This episode features a conversation between Phil Dillard, Founder of Thruline Networks, and Dr. Michael K. Dorsey, environmental scientist, advocate, scholar, and entrepreneur. Dr. Dorsey is a recognized expert on global energy, environment, finance and sustainability matters. In this episode, Dr. Dorsey talks about the building practice of capitalism and how to fix it, provides a life cycle analysis of renewable energy while mapping out the future course of the planet, and offers advice for aspiring policymakers looking to engage governments across the globe.
This episode features a conversation between Phil Dillard, Founder of Thruline Networks, and Dr. Michael K. Dorsey, environmental scientist, advocate, scholar, and entrepreneur. Dr. Dorsey is a recognized expert on global energy, environment, finance and sustainability matters.
A graduate of the University of Michigan, Yale and Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Dorsey is a serial organization builder and leader in for-profit, non-profit, scholarly and governmental realms. His significant government engagement began in 1992 as a member of the U.S. State Department Delegation to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, “The Earth Summit.” He has published dozens of scholarly and lay articles on a variety of environment, development and sustainable finance matters and has been featured or provided his opinions in the world’s leading lay television, radio and print outlets.
In this episode, Dr. Dorsey talks about the building practice of capitalism and how to fix it, provides a life cycle analysis of renewable energy while mapping out the future course of the planet, and offers advice for aspiring policymakers looking to engage governments across the globe.
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Guest Quote
“Renewable energy is going to change everybody's access to energy, absolutely and fundamentally. It's going to restructure and drive the restructuring of society as we know it because this world, like it or not, is an energy-based world. Right now we are living on dirty energy, fossil fuels, or fossil foolishness, and that's polluting and poisoning us and destroying ecosystems, destroying environments, driving climate change, killing species, poisoning water, poisoning aquifers, et cetera. When we pivot out of that nasty fossil foolishness, we don't see the pollution. We don't see rising CO2 emissions. We don't see accelerating greenhouse gasses.” - Dr. Michael K. Dorsey
Episode Timestamps
(00:38) The building practice of capitalism
(04:38) How to fix capitalism
(13:59) Dr. Dorsey’s efforts in environmental policy
(19:58) Life cycle analysis of renewable energy
(27:17) Advice for aspiring policymakers for engaging governments
(44:17) Mapping out the future
(49:37) Final thoughts
Thruline Networks
Learn more about Dr. Dorsey
Phil Dillard: Hello and welcome to Thruline to the Fourth Sector, where we're exploring fourth sector capitalism and impact investing as an invitation to innovation and changing the world. I'm your host, Phil Dillard, Founder Thruline Networks. In today's modern world, energy is essential to quite literally everything, especially building the 21st century global economy.
And building sustainably requires contributions from people from a wide range of industries and backgrounds, including business, nonprofit, and government. Achieving such an ambitious goal takes convicted individuals with intelligence, drive and leadership.
Fortunately, my guest today has all three of these qualities in spades. Dr. Michael K Dorsey is a recognized expert on global energy finance and sustainability matters. He's a graduate of the University of Michigan, Yale, and the John Hopkins University. He's been named one of the [00:01:00] 200 National and Energy and Environment Expert Insiders by the National Journal.
He's also been a professor at Dartmouth College, a contributor to the Wall Street Journal and received Rotary International's highest honor for distinguished service to humanity. No one on the world stage is a dynamic leader, teacher, innovator, and businessman. Dr. Dorsey is a major contributor to our clean, dynamic and abundant future in the classroom and in the boardroom.
In this episode, Dr. Dorsey talks about building the practice of capitalism and how to fix it. He provides a lifecycle analysis of renewable energy and maps out course projections for the planet's future. Now, please sit back and enjoy this conversation with Dr. Michael K. Dorsey.
Hello again everyone, and welcome to another episode of Thruline to the Fourth Sector. I'm your host, Phil Dillard, today here with Dr. Michael K. Dorsey, [00:02:00] all around incredible human being. He's got, uh, a number of degrees in accreditations. You've probably may have seen him in a number of different places around the world talking about the work that he does.
We're really thankful to have him here. Dr. Dorsey, how you doing today?
[00:02:15] Michael K. Dorsey: Phil, it's such a pleasure to be with you this afternoon, truly a pleasure to be on the through line. Definitely looking forward to where you take this and where it goes.
[00:02:25] Phil Dillard: Well, thank you very much. Thanks for making the time. We're, we're looking to take it, uh, first to know a little bit about you and then the, the work you do, and then to help people learn a little bit about how they can engage in building, um, a practice of capitalism that works for everyone.
So if that's okay, maybe we'll just get started. Jump right.
[00:02:46] Michael K. Dorsey: Yeah. You know, Phil, I don't know if we can build a practice of capitalism that engaged everyone. I think we're gonna probably have to spend more time on dismantling capitalism, cuz it's a broken system that's harming a lot of people, socializing a lot of evil and [00:03:00] madness, and then privatizing huge windfalls and concentrating those windfalls in the pockets of a few.
I think it's fair to call them sociopathic leaders. You know, that's really the formation of the corporation. Currently in the early 21st century and really the formation of the corporation as it existed across the vast majority of the 20th century of a machine that optimized sociopathy, that optimized harming people, undermining ecosystems, uh, destroying social systems, that is the cynic of capitalism.
That's a formation that we must, unfortunately, like cancer. Eradicate from the earth as we know it, less we'd be subjected to a dead planet, and that means, of course, the end of humanity. So I think the challenge going forward into the 22nd century, and certainly for the super majority of the rest of this century is.
