Andy Haldane, CEO of the RSA, calls for ‘social connection revolution’ to reverse economic and social decline
This evening, Tuesday 21st January, the CEO of the RSA and former Chief Economist at the Bank of England, Andy Haldane, delivered his annual Chief Executive’s Lecture to a sold-out audience at RSA House.
During the lecture, he set out a bold vision to tackle the “great division” in society which, he said, has been cleaving apart communities and countries for the last 50 years. This has amplified some of society’s greatest scourges from sub-par growth to stalled social mobility, from the epidemic in loneliness to our crumbling (and sometimes rioting) communities.
Andy Haldane, CEO of the RSA, said: “This is a dangerous moment. At the very point the world is more connected than ever, the social glue binding it together has rarely been weaker. Today’s connected economies are nested in increasingly disconnected societies. Neither can flourish in this setting. And recent research has shown just how large are the costs.”
Inspired by Harvard Political Scientist Bob Putnam’s 2000 book ‘Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community’, social capital is defined as the networks of relationships and trust among people in their community.
Increasing social capital, Andy said, must be the golden thread that runs through all public policy, including in education, housing, citizen governance, work and business, media, as well as the very machinery of government itself.
This would represent a bold and imaginative alternative policy path to those set out by both progressives and populists. It would require a revolution in policy and execution as large as that seen a century ago in response to the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Andy said: “At stake is more than a shift in policy. If successful, this would signal a decisive shift in capitalism itself, a ‘social capitalism’ better able to bridge progressives and populists, the me and we”.
His speech sets the RSA’s theme for 2025: social connectivity, with a wealth of announcements and interventions as part of the RSA’s Design for Life mission planned throughout the coming year.
The full speech is available here.
ENDS