Envisioning an Economy to Love
What if the real path to lasting peace and greater prosperity lies in building an economy grounded in love and integrity?
The Deeper Conversation
Last week, Marianne Williamson restacked The Business Model Love Deserves, an essay I wrote last summer about her impact on my work. In sharing, she thoughtfully added this comment:
“What’s emerging is a deeper conversation about the world we’ll create on the other side of this agonizing moment.”
To say I’m honored and grateful would be an understatement.
Her leadership has long given many of us language for a truth we’ve always felt but rarely heard named out loud: that love and integrity are not separate from economics. They are the missing ingredients of the greater prosperity and abundance awaiting us.
But love and integrity alone won’t carry us if the systems we live and work within can’t sustain them. That’s the tension too many of us feel in our industries and communities, where integrity is too often demanded in full but rarely resourced in full.
The essay was my attempt to carry forward the insight Marianne named and further bridge it with the structures our work still needs. Because the business model love deserves is also the economic model a peaceful thriving society deserves.
My hope is that you’ll read, reflect, and join me in imagining how we can build new systems where love and integrity aren’t just ideals, but operating principles.
Is Compassion Really Not Profitable?
As I was contemplating this followup essay to the above development, I came across a social media meme that said:
Media is a business
Community is not
Outrage is profitable
Compassion is not
It got me wondering: What if compassion actually is profitable? And verifiably so?
What if compassion could be made operational, not as a gimmick or marketing strategy, but as a genuine driver of true prosperity for all?
By this I don’t mean the kind of compassion that only shows up because it’s preceded by profit or tied to a profit motive. I mean compassion that is naturally profitable from the root—because it sustains trust, loyalty, and human potential.
Most people never stop to consider this. They default to the cynical view. And yet, it doesn’t take much to notice how much more sustainable the profits can be for companies that treat people well, pay fairly, and act as stewards of the resources we all depend on.
What if compassion could be profitable for the right reasons?
That previous essay centered on love at the individual level of business. This one is my first attempt to take the same line of thought in a more macro direction.
Marianne’s vision of a modern free-market economy, where the American Dream becomes possible for all again, deserves to come alive for our shared betterment.
And the free market—free of partisan politics—can lead this recalibration.
Beyond Sentiment
When many people hear words like love in an economic context, they flinch.
It sounds soft. It sounds impractical.
But love isn’t softness. Love is coherence. It’s the principle that ensures life can flourish.
Integrity isn’t just a moral aspiration either. It’s the condition for trust, for peace, and for long-term abundance.
The deeper truth is this: every time we separate love and integrity from our systems, we design economies that leak:
They leak trust.
They leak dignity.
They leak human potential.
And when those leaks compound, what we call “profit” is revealed for what it really is: borrowed time.
Love is not naïve.
Integrity is not idealistic.
They are among the most reliable, enduring, and scalable forces strong enough to counter violence, despair, and exploitation, and the ones most consistently shown to sustain prosperity over time.
We just need to take the time to realize this.
The False Binary
This conversation is running out of time for too many. And part of the reason it has been so difficult is that we’ve been trapped in a false binary about compassion and profit.
On one side, compassion is dismissed as weakness or an unprofitable softness. Efficiency and shareholder return are prized, while care is treated as a liability to cut. But what looks efficient in the short term too often costs much more in the long run: turnover, burnout, corruption, and reputational collapse.
On the other side, compassion is cast as something that must be subsidized—through charities or government programs. The intention is often noble, but the result can be fragile. Subsidies too often only patch the holes without redesigning the system that keeps causing them.
Both framings miss the point. Whether compassion is cut as a cost or propped up as a subsidy, it remains outside the system—it remains sentimental, not structural.
But what if compassion, love, and integrity were built in from the start?
What if they were treated not as external consequences, but as internal design principles?
What if they were the very conditions under which prosperity can effortlessly compound?
