12/21/09

Dear Ms. Ostrom.

I hope that things have calmed down for you a bit after your great honor. The Noble Prize has given me the opportunity to discover your work, as well as many, many others I am sure. I realize that you may not be able to respond to this, given all the world attention your recent fame is sure to have brought you. However, I am writing anyway in an attempt to get your perspective on the work I am doing and to possibly have you speak at a conference I am organizing on "Sacred Capital". So, here goes nothing . . .

I have been working on redirecting the huge body of organizational design that has gone into good civic governance and applying those methodologies to corporate governance. Some of the good design parameters being checks and balances, separation of powers, and elected leadership. I hope to be the catalyst for an economic evolution modeled after the American governmental revolution. As your work so clearly shows, good democratic governance is far more efficient, effective, and equitable than hierarchy. I am not a scientist, I am a public entrepreneur and I excited about the social, environmental, and economic benefits that could flow from a shift to good corporate governance, just as the shift to good national governance was the catalyst for our current abundance and ease.

The purpose of the Sacred Capital Conference that I am organizing this Summer at my resort in Northern California is to create a public awareness of the benefits of good economic organizational design. I am attempting to make the connection between the American Indigenous People's concept of sacredness and the management and governance of economic capital. I believe the indigenous concept of sacredness to have been a mechanism of social governance and resource management that lead to their pooled resources being managed for abundance and to avoid over harvesting. The challenge is that we don't hunt deer any more, we hunt money. But if we could apply some of the same reverence (i.e. acknowledgment of good organization design parameters) to the acquisition of capital, that the First Nations applied to the acquisition of the resources they needed to survive, then perhaps we could move our society away from the insatiable orgy for independent means, and over harvesting, towards more interdependent, decentralized, and efficient community control of economic resources.

I am in discussions with Anges Baker Pilgrim, one of the Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers who are speaking up for future generations, and whom have a great deal of authority among the under 40 crowd. My plan is to convene a council of First Nation representatives to discuss the concept of Sacred Capital, and the benefits of community pooled resources. My hope is to have a broad coalition of First Nation leaders agree to a plan of, basically, welcoming the latest wave immigrants (post 1492) to join with them to build the New Nations. These New Nations would be what I call "Policorps", hybrid organization structures that blends the three engines of our society -- the best of democratic governance, entrepreneurial creativity and energy, and the social cohesion and mutual care of traditional community. I believe the inherent dramatic potential of this event would be broadly covered in the international media and online, helping to bring attention to the good work you and others like you are doing and hopefully leading towards structural changes in how we organize ourselves.

I hope that you might come and help convince the gathering of the real, tangible, scientifically verifiable benefits of community pooled resources, thus blending the sacred with the science. If your schedule does not allow it, I hope that there is a brilliant graduate student or colleague who might want to spend a week in the High Sierra off the Yuba River talking about the future.

With hope and determination,

M