/policy one.

On the individual level, people can think through the ways that might be easiest and most enjoyable for them personally to give in any given way. Maybe you really like gardening and can collect compost to use for this. Maybe you can look up good recipes made out of chickpeas or tofu and make it part of your routine; or if you’re already plant-based, make some delicious food for your friends. Maybe you can take up sewing and repair or tailor old clothes rather than throwing them away. Maybe you can take the train instead of fly.

Sometimes these things will come very easily: maybe sewing is something you always wanted to learn, and being more climate-friendly meshes perfectly with these goals. And sometimes these things may come with more of a sacrifice or change to a slower lifestyle at first, but it will ultimately be more rewarding because you are better exercising your right to give. What is important is that you give where you can — where it is most accessible, ethical, and perhaps even liberating — rather than wasting your effort beating yourself up about not giving where it is sufficiently hard.

On the policy level, we need to figure out ways to set up society to allow people to give better. I know plenty of Americans who would love to not have to drive, but can’t afford to live in the 5-10 expensive metro areas in the U.S. where you don’t need to own a car.

For many Americans, the only option to get to work outside of a car is a bus that comes every hour and you have to walk through a death trap to get to. If you could take a frequent and pleasant and cheap 30-minute train to work, I’m sure many Americans would choose that.

For this, we need policy that is friendly to both the climate broadly and people’s acute needs, solutions that give people the freedom to give. While this isn’t going to be a comprehensive policy piece, and I do believe that technology won’t fix everything and people will need to give things up and make lifestyle changes to reverse climate damage, there are a number of things that really are win-win solutions. Bus rapid transit systems, which give buses a dedicated lane, are much cheaper than rail, and mean buses that carry a lot more people than cars with the same space can bypass traffic and become a more viable commuter option. Many more people would take buses, I think, if it got them to work 20 minutes faster than being stuck in commuter traffic. Electric buses in particular are very pleasant to ride: I used to commute to work on a zero-emissions trolley bus, and whenever I brought visitors they would comment on how quiet and nice the bus was. Plus you can nap on it which you can’t while driving!

Targeted government subsidies, either to producers or consumers, in some areas can also start to deal with some of the negative externalities to climate of daily life and allow people to be directly part of the solutions. A well-known example is solar panel subsidies. The US government and private sector invested to spur R&D in solar technology, and states provided subsidies/rebates to consumers who might want to purchase them and both lower their monthly electricity bills and be more environmentally friendly. Now in many places, solar is even cheaper than fossil fuels.

It is central to contributism that we are not an island; that it is both necessary and fulfilling to live in community, to make decisions based on others and not just for ourselves. Sometimes this will be hard, but other times, it will be easy – and it is a key, contributist role of society to work to break down the barriers that make it unnecessarily difficult for people to give.

This author writes from Los Angeles, just outside the reach of the Eaton fire that swept East and West along the 210, ravaging homes and communities in the northeast corner of the LA Basin.

The author would like to promote the following organizations, and encourage your support to them however possible:

LA Food Bank

Pasadena Humane

WatchDuty, a app for monitoring evacuation warnings and news

California Fire Foundation, for the families of fallen firefighters

Los Angeles is my home, and will always hold a special place in my heart. I was raised by its multiculturalism, glitz and glamour, and near constant drought. Wildfires are a deeply ingrained part of my childhood. I still vividly remember in seventh grade, walking out of class into the orange-brown haze, stunned at the ash falling from the sky. My first thought was confusion, thinking that the bits of angry ash were snowflakes, until I connected the dots between the haze and the smell. Though I moved away to the Bay for a period of time, the fires were never far behind. I lived through the dystopian haze of the 2018 and 2020 wildfires, and am well equipped to handle the physical effects.

But this time was different. This was the first fire where I really considered evacuating my home. Weighing what to take, and what to leave behind. I had just moved down from the Bay and most of my possessions were still in highly flammable cardboard boxes. What was worth unpacking and repacking? What should be left behind? Where would I go from here?

I write this now in a state of relative safety. The air quality has returned to normal, which is famously never that fresh and clear in the city, but a marked improvement relative to last Tuesday evening as the fire engulfed thousands of acres of arid land. The fires are burning, but containment is steadily progressing. Contributism is hard at work, bringing in support from neighbors local [1], national [2][3], and international [3][4][5].

While there is much to be written extolling the virtues of continued international cooperation, especially in the face of rising isolationist rhetoric, I want to take this opportunity to contribute my vision of the future, and how we both as Californians, and as a modern society, reflect on what has happened and rebuild.

Contributism is not just about fighting fires as they erupt. As inspirational and uplifting as it is to see international unity in these times, it would be so much more effective and efficient to practice this same conscientiousness and cooperation daily, in less stressful times.

What does that look like? Much has been written on the fact that many of the homes affected by the fires were built in areas prone to wildfires, that have been burned in the past, and will likely be burned again. Insurance, the marriage of cooperation and capitalism, exists to help protect those who live in these areas from absolute financial ruin, by leveraging the aid of the collective. Recognizing that this may incentivize risky behaviors, the California legislature has passed new regulations on insurance companies to enable increasing premiums on homes in fire prone regions. This is what thoughtful, concerted, and supportive leadership looks like. We recognize that there will continue to be those in our society who are drawn to the beauty of living in those hills. It is not our right to restrict them from settling there, but it is also not our duty to subsidize their loss. We can and should show compassion, but we must also ask for compromise.

This is the harsh reality of climate disasters, whether they be fires or floods. [6] The American expansion of sprawling suburbia has led to an untenable system of land use that has disregarded the inherent environmental risk in order to slake our thirst for larger, more comfortable homes. [7] From the very beginning this was unsustainable, but now it is time to pay the piper, and accept the financial and environmental costs.

Understanding this context, what comes next? The bitter optimism of this moment is to recognize that in many respects, fire can be cleansing. Just as the ecosystem of Los Angeles uses wildfire to germinate seedlings, the devastation wrought by these concurrent fires can give life to a new tomorrow. [8]

This author argues that we cannot rebuild as before. Sparsely populated, sprawling homes, built with more preference given to aesthetics than fire prevention, would show little respect for the efforts of all involved to contain these fires, but also continue to put lives at risk again in the future.

Whether or not these fires are a direct result of anthropogenic climate change, the expectation is that fires will become more frequent, and with that increased frequency, more damaging. This is an opportunity to be more efficient in our land use, to increase housing density in areas that are more safe from fires, and for those who choose to live in more fire prone regions, to migrate towards greater resilience.