Dismantling the [00:04:00] broken system, the broken legacy, really short legacy, you know, barely, you know, 200 years, you know, by some counts, some might stretch out a little bit further. But essentially a system that's been around you barely, uh, two centuries that really created, especially over its last century, an awful, awful, uh, repugnant, uh, formation that upended the planet as we know.
Caused the climate crisis caused the sixth largest extinction of species on planet earth. Uh, you know, drove and exacerbated, you know, the illegal trade and wildlife drove and exacerbated illegal fishing. Unregulated fishing, drove and exacerbated. Illegal, uh, logging. I point out those three things.
Illegal logging, illegal fishing, the illegal wildlife trade, because right now, just a few days ago in Ming China, we saw the start of the 15th conference of the parties of the United Nations Conference on Biological Diversity. A very important moment coming. [00:05:00] To tackle and to set parameters to hopefully begin to save what's left.
Save biodiversity because it's been absolutely hammered, destroyed, raped, undermined by the capital system, which is ricking havoc all over the earth. Well,
[00:05:17] Phil Dillard: that's, uh, that's jumping right into it. So let's continue to keep digging because I think this is probably one of the most important conversations I've had this year with that start the youth commonly site capitalism, right?
And experts like yourselves. Site capitalism, but there are others who say, Well, to date, it's the best system that we've found for elevating people out of poverty, or elevating the standard of living of the average person or distributing capital. And some way to argue that. Well, I mean, if I look at different systems, if I look at feudalism, if I look at socialism and communism, each of these different economic systems or.
Political and economic systems have different strengths and [00:06:00] strengths and weaknesses. I don't know yet what's better for my part. I don't know how to, to, to replace capitalism. I'm, I'm not that smart. I think I have an approach for how to fix capitalism, at least in saying mission driven capitalism balances out those things that folks called externalities that let things get out of control.
But is it fundamentally broken or is there a better system or a better practice of the system that we can go to? Or do we have to really seriously rethink the. Well,
[00:06:27] Michael K. Dorsey: you know, Phil Myopia is a bitch and path dependency is a fool. So those that somehow want to believe that this is the only system that we have, they are, you know, in the sea of the myopic, they are wedded to and connected up and in bed with those that are on the past dependent trajectory, and they've failed to.
Certainly what's possible right now. They also openly ignoring the [00:07:00] way in which we've come into the 21st century, now we have the data capability to do full cost counter. So we can give some capitalist, you know, these early 20th century folks, you know, living by candlelight, uh, without computers as we know them now, certainly not without computers that have the data resources that we know now without machine learning, we can give those, you know, cite capitalist, primordial, capitalist, as it were, the benefit of the doubt to some extent, because they lack the means, the resources, the technology, the wherewithal to not just invent.
A new system, but really to take advantage of the tools that we now have, we have the ability to do the math about how the current system is undermining livelihoods, how the current system is harming people. And also we have now the technologies that aren't really that infinitely sophisticated, not so much advance, but technologies like renewable energy, technology like battery power, particularly on the energy side where I, I'm [00:08:00] involved in heavily as an investor and on my business side, uh, we have the technology.
To bring forth things that don't des spoil the environment, that don't drive carbon emissions, that don't aid in a bet the sixth extinction of the, the sixth greatest loss of species on planet Earth. We have those technologies. We have the, actually now the ability to enhance those. I'll call 'em relatively crude technologies, like renewable energy as we know it right now, for the most part, the super majority of renewable energy is operating in an analog way.
It's not digitally driven at all. It's not being, you know, enhanced and optimized with machine learning and so forth. So we know, and, and that's actually, even though that's the reality now, that crude technology, that is much, much better than the stuff that. Poisoning us the fossil foolishness of the 20th century, and especially the 19th century.
Imagine here we are on the 21st century using 19th century technology to to heat our homes and turn on our lights and so forth, and keep the power [00:09:00] going. What Tom Foolery could we be assigned to and caught up with Then such nonsense like that. So we now. Given technology, given data, given things like renewable energy, we don't have to be caught up in the nonsense of fossil foolishness of the 19th century.
We don't have to be caught up in the trid capitalism of the early 20th century. We can actually. Improve livelihoods, improve ecosystems, keep them from being spoiled, keep ecosystems from being trash and undermined. Keep people's livelihoods from being reduced and harmed and still make money and still move resources to people and not just move resources to people with the technology that we now have, with the innovation that we now have with practices and.
With certain kinds of regulations and rules and political structures, we can guarantee people things like a right to energy, a [00:10:00] right to water, and still deliver returns for companies, for individuals that invest in those structures that go and take the sort of call it first risk, first loss, whatever metaphor you like that, go and install that stuff.
We can. Make them whole return profits to them, improve ecosystems, avoid the further deterioration of ecosystems and, and social systems, and improve livelihoods and things in areas that we weren't even trying to do in the first place with the money that we make in and the new technology. In a new 21st century and take us into the 22nd century.
And the only reason why we're not gonna do that, the only reason, the biggest sort of stumbling block or barricade to disabling us or slowing us down from delivering that kind of future are. Oligo forces, monopolistic forces, forces of greed, forces of [00:11:00] plunder, sociopathic forces, forces, like many of those in Silicon Valley where you are, we might as well call it Silly Valley, where people are hoarding resources unnecessarily.
