“Good Standing” is the working title for the first venture or “answer” to emerge out of Radiical System’s venture capital studio and case study model. Good Standing is also the name of each individual commissary, as well as the greater network of associated infrastructure operating in various key cities around the United States and across the world. Radiical Systems is currently building a “Good Standing” application to integrate with and support its multifaceted partner spaces. The app engages and informs members of local communities in order to collaborate on and benefit from initiatives incubated within these spaces.

Our venture studio believes the commissary is the answer to urban decay and collapse and the key to a new renaissance regarding the health of humanity and its infrastructure. The failure to sustain major American cities has become a core political issue, if not an outright zeitgeist, as it’s anxiously tethered to emotional, existential, and very real (brick and mortar) notions of “late-stage capitalism,” which includes hyperinflation, automation and AI-driven paradigm shifts in labor, mainstream media gaslighting, hyperbolic alt-media fear mongering, corporate apathy, a breakdown in shared values, and rampant political corruption.

Radiical Systems believes the commissary, often defined as a “store” that sells food and supplies to the personnel or workers in a military post, mining camp, lumber camp or the like, is the answer to community, economic, and human revitalization precisely because of its fluid utilitarian nature. Commissaries, for instance, can also serve as a dining room or cafeteria, whether on the set of a major motion-picture studio feature or in a federal or county prison. These are largely 20th century definitions. Though they remain relevant to a degree, they fail to encompass the evolution of technology and humanity’s evolving relationship to it. That being said, humans and their general infrastructure, in America especially, have not evolved to the point of being unrecognizable. Instead, much of our behavior, like our infrastructure, is sadly outdated. But humans still need their basic needs met. So, why are they so often not being met?

The answer to this, or answers, are of course multifaceted and will be addressed more succinctly in our various case studies, which tackle specific issues facing America and global society. Globally, and in the United States, the answer seems to be that certain subsets of society, the marginal or historically disenfranchised, are caught in systemic cycles of degradation, built on oppressive systems like slavery, redlining, Jim Crow, displacement, discrimination in lending, inequality in policing (police violence and privatized prisons [cheap prison labor]) and employment opportunities; schooling, and the list goes on. Generally, people, individuals, not only need a “hand-hold,” they need an ongoing hearth; an infrastructural heart.

On Dec. 12, 2023, the New York Times reported on discriminatory labor practices in American prisons (putting it mildly), running the sub-header and headline: Prisoners Sue Alabama, Calling Prison Labor System a ‘Form of Slavery:’ The plaintiffs, who are all Black, contend that the state regularly denies incarcerated people parole so that they can be “leased” out to make money for government agencies and businesses. The lawsuit, filed in Alabama, accuses the state of regularly denying incarcerated people parole so that they can be, yes, “leased” out to produce hundreds of millions of dollars in profits for local and state agencies and businesses every year. This of course is abhorrent, and a perversion of our justice systems, let only our humanity.

“Redlining” is a discriminatory practice in which services (financial and otherwise) are withheld from potential customers who reside in neighborhoods classified as "hazardous" to investment; these neighborhoods have significant numbers of racial and ethnic “minorities,” and low-income residents. While the best-known examples involve denial of credit and insurance, also sometimes attributed to redlining in many instances are denial of healthcare and the development of food deserts in minority neighborhoods. In the case of retail businesses like supermarkets, the purposeful construction of stores impractically far away from targeted residents results in a redlining effect. The toxic inverse of this, is stores like Whole Foods are often weary precursors for gentrification. Good Standing commissaries can bridge these gaps.

“Reverse redlining” occurs when a lender or insurer targets majority-minority neighborhood residents with inflated interest rates by taking advantage of the lack of lending competition relative to non-redlined neighborhoods. The effect also emerges when service providers artificially restrict the supply of real estate available for loanable funds to nonwhites, thus providing alternative pretext for higher rates. Neighborhoods which were targeted for blockbusting were also subject to reverse redlining. Good Standing rejects both forms.

