Measure well-being alongside GDP
Track health, secure housing, equal access to quality education and training, useful time, ecological condition and long-term resilience alongside output and income. Publish the trade-offs.
Governance
What governments can reward, measure and put into practice.
A different approach
Change what governments reward and measure
Consider a parent comparing two government proposals. One promises more economic activity; another promises cleaner water, reliable transport and accessible training. The practical question is what each proposal would change in the family’s daily life, at what cost, and for how long.
No country can solve global problems alone. Governments can cooperate across differences while remaining accountable to their own people.
Make lasting products pay
Support repairable design, spare parts, durable software, reuse and responsible recycling. Let public purchasing help create markets for longevity.
Bring long-term costs into decisions
Use transparent impact assessments and suitable rules for pollution, restoration and producer responsibility. Protect low-income households as policies change.
Cooperate without requiring agreement on everything
Share evidence, align useful standards, protect communities affected by transitions and build practical agreements on climate, trade and technology.
Canada’s trade and energy choices are one example of this tension: diversification and cooperation can improve resilience, while new projects still need honest assessment of ecological and community costs.
Where to begin
Turn a vision into decisions we can test
A resident trying to repair an appliance, a young person seeking training, and a parent looking for reliable childcare all encounter the effects of public decisions. Begin with those experiences, then examine the evidence and the wider consequences. A proposal deserves to be judged by what changes for people and the living world.
Ask a better question
For any policy or product, ask what useful service it provides, how long it lasts, and who bears its full cost.
Try, measure, revise
Test repair rules, well-being measures and fair transition policies. Publish results, including failures, and change course when evidence demands it.
Build bridges
Invite people with different priorities to define the problem together. Cooperation begins with a shared picture of reality, not forced agreement.
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- From public purpose to accountable decisions
- Short political horizons versus long physical consequences
- Measure what society actually wants to improve
- Represent people who are not in the room
- Govern through cooperation rather than humiliation
- A staged transition rather than a sudden replacement
- A practical governance framework
- International cooperation and the United Nations
- Cooperation that reaches people in danger
- What the present rules actually allow
- Questions a credible reform must answer
- How this connects
From public purpose to accountable decisions
Drawn from the Governing for Life discussion paper. Linked references open the supporting sources.
Short political horizons versus long physical consequences
Election cycles, quarterly earnings and annual budgets encourage attention to immediate results. Climate systems, forests, soils, infrastructure, public health and resource depletion operate over decades. Future generations cannot vote in today's elections, and ecosystems do not participate directly in markets. Governance therefore needs mechanisms that deliberately represent long-term consequences.
Measure what society actually wants to improve
A national dashboard could place conventional economic indicators beside measures of present and future well-being. The OECD already maintains a well-being framework, and UNDP's Planetary Pressures-adjusted Human Development Index adjusts human-development performance for carbon emissions and material footprint. These demonstrate that broader measurement is practical, not merely philosophical.
- Economic security: median disposable income, affordability, household debt, productive investment and resilience.
- Health: healthy life expectancy, preventable disease, mental health and access to care.
- Housing: affordability, quality, homelessness and security of tenure.
- Time: working hours, caregiving burden, leisure and work-life balance.
- Community: trust, safety, social connection and civic participation.
- Living systems: air, water, soil, biodiversity, habitat and ecosystem restoration.
- Resource stewardship: material footprint, waste, repair, reuse and recycling.
- Education and training: equal access to quality learning throughout life, including early childhood provision, academic and vocational pathways, arts, disability support and adult retraining. Measure affordability, participation, learning, completion and gaps between communities, rather than counting available places alone.
- Future capacity: infrastructure condition, education, research, natural capital and fiscal sustainability.
Quality education is part of durable well-being in its own right. A place in a classroom is a limited measure if teaching is inadequate, essential equipment is missing or a learner cannot afford to remain. The proposed dashboard would report opportunity and quality together, with results by income, disability, location and age where data permit. Equal access means a fair opportunity with appropriate support; it does not require identical interests, pathways or outcomes.
Represent people who are not in the room
Future generations and non-human life cannot bargain directly in today's institutions. Governments can compensate by requiring long-term impact statements, independent future-generations offices, natural-capital accounts, intergenerational fiscal analysis and ecological thresholds for decisions with irreversible effects.
This would not give an abstract concept veto power over elected governments. It would force present decision-makers to make long-term consequences visible before acting.
Govern through cooperation rather than humiliation
Complex transitions create legitimate disagreements. Energy security, employment, affordability, environmental protection and industrial competitiveness can pull in different directions. A governance culture capable of stating the strongest case on each side, acknowledging uncertainty and seeking shared gains is better suited to these problems than a culture that treats disagreement as disloyalty.
- Separate the person from the proposal.
- State benefits, costs, uncertainties and who bears each one.
- Publish assumptions so others can challenge them.
- Use pilot programs where evidence is uncertain.
- Measure outcomes and revise policies when they fail.
- Build coalitions around specific shared interests rather than requiring agreement on everything.
A staged transition rather than a sudden replacement
- Measure first. Establish credible national accounts for well-being, natural capital, material flows and long-term resilience alongside GDP.
- Remove perverse incentives. Identify rules and subsidies that reward waste, pollution, short product lives or unnecessary resource consumption.
- Set product rules gradually. Begin with high-impact categories where durability, repair and recycling standards are technically mature.
- Use public purchasing power. Governments can buy durable, repairable and low-lifecycle-cost products, creating markets without prescribing every private choice.
- Invest in enabling infrastructure. Clean electricity, grids, transit, digital infrastructure, recycling systems, water systems and research make sustainable choices cheaper.