Increasing housing density as means to increase housing affordability, needs to become a rallying cry for the future. Removing parking minimums, designing streets and cities to be safer for all road users, not just cars. As I followed the news last Tuesday, waiting to see if I would need to evacuate, I quickly decided to evacuate using my bike, and avoid the freeways. People fleeing the Palisades fire were met with complete gridlock, along PCH, and I did not want to risk getting trapped in my car along the 710. [9]

Los Angeles is the archetypal American city. It exemplifies urban sprawl, leveraging the mobility of the automobile on a scale that had never been seen before. It is necessary for Los Angeles to take on the mantle of leadership again, to blaze a new path in building resilient, efficient, sustainable cities, capable of weathering the storms to come.

If you’re interested in participating in this growing community, click the Become Pablo button at the top of the website.

Dear Reader,

The Contributist Reader is excited to announce “Dear Pablo,” an advice column offering a contributist perspective on your everyday problems. We want you to ask us about anything that’s been bothering you: whether it’s about interpersonal dynamics, workplace drama, personal growth, or social and political issues.

Ever since we started the Reader, some of us have taken to asking each other: what would be the contributist take on this? We ask it about political issues, but we also ask it about more personal matters: feeling slighted by a friend, choosing between two jobs, navigating conflict with family. Even when it’s brought up as a joke, we’ve found that taking a moment to consider a problem from the contributist lens is surprisingly helpful.

Maybe this shouldn’t be so surprising — contributism is a framework for restoring dignity and building community through generosity. If you look carefully, you’ll find that dignity and community are at the root of many of our personal troubles. This is why contributism starts at the personal level, and expands outward.

So, one of our contributors with experience as a counselor has offered to run the Dear Pablo column, which will begin in the next few weeks. We encourage you to submit your questions, no matter how big or small. By sharing your struggles and seeking advice, you're not just finding solutions for yourself — you're contributing to the collective project of building a more generous and fulfilling world. The contributist society begins with the contributist act.

Send in your questions here or to pablo@thecontributistreader.com, and we’ll answer them (fully anonymously) on this column.

Let's build a better society together,
Pablo Parabola

Every year, Christmas comes around as a bit of a paradox — there is no time of year more associated with giving, but there’s also no time more laden with commercialism. This may be because giving and taking are so easily confused — especially within a culture that seems increasingly accustomed with asserting the right to take, and increasingly forgetful of what it looks like to give.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. In fact, the more commercial our surroundings feel, the more important it becomes that we maintain a season that reminds us to focus on giving. Around this time every year, the Peanuts kids dance across TVs all over the country in A Charlie Brown Christmas, and millions of families are treated to Charlie’s woeful observations about commercialization (“My own dog gone commercial, I can’t stand it!”), Linus’s reminder of the true meaning of Christmas, and the heartwarming hums of a community that comes together, with gifts and decorations, to create miraculous beauty out of what was once a sad little tree.

Traditions like these serve as repeated reminders of the power of giving, and of what truly matters to us. So, without further ado, let’s take some time to appreciate five of the most contributist Christmas movies of all time.

Happy holidays!
Pablo Parabola

5. Die Hard

No list of great Christmas movies would be complete without a Die Hard mention, so we’ll get it out of the way first. In a way, perhaps Die Hard is the most obviously contributist Christmas movie of all. It is a film about a man who finds himself in a position to give that he is uniquely suited for (one can argue that Detective McClane’s actions throughout the film are supremely free, active, valued, and effective). Not only that; the film also arguably serves as Bruce Willis’s most perfect contribution to the world.

4. The Nightmare Before Christmas

Tim Burton’s gothic stop motion masterpiece The Nightmare Before Christmas is a Christmas movie dressed in the dark tones of Halloween, and it can at times seem like it trades Christmas morals for goofy Halloween scares. But it is, in fact, an earnest film to its core. It is a story about learning to appreciate the fact that everyone has something to give, and that the best world is one in which everyone can find their own way to give, even if we don’t understand them. Jack Skellington learns this the hard way, after he attempts to hijack Christmas because he doesn’t think it’s scary enough. But he eventually realizes that Halloween and Christmas serve different purposes, and there can be room for both. Ideally, we too can build societies where everyone has a role and can give in a way that is free, active, valued, and effective.

3. How the Grinch Stole Christmas

The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps his shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.

— Dr. Seuss, How The Grinch Stole Christmas!

Dr. Seuss’s classic children’s book How The Grinch Stole Christmas! has been adapted many times, though the original 1966 animated TV special is probably still the best. It tells the story of a monstrous creature who is tired of Christmas and thinks he can end the whole affair by stealing all of the Christmas gifts and decorations. To his surprise, the people’s joy came from their community, not their commodities, so they celebrate Christmas undeterred. When the Grinch sees this, his heart grows three sizes and he brings back the presents and joins their Christmas feast. There are layers of contributist messages here, including that we find joy in community, and that anyone can join in that community if they choose to give rather than take.

2. A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which has also been adapted into film multiple times and is perhaps the grown-up’s version of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” is the classic tale of greed and redemption. It is the perfect illustration of how the capitalist impulse to take and to hoard can become dehumanizing both to the self and others, but also of how even the most cold-hearted capitalist can be healed if their right to give can be restored to them. In fact, we’ve already referenced the story twice in the Reader, in our intro piece on the right to give, and in our piece about whether a good job has to be freely chosen. Here’s a quote from the former:

“In other words, the contributist sees A Christmas Carol’s Ebeneezer Scrooge as a man badly damaged — lacking the right to give and in need of its restoration — and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future as wise contributist agents of change, providing him with exactly the service he needs to be restored his right. And crucially, the contributist sees the world at the end of the story, in which Scrooge regains the right to give and is thus reconciled to his community, as a more just outcome than any world in which he goes to his grave still unable to give.”

1. It’s a Wonderful Life

It’s a Wonderful Life is not only the most contributist Christmas movie, it’s perhaps the most contributist movie, period. And according to the American Film Institute, it’s also the most inspirational film of all time. It’s the story of George Bailey, a man who wants to “shake the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and see the world,” but instead repeatedly finds himself stuck at home, contributing to his community. As a father, husband, and empathetic owner of a successful small-town bank, he gives and gives to everyone around him, enabling their dreams while postponing his own. He eventually becomes suicidal when some trickery by the big banker Mr. Potter leads him to believe that his giving has been neither valued nor effective. But after some good ol’ Christmas-y divine intervention, he comes to realize just how valued and effective his giving really was. And by the heartwarming conclusion, it’s become obvious to everyone involved (including every misty-eyed viewer like myself) — a life characterized by giving is the most wonderful life of all.

