Four For Friday | Mar 29, 2024
LF116 | Impact investors embracing systems investing, Blackrock on rethinking retirement, data ownership & building in fire zones
Welcome to Looking Forward’s Four For Friday. Four things that have piqued my interest this week. Enjoy!
Impact investors are embracing systems change
An MIT article about how impact investors who want to improve the world are starting to adopt a ‘systems investing’ mindset. According to this research, there are nine ‘levers’ impact investors can use to ensure a coordinated, systemic approach, rather than just point solutions, ranging from experimentation, network orchestration, data generation and management and changing public norms and behaviors.
Blackrock wants to rethink retirement
Larry Fink is founder and CEO of $10 trillion asset management firm Blackrock and his latest annual Letter calls on a radical reshaping of aging in the US. He suggests making savings more automatic, creating more certainty around income streams (hello, tontines) and raising the retirement age.
“As a society, we focus a tremendous amount of energy on helping people live longer lives. But not even a fraction of that effort is spent helping people afford those extra years.”
Interestingly, Fink calls for there to be a high level public-private collaboration on this topic, and for it to immediately become a top priority for business and government agencies.
“America needs an organized, high-level effort to ensure that future generations can live out their final years with dignity”.
Data ownership isn’t the right approach - Brookings
I’ve generally assumed we should all own our own data, but this article raises some important issues, suggesting it’s not as simple as it first appears. It suggests that some information needs to be free for the benefit of society (e.g. census info), and also the process of creating an ownership model would create too much friction and destroy economic value. I’m definitely in the ‘uncertain’ came on this one, and would value ideas from those who have studied this issue.
60% increase in homes in fire risk areas
The number of homes in high risk fire areas has risen from 10m in 1990 to 16m today, which is one of the reasons that the economic and health impact of recent fires has been so significant. Notwithstanding the impact of climate change, an important conversation about housing policy and state-provided insurance should be had - to ensure that we as a society make smarter, forward-looking decisions.
That’s all for this week. As always, feedback welcome. Feel free to share insights or links of interest.
- Stephen