- Protect households during transition. Avoid policies whose immediate costs fall disproportionately on people with the least financial flexibility.
- Prepare for automation. Build education, income and ownership systems that can distribute productivity gains.
- Cooperate internationally. Align standards and supply chains so environmental responsibility does not simply push production to jurisdictions with weaker protections.
- Review and adapt. Sunset ineffective policies, expand successful ones and publish results.
A practical governance framework
Principle | Question | Possible instrument | Guardrail |
|---|---|---|---|
Life first | Does this improve durable well-being? | Beyond-GDP dashboard | Keep economic output visible |
Long-term stewardship | What is transferred to the future? | Future-impact assessment | No unelected veto |
Circularity | Can value remain in use longer? | Repair/durability rules | Technology-neutral where possible |
True costs | Who pays for harm? | Lifecycle accounting | Protect affordability |
Shared prosperity | Who receives productivity gains? | Tax/benefit/ownership reform | Preserve incentives to innovate |
Evidence | Did the policy work? | Independent evaluation | Publish data and assumptions |
Pluralism | Can disagreement improve the design? | Deliberation and pilots | Protect rights and dissent |
Global cooperation | Can the problem cross borders? | Standards and coalitions | Respect national autonomy |
International cooperation and the United Nations
Cooperation that reaches people in danger
Imagine a family whose safety depends on help crossing a border or on violence stopping nearby. A debate about institutional rules becomes very personal: can people reach shelter, food, medical care and protection? This illustrative situation gives a human starting point for Michael’s earlier discussion of a more effective United Nations.
The earlier essays “Message to United Nations” and “Five Pillars of a Reimagined United Nations” propose stronger protection of civilians, fairer international decision-making, predictable funding, wider public participation and a voice for ecosystems and future generations. These are reform proposals, not descriptions of powers the UN already possesses.
What the present rules actually allow
The Security Council’s permanent members can veto substantive decisions; procedural decisions follow a different voting rule. A veto is not a power to block every action of the entire UN. Read the Council’s voting rules.
Changing Charter provisions is a major legal and political undertaking. Article 108 requires adoption by two-thirds of General Assembly members and ratification by two-thirds of UN members, including every permanent Security Council member. Read Article 108.
UN peacekeeping currently relies on military and police personnel voluntarily contributed by member states. Its financing includes assessed contributions, rather than depending only on voluntary donations. A proposed standing peace service or new funding mechanism must therefore explain how it would differ from existing arrangements. Read how peacekeeping is funded and staffed.
Questions a credible reform must answer
Who authorizes an intervention? How are civilians protected and abuses investigated? How can smaller countries influence decisions? Who funds the work, and what happens if contributions are withheld? How are youth, Indigenous peoples and affected communities heard without replacing democratic accountability? A proposal should address these questions before promising that a new institution will bring peace.
The practical starting point is cooperation on specific needs, transparent decisions and independently examined results. More ambitious changes require negotiation, legal authority, safeguards and sustained public support.
How this connects
Questions for candidates · Costs to households and ecosystems
Participation: learning from the past and widening opportunity
No single political system tells the whole story of human governance. Institutions have changed as people organised, challenged exclusion, negotiated rights and revised rules. Some inherited arrangements solve real problems; others need reconsideration. Our aim is to examine outcomes and opportunities, rather than judge entire parties, governments or populations.
When people have a meaningful role
Participation can extend beyond elections to public consultations, local decisions, citizen panels and oversight. The OECD’s 2020 review examines representative deliberative processes used by public authorities for complex questions, including climate and infrastructure. It identifies opportunities to improve decisions and trust, alongside the need for thoughtful design and evaluation.
OECD: Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions (external source)
A concrete example is Ireland’s 2022 Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss. The OECD’s 2025 review describes how it helped strengthen the public mandate for action and government support for nature restoration. This illustrates a possible contribution from deliberation, not proof that every assembly or recommendation succeeds.
OECD: Climate governance and citizen participation (external source)
Benefits and risks to examine together
- Wider participation can reveal overlooked needs; exclusion, inaccessible meetings and unequal resources can still silence people.
- Local knowledge can improve proposals; misleading claims and organised pressure can distort discussion.
- Public deliberation can encourage understanding; participation becomes symbolic if decision-makers never explain how they use the results.
- Collective choices can strengthen accountability; majority preferences still need safeguards for rights and people with less power.
Ask who can take part, what information they receive, whether disagreement is welcome, how decisions are made and how consequences will be assessed. Participation should be an opportunity people can choose, with realistic ways to influence outcomes.
A worldwide opportunity—with unequal access
People with connectivity can now exchange information across countries in moments, at a scale unavailable to earlier generations. This does not mean every person can participate equally: ITU estimated that 2.2 billion people remained offline in 2025. Accessible information, language support and opportunities beyond the internet remain important.
ITU: Facts and Figures 2025 (external source)
Share experiences and suggestions · Examine information fairly · Help nurture the conversation
See the connections between our rooms
Our familiar surroundings are connected to people, institutions and living systems far beyond them. Read The House With Many Rooms and explore what those connections mean.
The United Nations and our shared future
Explore why the UN was created, what limits its work and proposals for equal participation, accountable peacekeeping, fair work and protection from child labour.
Women and girls equal rights and world peace
Examine restrictions, recent evidence, collective action and practical ways to make equal rights real.
Beyond Epstein: Exploitation and Governing for Life
Explore documented international cases and the wider conditions that allow exploitation: power, insecurity, institutional failures, and the changes needed to protect dignity and freedom.
Read the full illustrated article