This is the beginning — from "I" to "we." If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we."

- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

On Wednesday morning, Brian Thompson, the CEO of health insurance company UnitedHealthcare, was assassinated on the streets of Manhattan. The killer remains unidentified and his motive is uncertain, but he left behind clues in the form of three words scratched into the casings of the bullets he used to murder Thompson: “Deny,” “Delay,” “Depose.” These words imply that the killer was motivated by frustration at UnitedHealthcare for its regular practice of delaying and denying healthcare claims for its customers, forcing some of them to go without life-saving treatments. He seems to have felt that it was his responsibility to complete a grim cycle — by deposing the insurance company’s leader.

Every death is a tragedy. Thompson left behind a wife and two children, and no doubt a community. He was a co-chair and advocate for the Special Olympics. In the photo of him that has circulated after his death, he looks kind, attentive, maybe a bit goofy. He looks like a dad.

And yet, the overwhelming response to Thompson’s death was not sympathy, but schadenfreude. The general tenor of the public response to the assassination is perhaps best illustrated in this observation by Zeynep Tufecki of the New York Times: “Even on Facebook, a platform where people do not commonly hide behind pseudonyms, the somber announcement by UnitedHealth Group that it was ‘deeply saddened and shocked at the passing of our dear friend and colleague’ was met with, as of this writing, 80,000 reactions; 75,000 of them were the “haha” emoji.”

Brian Thompson is not a household name. Nearly all those who heard of his murder were hearing of him for the first time, and came to know precisely one fact about him — that he was the CEO of UnitedHealthcare — before developing the apparent consensus opinion that he deserved to die.

How on earth did we get here? Why do the American people hate the health insurance industry so much that we are happy when its executives die? And more importantly, is there any way out of this mess other than more violence?

In short, the answers to these questions are: capitalism, capitalism, and yes (contributism). But more precision in our language leads to better understanding, and better understanding leads to better solutions, so let’s take a few minutes to understand exactly what has gone so wrong that has led people to become so angry, and what a better health insurance industry — one that doesn’t inspire the rage of the masses — could look like.

Efficient and effective?

One of the great misunderstandings of capitalism is that it naturally leads companies to become more efficient and effective, through market competition. While this is technically true, it is true only in the most unhelpful and unintuitive sense. Capitalism does naturally lead companies to be more efficient and effective — in their production of capital for their owners. It does not necessarily lead them to be more efficient and effective in their supply of goods and services for their customers.

In fact, there is a natural tension between these two goals, and the design of capitalism means that the former will always eventually win out over the latter. In other words, as capitalist companies naturally get better and better at producing capital for their owners, they naturally get worse and worse at producing value to society.

Nowhere is this capitalist tension more visible (or more consequential) than in the health insurance industry — which is why we all hate health insurers so much. For the health insurance industry, the goal of making profits is in direct tension with the goal of insuring health. Every paid claim is taken directly out of profits, so, from a capitalist perspective, a health insurance company can increase its efficiency and effectiveness by denying claims and raising deductibles and co-pays. Every time an insured customer must pay out-of-pocket for necessary (perhaps life-saving) healthcare, or forgo that healthcare entirely, the insurance company wins.

But surely it can’t be in a company’s best interest to provide a poor service to its customers, right? Won’t the customers just take their business to a competitor? As it unfortunately turns out, this often isn’t the case in economies of scale — when you’re a big enough business, customer acquisition is a problem that can be solved with the very capital that has been extracted from the consumer. The specific methods vary by industry, but the overall picture is always the same. This is why, in recent decades, the word “Big” has taken on new meaning — “Big Pharma,” “Big Media,” “Big Oil,” “Big Tech.” We intuitively understand that the interests of the largest companies are no longer aligned with the interests of their customers. As a capitalist industry matures, efficiency and effectiveness in producing capital for owners drifts further and further away from efficiency and effectiveness in providing value (giving) to society.

Within this context, the widespread societal apathy at Brian Thompson’s death is unsurprising. UnitedHealthcare, the company he ran, is perhaps the epitome of late capitalism. Under Thompson’s leadership since 2021, it has achieved record profits, and it has done so by being rabidly anti-consumer. The company has faced numerous scandals over the past two decades, including (among many others) state, federal, and class action lawsuits related to overbilling, underpaying, privacy violations, and even using AI to auto-deny claims. But somehow worse than all of that is the single statistic that defines the everyday reality of being a customer of UnitedHealthcare: 32%. That’s its industry-leading estimated claim denial rate, which essentially means that core to its business model is the systematic refusal to actually pay for the healthcare services that it ostensibly insures.

But here’s the thing: UnitedHealth Group (UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, which consists of UnitedHealthcare and Optum, its pharmacy and health services provider) is, by revenue, the ninth largest company in the world and the world’s largest health care company. In other words, if we are measuring by value provided to society, UnitedHealth may truly be the worst healthcare company of all. But if we are measuring by capital, UnitedHealth is the most successful healthcare company, and one of the ten most successful companies in the world.

UnitedHealth is not successful at capitalism despite the fact that it has abandoned all care for its customers — it is successful at capitalism because of it.

The 800lb company

This is why we need contributist models rather than capitalist ones. Instead of living in a world where companies and industries are becoming better and better at generating capital for their owners (capitalism), we want to live in a world where they are becoming better and better at providing value to their society (contributism).

But how do we get there? In the case of healthcare, as with many other industries, the shift from capitalism to contributism starts with a shift in our mindset and attitudes, which is followed by a shift in incentives and behavior. We must first understand what true corporate success is and isn’t. Only then can we develop a society that rewards and performs the sort of corporate behavior that leads to truly successful organizations — the kind which, among other things, don’t inspire the sort of rage which results in their CEOs being murdered in the street.

The most pernicious attitude that must be left behind if we are to build a better health insurance industry is the idea that capital accumulation is equivalent to success. I noted above that UnitedHealth is the largest health care company in the world by revenue. This is a neutral statement of fact. But the related idea that UnitedHealth is the most successful healthcare company in the world is not a statement of fact — it is a motivated claim. Size is not equivalent to success, and in many cases, we consider too much growth to instead be a sign of excess. While a man who weighs 160 pounds is seen as healthier than a man who weighs 80 pounds, a man who weighs 800 pounds is not considered, by virtue of his size, to be healthier than the 160lb man. In humans, excessive growth is a sign of imbalance — we would say that the 800lb man has become disordered in his thinking: he has put too much effort into the accumulation of calories and not enough effort into the productive use of his calories.