On the now globally infamous date of October 7th, Business Insider ran a story with the headline: Target says it's closing 9 locations over crime, but New York City crime stats surrounding its East Harlem store tell another story. That “other” story is some stores that are not closing had worse crime stats. Safety is a core issue. The stores that did close also had serious issues with crime. In May, Target’s CEO Brian Cornell called theft an "urgent issue" that was driving a $500 million increase in the company's missing inventory for the year. In August, he said store incidents with "violence or threats of violence" had more than doubled between January and August alone. "While we're doing all we can to address the problem, it's an industry and community issue that can't be solved by a single retailer," Cornell was quoted as saying in May, 2023. "That's why we're actively collaborating with legislators, law enforcement, and retail-industry partners to advocate for public-policy solutions to combat organized retail crime."

The sad thing about this is, these stores, these huge commercial real estate boxes, will most likely remain empty for some time. What’s to be done with all this space, these huge containers, when Target can’t cut it and the community can’t support it? As of 2023, Target operates 1,948 stores throughout the United States, and is ranked No. 32 on the 2022 Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. corporations by total revenue. They’re currently ranked 90 overall out of 500, with figures accurate up to 8/2/23. It’s not just one issue, it’s several compounding issues all at once.

So what’s going to happen with those barely upwardly mobile jobs, that were, probably to a negligible degree, supporting folks from the same communities as those responsible for the spikes in theft. This is simply another “kill-curve” of American infrastructure. What is being done about this decline? What can step into these structures? It’s also been widely reported that staff at Walmart are some of the largest users of welfare in America, meaning, American taxpayers have long been subsidizing Walmart’s workforce, a strictly, staunchly, anti-union company.

In a report, “Millions of Full-time Workers Rely on Federal Health Care and Food Assistance Programs,” commissioned by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), found that 5.7 million Medicaid enrollees and 4.7 million SNAP recipients who worked full-time for 50 or more weeks in 2018 earned wages so low that they qualified for these federal benefits. An estimated 12 million wage-earning adults enrolled in Medicaid and 9 million wage-earning adults living in households receiving SNAP benefits worked at some point in 2018. The same people who rebut this notion, put the emphasis back on the government to tax billionaires, which is most likely still in line with Bernie Sanders’ general ethos, mission, and perspective. Still, everyone is passing the buck.

One must also briefly contend with what, at least from some perspectives, appears to be a legitimate immigration and refugee crisis. New York Mayor Eric Adams said earlier this year that the migrant crisis would “destroy” the city. This is serious language. Back in October, at a press conference, Mayor Adams offered up his take on New York’s “right to shelter” decree, a status and right currently in serious legal and functional jeopardy: “There’s two schools of thought in the city right now. One school of thought states you can come from anywhere on the globe and come to New York and we are responsible, on taxpayers limited resources, to take care of you for as long as you want: Food, shelter, clothing, washing your sheets, everything, medical care, psychological care for as long as you want. And it’s on New York City taxpayer’s dime,” he said. “And there’s another school of thought: that we disagree.”

Budgets at the state and city level are being decimated. New York City is facing a $7 billion dollar budget gap and climbing. “Let me tell you something New Yorkers, never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to-I don’t see an ending to this,” the mayor said on a Wednesday night in September this year, in his opening remarks at a town hall-style gathering in Manhattan. Adams pointed to new projections that the city’s budget gap could grow to nearly $12 billion, the same amount that city officials estimate that the migrants could cost the city over three years, the NYT reported.

On December 20th, 2023, the Washington Post ran this sub-header and headline: U.S. faces ‘unprecedented’ border surge as immigration deal stalls in D.C.: Brazen smugglers saw through border wall, coordinate travel from Africa and Asia to bring tens of thousands across the U.S.-Mexico border. In the article, the Post’s immigration reporter, Nick Miroff writes, “The broader U.S. immigration system is in similar tattered shape after decades of congressional inaction and recurring migration spikes-including record numbers of illegal crossings this month. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is surpassing 10,000 encounters with migrants along the southern border per day, an influx likely to exacerbate strains on New York, Chicago, and other cities already swamped by newcomers seeking shelter, food, and assistance.”

“The numbers we are seeing now are unprecedented,” Troy Miller, the acting commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said wearily in an interview this week, as reported by WaPo.