You know, a few billionaires there, hoarding resources while their workers barely make minimum wage, barely make two or three times minimum wage living, you know, at the margins of society and not really even living there, dying there, right? You don't live, you know, below minimum wage. You die in that space.
You don't live on a dollar a day. You don't get by, you know, in emerging economies on a dollar a day, you die in that kind of way. So we've gotta get to a situation. We roll back that oligo, ballistic, ergonomic forces, we roll those back. We put the cap on those folks. We get rid of their broken formations because those are the formations that are killing us, that are killing the planet, destroying ecosystems, and not delivering things for our children, for our livelihoods, for our ecosystems, and [00:12:00] ultimately stealing and robbing the.
From us and from all the listeners that are listening to this, but also from future listeners. So we gotta get out of that and we can get outta that. We're in a moment now where it just so happens just a year ago. The end of 2020. We had a historic moment. Probably few people even noticed it because you had a, a rogue president.
You had this, you know, global pandemonium unfolding, taking many, many lives. Millions of lives now have been lost from this pandemonium foolishness, you know, killing people all over the earth. But what happened at the end of last year? At the end of 2020, Q4 2020, we saw for the first time in history, renewable.
Become the cheapest way to generate power, bar none on the earth. And that breakthrough, that historic moment, that few probably even notice is gonna continue to be the case into the future. Right now, renewable energy makes up only single digit percent of the global energy [00:13:00] mix in a very short period of time, just a few decades long before we get to the end of this century renewable energy that's.
Green, healthy, profitable, that enables us to deliver a human right to energy for folks because it's gonna be so cheap, it's gonna get cheaper. That is a thing that's gonna continue to be the case gonna, it's gonna get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, and it's also gonna be profitable and it's also gonna help us fix ecosystems.
Fix broken social systems, deliver things even far away from energy, deliver things like free healthcare because we're gonna can take some of the bunnies out of that and pay for those social services, restore that social fabric, restore that social welfare that we need. We've got an opportunity to do it, and that's what we have to think about, not about the ancient history.
Of a century ago when people were, you know, sitting around by lamps and candlelight wondering about, you know, Adam Smith and other sorts of nonsense. We long [00:14:00] left that, and we shouldn't be even thinking about it. We gotta be thinking about what's we have now and we can deploy in the future with a sensibility not towards a broken century of, you know, feudalism and slavery and, and pseudo capitalism, but really to a future that's completely.
Different than what we certainly, what we know now and different than what we might even be able to imagine.
[00:14:23] Phil Dillard: Well, you covered a lot of ground there and it was pretty awesome and I'm trying to figure out exactly where to go next, but I think I'm going to drop the conversation about what's broken in capitalism.
We can, we can let other people take that way because I'm gonna go with the energy and the optimism and the clear vision of the future that you have and actually highlight that for folks because I want people to come out of. Inspired that they can be part of something new. And what I hear is there's an evolution.
There is this incredible greenfield, there's this incredible opportunity. We need to drop the past. We need to, We need to remember the lessons of what's bad about [00:15:00] concentration of power or hyper concentration of power. Wherever it is, right? The billionaire class, certain government to entities, that sort of thing.
Certain corporations, I don't blast corporations or anyone for it being inherently evil, but if the system is out of whack, then it, then it needs to get adjusted and we can adjust it, I believe through entrepreneurship, through innovation as opposed to historical adjustments that haven't been. As clean or as orderly.
The other thing is that I hear you calling people on hypocrisy, calling people out on, on false meritocracy and on false narratives that are going out there. So I wanna stick with the, with the positive and move in that direction and talk more about the opportunities we see at when we talk about renewables.
I think solar, wind, hydro, I think green hydrogen, I think other technologies. And then there's a technology layer on top of it. Can you talk a little bit about your. History in this industry. For those who haven't had the chance to read all the detail about your background, you have significant expertise in the [00:16:00] evolution of the renewable energy space to the point where it is today, you made some serious impact and that lowering the price of energy globally.
Can you, can you talk a little bit about that journey and the trajectory that it's on right
now?
[00:16:12] Michael K. Dorsey: Sure. In fairness, you know, quite new to the business side of renewable energy. I've only been in that space barely a decade. Not, not even a decade, really. You know, I've certainly paid attention to the business side of renewable energy for now going on, you know, almost four decades.
But in terms of being on the money side properly, that's something that's new for me. But at the same time, I came into that space with a deeper history on. Call it the knowledge, you know, side the, you know, academic scholarly policy side, trying to, you know, make the case at mainly in policy circles, but make the case to business folk make the case to leaders in government, heads of state, and so forth.
They representatives are representatives, uh, that a renewable energy [00:17:00] economy was not only technologically feasible, was not only good and had an. For communities, for the environment, as it were for individuals in terms of just their wallet, their income, but also could deliver power and resources and light and heat and air condition for that matter, at scale, at cost, and be very cheap and still generate those returns.
I think it's fair to say. Many of my colleagues on both the business side as well as more, call it scholarly or policy side, we certainly. Were subscribers to the argument of the upside, the net upside of renewable energy for communities, for states, for countries, regions, a whole planet as it were. But I don't think any of us for saw the rapidity of which, at which the prices of renewable energy would decline and have, you know, many of us knew that at [00:18:00] certain point in time, you know, this solar and wind would become cheaper, but none of us.
Even certainly not 10 years ago that we would be added 2020, where the cheapest way to generate energy was with renewable energy. Now that that day is here, that creates a tremendous opportunity that we will see continuously unfolding over the next several decades as we essentially crawl out of being a single digit percent mix of the energy mix.