UnitedHealth is healthcare’s equivalent to the 800lb man. It has grown at all costs, abandoning true productivity (the conversion of capital into ensured health for its customers) in favor of endless capital accumulation. And as in the case of the 800lb man, this growth maximizes the company’s short term satisfaction, but has a number of dire consequences. The most obvious costs are the immediate burdens shouldered by everyone else around — the patients who are denied life-saving care, the employees whose retirement plans are raided, the competitors who must fight for shrinking market share. Theirs is the pain and labor necessary to feed the “successful” company’s all-consuming greed for capital. But there are also short term costs for the company leaders — in leeching from rather than contributing to society, they forfeit their dignity, and live less fulfilling lives. And there are long term consequences for the whole of society, which we are seeing all around us in slow motion, as inequality has led to the decline of democracy globally and climate change makes the world less habitable each year.

And on the long scale, death always comes for the glutton, after it has laid sufficient waste to the society around it. Thompson’s death is a shame and a tragedy, but it is also a warning. Mistaking capital accumulation for success has led us to a society full of 800lb companies, and although the rest of us have long worked hard to shoulder the consequences, it may not be long before the whole society buckles under their weight.

The Grapes of Wrath quote at the top of this essay is a timeless warning to the business leaders “who own the things people must have.” Here’s a longer quote from the novel which clarifies Steinbeck’s point:

And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on.

- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

This is not a picture of “success,” but one of insanity, and it is a picture that increasingly resembles modern capitalism. Notice that Steinbeck presents himself not as a prophet, but as a historian. This is a pattern we have seen repeatedly throughout history, and it never ends well for the “successful.” No one should be surprised that the phones of corporate security firms are now “ringing off the hook.”

Could the health insurance industry be good, actually?

But there is hope for the paranoid corporate executive, and for the rest of us too. Because when we come to understand the capitalist mindset as disordered, we implicitly also recognize that it can be healed. If we can see the difference between corporate success and corporate excess, we can redesign our companies and our industries towards health, and away from Steinbeck’s grim prognosis.

After all, despite our hatred of our health insurers, they do provide a much-needed service. By spreading the cost of healthcare across a pool of customers through premiums, health insurance makes healthcare affordable. This function — socializing the cost of healthcare for the benefit of all — is the ostensible goal of health insurers: it is how they contribute to society. To apply a contributist mindset to the health insurance industry is to simply recognize that a health insurance company’s success should be measured by how effectively it performs this contribution, rather than how much capital it accumulates in the process. From this simple recognition flows the opportunity for a number of shifts in behavior, from actors on all sides: customers, government, and businesses themselves.

First, the customer always has some say in the market, although in the case of health insurance, the customer is unfortunately not usually the individual consumer. In the US, health insurance is not purchased directly by individuals — instead, employers act as intermediaries for most consumers, and the government acts as an intermediary for the rest. Functionally, this means that most consumers don’t have a lot of freedom to choose their insurer; they can only choose whether or not to opt-in to one of the insurance plans that have already been preselected by their employer.

While this means that individual consumers have little say in this system, it also means that employers have significant power to influence the health outcomes of their employees. If these employers are themselves contributist, they take this responsibility seriously; they will choose plans that are likely to result in positive outcomes for their employees, and reject plans from companies like UnitedHealth, which are likely to do them harm. They will do this even if the alternative plans are slightly more expensive, because they want to help, not harm, the people they employ.

But it is not only the responsibility of customers to make the health insurance industry shift from capitalism to contributism, and in fact, they are usually far from the ones most empowered to do so. It is the responsibility of government to set market incentives, and the US government has long designed incentives to favor capitalism, and the generation of 800lb companies, over contributism.

This is as true in health insurance as it is in any industry. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 was originally designed to introduce a competitive state-run insurance company (the “public option”), which would not have put UnitedHealth out of business, but would certainly have forced it to be more consumer-friendly to be competitive. But that part of the bill was blocked by senators who were heavily funded by the health insurance industry, and was replaced by health insurance co-ops, a compromise alternative model that may have also proven competitive, except that it was hamstrung on arrival by a series of unfavorable government policy decisions. The consumer-hostile business model that UnitedHealth has perfected only works so well because the government chooses to protect it from meaningful competition.

This can change. The US healthcare system may incentivize profit-seeking over positive results today, but there is no reason it has to continue to do so. There are plenty of models of health insurance around the world that do the opposite. Some are government-run, while others, like the highly-successful insurance system in the Netherlands, are private markets. Notably, private health insurance companies in the Netherlands are virtually all non-profit organizations. The Dutch market is as real as any in the US; the difference is only what government incentivizes through policy and regulation — seeking profit or seeking true productivity.

Finally, the corporate executives themselves have the opportunity to choose contributism. They are not, despite popular belief, bound by shareholders to extract every possible dollar from their customer base, at the expense of providing a valuable product. Executives are generally given wide latitude to run their companies in the way that they believe will be most successful. Operating by way of harming and defrauding customers is a business choice, but it is not the only viable one. It is easy to make the argument that providing the best service for customers at the most affordable price is a better way to ensure a company’s long term health. Perhaps easier still, now that executives understand that it is not only their customers’ lives which are on their line, but maybe theirs as well. UnitedHealth and its competitors could choose today to begin to value metrics that correlate to true success like time-to-claim-completion, customer savings, and customer satisfaction. Perhaps they will even find that this saves them money on fines, legal fees, and resources spent contesting claims.

Maybe it’s unlikely that the leaders of the largest businesses will choose this path, but the reality is that they don’t have to for contributism to take hold in the industry. Just as local credit unions can provide better rates on loans than big banks do, smaller organizations can often compete with larger ones if they re-conceive their goals. Instead of trying to become their big competitors, they can forgo profit-seeking in favor of providing a necessary service to their community. They will never be as big as their 800lb competitors, but they’ll have achieved something better — the dignity of having given to society, rather than the anxiety of having harmed it. They’ll be able to sleep at night, without hiring a security detail.

This is the third and final entry in a multi-part manifesto by the newest author to take on the Pablo Parabola name.

Taking Less, Giving More

Combating Climate Change Through Contributism

In the digital age, and the ensuing global expansion of capitalism, we have increasingly begun to centralize production, taking away the ability for giving at the individual level, the community level, and even at the national stage. No single country can build an electric car from purely domestic resources. No city or town can feed their residents with locally grown produce. No man is an island.

Social media has further devastated our ability to give. It is impossible to compete with the emotional validation possible through millions of adoring fans, yet this pretense of community is first and foremost a means of advertising, taking our attention from our local and analog spaces.