Some of the behaviors and situations facing the world are as old as time, but simultaneously, their untenability feels new, or rather, “unprecedented.” This calls for unprecedented solutions.

Radiical Systems believes the commissary can adapt to fit the specific and shared needs of various site-specific locations in ways that they are clearly not being met as things stand. From rampant homelessness and crime in San Francisco, to refugee and mental health overload in New York City, the commissary can adapt to mitigate and solve civilization’s mounting pressure points, which are already crossing over clear political fault lines and infrastructural thresholds.

As envisioned by Radiical Systems, the commissary, or a “Good Standing” unit or structure, should be equally accessible to community members who desperately need the services it can provide as well as by those who can and choose to help facilitate or provide those services. This might mean an immediate repurposing of those newly emptied Target locations. Users and patrons operating as seamlessly as possible across this spectrum is essential for Good Standing to itself remain in good standing. Securing the individual units and the larger network by a trust of investors from the public and private sector, is worthwhile for these exact investors, as they are often the same people lamenting the ongoing, kill-curve degradation of their cities, work centers, and offices. Many of these parties, whether political or corporate, independent of the citizenry (who too must show ongoing agency) are partly responsible for their city’s plight and blight. Good Standing is the arena of accountability at all societal vectors. Good Standing needs to make clear that, to engage with Good Standing, one must act in accordance with it.

The through-line for the commissary, regardless of its bespoke, site specific context or industry association, is the fact that it serves as a space for the community members to secure nourishment and resources, including safety and peace itself, though not shelter at this juncture.

The commissary is also a place to develop useful skills. In the case of Ari Stern’s Dinnerfix for instance, which operates out of a 1,500-square-foot commissary in Baltimore, handling food prep, inventory, packaging, menuing, management, cleaning, shipping, cooking, sales, outreach, and so on. These are all applicable in the “normal” community business sphere, especially in Hospitality/Food & Bev. In the commissary, especially as it grows and evolves, members can evaluate their ongoing role and standing amongst their peers, while investigating new interests, tools, and work (business) acumen. American cities could utilize the commissary as a “purpose-driven” hub for transformation across every problematic 21st century dimension, from homelessness, addiction, food scarcity (deserts), lack of primary resources, unemployment, bad or no credit, suicidal thoughts, need for sanctuary, crime, misappropriated energy and anxiety, fear of gang violence, and general malaise or despair. The commissary gets you off the couch, out of trouble, and off the unemployment line.

What is a “store?” A store can be a retail establishment selling items to the public. It can be a quantity or supply of something kept for use as needed. And it can be a verb, as in to keep or accumulate (something) for future use. The commissary, again, can be all of this and more. Where it stands apart from a “general store” operating within standard fiat models out in the open market, is the commissary is designed to nurture citizens who can engage with standard transactional USD models of goods and services exchange, but more importantly, it is specifically designed to revitalize those who have fallen out of good standing in different ways. Members without initial capital or credit can retrieve (extract) goods and services while being afforded clear channels to contribute services or time, as a means to remain in good standing.

Good Standing is not anti-capitalistic, it simply wants to help those who are not succeeding under capitalism’s hegemony (and this is clearly the case in certain cities, countries, and demographics), by providing goods and services until members can partake fully. We ask that they enter into a reciprocal relationship with the commissary itself to remain in good standing. This requires that Good Standing, powered by Radiical Systems, interfaces directly with local businesses and other organizations, public and private, to tackle various issues on the ground. Good Standing is the new 21st century community hub on the block. Its spokes are numerous.

The commissary is a place for members of a community to remain in good standing with the community itself, but what is “community?” A community could be a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. One could also feel a sense of community or a fellowship with others as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. The commissary is the hub, nexus, portal, and perpetual incubator to discuss and align on these concerns and goals, while also putting the effort needed to achieve these goals and ameliorate these concerns into actual practice. Radiical Systems and Good Standing believe that human beings want to be treated as human beings first and foremost and therefore, Good Standing is boldly planting its most conspicuous flag in the corner of humanity. Good Standing also understands that certain communities have and do face different if not more pronounced issues. Bridging universal human concerns with site-specific, intersectional, geographical, racial, and cultural concerns requires the responsibly aggressive introduction of truly radical systems built on a foundation of empathy, common sense, common courtesy, and common decency.

