Productivity Line

When tackling any sort of problem, it matters immensely how you frame it. The construct and language you use to describe the problem will inevitably direct and guide how you formulate solutions. Let’s take a look at the economic topography of the world – there are places where a great deal of innovative products and services are created that many have access to and other places where much less is created and fewer people have access to the little there is. The medium of exchange for these goods and services being money, the issue of this global inequity among human beings has been constructed in the context of money. It has been framed as an issue of ‘poverty’, the lack of money and therefore the ability to acquire. With this framework lack of money becomes the central issue and we draw ‘poverty lines’ – how much money is reasonable to have and formulate solutions that focus on how to redistribute money and give people ability to acquire.

What if instead we had framed the issue in the context of productivity – in terms of what you give or create and not what you take or acquire? Then instead of looking at the world and wondering why so many people are able to acquire so little, we would ask why so many are able to create so little and why we are so grossly lopsided in terms of productivity. Instead of seeing people as lacking enough money to be above some poverty line we would look at it in terms of people lacking in ability to be above a productivity line. If we saw it this way we would construct our solutions profoundly differently. Rather than focusing on money – which is simply a token of exchange – we would be forced to focus on human capability and the conditions that drive it.