We'll crawl out of that and then we'll accelerate like a rocket. Up to 80, 90, a hundred percent in quite a number of countries of the energy mix. So we're gonna see literally, exponential growth in a very, very short period of time. Because why? Because everybody, everywhere needs energy. We have so many people.
Around the world, and even quite a number in the United States, particularly poor black and brown folks, but especially [00:19:00] folks in, in Indian country, aren't connected to the grid at all. They don't have power at all. They don't have light, they don't have heat, et cetera. And of course, poor, black, brown, red folks, yellow folks, you know, bipo, some of you, you California's like to, to offer up those acronyms for, for describing people.
If you're poor and you're not white, you pay a disproportionate amount of your salary. Or your income. You know, if some, if you don't have a salary, even however you get money, you pay a disproportionate amount of that money for energy. So we now in a moment where that no longer has to be the case, and it should have never been the case, but it certainly doesn't have to be the case in a renewable energy world.
So renewable energy is going to change everybody's access to. Absolutely, and fundamentally, it's gonna restructure and drive the restructuring of society as we know it, because this world, like it or not, is an energy based world. Right now, we are living on a dirty energy in fossil fuel of fossil [00:20:00] foolishness, and that's polluting and and poisoning us, and destroying ecosystems, destroying environment, driving climate change, killing species poisoning water, opposing aquifers, et cetera.
When we pivot out of that nasty fossil foolishness, We don't see the pollution, we don't see rising CO2 emissions, we don't see accelerating greenhouse gases. We see those systems gradually getting cleaned up. We see an opportunity of which we can actually put more resources to actually cleaning them up as opposed to simply watching them get better, as it were.
You know, I was certainly involved with a lot of folks, uh, my friends and colleagues in, in places. Universities and places, other places like the Club of Rome in advocacy groups like Sierra Club and Sunrise, The boards of whom, whom I've sat on. We've been advocating for this for decades, but really now we're at a moment where this stuff is what the business people say.
Now, my new peers, this is the [00:21:00] stuff, renewable energy, the clean, green, beautiful stuff. It's the shit that pencil. It's only gonna be the stuff that pencil's going forward. Nothing else. Nothing else.
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Head over caspian studios.com to learn more. And now back to the interview. I'm gonna ask you two questions at the same time, even though I'm dropping one, but I know you can handle it. I was going to ask you why now, And I was also thinking, well, does it really matter why? It's just, it's just where we are, You know that, but still, you, you, you hit on it a little bit, you said, at this point in time, and, and I'm, I'm very curious about what the major factors are for this.
Time that are different than 10, 20 or 30 years ago. Is it China rapidly producing in solar at scale? Is it social zeitgeist? That sort of thing. And then the second part to that question really is what do you say to folks who talk about the end of life issue or the life cycle analysis? Of solar or other renewables, they say, [00:23:00] Well, you know, we don't know what to do with the batteries or, Well, you know, the solar panels only last for so long and they take a certain amount of energy to, to make I'm sure very common criticisms and common questions.
I'm wondering what you would have to say
[00:23:12] Michael K. Dorsey: to that, you know, to the first half the question Certainly. The explosion, the economic explosion, the awakening of China, as it were. The awakening of the Chinese economy has absolutely contributed to, uh, creating the economies of scale for renewable energy. That is, without question, it's beyond reproach.
Uh, I would also add in the mix, uh, the parallel, essentially parallel explosion of the Indian economy, uh, but China and India, Combin. Right now at least the only greater than a billion population countries on earth and and still growing, they have absolutely contributed and are gonna continue to contribute actually to creating those economies of scale for renewable energy.
That's for sure. So they are [00:24:00] part of the engine room of what is given us. You know, energy, in this case, the cheapest way to generate power with renewables. But there are also some other early movers in the, in that equation. Germany certainly stands out. They took some early bets, particularly with WIN and built in WIN when it was quite expensive, actually, you know, about 89% higher than what it costs now.
They took that first loss capital to sort of make the point that this could be done, and a lot of that went infrastructure that they. Literally a generation ago, you know, 20, 30 years ago is still generating power. Will continue to generate power. Some of it's even now being replaced and improved and so forth, so that, that falls into the second bit.
Let's face it, everything has a life cycle, right? There's no question about that. Unfortunately, we've escaped a century where redundancy was built into a lot. Manufacture goods and so forth. You know, they, they were not built to last unfortunately. [00:25:00] Certainly as we, as we now know, it doesn't have to be the case going forward.
That still, even if you remove as much of the sort of built in failure, You know, not making goods up to, you know, the most, most sort of resilient as you could make them. And even if you did make them at the highest level of resiliency, they're still ultimately gonna come to an end, you know? And if they don't come to an end, if they're still functioning, they probably will be more efficient things on the market that warrant replacing those older, less efficient technologies, as it were.
So we're seeing that. I think what's important about solar is. and also when, for that matter, bar none, their total footprint in terms of mining the materials to create the base resources to put them together, uh, as well as ultimately once they've been assembled, once they're made redundant, you know, they've stopped working, they've gotta be disposed of.[00:26:00]
That whole life cycle as a word of noble energy is nowhere near. It's literally orders of magnitude less than the life cycle of fossil fuel energy, and certainly it's tens of thousands of orders of magnitude. You heard that right? Tens of thousands. Less than nuclear as we currently have it, right? That thing, that ridiculously expensive way to boil water or nuclear energy, that some of the technical people refer to it as that thing, when it fails, it has catastrophic implications.