“Good standing” as a state of being is regarded as having no financial obligations. A business entity that is in good standing has unabated powers to conduct its activities, which can include business endeavors. Similarly, a person who is in good standing within an organization or educational institution may take advantage of the benefits of membership or enrollment. Beyond having your paperwork in order, in membership organizations, or voluntary associations, there may be criteria for becoming a member and maintaining membership. Such criteria may include payment of dues or attendance of meetings. Failure to meet these criteria may result in loss of "good standing" within the organization or loss of membership in the organization altogether.

Unless the organization defines "good standing" and what causes a member to lose good standing, a member has all the rights of membership even if in arrears in payment of dues. “Arrears'' is a financial and legal term that most commonly describes an obligation or liability that has not received payment by its due date. Being in arrears may not have a negative connotation, as in cases when payment is expected after a service is provided or completed, not before. It is essential that Good Standing, powered by Radiical Systems, is clear on all its terms.

In any circular economy, or in the Stable Credit Protocol, having a specific place for community members to report to in order to remain in good standing is essential. The commissary must clearly articulate and provide real goods and services, as well as mutual incentives, for the system to work. Walls of financial assurance and vague speculation about barter systems is not and has never been enough to prevent system collapse. Good Standing, the commissary unit and eventual network, is the substantive IRL key to system durability.

Good Standing is not allergic or antagonistic to the open or free market, it simply shows up and holds space in the free market’s blind spots, which, like wounds, are urgent and need to be dressed.

Radiical Systems is interested in placing “Good Standing” directly in the title, as it feels most human beings have a deep emotional and instinctual desire to remain in good standing with their peers and with their community. Humans in poor standing, the idle, the aggrieved, the dispossessed, in the 21st century, are highly dangerous. Human beings want to take pride in their communities, as they feel it is a reflection on themselves. They need to take pride in their role in their community and in their household. If one’s house, village, city, state, or country is in poor standing, it is difficult to feel productive, useful, happy, and healthy at the individual level. This is largely what is sending 10,000 immigrants across the United States border. Immigrants and refugees feel unsafe and degraded in their home-countries, and after traveling for hundreds if not thousands of miles in fear and pain, they are treated like sub-human aliens upon arrival.

Radiical Systems believes communities and cities around America and in other international cities desperately need a designated hub, a beacon, or a brick and mortar clarion call when they feel they or their loved ones are falling out of or have fallen out of good standing. This might be a veteran returning from Afghanistan; a recently laid off tech worker; a chronically unemployed son in law; a sister-in-law on parole; a daughter finished with community college and awaiting her next move; a teenager avoiding gang affiliation and recruitment; someone on the brink of homelessness, a refugee working through our legal immigrants apparatus, members of Indigenous reservations, bands, and chapters looking to integrate with the wider economy, etc.

We also feel those with means who are looking to give back are desirous of a trustworthy and consistent entity to help them do so. Most importantly, Good Standing has to be honorable, it has to be accessible, and it has to be fun. It must be cool. Good Standing is not the DMV.

Infrastructure, meet Social Services.

Infrastructure has become a hyperobject, much like climate change. Where this can be debated, involves the components of so-called infrastructure that can surely be seen, measured, and touched. When politicians talk about infrastructure, for instance, or more recently, when they go on about “building back better,” one might still envision bridges being built, roads and dams being repaired, and other salt-of-the-earth, pedestrian, 20th century notions regarding actual hard-hat-wearing construction projects. For some, infrastructure as a political issue might involve notions of reconstruction, both as it pertains to fixing real things, as well as its context in the greater philosophical or metaphysical abstract. For true revitalization of American infrastructure, both are necessary (the fixing and the dreaming), as we solve the riddle of what to do after late-stage capitalism ends and systems collapse; and if it does/they do, what begins?