Leveraging the work of Nadia Asparouhova, the tribes of climate change provides a framework for navigating our lives, and paths to consider as we adapt to a changing climate. [1] For the past decade the perspective du jour has been a combination of energy maximalism and climate technology, like carbon capture and sequestration.

To blindly hope for technologic miracles is naive at best, malicious at worst. Technology alone cannot resolve our climate crisis because humanity is at the core of the dysfunction. With traffic, building more lanes has induced more demand, leading to a forever escalating cycle. [2] Too much traffic? Build more lanes. Traffic dies down, people stop carpooling, and now traffic is bad again. Build even more lanes, and the time cost of public transit is too great to be a competitive choice. Just as with traffic, carbon capture and storage will likely lead to the same behavior. If it becomes safe to emit our current levels of carbon dioxide, why not do more? Unless there is an external pressure to maintain or reduce carbon emissions, whether in the form of strongly enforced legislation or grassroots behavioral change, there is no reason to believe that humanity will voluntarily reduce our total fossil fuel consumption. [3] This is not to preclude technology from being part of the solution. Indeed, renewable energies like wind and solar have likely changed the course of energy related carbon emissions permanently, and there is hope that 2024 represents the peak of energy related CO2 emissions. [4] It would be wrong to stop funding novel technologies, but it is equally incorrect to believe that technology alone can address what is fundamentally a question of gluttony. The balanced perspective is to recognize that all technologies require investment. Not just financial investment, but an investment of time and carbon emissions as well. As the parts per million of CO2 continue to increase in the atmosphere, our budget for both time and global warming gasses is dwindling, and we need to be much more targeted with how we spend the remainder.

Environmentalism and eco-globalism are the only pragmatic solutions. To self-isolate through homesteading or disaster prepping is not feasible for the vast majority of people on planet Earth, and fails to address the human need for community and the compounding strength of global corporation.

We must accept that to effectively combat climate change is to fundamentally change how human society lives. Technology is an incredible tool, maximizing or minimizing what humanity chooses, and as of now, we have clearly chosen to continue short term growth over long term security, the results of which have begun to tear at the very fabric of our societies. Contributism can subvert this “growth at all costs” paradigm by turning the attention away from materialistic consumption and towards enriching our interpersonal bonds.

The greatest failure of capitalism is that in pursuit of efficiency, humans have become liabilities, and our ability to give to one another has been relegated in order to maximize our ability to take and consume. Climate change upends this new status quo. We cannot move into the future with the same underlying assumptions as the past, because to continue this descent into hyper-individualistic consumption is unsustainable in every way. Communities that are able to support one another are resilient communities, and resilient communities will survive. Global capitalism will fail because the risk of a distributed supply chain is ever increasing, the effects of which we experienced first hand during the COVID-19 pandemic. As hurricanes grow stronger, droughts become more widespread, and ice storms more devastating, the scope of our giving must become more specific, more efficient, more effective.

In accepting slower lives, less comfortable lives, society and individuals can become richer in every way. In reclaiming our ability to give, we open ourselves to receive so much more.

If you're like me, you often find yourself getting triggered to anger by the careless or harmful things others say (especially on the internet). Often, these upsetting statements would be merely annoying if you encountered them only once, but you’ve seen or heard them so many times that you can’t take it anymore; they’ve become automatic triggers to anger. A classic example of this is when a man starts explaining to a woman basic things in a field she is an expert in. The first man to assume you don’t have expertise in the field you’re talking about is merely annoying, but the fiftieth can be rage-inducing.

Some ways of responding may feel good momentarily (e.g. snapping back, or settling into a fixed picture of the triggerer) but these responses ultimately leave us divided as a society, and work to dehumanize us as individuals. It is not hard to see how our everyday resentment of one another and lack of generosity feeds into the national dysfunction that has been on display in every recent election year. Is there another way? As I reflect on contributism, I'm inspired to approach these situations with generosity — reaffirming my own dignity (and humanity) by asserting my right to give. When I stop and consider the various complexities behind the anger, I find myself led to respond differently, with curiosity and grace.

As an Asian American woman, I come from a culture where it is common to comment on any weight gain or loss, and to assume that all women must have a goal to lose weight.

Say I meet a new friend who makes a comment about my weight in one way or another (it doesn’t even particularly matter what it is – it could be an assumption we both want to lose weight; it could be a comment on my weight gain or loss). I am happy with my fitness level and would prefer my weight not to be commented on, and my annoyance immediately turns into anger because she is the fiftieth person I’ve heard something like this from and I am tired of hearing it.

My initial instinct in this case might be to snap at her. But thinking even for a moment, it’s clear that she has no idea that what she said is particularly annoying to me or that it would make me upset. 

From a contributist perspective, I think it’s important to react to this emotion internally and to the other person externally with understanding and grace.

Responding Internally

I think the first step to addressing anger from a contributist perspective is to simply stop and think before responding, and (at least momentarily) assume best intentions on the part of the other. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Why might they have said this thing? This all stems from having “incomplete information” about others, as economists put it, or “not being able to read minds,” as your parents might have put it. Some reasons may be:

• They don’t have good information. They don’t know your background and were trying to help out. They may be saying something factually incorrect because they don’t have good data.

• They have insecurities or have been hurt in the past, and maybe they assume you share their insecurities and can relate to them.

• You have insecurities or have been hurt in the past. Maybe they meant something in a completely different way to how you perceived it. Are you perceiving what someone said in an uncharitable way based on other experiences you have had?

• There’s a cultural difference. What’s seen as an acceptable conversation topic or way of communicating in Asia might be seen as rude in the U.S., and vice versa.

• They are actually being malicious and trying to purposefully bother you. But I think and hope that as we mature into adulthood, this is less and less the case.

Even if this reflection doesn’t result in a clear change in how you react externally, there is value to oneself — and indeed, even virtue — in reframing one’s relationship to the other internally. 

I often think of Iris Murdoch’s story of the mother-in-law as an example of this. A mother-in-law “M” views her daughter-in-law “D” as rude and juvenile and beneath her son; in short, she finds her annoying. “M settles into her fixed picture of D.” writes Lawrence Blum in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Murdoch:

But something prompts her to reflect on her view, recognizing both her jealousy of D and her own snobbishness. She tries to look at the D she knew in a new way, and over time, as the result of her attempts to see D anew, her view of D changes. … D is discovered to be not vulgar but refreshingly simple, not undignified but spontaneous…not tiresomely juvenile but delightfully youthful. (IP: 17–18/313)

M doesn’t act any differently outwardly once her opinion of D shifts, but even so, Murdoch believes she is still engaging in moral activity by changing her inner view. In my view, I think she has also shifted to viewing the world through a more contributist lens, and is likely more at inner peace for it.

