One of the foundational elements of the Lionsberg System centers around redefining and truly understanding what constitutes Value, and differentiating it from money and activity.
From an economic lens, organizations are created to accomplish a set of goals that are valuable to a customer. Often, that customer in turn uses the Value that was created for them in turn to create Value for their customers that are further downstream. This basic Chain of Value Creation works its way through a series of organizations from the smallest individual inputs all the way up to the most complex outputs.
Techniques such as Value Stream Mapping bring these Flows to light.
As an organization accomplishes the goal for the customer, value is created for the customer that is then recognized and paid for.
Activity that the customer does not value is Waste.
Organizations should work to progressively eliminate Waste, and progressively increase Value creation. These two activities work together to increase Throughput of the Goal of a System.
Value is recognized by those who pay the Value Creator for what they have created. Less is paid for less value, more is paid for greater value creation.
This voluntary reciprocity around Value Creation is the basis for functional free market economies, and reciprocal relationship in general.
Reciprocal relationships and value exchange need not be monetary in nature and can be bartered or transacted in kind in a number of ways. This multi-capital lens of Value is critical.
Value can take numerous forms. For example a product, service, knowledge, location, mindset, access, influence, wisdom, capability, etc.
Anything that anyone is willing to recognize as valuable can be a basis of value exchange.
The key is that the Value is created and recognized, and reciprocally transacted on so that the Flow of Value can continue.
As mutiple Flows of Value converge and interact, an ecosystem or economy emerges.
Often value creation goes unnoticed. If it is not noticed, it cannot be recognized. If it cannot be recognized, it cannot be valued. If it cannot be valued, it cannot be transacted with. If it cannot be transacted with, the ecosystem / economy of value exchange cannot build itself.
As we recognize and enumerate different kinds of value that has been created or is emerging, we make it visible, and recognizable, and countable, and otherwise measurable.
This leads to the possibility of also making it transactable by a multitude of different relationships and different forms of exchange.
Value is created when something is produced that someone else finds valuable.
Waste is created when something is produced that someone else does not find valuable.
What is valuable can be thought of as a worthwhile Goal or an Aim.
Producing anything of any reasonable level of complexity demands that we move beyond the concept of a single goal, to a Total Nested Hierarchy of Goals that must be achieved in order for the Good to come into reality.
The Good that is being produced, such as a building or a car, is one unified Goal, that contains within itself and order all the other sub-goals that must be achieved to bring it into reality.
The first discussion above spoke of the creation and exchange in general, from the standpoint of an economy or ecosystem without a specific guiding purpose.
The second discussion above zeroed in on the production of a specific valuable Good / Goal, and then articulated the reality that most Goods / Goals actually contain within themselves a Total Nested Hierarchy of Goals.
If the Total Nested Hierarchy of Goals is not accomplished, the higher order overarching and uniting Good / Goal will not be properly functioning reality.
Recent advances in the science of systems and manufacturing have revolutionized our understanding of the way that a System produces throughput of a Goal.
In fact, that entire science has led to lean philosophy and its derivatives, which view any system as a single functional unity, whose purpose is to produce a single overarching and uniting Goal, which contains and orders within itself all other Goals.
From this lens, Value takes an incredibly specific definition.
In a System, Value is Throughput of the Goal.
This realization has revolutionized nearly every industry, and led to the dramatic proliferation of low cost "goods" around the world.
Economics relates to the the production, distribution, and consumption of "goods" and services in a society.
What is a Good?
A good is something that is useful, and has Value.
If Value is Throughput of the Goal, in order to know if something is truly a "good", we have to know what the Goal is.
But does an economy, at the highest level of abstraction, have a specific Goal?
Why do we have economy?
Economy naturally arises through the creation and exchange of goods and services we perceive we need or want.
However as humans, we often perceive that we need or want things that are not "good", and which actually harm us and others.
Every human knows that we need to help one another learn the art of self-control, and how to integrate our various drives and desires into a higher order functional unity that actually moves us towards our potential, and not away from it.
A fully integrated human being has integrated their various potentials and drives into a functioning personality that acts properly in the world for the good of all.
In the same way, an economy is merely one drive of the total society and living system that we striving to create so that we can flourish.
All elements of a society, like all elements of a person, should be integrated into a higher order functional unity that is actually moving society towards its goal.
Therefore the Goal of every sub-system in any person, or any society, needs to be integrated in service of the higher order goals of the higher order systems it exists within.
Therefore the Goal of the economy should be to properly integrate itself into society and the living system, and to play its unique role in advancing the Whole towards its highest potential and greatest Good.
The next critical understanding that activity that does not produce Throughput of the Goal is not Value. It is Waste.
This is because it consumes energy and resources that could otherwise be directed to creating Throughput of the Goal, and instead uses them to create other things that are not needed at that time, and end up getting in the way and obstructing the true Critical Chain of Value Creation. They obstruct the true Flow of Value.
Therefore the Meta Idea is that All things should be contained and ordered within One Thing, and that the Spirit of that One Thing should be Love, and that the Goal of that One Thing should be for all creation to develop into the fullness of its potential and flourish in harmony.
If that highest overarching and uniting Meta Goal is shared by All, then all things can begin self-organizing, integrating, and acting in concert to produce Throughput of that Meta Goal.
Then, the definition of Value becomes clear.
Value is Throughput of the Meta Goal.
If it does not produce Throughput of the Meta Goal, it is Waste.
And the Meta Goal is the One Thing that is (something like)
Through this lens, it becomes clear the vast majority of human activity, which we think it producing Goods and Value, is actually producing Waste, that is hindering our ability to produce Throughput of the Meta Goal.
Therefore, we need to cease the wasteful activity, and redirect all that capital an energy to intelligently working together to operate a Meta System that is producing Throughput of the Meta Goal for the Good of All.
The final note is that this Meta System needs to be co-operated through the voluntary association and free will of decentralized, sovereign, autonomous agents collaborating to bring the Goal into Reality.
This can be done by forging a shared and continuously improving undersatnding of the Critical Path or Critical Chain that marks the Way towards the Goal, and each doing what is uniquely ours to do to advance along it.