But what even is “infrastructure” as it’s perceived in America, or around the world in various countries, states, cities, communities, and villages, as we stumble trepidatiously into what is sure to be a wild and critical 2024? What exactly is being built back better domestically or abroad and is it compatible with 21st century notions of usefulness, social consciousness, consent, transparency, efficiency, and sustainability? How does it connect to, integrate with, or incorporate the United States’s various industrial complexes, globally infamous (nay pernicious) as they’ve become (and perhaps as abstract)? What industries, structures, and institutions do we really want and need to build or sustain? Who wants these things built or sustained and who benefits most should they be? Are politicians, government officials, CEOs, non-profit-types, and the American public even on the same page regarding incentive, intention, mission, and vision as it pertains to so-called infrastructure?

As of this writing, Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, now the executive chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling shareholder of Meta Platforms, is facing global scrutiny after plunking down over $100 million dollars (some say as much as $400 million) on a secure compound and state-of-the-art apocalypse bunker in Hawaii, a state that was most recently in the news for a series of disastrous, unprecedented wildfires that prompted evacuations, caused widespread damage, and killed at least 100 people, leaving four persons missing in the town of Lahaina on Maui's northwest coast.

VC firm Y Combinator’s Peter Thiel, an early investor in Facebook, faced difficulties from local councils and environmental activists as far back as 2018, after attempting to build something similar in New Zealand. “Second Star, a New Zealand company owned by the PayPal co-founder (Thiel), had applied to build the sprawling lakeside complex in Wanaka, an alpine South Island region known for its natural beauty and isolation. The plans were fiercely opposed by conservationists, who claimed in submissions that the lodge would “destroy our beautiful lake environment,” Tess McClure reported for The Guardian in August 2022. There have been numerous articles on this growing phenomenon or fad since. Perhaps it’s time to introduce a new fad and investment phenomena for bored and fretful billionaires?

To be fair, one could offer here that it’s a billionaire’s prerogative to build the Ubermensch man cave bunker compound (apparently with a network of Zuck-approved discoidal tree-houses) of their libertarian Bond-villain dreams, but unlike Ayn Rand’s seemingly valiant if not slightly aloof protagonists in Atlas Shrugged, who actually cared if the world and its infrastructure went to hell, if systems failed and the lights in Manhattan went out, the Zuckerbergs of the world not only seem not to care, they’re accelerating its demise. One can point to the Cambridge Analytica fiasco, the erosion of privacy, or social media’s influence on child and teenage psychology, which means dangerously unstable suicide rates, especially for young women. Here it might make sense to say, ‘One could only speculate what could be done in Hawaii with half of that money;’ but we shouldn’t have to speculate. There are people on the ground who need help now. It’s time to stop reacting to catastrophe and start preventing it. At the individual and global level. Radiical Systems believes the commissary is both proactive and responsive as a model.

In August, earlier this year, Forbes reported that, “Priscilla Chan, co-CEO of the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative and wife of Meta founder Zuckerberg, announced in a Facebook post Friday afternoon that the couple donated $400,000 to the Hawaii Community Foundation and encouraged others to follow suit. Zuckerberg and Chan have previously donated or pledged approximately $25 million to the Hawaii Community Foundation.”

Where this money has gone, beyond greasing the state’s wheels to build Love Island: Ernst Stavro Blofeld Edition, can perhaps be traced to the foundation’s “Strengthening” page, which highlights their initiatives and grant programs.The commissary, in a place like Maui, could be the hub to heal commercial and residential destruction and yes, mounting resentment, while providing social services and rehabilitation training in all relevant sectors. The commissary would liaise with organizations like the Hawaii Community Foundation, helping to support its various initiatives and support its contributors and grantees. Why can’t the US government and the top ten percent of earners in the United States, who held 66.6 percent of total wealth as measured in the third quarter of 2023, fully unite on this front? Can there be a singular initiative, a crucial extrapolation, to put America and the diverse, shifting demographics that make up “Americans“ in good standing?

The Whitehouse’s official website, on a page dedicated to Invest.gov, an initiative that directs private corporate capital to seemingly government-approved infrastructure initiatives, declares: “For decades, the U.S. exported jobs and imported products, while other countries surpassed us in critical sectors like infrastructure, clean energy, semiconductors, and biotechnology. Thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda – including historic legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden such as the American Rescue Plan, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (Build.gov: Maps of Progress, last updated - November 2023), CHIPS and Science Act (Fact Sheet: “Will Lower Costs, Create Jobs, Strengthen Supply Chains, and Counter China''), and Inflation Reduction Act – that is changing.”

