Medium Short: Modeling Modifying Models

Changing how I create change (with a hint of compost)

A city crew planted dozens of diverse saplings along the bike path near the Lachine Rapids this week, where they join many mature deciduous delights. (photo by me, May 2023)

Welcome to the latest Medium Short, a weekly accountability practice highlighting what I’m up to along the unmarked trail towards #IndustrialHealing. This is a personal update — my (debatably) more professional writing is freely available through this link.

Coming out of the performance appraisal with my Imaginary Boss last week, I’ve been nudged (okay shoved) towards a more focused path. It feels new and weird for me, but these Shorts are a personal accountability practice, so new and weird are nonviable excuses. Also, as I like to remind myself when I get hung up in the rafters, nothing’s that exciting really.

So in today’s Short I’ll share The Next Thing I referred to last week, including how I’m modifying my own model, which flows into how I offer more actionable ideas to other business model modifiers out in this crazy old economic world of ours.

Modifying my model

In my explorations of industrial healing, I look at business models a lot. As long as we live in a world with money, I want to see companies earning revenue based on activities that make society and the biosphere healthier. That’s not how most companies are structured. Instead we have the short-term profit motive which undermines (most) human wellness while wreaking ecological havoc. Hence I look for ways to redesign — or straight up compost — the metastatic business models that are profitable today.

Meanwhile I live on the same planet as you do (I’m making some assumptions here) so my landlady expects me to pay her in fiat currency as opposed to airy fairy ideas about paradigm shifts.

What to do? I wonder.

One thing I do is take a closer look at the algorithmic economy. This is a big, potentially painful puzzle — I refer to it as algorithmitis. Case in point: I do not monetize my YouTube channel (though it’s been getting thousands more views in recent weeks) because I don’t want to earn income by driving up sales of stuff I have no say over, that is likely causing industrial harm. I have looked into YouTube’s parent, Google, and how they monetize our data — asymmetrically and profitably. I share more about this in…