Where the Gap Shows Up
We don’t have to look far to see the absence of love and integrity in our systems:
Wages and Compensation. We say we value workers, but too often they’re treated as commodities. Companies pay the minimum they can get away with, calling it “good business.” In reality, underpaying leaves hidden money on the table: higher turnover, lower creativity, eroded trust.
Arts, Education, and the Helping Professions. We say we value teachers, artists, and caregivers, but they’re asked to give integrity in full while being resourced in fractions. Entire industries are built on burnout and attrition.
Entrepreneurship. We say we value innovation, but entrepreneurs are too often coached into mimicry, hype, and performance theater—rather than into structures that actually last.
These are not failures of character.
They are failures of design.
A Lineage of Principles
I didn’t invent this conversation.
I inherited it, and I synthesized it.
Charlie Munger taught us that incentives are the behavioral DNA of every system.
Jack Bogle showed us how integrity compounds when structures remain simple and durable.
Marianne Williamson has reminded us for decades that love belongs in our systems, and that moral coherence is not a sentiment but a necessity.
Wallace Wattles taught us that prosperity is a science—but only when the foundation matches the person creating it.
And in Chapter 3 of The Science of Getting Rich, Wattles wrote:
“The working class may become the master class whenever they will begin to do things in a Certain Way. This they must learn…The individual worker is not held down by the ignorance of his class; he can follow the tide of opportunity to riches.”
If there is a science of getting rich for the individual, there must also be a science for the economy itself, or a way for whole societies to follow the tide. And unlike in 1910, when Wattles published these words, today we have the means to educate and equip people at scale.
Together, working in the Certain Way, this lineage of thought leadership becomes a set of pillars—and together they form the backbone of what we could call An Economy to Love.
An economy where prosperity is not stolen from human dignity but grown out of it.
Where love is not a slogan, but the foundation of life together.
Where integrity is not an afterthought, but the blueprint itself.
The Evidence Already in Front of Us
The good news is that this isn’t abstract.
As Steve Jobs once said:
"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
The dots are already there. The patterns we can trust already exist.
We already know what happens when love and integrity are built into economic life.
Costco, Patagonia, Chanel, and BIGGBY Coffee are just a few examples of companies that show how paying people fairly and honoring values creates loyalty, resilience, and long-term strength. Towns anchored by thriving small businesses keep money circulating locally and generate more stability than places dominated by extraction. Workplaces that respect and reciprocate with their employees retain talent and avoid the constant drain of turnover.
None of this is charity. It’s design.
And it’s proof that love and integrity can pay off.
They don’t just feel good—they show up on the balance sheet.
And yet, our broader economy resists. Even what should be a bipartisan goal—compensation models sufficient to eliminate the need for government subsidies—gets treated as politically out of reach.
That is not a law of nature.
It is a distortion of incentives.
But like any distortion, the free market can correct it—once we have the mechanisms to measure what truly matters.
The Future of Measurement
Here’s where the conversation must go next: measurement.
We can begin asking new questions:
Does this business fully align compensation with contribution?
Does it resource integrity at the same level it demands it?
Does it measure prosperity only in quarterly returns, or also in trust, peace, and human flourishing?
These are not abstract ideals.
They are concrete benchmarks for whether an economy holds or leaks.
For decades, we’ve had metrics for revenue, costs, and productivity—but almost nothing for adequately assessing reciprocity, congruence, or integrity.
We measure what’s easy, not what’s essential.
We already forecast insurance risks, the solvency of Social Security, and the effects of climate change decades into the future. We also project incarceration rates, white-collar crime, productivity losses, and even the expected gains from AI.
If we can model all of that, then we can also model the economic impact of a better-compensated and more economically secure populace. Imagine having far less wasted human potential because people are motivated and able to contribute more fully.
And as AI accelerates our ability to model complexity, leaders will inevitably face data they can no longer deny:
Societies where people are paid fairly prove to be more peaceful, more stable, more valuable, and more abundant.
Companies investing in dignity consistently outperform those that exploit.
Employers that align incentives with integrity experience fewer losses from white-collar crime, corruption, and other security or compliance risks.
