When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist. Dom Helder Camara, Brazilian Catholic archbishop and important figure in liberation theology (1909-1999)
Wrench in the Gears is primarily a blog about education, and the dehumanizing influence technology wields over classroom instruction. In doing this work, I’ve come to understand that, at its root, the shift to digital “education” is about aggregating vast datasets on children than can be mined for profit in the impact-investing sector. This tactic is not limited to education. In fact, it threatens to engulf ALL public services.
Through outsourcing and the imposition of hard metrics, “what works” lobbyists intend to push the poor, and those teetering on the brink of poverty, into an abyss of impact-driven digital slavery. They’ll pull the non-profits in, along with their clients, since “what works” government hinges on their complicity. Moving forward, non-profits will increasingly run outsourced programs and will be required to deliver the data demanded by outcomes-based contracts. Services will be reengineered to fit the constraints of data dashboards-human life reduced to numbers to meet the demands of global capital.
The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, signed into law this February, created a new $100 million Pay for Success Fund at the US Department of the Treasury. Merchant banking firms like Ridge-Lane have marshaled teams of advisors to get in on the action. Financiers and tech billionaires are grooming candidates across the country, hoping their chosen ones will usher in a wave of Pay for Success initiatives that will rival the stock market.
At its core, the new theory of “economic thinking” promoted by INET is riddled with rot. While George Soros, James Heckman, and Robert Dugger attempt to cast social impact investment programs as socially conscious and “progressive,” the public deserves to know the truth. That truth is that these predators will NOT feed hungry children UNLESS they can profit from it.
Feeding people through mutual aid has always been a radical act. The Black Panther Party knew it, which is why those in power considered their free breakfast program so dangerous. In January a dozen activists associated with Break the Ban were issued criminal citations for feeding the homeless in a public park in El Cajon, CA. In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, mutual aid became the backbone of recovery efforts in Puerto Rico. Food is central to the human experience. Food insecurity drives poverty.
After reading the exchange below it appears impact investors have not YET found a way to track cost-offsets for feeding people, but they are trying. It is likely the tool they need will come in the form of digital identity systems linked to public assistance benefits. The Illinois Blockchain Taskforce is already envisioning ways they can use blockchain technology to track and manage a person’s food choices. See the screenshot below taken from the Illinois Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Taskforce Final Report to the General Assembly, January 31, 2018
The built-in incentive to make a “healthy choice” is part of a larger shift that will combine digital identity and payment systems with choice architecture to control the behaviors of all who utilize public benefits. We definitely need a Plan B lined up before THAT program comes online.
Below is an exchange shared during the Q&A portion of a Federal Reserve-sponsored panel presented in January at an impact investor gathering in Salt Lake City, Utah. Janis Dubno moderated the panel. She works with the Sorenson Center, served as a Pay for Success Fellow at the US Department of Education in the lead up to the passage of ESSA and designed the Salt Lake City pre-k social impact bond. Click here for interactive map.
Participants discussed Pay for Success initiatives involving justice-involved youth. The conversation between Gina Cornia of Utahans Against Hunger and the promoters of social impact investing lays bare the truth of “innovative” finance. Far from being a silver-bullet for poverty, Pay for Success doubles down on inhumane, neoliberal practices that flow from a culture of white supremacy.
The upshot is if they can’t figure out a way to predict and track a future cost savings, they won’t pursue it. What is so very sad is that instead of confronting the panel about the inhumanity built into this “innovative” finance system, Cornia attempts to figure out a way her non-profit can work WITHIN the oppressive structure…perhaps as a strategy rather than a stand-alone outcomes-based contract? It sickened me to listen to adults saying they may be able to fund a child’s breakfast if they can link the food to a rise in third grade test scores. This is an abomination that cannot be tolerated. The machine we are confronting is not just eviscerating education; it’s so much bigger than that. The stakes are so high. Now is the time to create a Plan B. Who is doing that work in YOUR community and how can you support them?
Watch the video clip here.