And even if it doesn't fail, you need facilities that are gonna be resilient out beyond the existence of modern human. So you need facilities that have the, the resilience at 10,000 or 20,000 more years, they're building one of these things up in Finland actually called . So to keep [00:27:00] nuclear power in place for literally.
More than modern humanity. So beyond 10,000 years, what foolishness would you want to be trafficking with such an energy source when you just certainly don't have to? Who knows why? Maybe it is just only Bill Gates and his cronies and some other, you know, jokers that wanna spend so much money boiling water.
We don't need to do that now. But that said, renewable energy has a, a very small footprint. Nevertheless, we still have to. Put in practices in terms of it, the manufacturing of the raw materials to get to the base, uh, materials. We've gotta put in regulatory controls. We see lots of problems, particularly in China with the way they're using bad labor practices.
They, uh, exposing workers to a lot of chemicals that are used, those. Sort of the earliest stages of the production long before assembly. Better rules, better regulations, certainly to protect workers. We've also gotta come up with policies to deal with, uh, [00:28:00] that waste stream to deal with how we can recycle those materials.
They certainly are recyclable. That's something that, for better or for worse, probably more for worse, isn't built into the practices and policies and regulatory policies in a lot of countries. Uh, Solar in particular. And also when are taking off, we, we need those rules and regulations. So we've got something that has a much, much smaller footprint in terms of its capacity to generate energy versus, you know, 20th century fossil fuel technology.
But at the same time, we need a new regulatory landscape in order to make sure that the win, which it's produced isn't disproportionately harming people and also, At its end of life that it's properly recycled, properly dealt with in a way that certainly doesn't harm people, harm ecosystems, undermine social systems, and the.
You go to policy
[00:28:53] Phil Dillard: and it's an important piece of the puzzle, but it's also a tricky one, right? If I go back, I'm a University of [00:29:00] Chicago MBA, and I go back to Milton Friedman who talked about the role of the corporation maximizing value for shareholders. But I went back to read his article, Capitalism Freedom.
People don't comment on this part. They don't comment on the part where he talks about government's responsibilities to set the boundaries for business and that. Operating inside. Those boundaries should then maximize value to shareholders and then government outside those boundaries should be setting the rules.
I often maintain, and I'm curious what you think of this, that the problem, one of the problems that we have right now is if corporations or individuals and or there are others with multi billion dollar pockets, it is hard for someone who. Who does not have significant capital to have anywhere near an equivalent voice of someone else who does.
So there is a disproportionate influence on government because of global governments operating completely differently. Let's talk about the difference between the US and Germany and China, for example, and three countries you [00:30:00] just mentioned. Well, there's significant differences in the way they operate, so it's really challenging to be able to hold global business to one similar standard across the.
How would you suggest that someone who's coming into this space as an activist, as an entrepreneur, as a aspiring policymaker, how should they think about engaging with the government and policy apparatus as part of their approach?
[00:30:27] Michael K. Dorsey: Well, you know, thankfully, certainly appreciate you. I won't even say calling out.
Some people might say it would be calling out Milton Friedman. Most folks who are thought of as the paragons of, you know, capitalist thinking or foundational theorists and so forth, uh, you know, whether it's treatment or you name who you wanna pick, you know, Smith, whatever, when you actually read. Their thoughts and you read the literature, you actually find [00:31:00] exactly the sorts of things that you find, right?
The foundational thinkers of free trade, for example. You know, argue that the only way it works properly is with the movement of three things, not the two things that we normally associate with it. Most people think free trade is just about moving goods and money, but the foundational theorist, we worked that out said, No, we gotta have the free movement of people.
And things and what do we know that doesn't really move? In the free trade world and the globalization world and globalized world, it's people, right? People aren't allowed to move freely, right? They, they're running up against borders. People are using, you know, racist, you know, anti migrant issues and so forth.
So when you really, it's really important to do what you just did. When you talk about these folks, whether it's capitalist or Marxist or whatever, it's really important to be wedded to the foundational theorist. Truly, and at least to acknowledge what they're talking about and what they've written. So kudos to you for doing that.
And now to take it back to your question, thankfully, we live in a world, to some extent [00:32:00] of rules. Not everybody respects them. Not everybody cares about them. Some people like to present, they don't exist. But we, we do live in a world of rules. And thankfully those rules, they serve a purpose. They, they serve to help us maintain order.
So we have lots of, for. Where those three folks that you mentioned, activists, entrepreneurs, policy makers, you know, regulators can go. We have four, like the United Nations coming just in a couple weeks. Actually, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at the 26 conference at the parties, the 26 time that the countries around the world, those called parties are coming together.
They're gonna be meeting in Glasgow, Scotland. So there are. Not only limited to United Nations, but there are great many for where people can go from different countries, from different backgrounds, uh, whether it be activists, whether it be business, uh, you name it, where they can go and [00:33:00] essentially try to work out these differences, these problems try to make sense of them.
Hopefully if they really, really come together, make enhancements. Make things that improve livelihoods, that get them further ahead than they otherwise were, that's a place where we can begin to tackle some of these things. That's the point of these UN conferences is not just a a bunch of talk shops. Now oftentimes we don't see the results and we being.
Citizens, you know, countries as it were, particularly countries in global south, even countries in the global north, we want more ambitious outcomes. We don't always get them, but that doesn't negate the fact that we have places to go to attempt to. Solve and surmount these problems that you identified.