Abundance compounds wherever love and integrity are built into the system.
The result will be a better allocation of human potential, and more energy will be freed for innovation, creativity, and the kind of renaissance that advances humanity.
When that happens, and the incentives or ROI become clearer to all, the free market will naturally recalibrate. Those still clinging to the current arrangements will be leaving far more money and long-term stability on the table than they may realize.
This will mark the shift from an economy that leaks to an economy that holds, from a compass spun by extraction to one pointing toward greater abundance.
What’s at Stake
The question is no longer whether love and integrity are profitable.
The evidence already points to yes.
The lineage behind us affirms it.
The future of measurement will prove it.
The question is whether we will build systems that acknowledge this truth—or continue pretending scarcity, extraction, and exploitation are sustainable.
Because they’re not.
Extraction is fragile. Congruence endures.
The Invitation
This is the deeper conversation Marianne named. It is not just about politics or spirituality. It is about how we live, how we work, how we prosper together.
My work—through my coaching programs, my upcoming books (stay tuned!), and my other offerings—is my attempt to carry that conversation forward and to help others do the same: to move from naming values to designing the structures that can finally hold them.
Because if love and integrity really are the missing keys, the question isn’t whether we can afford them. The question is whether we can afford to keep building systems without them.
On the other side of this pivotal moment, we can build an economy to love, or we can keep clinging to one that breaks us.
The choice is ours.
Thank you for reading!
If this essay resonated, I’d love for you to stay in the conversation.
Join me as I keep exploring how love, integrity, and structure can change not just business models, but the way we live and work together.
Subscribe here on Substack, share this with someone who needs it, or reach out if you’d like to continue the dialogue. Because building An Economy to Love isn’t a solo project—it’s work we’ll take on together.
And how to work with me
If you’re ready for your income and your integrity to finally match…
If you want a structure that doesn’t just survive, but actually holds…
Or if you’re looking for someone to bring these ideas to your class, podcast, or seminar…
Then let’s connect.
Here or on LinkedIn.
Because the future belongs to those who design systems that compound trust, prosperity, and human dignity.
This is helping me clarify something I’ve been circling from a different angle.
The “income as optional” point is painfully real — especially for artists and creatives trying to survive inside systems that often praise what we make while making it extremely difficult to actually live from it.
What I appreciate here is that you’re not just asking whether love matters, but what kind of economic structure could actually support love, integrity, creativity, and human flourishing instead of punishing them.
Funny timing too — I have another Marianne piece coming Sunday that feels connected to this whole conversation, especially around how love gets dismissed as softness when it’s actually a theory of power.
This is beautifully written and well thought out. Social change is very difficult. Yet, at this time, there is an argument to be made that perhaps social change is exactly what is needed.
Brian explained to me that he works with artists and with wealth counselors in his business. God bless those artists! You have a very powerful and beautiful role to play in the changes we need.
I am ever grateful for every artistic mentor I had in my own life as a young person, and continue to have as a senior active in my community theatre and any other place in my community where I can show up and make an artistic contribution.
I strongly believe I never would have survived adolescence without the gift of deepening my relationship to music in general and with the piano specifically.
I also would not have had the opportunity to do so without and incredibly talented, and loving teacher who kept music lessons affordable to my family.
I read one time of an arts organization who was mentoring a young violinist. Her dilemma was that her family did not have money to buy her strings for her instrument and an arts organization stepped in and helped out.
For anyone, who provides a sliding scale fee structure for their students, Gods bless you. You are making a difference.
The changes that need to happen to make our society compassionate when it comes to economic and work place justice are immense and difficult.
As we plan for individual wealth, we have to consider how our actions impact others.
In the 90s the stock market went through the roof. This was the same time during which middle class, blue collar jobs were shipped out of the country. Pensions were eliminated and full time employment for many was abandoned in favor of temporary workers who, for some reason, did not require job security and benefits.
Working people fell behind during this great "prosperity,".
These are difficult issues. But these issues are the ones with which we must wrestle in order to actually "make love the bottom line,".