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“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.”
— W. Edwards Deming

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“To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.”
— Stephen R. Covey
 

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​​Before we can fix what’s broken, we have to be able to see it clearly — and that’s not as easy as it sounds.  

We’re so steeped in the way our current economy works that it’s hard to imagine anything different. It’s like asking a fish to understand water when it has no concept of air.

For too long, we’ve simply accepted that a market economy is a kind of natural phenomenon — something that just is, rather than something that was designed. 

Chapters 1 and 2 proposed a bold hypothesis: that the root cause of many of our biggest challenges — from inequality to instability to overreliance on government — may not lie in politics or policy, but in the underlying design of our economic system itself.  

As Steven Covey has taught, all sound design begins with clarity of purpose. So before considering what to fix, let’s first ask: 

What do we actually want our economy to do?

Should it provide plentiful, well-paying jobs for everyone willing to work?  

Would wages rise for all workers as the economy grew?  

Would it reward those who innovate and contribute more with a greater share of prosperity?

 
Would it heal the Earth even as we draw resources from it?  

Would it strengthen families, expand opportunity, and support democracy?

Would it continuously reinvest in new ideas, new companies, and new workers?

Would it be so effective at delivering prosperity that the government found itself with little to do?

And would it tend to circulate wealth forward into the working population, rather than concentrating it into fewer and fewer — and often idle — hands?

If your answer to most of these questions is yes, you’ve just described the architecture of a forward economy — one that continuously lifts, invests, and renews rather than extracts, hoards, and depletes.

But here’s the paradox: the incentives embedded in today’s system — the engine beneath the hood of our economy — tend to drive us away from these goals instead of toward them.

 
We’re constantly told that America has the greatest economic engine ever built.  But ever-rising prices, stagnating incomes, unaffordable homes, and the fading American dream demonstrate that’s nothing but a myth.

In truth, our so-called modern economic engine is built on contradiction.  It has an engine that powers us north, but other gears and motors that drive us south. We lurch back and forth without real progress, in a car that burns enormous fuel but travels little useful distance.  

If we fail to understand how and why this is happening, we’ll never break free from the ring that binds us.  

Our politicians, unfortunately, have not hit upon this diagnosis.  They keep trying to fix the vehicle without questioning the blueprint.  One camp believes the solution is to ease off the brakes — fewer regulations, more freedom. The other insists on a better governor — smarter oversight, fairer taxes. Both treat the symptoms without going after the infection.

 
The only way to get out of the mess is to address the true root cause.  

We need a vastly improved economic engine — one grounded in virtue, aligned with our true goals, and capable of continuously renewing itself.  

In short, we need a Forward Economy.  Let’s see what makes it so unique — and why it holds such promise for renewing the nation.