[00:33:51] Phil Dillard: I agree with you and I intend aspire to, to go and to, to mix it up with those folks, but to what percentage of the people who need to [00:34:00] be engaged is it accessible, from my perspective, from a lower lay perspective.
Millions of people are talking about Greta Thunberg, right? Not about their country's delegation to Cop 20. They're talking about local, uh, bag bands or renewable energy ordinances or recycling programs and not Californians statewide initiative to decarbonize and to electrify the entire estate's vehicle fleet sometimes.
and I don't know what, how to describe what this phenomenon is, is I aspire. It's encouraging people to get in where they fit in to act where they can and then elevate their game to the, to the right level of play. What would you say to that?
[00:34:43] Michael K. Dorsey: I would say, and this is certain to you and all your listeners and all of the friends of all the listeners and friends of those friends that these for.
Are much more accessible than not. That's the first thing that I offer [00:35:00] to everybody. I would offer a challenge up to you and your listeners and you know, it's too bad we're not live and people would call in and Yammer about. But think if you're listening to this, when is the last time you went down to City Hall and now admittedly in the last year, you know, 18 months, you, you would've to do it online.
Ok. Just then think
[00:35:22] Phil Dillard: over the last. Four or
[00:35:23] Michael K. Dorsey: five years when you went down to city Hall to just sit in and watch the process or even tune into it. Mo most municipal, certainly in the us, in a great many across Europe and even in Africa and Asia, you can tune in to not just the Parliament, the national or the Congress as it were, but you can tune in to the local.
City hall or the local town meeting in New England and the US they have town meeting. It's a very rare, it's very uncommon across the rest of the us but every Jane, John, Harry, Sally, they [00:36:00] go to town meeting once a month. They vote on issues, they raise their hand and count it out. So the first question is, Figured about, you know, you wanna know how to access United Nations, you know, seems like this, you know, place of, you know, black helicopters, secret, you know, men, you know, phones, you know gadgets, you know, you having your adjacent born dream, you know, it's gotta be connected to that.
Well, it's a wonder you think that that's far off. and you haven't even been down to City Hall. If you haven't even walked down to Sea Hall or tuned it in on public television, then you would probably be just predisposed to think that a building in New York is just as inaccessible and I offer to you.
Nonsense. Nonsense. Just like you can watch city Hall, you can go to un.org, tune in. They run it live pretty much every day. You can look at the UN daily and read what's going on and engage in these conversations. These places are not inaccessible, they're not far removed. Indeed, [00:37:00] they are designed to accommodate people.
They are the people's house, as it were. It's an interesting thing when, when you work at the un, which I had the privilege of doing, you know, years ago, uh, worked in a unit of UNC Tad for something called the United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service. You know, a mouthful. But when you're in the un, One of the refrains that we hear over and over and over again is that the United Nations, it does one big thing.
A lot of people don't even recognize this or even know it for that matter. It's, it's kind of inside baseball, but it's a really amazing thing. The UN is there to serve the members. Now, that's a very specific thing, by the way, serving members, what members in this case that it's serving the countries, the whole system.
Is designed to serve those countries and who makes up countries? People, The representatives are there. Most people even in America, forget, you know, Joe Biden's working for you. He works for [00:38:00] us. Some people don't, aren't tuned into that. Some people think that, you know, the, the president, we must bow down, feed him like a king nonsense.
Nonsense. Some of this accessibility, I think also requires a reorientation of our sensibility towards the, let's call, I don't even wanna say the ma, the machinations, not master, but the mechanic. The fundamentals of politics and politics, right? And that, and that's why's some really important to understand those terms and to appreciate their origins and appreciate how they really, truly function.
So I would encourage folks. To simply not only city Hall, When is the last time you went and sat in a courtroom, a local courtroom, which we all have rights to do. Everyone, everyone grumbles in the us At least when they get the jury duty slip. Oh my God, I went to jury duty. I don't wanna go. When is the last time you ever just, You can, you get summoned to go to the jury, but you can go and sit and watch cases.
It's a public venue. Nobody does it though. You could do this. You could, [00:39:00] instead of your vacation running around, sitting in the sand in the beach, go to the courthouse. Go and sit and see the function of one of the pillars of democracy, the legal pillar, the core system. I mean, so these are things that are much more accessible than people make them out to be.
And they're there to be access to maintain our democracies, as it were, and to facilitate democracies in places that have less democracy and they're open, and more people should engage with them to understand them. Just like you can engage in your own local court system. You can go and watch those proceedings and you, there should be an obligation for people to do it at least once a year.
They was money on movies, bad movies at that when they could go and learn something about a court case instead of being, you know, bothered about being in jury duty. And that accessibility is no different than accessing the World court or the international criminal court. You can go and sit in those proceedings as.
Go to the HA and sit. I've done it. [00:40:00] So these venue are much more accessible than we make them out to be and that I offer to you. Phil is a C of not just empowerment, but that's the c Quana of power. Understanding the accessibility that clues you into the way in which. You might be able to change the course of those institutions and at the minimum, you might not be able to change it, but you may be able to begin to manipulate them and move them in a certain way if you have at least the understanding of the hours of access.
If you don't know about that, then you know, go sit by the beach and watch a bad James Bond film and waste your time otherwise. Right. But some people that take that step and it's not even a huge step that take that baby. Those folks are the folks that we all should be working with and watching out for, and partnering with, and collaborating with, because it's those folks that are gonna help us not just [00:41:00] gently nudge these institutions, but those individuals that are gonna know when they meet, how they worked, who we need to talk to, when we're dealing with them, how we can move issues in those institutions, what the implications of inserting and moving those issues in those institutions will be for business.