Responding Externally

Once the internal reflection is done, which hopefully becomes more and more second nature as time goes on, considering the different reasons someone might have done something can also be helpful in thinking about how to respond externally in a contributist manner. How to respond in a contributist way depends on your existing relationship with them and exactly what they said; to think about both their relationship with you in the future and their relationship with others.

In cases where you don’t know the person well and won’t see them much in the future (such as the vast majority of cases on the internet), it may sometimes be best to simply accept that their reasons for doing what they did might have been any of the above and move on. The internal work has already been done — you have turned towards generosity, and you can leave with your peace at least partially regained. It is not always helpful to engage further, especially when there are barriers (cultural, time, knowledge gaps) that limit the space for effective communication to take place.

But say, upon reflection, you believe that responding is worth a shot. There are a few ways to do so in a contributist manner (asserting your right to give).

It might make sense to ask about something that might be factually incorrect, or to clarify if your interpretation was correct. Sometimes these sorts of annoyance and anger situations arise from assumptions, and no one is exactly in the wrong. There’s a lot you simply don’t know about another person; it can be surprisingly helpful to ask. 

In some cases, the annoying thing might be part of a specific personal trigger of yours that they couldn’t have known and is truly no fault of theirs. If this is a friend, it may be helpful to tell them about this, as it might affect your relationship long term. But if it’s only an acquaintance, it might be better to ignore.

In other cases, though, the annoying thing is not annoying just to you, but to lots of people, and may therefore be affecting their interpersonal relationships generally. In these cases, the most generous thing to do would be to attempt to help them to stop engaging in behavior that harms their relationships. (Notice how the contributist mindset doesn’t prevent intervention, but through generosity, reframes it from conflict to connection.)

This comes up a lot in interactions between people from different cultures. If someone has just moved to a new place and is unknowingly offending everyone, it might be the kindest thing to do to point it out (people kindly pointing out insensitive things I’ve done has been tremendously helpful to my development as a person), if you can do this in a culturally sensitive way. 

The exact external contributist response to annoyance and anger, I think, then, is highly situation-dependent, and may require more reflection when the person is a friend. 

The clearest guidance I try to give to myself is to try to have generosity and grace in the way I  view and respond to the other person’s actions, and to think about both my relationship with them and their relationship with others, when making a decision on how to act. I have annoyed many people too; we are all, mistakes and all, people in need of love.

This is the second entry in a multi-part manifesto by the newest author to take on the Pablo Parabola name.

Taking Less, Giving More

Combating Climate Change Through Contributism

Climate change is a catalyst for contributism because it is the direct result of capitalism taking time from the many and showering that abundance upon the few. This greed can only be resolved through a return to contributist giving. Yes, contributism is not new, and in fact it is woven into the very foundation of human society. Contributism is what enabled our ancestors to brave famine, survive drought, withstand floods, and tame wildfires. Though humanity is complicit in the climate catastrophes we are expecting to face in the 21st, humanity will endure and overcome, as it always has, through collective social action. 

It was only a few generations ago that the USA itself, the modern epitome of excess and overconsumption, was rationing essential foodstuffs to further the effort in World War II. [1] This is not to say there was no corruption or that there were no illicit markets for extra food, but rationing did sway the populace, and it was seen as right and honorable to make do with less. [2] It is also important to highlight that remaining lean in this time was a critical factor in providing the broader society the resources necessary for the Allied forces to win the war. This is a crucial part of the larger strategy because self-control and abstinence alone is not enough. This self-sacrifice must be engaged efficiently and effectively. 

Viewing climate change through the lens of past world wars is not a unique or original position. [3] As with any war, whether it is waged with global warming gasses or intercontinental ballistic missiles, humans are at the helm. Humanity chooses to continually consume fossil fuels, and in so doing, humanity has agency and responsibility in choosing the consequence of that consumption. It is all but assured that Earth will cross the 1.5 C temperature threshold target laid out by the Paris Agreement. [4] Beyond that it is unhelpful to speculate where climate change might take the planet, because, frankly, it is uncertain what might happen once we cross that 1.5 C threshold [5]. While the data regarding the climate future is incomplete, we can instead turn to the past for wisdom.

Human history emphasizes the inherent generosity within all humanity, giving credence to contributism as the most effective and natural solution for mounting existential dread. [6] While such a sweeping statement cannot possibly capture the diversity within the human condition, both at the community and individual level, the claim is that there is indeed a majority opinion that drives humanity, and that opinion is altruistic and giving. From there, society is built, thrives, and prospers. The failure of modern capitalism is that it has pitted the human desire for status against altruism. Throughout human history, we see that the tension between the wealthy few and the impoverished many is always tempered through giving, and failure to do so risks revolutionary action. America’s own billionaires, past and present, have consistently papered over their transgressions with philanthropy, partly to further their personal agendas, but also to preserve their legacy and offset the brutal reality of their wealth.

At the heart of this, however, we must recognize that intrinsically, capitalism is not a moral framework. Capitalism is solely motivated by the ability to provide more value for less, and leaves humanity to decide how to value both the input and output. Adopting a capitalist perspective to direct investment is a prudent and rewarding framework. Adopting a capitalist perspective to direct the developmental arc of society has only served to tear at the social fabric within our families, our communities, our nation. When every relationship exists to be leveraged for maximal gain, generosity is not a virtue, but the worst possible transgression. Yet this perspective runs counter to the very core of the human condition. To forgive a debt is kind, to labor for love is sublime.

Humanity holds all the cards, and yet is paralyzed by the choice ahead. To continue with the status quo risks horrors unknowable, yet that abstraction means eating less meat, flying fewer miles, and keeping the house less temperate are real discomforts that outweigh some imagined future state. By giving a little now and each day following, we can slowly build towards making real mitigation in the coming decades.

Markus grimaced as he hurried, hunched over, across the street to the Uber that was waiting for him. It was raining lightly — not enough to bring an umbrella, but enough to add to his discomfort. He had taken a shot of tequila before leaving his apartment, to calm his nerves. Now, with his nerves setting in anyway, he already regretted it, worried that he might make a fool of himself.

“Headed to Greeley Street?” the driver asked as he settled into the back of the red sedan. Markus nodded, then pulled his phone from his pocket and tried to look occupied. Sometimes he welcomed small talk with drivers, but this time, he just wanted to be left alone.

