We’re all being played – time to change what winning means

Originally published on 1 February 2022

If you’re not angry you’re not paying attention.

We have been through a global pandemic which has highlighted and exacerbated the inequalities in our society. The UK is one of the world’s richest economies and yet we have over 20m adults in financially vulnerable circumstances. Over 14m people have less than £100 in savings. During the pandemic 11m people accrued £25bn of debt. Living on the edge is far too real for far too many people.

Against that backdrop we have a violent storm coming; a cost of living crisis, a rise in insolvencies (and the subsequent loss of jobs) and the collapse of core provision of services for those who can least afford it – from energy, to social care to financial services.

Everyone I know working to improve the situation for those in vulnerable circumstances is seeing events they foretold unfold with a sense of horror. That without big changes to how the system operates many more people are going to be choosing between heat or food.

In a small community when tough things happen people come together, pitch into help. I see that in my own community where extraordinary people galvanise others to scoop others up from the edge and with care and tenderness help them get back on their feet.

Yet at a country level we have subscribed to a system that by design fails us. The combination of competition and pursuit of profit or shareholder returns has created a game where those in vulnerable circumstances lose – by design.

Look at every sector: where all we value is returns, competition drives people away from serving those most in need towards the rich. The ‘high net worth individual’, the A, B, C s. Whichever marketing acronym you choose to pick they all lead in the same direction.

And so those falling outside those demographics find that organisations in pursuit of more money, or even the misused ‘value for money’, cut corners; dwellings built to a poor quality, plagued by damp, rats or worse, social care where workers on a pittance with little training fail. We find businesses design products that are more expensive if you are poor. And chalk it up to ‘risk’. And we find wholesale moves away from serving whole customer groups. In a world where it is illegal not to serve people by dint of their sex, race, gender, not properly serving people who are poor seems to be the inequality where it’s still legitimate to say ‘oh that’s not where we’re going strategically, we don’t serve that customer group’.

Over my working life I’ve realised that these big challenges need government, business, regulators, not for profits all working together to solve them. It’s what I work on every day. In reality we try to chip away at the edges, but without brave people to stand up for change across business we will fail.

More than ever I know that the game we’re playing is by design failing people.

And I am angry. At the person who tells me ‘competition in the market will sort it’. At the person who tells me ‘it’s too risky to serve these customers’. At the person who tells me ‘It’s not our strategic priority right now’.

And then I pause. They’re all pawns in a game. A game where our definition of winning is to deliver binary profit. A game where people and planet are used up in service of the economy to benefit the few.  Unless we change what winning the game means, eventually everyone will come to the realisation that we weren’t playing, we were being played. And then it will be too late.