Most debates about human nature (are we inherently “good” or “evil”, “cooperative” or “competitive”) ignore that humans are largely shaped by their environment.

Are we building environments that enable us to be the best version of ourselves?

This recursive loop needs to take a front seat in design.

From “designing good cities” to “designing cities that encourage us to be good neighbors”

From “designing good tech” to “designing tech that empowers us to be good to each other”

This will require shifting our focus from form and function to a focus on relationships, interdependencies, and nth order effects.

From the language of industrial design to the language of ecology and complexity.

Here’s the rub: Our incentive structures make this virtually impossible—design operates largely at the bidding of capital, and is thus optimized for value capture. However, the value created by an ecology can’t be captured.

How can designers create recursive ecologies of good in the context of late capitalism? I see a few possibilities, largely inspired by the late Erik Olin Wright.

1. Harm reduction. Even in the limited lateral space granted to designers by capital, there is room to limit negative externalities. It often requires standing up and pushing back, but it can be done. (Learning what actions may invite lawsuits/bad PR can be a valuable tool here).

2. Jiu-jitsu private interests for public good.
Maybe it's philanthropy, maybe it's an in-kind agreement with the city. These don't change the rules, but if you can leverage these opportunities to open up space for richer ecologies, they become a tactic towards a new framework.

3. Exploit and expand spaces beyond capital.
This is about building new rules from the ground up. Starting worker-owned design cooperatives, building in-roads with progressive political parties. Find opportunities to merge design thinking with political and economic strategy.

We get to "recursive ecologies of good" through a feedback loop: We find cracks in the current capital framework–internal tensions and inconsistencies–and we pry them open. Once we've made room, we can construct new generative activities in the space we've created.

I believe this to be the most effective strategy towards reforming the incentive structures of design and generating recursive ecologies of good, but I admit an unsatisfying truth: It is unlikely that we will live long enough to see the change we're driving toward.

We have to push anyway. We can learn a lot from the black abolitionists who never saw freedom and knew they wouldn't. The emancipatory project doesn't work unless we embrace cathedral-thinking.