But after only a few minutes of scrolling, he realized that his phone was only making him more anxious. It seemed like every other social media post was about the election. Most of his feed was Harris supporters: showing off their “I voted” stickers, begging their followers to recognize the existential stakes of the election, showing off their election day cookies, making fun of Trump voters for voting against their own interest, expressing how angry they were that this was even so close. But there were also a few pro-Trump posts interspersed, bragging about Trump’s odds in the betting markets and feigning confidence that America’s future would soon be rescued from the libs.

With each post he saw, he felt his stomach twist a bit. He had voted for Harris a few days ago, and had even phone-banked for her once with a friend. But the people posting online seemed so obnoxious, anxious, and hateful that it almost made him feel bad about his own participation. Was this really the end of democracy, like everyone kept saying it was? And even if it was, did that make it okay for everyone to act like this? He stuffed his phone back in his pocket and turned toward the window, where he watched tiny droplets of rain trace each other’s paths in a downward race, as suburban townhomes flitted by in the middle distance.

On one sidewalk corner, a small group of Harris supporters in rain coats sat on mesh camping chairs and waved handmade signs. Honk if you voted today!, read one of them. The driver honked his horn, then laughed. 

“Nah, I don’t vote,” he said to Markus, grinning at him through the rearview mirror. “But I like seeing all the cheerleaders out on Election Day. It’s like the Fourth of July or something. Makes you feel like a real patriot for a minute, like everyone in the country can really finally come together about something.”

“Yeah,” Markus mumbled. He wondered how his driver could possibly feel like a patriot if he wasn’t voting himself, but he didn’t want to engage. His phone buzzed, and he saw that his friend had texted, asking for his ETA. He typed out a quick response.

“You headed to one of those election watch parties?” the driver asked.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t sound too excited.” He laughed again. “To be honest with you, I’m glad I’m working tonight. My wife’s at one of them parties. She wanted me to come, but her friends are a bunch of corporate assholes. And anyway, I can’t be around all that anxious energy. I told her, what’s the point? We’ll all find out who wins by tomorrow. It’s not a football game — there’s nothing to watch.”

Markus actually agreed with this point. He was only going to this watch party because a friend he knew from an old job had invited him. He had almost no interest in sitting around a TV with a bunch of strangers and old acquaintances making small talk about shared political enemies. But still, he didn’t say no. Sitting alone at home during it all felt somehow worse.

The driver pulled to a stop in front of a modest, but stylish cottage house, with a shingled roof, wood trim, and grey brick siding. He could see through one of the windows that a small crowd was already gathered in the living room. He thanked the driver and made his way to the front door, while hastily leaving a tip using the app on his phone. He could hear the evening chatter of the ongoing party through the door, so he only knocked briefly before trying the handle. Finding it unlocked, he gently pushed open the door and let himself in.

“Markus!” cried his friend, Anne, who was standing in the kitchen, chatting with a couple, when she saw him enter. She put down her drink and walked over to Markus to give him a hug and take his coat. “I’m so glad you could make it! Here, let me introduce you to my coworker Eric, and his wife, Hannah.” She ushered him into the kitchen, and poured him a glass of wine.

“I was just talking about Trump’s tariff plan,” Eric said, after they had introduced themselves. “I think it’s genius that the Harris campaign has reframed it as a sales tax. I just can’t understand how anyone who thinks the economy is bad now would be willing to vote for a man who wants to raise their taxes by 10, 15, 20 percent.”

“I know!” said Anne. “I can understand the rich corporate donors who are voting for him; you just know he’s going to pass another bill to lower their taxes. But it’s so frustrating to see the polls saying that so many middle class people are willing to vote against their own interests.”

“Don’t get me started on ‘voting against their interests,’” said Eric, taking a brief pause to gulp down the rest of his cocktail. “Have you seen the numbers on immigrants and minorities? I don’t know how he’s convinced so many of them to go along with his blatantly racist agenda. You’d think these people would know better than anyone how bad it’s gonna be for them to have a racist president in office.”

“I heard it’s mostly the men,” said Hannah quietly.

“Yeah, you know sexism has to play a role in it,” Eric continued. “Too many men can’t stand to see a woman in charge. And listen, I get it; I wasn’t a fan of Hillary in 2016, and I know Kamala ran a poor campaign in 2020, but still. At some point, you have to get over yourself and recognize that this is a choice between a narcissistic sociopath and a normal, decent politician.”

As Markus listened, he sipped his drink anxiously, felt the same twisting in his stomach that he felt when he was scrolling through social media. He wasn’t sure he could point out anything that he disagreed with, but something about the whole conversation felt soul-sucking to him, even if they were all ostensibly on the same side. It was as if a group of older siblings had come together to complain about their stupid younger brother. Even if he agreed, he felt the whole thing was somehow debasing to everyone involved. He began thinking about a cousin of his who had voted for Biden in the last election, but had told him he was voting for Trump this time. He had told Markus that it was because the Democrats had forgotten about ordinary people like him. He said they were only concerned about coddling the freaks, the illegals, and the college-educated elites who called themselves “middle class,” even as life got harder for everyone else. Markus had felt the same twisting in his stomach then as well.

“What do you think, Markus?” Anne asked, perhaps noticing his discomfort. “Why do you think so many people are voting for Trump, even if he’s going to raise their taxes?”

“I don’t know. What’s wrong with higher taxes?” Markus heard himself saying. “I’d be okay with paying higher taxes if I felt like it was going to the sorts of things I care about. Maybe they’re all just frustrated with the way the whole country seems to have left them behind.” He felt oddly defensive of his cousin in that moment — even though he strongly disagreed with him. Something about Eric’s attitude felt hostile, and he didn’t like the idea of being hostile to people like his cousin, who were so obviously reacting with anger because they knew people like Eric didn’t respect them. He thought that Eric was just perpetuating a vicious cycle of growing resentment — he wanted to be more generous. He also felt a little bit tipsy, and worried that he might be a bit in over his head.

Eric laughed. “I guess that may have made some sense in 2016, but now they’ve seen what a Trump presidency is really like. He certainly doesn’t care about them any more than the Democrats do. He only cares about his own power and his own wealth.“

“But at least he makes them feel listened to, right? At least he doesn’t hate them like you do.” Eric frowned, and Markus winced at his own directness.

He immediately tried to explain himself. “I don’t know. I don’t disagree with you; I just . . . I guess I don’t think any of this is really about who pays what in taxes, or even the rich versus the poor. I think it’s about who we let in and who we push away.” He thought about his Uber driver. “Who feels welcome at the election party and who doesn’t. I think a lot of people are voting for Trump because they think a lot of Democrats would prefer that they weren’t around.”