For livelihoods, for civilians, for improving ecosystems, for not disposing the environment, for improving the world as we know it, for giving hope and nourishing our children and giving us something that is much better than was what was yesterday.
[00:41:30] Phil Dillard: Sure. That gives a great picture and thanks so much for, for sharing that.
Right. A great picture. People can engage more than they might believe that they could, but they have to make the sacrifice. They have to make a little bit of commitment. They have to take a little personal responsibility, dare I say that word, Have to take a little personal responsibility that they're going to be part of the change, part of, part of something different.
It, it would almost. And when I hear people like you who've been in this space for a long period of time, who [00:42:00] see a future that is positive and optimistic, it reminds me that in some ways things aren't as broken as people might make them out to be with the not as broken as they would make them out to see should we have our problems and our challenges, should we have a climate immersion emergency and a species emergency and all that sort of stuff.
But if more people engaged in the fundamentals, Of citizenship and the fundamentals of leaning into something that they believe in, that they, they wanna do something positive about, they can make more of a, more of a positive change. And from my limited experiences of engagement with the local government, people are more than happy to have you there.
[00:42:35] Michael K. Dorsey: You know, you'd be surprised and I would encourage people to, to do this as well. A lot of local governments. Have vacancies. You know, we focus on, we tend to focus on the shiny stuff, especially Americans. Americans, if it's shiny, Americans are wondering about it. You know, they, they're going around looking, you know, look at the movie star, look at that.
Look at this. If it's, if, you know, look at whomever's got the most of whatever, whatever the shiny thing is that that's, the Americans are [00:43:00] like the moth drawn to light. Wherever there's some light, we find Americans hovering and going. Let's look at the stuff that's not necessarily shiny. That's still so, so important.
Many, many municipalities, many cities, states, even regions for that matter, have positions for offices that go unfilled, right? People don't even run for the offices. You can look these up for most states. You can stand for these things. So elected officials aren't just looking for people you know, aren't just happy to see you.
Some are, certainly are happy to see you, but they're especially happy to see people that have got expertise, that have got credibility, that have got wherewithal that wanna work with them and not just give them money for their campaign, but one who build out things that are gonna improve the livelihoods of their constituents.
If you can do that in a given jurisdiction, That can create the onus for the elected [00:44:00] official to change and adjust some of the rules to facilitate more livelihood improvements for people. Now, it's never one to one, but certainly when you engage in government, as it were, the halls of powers that we call it what you want, when you engage in that in a serious way with serious.
With intent, especially to deliver things at scale and at the scale that we need them. Elected officials, government folks, regulators are more than happy to engage you, more than happy to work with you. Happens all the time, and you don't have to be. Certainly don't have to be Bill Gates. You don't have to be, you know, Elon Musk.
You don't have to be a giant Fortune 100 or even Fortune 500. Uh, you can be a small, medium size business. You can be a group of small businesses coming together as a group to deliver things collectively. So there are many ways we can, we can do this.
[00:44:50] Phil Dillard: That's a really great point. I mean, I guess, you know, I hadn't really thought about it that way, but I've experienced that directly cuz you know, somebody said, Hey, the California Economic Summit wants to know, wants people who [00:45:00] care about this.
And I said, Okay, you know, all about cost me a little time. But got the ability to be part of digging into how they think about the state, how they think about policy and it's not unattainable. There are all kinds of people who are in, in the mix, and there are all kinds of people who need to be represented.
That's way we have a representative democracy that reflects all of the people, a representative sample of the people that we represent. That's, that's what the diversity is, is about this. We want a representative sample of all of us so that the best of us get there. You talked about the transition from cite capitalism.
What I would call more, you know, more modern today, capitalism to something in the future. It's in evolution. My best guess has been fourth sector capitalism to to date, but we're evolving what that, what that means, what mission driven entrepreneurship means, and what the spaces of that and. I was thinking also about your point, about the, um, about energy and the evolution of energy, and actually as you were talking, I'm looking out my [00:46:00] window.
I watched it's Fleet Week in San Francisco or the end of it, and I watched a couple ships get underway and it got me thinking about how inspiring actually the Navy and the Department of the Navy has been in in this, in this whole discussion because I know first. The first ship I served on was ordered 1939 was Iowa class Battleship.
The old, old steam cycle, they've moved up from coal to oil in the fuel oils. Freight in there, right? Um, and I watched it go from 600 pound steam to 1200 pound steam to diesel to gas turbine to who knows what's next to people talking about electrically driven battery powered ocean going vessel. Right.
There was this incredible evolution, navigation systems, all this sort of stuff. I know a couple years the Blue Angels flew the whole season on biofuels and the Navy operated one ship completely on biofuels and is and is probably installed one of the single largest installers of solar and renewables in the us.
Not only for a national security perspective, but because [00:47:00] they care about the environment. So I think about those evolutions and I think, how do we think about guiding the evolution? Of this newer system that you talk about, if you were to suggest a, a roadmap or great resources outside of the things you've already shared, or a way to think about it in one that urges people to mash up different ideas or concepts or iterate or, or experiment with different things and draw in those folks from the, from the fringe.
Drawing those folks that people might not have listened to before, not have con considered or, or learning from different, different parts of the world. Are there any things that usually, could you put solar in the most continents on the planet? Are there any things that you see that are sideposts of how things we've done in the past can guide us toward what we need to do in the future?