(Gina Cornia, Utahans Against Hunger) Hi, my name is Gina Cornia. I work for a policy advocacy agency, Utahans against hunger. And in my experience just in talking about a lot of these issues, nutrition is frequently just not even mentioned. We talk about housing. We talk about healthcare. We talk about a lot of things like that, but food insecurity and hunger is not, I mean hardly ever, mentioned. So to what extent are your projects looking at food insecurity both on the family, on the family level, and on the kids who are going into juvenile justice? Thank you.
(Caroline Ross, Sorenson Impact) Sure, I’ll go ahead and speak to that. I think it’s such an important issue, and in a couple of our projects we’re looking at actually integrating food security components. For instance in our homelessness projects integrating a piece where at least there’s food, sort of as a consideration, or provided as part of the program. As far as outcomes-based payments, we haven’t really thought to that level. Again, I’m curious if folks, anybody else on the panel has thoughts?
(Ian Galloway, San Francisco Federal Reserve) I’m so glad you asked that question, because it’s such a great example of what I kind of consider to be these sorts of nested outcomes. And there’s a lot, always you know, a lot of these determinants of success, and some of those more narrow determinants are difficult to fund with a performance-based contract or an outcomes-based funding stream. There are a lot of reasons for that; part of it has to do with the fact that it’s difficult to find savings in the system.
I know I just went on a diatribe about how we shouldn’t use that as a basis for establishing value, but the truth is a lot of people do. And you know improving nutrition; it’s hard to follow the money if you can’t follow the money to an agency that saves when you increase nutrition, then it’s difficult to re-route that money to pay for projects that address the underlying needs. So that’s one of the big reasons that we don’t do this. The larger challenge is that it’s one of many component pieces to a larger anti-poverty strategy that tends to not get included as much as I think we all wish it were.
I say that coming from, I believe and I don’t think I’m making this up-I think Oregon is the most food insecure state in the country-which is kind of nutty, because it’s an agricultural state and if it’s no longer number one it’s certainly up there. So it’s an issue that is very personal to me, working in the state of Oregon. But I have not seen any examples of using a Pay for Success contract to address food insecurity and nutrition, yet.
(Gina Cornia) I don’t, I guess I’m not suggesting it as a Pay for Success project, but using access to nutrition to improve your outcomes in Pay for Success.
(Ian Galloway) So just, yeah, I think you’re spot on. I think that this is one of the beauties of paying for outcomes instead of programs. If your outcome that you’re being paid for, for example just to sort of set up the straw man, is improving third-grade reading scores. Well if kids are not adequately, you know, being fed at home, and their nutrition is poor…good luck, right? So that is a really important building block to academic success, but what we need to do is recognize that the outcome that we want is an education outcome, but the intervention is a food intervention. And that’s one of the things that Pay for Success and Outcomes-based funding hopefully makes a little bit easier, but we haven’t seen it yet.
(Gina Cornia) But I would encourage you that that should be the first conversation you’re having as you look at Pay for Success projects, especially in education. Are kids getting adequate nutrition? Do they get breakfast in the classroom? Are their families eligible for SNAP? Because, you know hungry kids can’t learn, and if that’s not the first thing you’re talking about then I don’t think the programs will be successful.
I think you for doing the work you do. Reading your work is excruciating and infuriating – I can only imagine what it’s like to write it. One part of me even has to admire how brilliant – diabolical, but brilliant – all of this is. It all sounds so noble and social justice-y and liberal-ish. It’s so hard to convince people what’s so wrong about it. I loathe digital learning and “social impact investing” to my core, but even I have a hard time refuting this stuff without sounding monstrous. They’ve done such a good job of framing – how can you be against these programs? Do you want poor people to starve? Don’t you think poor children can learn? That’s what’s so important about what you do because you cut through that veneer. Thanks again.
Sorry, hit the post button too soon. Also, thanks for connecting the dots among “digital learning” and data mining and, ultimately, complete state and corporate control over the individual. Regardless of left/right, Conservative/Liberal labels, we should all be horrified by this.
I agree completely. And thank you for taking the time to share your kind words. It’s kind of a slog to do this work and hard to know if any of it is making a dent. It helps to know that there are people out there who find the information useful, if excruciating.