“Yeah, well, truth be told, some of them I don’t want around,” Eric said. “The racists, the incels, the religious nuts. The people whose whole thing is excluding other people. Do you think the Republicans are the more welcoming party? Their entire platform is just being anti-immigrant and anti-trans.“

“Listen, I’m on your side,” Markus protested. “I just don’t think it’s that simple. I think you’re right that they’re a party of exclusion. But I think, increasingly, we are too. I just think everyone wants a place to belong, a community that values them and gives them a way to contribute, to participate. And when they find that place, they’ll commit to it, even if it means higher taxes or excusing a tyrant. Some of us find that here. But you have to recognize that this—” Markus gestured around the room. “This just isn’t a place that values everyone.”

“I don’t know. I guess a lot of us are just tired of tolerating racists and sexists.”

“Yeah,” said Markus softly. “Maybe on both sides we’ve done too much tolerating of hate.”

At this, Eric spent a few moments in thought. “Yeah, maybe.”

After a few more moments of silence, Anne spoke up. “Hey Markus, do you want to get some fresh air?”

Anne and Markus stepped outside onto the front porch and looked out at the rows of houses, lit by the soft yellow haze of streetlights. Each home had its own unique style, but all lined up together, they looked remarkably uniform. “You know, I never really liked Eric,” Anne said with a smile. “But I’ve never heard him talk like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, he’s always like that, of course. He’s always so sure of himself, even if he’s always right. But I think you triggered something in him. You pressed him in a way he wasn’t used to; you pressed him on his kindness, his generosity of spirit. In return, he was honest, and he listened.”

“I’m glad you felt that way, because I just felt kind of stupid.”

Anne laughed. “I’m really glad you came,” she said seriously. “You bring something . . . different. I swear it changes people.”

Suddenly, they heard a number of gasps and then excited chatter coming from inside. Markus checked his phone; it was 8 o’clock, and the first election results had begun to pour in.

This is the first entry in a multi-part manifesto by the newest author to take on the Pablo Parabola name.

Taking Less, Giving More

Combating Climate Change Through Contributism

In the wake of a devastating hurricane season, it is imperative to explore the choices that have led humanity to this pivotal moment, and from this foundation peer beyond the veil to the possible futures before us.

The technological marvels that have fueled the global spread of capitalism in the last century can be traced to a single source. Oil. [1]

Petrochemicals have unleashed an exponential quality increase in every aspect of human life. Whatever humanity wanted, oil delivered an answer. Plastics could outlast any naturally occurring polymer by many centuries, meaning less time spent repairing and replacing worn components. Instead of harvesting bat guano from far off atolls, modern chemistry could synthesize fertilizer from fossil fuel feedstock. Electricity became commonplace and abundant, as new materials begat new techniques for wire insulation, data transmission, and remote control.

As humanity’s ability to transmute oil grew, so did our overall supply of money. Unlike gold, the benefit of abstract currencies was that as productivity increased, more money could be made available to other members of the community, whether that community was a small farming town in eastern Oklahoma or all 9 billion people on planet Earth. This is the underlying premise of fractional reserve banking, a fundamentally contributist concept in itself. A windfall of good fortune experienced by a singular individual goes into a bank and is then redistributed to other clients in the form of loans, while the bank might hold only a few cents per dollar in reserve. This takes one dollar and makes it ten, enabling enterprising individuals to roll the dice on innovation.

At the core of this entire scheme is the premise that currencies are a representation of value. That value can take many forms, but no matter what the direct value is to the consumer, this value is a representation of time. Producing more wheat in a given harvest means less time spent plowing fields or pulling weeds. Therefore spending top dollar for time saving tools or extra strength pesticides are worth the investment.  A thought provoking film is a distilled and polished narrative journey told through a medium of sight and sound, stirring within the viewer ideas and emotions that they may have needed years of introspection to achieve personally. The very basis of entertainment is that it fills our time with meaning, adding texture and richness to our lives.

Fossil fuels, themselves formed over millions of years, were extracted and refined by humanity to save billions of hours of labor. This increase in productivity per unit time is the fundamental basis of capitalist expansion that has come to shape modern life. Unbeknownst to the wider public, this thermodynamic trickery of converting oil and gas into abundant energy literally mortgaged the future of humanity for the benefit of the present. The many centuries of extra productivity we have unlocked in these past few decades have manifested themselves as a debt to the environment, to our ecosystems, to our future generations.

Capitalism was a useful framework for directing and allocating this added time. It forced humanity to think non-intuitively, driven to utilize cheap and abundant energy to maximize production. Our massively interconnected lives have led to seemingly paradoxical efficiencies. For example, when buying pear compote in the USA, who could have imagined that the most capital efficient solution would be to grow the pears in Argentina, ship them across the Pacific to be packed in Thailand, and then cross that giant blue expanse again to await consumption. [2]

Driven by a singular focus on maximizing profits, capitalism has subsumed itself like an overheating snake. Instead of leveraging capital to improve the quality of life, capital has leveraged the lives of the many to serve the wants of the few. 

Machine learning is the latest incarnation of this trend, promising to further reduce human involvement in the production of knowledge work, drawing upon an overwhelming display of resources to train and develop these tools, upending copyright protections and environmental commitments. [3, 4, 5, 6, 7] Yet even if large language models are able to deliver on their lofty claims, will our society be better as a result? Will our interpersonal relationships be strengthened? Will our communities be drawn closer, and the rhythm of our weeks more lively and bright? 

The umbra of capitalistic taking doesn’t consider the externalities of the environment or society. This singular focus on increasing shareholder value has shaped the rise of Big Tech from brash, irreverent newcomers, to subservient participants in a global surveillance apparatus, powering new forms of international espionage and propaganda, while also raising an anxious generation [8] beset with challenges our current cultural attitudes are unable to address. I don’t believe this is a grand conspiracy to usher in a brave new world, but rather the consequence of a simple formula. More engagement with the platform enables better and more targeted advertising. 

Advertising is the leading edge of the modern capitalist money machine, with Meta and Google dominating the market by becoming wildly efficient at extracting individual user data.

Contributism in the 21st century needs to be about reversing this societal norm. The discovery of oil led to such dazzling gains in productivity that we began to believe that productivity was an end in itself. By chasing productivity for its own sake, we have distracted ourselves from our humanity. We toil endlessly in pursuit of more energy to burn, despite knowing that it does not fulfill us, and even imperils our future selves. Instead of racing to see who can hoard the most capital, can we turn the tide, and ask: how can we enable the most number of people to be fulfilled, and in their fulfillment, contribute?