[00:47:50] Michael K. Dorsey: I'll tell you something, and many of your listeners, no doubt know the aism that injustice anywhere. Is a [00:48:00] threat to justice everywhere and that I think, you know, as an old aism, not uncommon, not unknown to many. If there's anything that is something from the past, as you say, that could guide us for the future, I think that that is one of the, sort of the, the key.
Cornerstones of future practice, you know, for the late 20th century now into this early quarter of this century. You know, we've been focusing. Call them clean energy accelerators, you know, call them green accelerators. Things to get us out of that dark, uh, you know, dirty fossil fuel based fossil foolishness of the 20th century, and take us into this renewable energy, clean green energy, 21st century.
But going forward, for the rest, for the remainder remaining three quarters. Of the 21st century and [00:49:00] far into the 22nd and beyond, we've gotta focus on, I think, what is fair to call the justice accelerator? We've gotta be on about accelerating justice. Cause if we're not on about that, then we're gonna harm many, many more people on this planet than have already been harmed right now.
You know, figure about your neighborhood, figure about your town. Figure about your state or your province, or wherever it is you live, or your little region. When we look at the planet, We look at one big underdeveloped country. The planet is a third world operation. The planet is a third world operation.
I'll say it again. We've gotta get out of that cuz that's nonsense. Mm-hmm. , that is the, the machinery that grinds people into dust. That's the machinery that takes away the future of children and the children's children. So we've gotta get on now that we've. The clean green stuff in this first quarter to being the cheapest [00:50:00] stuff, to being the most affordable, to being the most appropriate.
We've also gotta get on about how can we accelerate justice? How can we get this planet? And, and by getting this planet out of its status as one big underdeveloped operation. Right. One big, call it Third Worlds, and people think that's majority, but let's offer that up because it's sixth of people's mind.
The planet is a third world operation and we've gotta put an end to that. Mm-hmm. . If we don't, we're gonna see huge amount of misery. We've gotta come up with the systems that reduce the hoarding and privatization of Winful and give people not just money per. Certainly share some of that windfall, no doubt, but give people things like the right to water, the right to energy.
Right now we can model out how that's possible to do. I've been involved with [00:51:00] PV projects that have irr north of 20, mid to high 20% irr. Okay. Could I be happy with 15 or 16%? You bet. I. You absolutely bet. Could I make a lot of money with 14%? You bet. . You know, we already do in some projects. Mm-hmm. . So when we know that that's happening, that is a tip off that we, with new rules of the game, can begin to think about how can we accelerate justice?
How can we move? Some of that, that huge profit into giving people better healthcare, giving people things like free education, giving people things like free access to water, and if not everybody, can we give not just the bottom core tile or quintile? Can we give the bottom two or three quintiles [00:52:00] or quartiles half and still make money?
Well, I'll tell you what, without answering the question, because of lack of. We've got the capacity to run those numbers and I'll offer it to you that we actually can do that. But we've gotta get on to thinking about how we can accelerate justice. That's the 21st century challenge, to deliver us out of a third world planet into the 22nd century.
And I'll dare anybody to come along with me on that pathway. I dare you. Cause I need your.
[00:52:31] Phil Dillard: I'm there with you and I really appreciate your, uh, you sharing your time, your wisdom and your, and your passion with us. I think, uh, didn't expect to end where we, where we were, but I as clear as day seeing it after dancing around it a bit and we believe that there's abundance, I'm sure we can model there's that, the abundance and in all the business models you talked about, I see the equivalent.
Of impact unicorns in the new system, hundreds if not thousands of them, [00:53:00] because there is so much work that needs to be done and so many opportunities to create things to elevate the lives of billions and billions on the planet. And I appreciate you for your contribution to that and your contribution to our community today.
Thanks so much for your time.
[00:53:14] Michael K. Dorsey: Thank you, Phil. Thanks for. My pleasure.
[00:53:17] Phil Dillard: Yes. Well, it's been my pleasure too, and hopefully yours, We hope to see you again on the next episode of Through Line to the Fourth Sector. Thanks so much and I'll talk about it very soon. Building a thriving planet for humanity is no walk in the park, but it's far less difficult than colonizing a new planet.
Getting where we need to go will require commit. Effort and vision through his honest, direct, and passionate explanation of complicated issues. Dr. Dorsey makes the complex seem simple and provide the clear path towards a bright future. What are the keys to success? Clearly engagement, curiosity, and a commitment to justice are all a good start and for that [00:54:00] journey, Dr.
Dorsey is a good. And a valuable ally. Hey everyone, thanks for being part of the movement of human evolution that we called Fourth Sector Capitalism. The fourth sector is a space where companies operate at the intersection of purpose and profit where companies are intentionally built to deliver both impact and financial returns.
As a compliment to this podcast, we'll be out speaking both in live and virtual conferences and events around the world. Upcoming plans, speaking events include New York Climate Week in September. Nexus Global Conference and COP 27, both in October. You could find more information in the show notes and on our website and LinkedIn pages.
We hope to see you there. Thank you for listening to this episode of Through Line to the Fourth Sector. I'm your host, Phil Dillard. If you enjoy the show. Please leave a rating, write a review, and tell a friend. To learn more about the journey towards the fourth sector economy, [00:55:00] visit throughline networks.com.
That's T H R U L I N E networks.com. You can also follow us on Instagram or LinkedIn. Better yet, you can join us every Monday at noon Pacific on the Clubhouse app in the Fourth Sector Impact Leaders Club. Thanks. We hope to have you with us in the next episode.