Wendell Berry
We are all participating in an unprecedented moment in human history. Everywhere we see paradox: great opportunities for growth alongside the untenable acceleration of poverty; massive global demand for legitimate environmental and social solutions alongside widespread green-washing; slick “sustainable” investment strategies and corporate dishonesty; demands for local self-determination competing with globalised agendas. From one perspective, this dissonance is responsible for increasing levels of global chaos, confusion and instability. From another perspective, what we are experiencing is a complex set of signals telling us that the entire global system is experiencing a decisive evolutionary shift.
Catalyst is born from a clear-eyed and positive vision of this moment. All this dissonance and conflict, properly harnessed and utilized, can be used to create an almost infinite amount of solutions that will benefit the entire globe. Our contribution is a global platform designed to serve as a foundation for unifying and scaling a myriad of these solutions that – once brought into their full potential – will shift humanity out of peril and collapse into a future of shared abundance and limitless possibility.
History has shown us that when local people have access to capital, markets and opportunities that they control, they will – in almost every case – protect the health and wellbeing of their lands and their people for generations. When extraction is the driving force of an economy, lands and people are degraded, local assets are removed from the community, and the spirit and dignity of people everywhere is minimized. The collapse of democracies, the rise of authoritarianism, the decimation of middle and lower classes and the capturing of media flows is the inevitable outcome of centuries of an extractive economy.
Our job is to demonstrate that a win-win, non-extractive economy is not merely possible, but that when fueled by a global platform, it will generate widespread wealth and opportunity to such a degree that the old-extractive economy will become a welcome relic of history.
The current extractive economy has facilitated the concentration of wealth and power to such a degree that the critical life systems of the planet and societal institutions are rapidly nearing collapse. When faced with a shared global challenge – like we have seen in 2020 – the global system has failed at almost every level. Instead of engendering trust, cooperation, widespread economic opportunity and transparency, we have experienced the opposite. This experience has produced in many a deep sense of despair; if we can’t work together with something as basic to human life as a virus, how are we going to tackle the immediate existential issues of climate change, wealth inequality, racial injustice and collapsing democracies in the very limited time window we have?
More devastating still is that we are now bearing witness to the largest transfer of wealth and power in the history of civilization, and it has only just begun. While millions are suffering in unthinkable ways all over the world, wealth and power is concentrating at alarming rates threatening the essential pillars of democracy and the free flow of information around the globe. This concentration of wealth and power at the top of nearly every institution of consequence undermines trust everywhere and further restricts the numbers of people and communities with access to capital and markets in the world. This extreme form of power concentration has only been seen in those moments of history where oppression, subordination and poverty became the widespread and dominant forces of life.
Half the small and medium sized business owners in Europe interviewed by McKinsey - the lifeblood of the European economy - do not see how they will survive the next 12 months.
The fortunes of Latin America’s 73 billionaires surged by $48.2 billion since the beginning of the pandemic
The wealth of the top 12 billionaires in the U.S. recently exploded to more than one trillion dollars
The net worth of Indian billionaires has surged 90% since 2009 with 35% of that increase coming in the first four months of Covid - culminating in a total of $423 billion in July 2020.
Leverage the tremendous economic power of a global platform to redirect the global flow of capital. Instead of using platforms, infrastructure investment and cutting edge technology to extract more and more wealth from people and communities, design a global platform that will shift this flow back to the local communities that generate the wealth in the first place. We call this process Sovereign Wealth Creation.
We Face a Choice:
Do nothing. Continue to profit off the back of widespread suffering, ecological devastation, the loss of essential freedoms, and diminished opportunity incentivized by the current market reality. Play the unsustainable zero sum game and hope you and your family will be fine.
– OR –
Build something new. Work with us as we design, build and scale our global solution.
By freeing ourselves from the dynamics of profit-driven decision-making, we have positioned Catalyst to be in service to the creation of a future that sees Sovereign Wealth Creation as the irresistible force for economic growth worldwide.
Over the last two decades, the leaders of Catalyst have designed and prototyped various elements of Sovereign Wealth Creation. This work has resulted in a global strategy designed to move trillions of dollars of institutional investment capital into critical infrastructure that will be owned and governed by a local community or city.
The foundational element of this strategy is a digital platform (see Architecture Whitepaper) that will serve as the nervous system for Sovereign Wealth Creation. This platform will support local communities as they take possession of the critical infrastructure they need, while simultaneously providing access to essential data, intelligence, coherent media sources, investment capital, project expertise and global markets to help build robust local market ecosystems.
Over the next decade, upwards of $100 trillion USD of investment will be deployed to build infrastructure assets all over the world, and hundreds of trillion dollars more will be used to support a wide array of sustainability and impact goals. This capital will either accelerate the collapse we see today, or it will ensure that the essential digital, physical and financial infrastructure assets of a community are owned by and directly benefit the local people
It is critical to note that the Catalyst capital strategy does not need to transform hearts and minds, rely upon global institutions, build a radical new economic model or wait for government regulation in order to work.
Sovereign Wealth Creation leverages the same mechanisms that financial advisors, family offices and institutional funds rely upon every day – Confidential Investor Memorandums (CIM), Project Business Plans, Bonds and other financial instruments – to fulfill the massive need for low-risk, physical, financial and digital revenue-generating assets by investment portfolios worldwide.
Identify local and regional needs to be met via digital, physical, and financial infrastructure assets.
Create CIM’s for these projects that will be invested in individually or will be put into a bond-like financial instrument to be marketed by dealer brokers to dozens of funds and financial advisors in need of low-risk investments to satisfy their fiduciary requirements.
Institutional investment then flows into these projects. Once they reach maturity (5-10 years depending upon the type of infrastructure project) equity investors are paid their 5-7% return, banks are paid back their loans, and the asset ownership is transferred to the local community via a revenue bond that every community can access without needing to raise a single dollar of new taxes.
As communities take possession of their revenue generating infrastructure assets, these assets are hooked together in a distributed fashion on the global Catalyst platform in order to support an unlimited array of collaborative practices between local and regional sovereign economies that can now, for the first time, truly grow the local economy and also participate in global markets.
All the millions and in some cases billions of dollars designed to exit local and regional economies via extractive infrastructure investment can now be reinvested back into these local markets in ways that support the long term resiliency and stability of the local economy.
Build the initial version (V1) of the global platform to facilitate the flow of investment funds and intelligence to cities and communities globally. This platform allows participating communities and cities to share, learn and collaborate on the development of their sovereign critical infrastructure assets and local market ecosystems.
Further promote and expand Sovereign Wealth investment through Catalyst’s global business development.
Create and scale an array of innovative Financial Vehicles and Instruments (e.g. a Global Sovereignty Index to facilitate the flow of as much money as possible into local infrastructure that will give every community on earth the opportunity to control their own economic future.)
The unmitigated concentration of power and wealth at the expense of people and planet is replaced by a fierce and shared commitment to local self-determination. Human power, creative imagination and strength are no longer commoditized and crushed in the gears of a global extractive machine. Instead they are unleashed in service to the creation of an abundant future worthy of those that came before, and the thousands of generations that will follow.
We are currently raising $11M to cover our initial operating costs for a planned two-year project:
Capital donations
Global platform
Financial partners
Advisors & connectors
Needed role
Contact us directly
We are excited to hear from you and find ways to work together.