The Biden-Harris administration appears to be interested in “Manufacturing the Future,” reads a subheading on the same web page. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, private companies have announced $628 Billion so far in commitments to invest in 21st century industries like: $232B in Semiconductors & Electronics; $152B in EVs & Batteries; $74B for Clean Energy Manufacturing; $20B in Biomanufacturing; $132B for Clean Power, and $17B in Heavy Industry, the division perhaps most associated with the aforementioned 20th-century notions regarding infrastructure. “Heavy Industry” relates to a type of business that typically carries a high capital cost (capital-intensive), high barriers to entry, and low transportability. The term "heavy" refers to the fact that the items produced by heavy industry used to be products such as iron, coal, oil, ships, etc.

Strangely, or rather, not so surprising, is companies like the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, through Invest.gov, seem to be investing money in biotech start-ups and building factories. This is a bit misleading, as it’s more accurate that Pfizer is investing in their own infrastructure. This feels more aligned with Reaganomics or the “Trickle-down” effect. That big companies invest in themselves and the citizenry reaps the rewards. But does this model really work? This is one of Invest.gov’s misnomers, or at least it’s murky. An info-map on the same site points to various private investments in infrastructure. One node points to Pfizer investing $470 million in Pearl River, New York, most likely in the renovation and expansion of the building that houses one of their biggest East Coast research facilities, which focuses primarily on vaccine development and research in “Antibody Drug Conjugates.” Without derailing this report, the Covid pandemic drove Pfizer's 2022 revenue to a record $100 billion, almost $57 billion of which was driven by its vaccine and antiviral pill Paxlovid, the company itself reported in January 2023.

It’s important to reconcile that the American public largely funded the vaccines, as stated by the National Library of Medicine on their official government website: “Despite ownership of the patents on these lifesaving vaccines lying now mostly in the hands of private companies, US taxpayers funded the fundamental innovations that made mRNA vaccines possible. As the US healthcare system tries to manage the daunting logistical challenges of vaccine distribution and public health officials and physicians work to communicate the importance of getting vaccinated, the government should leverage its position, patent rights, and substantial investment to ensure continued vaccine supply at a fair price both domestically and internationally.”

The truth is, private corporations do the majority of the leveraging in America, usually at the expense of the citizenry and for the benefit of a small group of board members, execs, and major shareholders. By May 2021, Covid-19 vaccines created at least nine new billionaires after shares in companies producing the shots soared. As per a CNN report: “Topping the list of new billionaires are Moderna (MRNA) CEO Stéphane Bancel and Ugur Sahin, the CEO of BioNTech (BNTX), which has produced a vaccine with Pfizer (PFE). Both CEOs are now worth around $4 billion, according to an analysis by the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a campaign group that includes Oxfam, UNAIDS, Global Justice Now and Amnesty International. Senior executives from China’s CanSino Biologics and early investors in Moderna have also become billionaires on paper as shares skyrocketed, partly in expectation of profits earned from Covid vaccines, which also bode well for the companies’ future prospects. The analysis was compiled using data from the Forbes Rich List. How much wealth actually trickles down from the Forbes Rich List?

Could, should, why aren’t some of these profits, at least an amount on par with the initial funding, given they were funded by the public, be reinvested back into revitalizing infrastructure, specifically into the preventative health programs for those who were most at risk?

In 2022, Tim Bierley, a pharma campaigner at Global Justice Now said: “It’s nothing short of pandemic profiteering for Pfizer to make a killing while its vaccines have been withheld from so many. Pfizer is now richer than most countries; it has made more than enough money from this crisis. It’s time to suspend intellectual property and break vaccine monopolies.”

The top 1% of American earners now control more wealth than the nation's entire middle class, federal data shows. More than one-quarter of all household wealth, 26.5%, belongs to Americans who earn enough money to rank in the top percentile by income, according to Federal Reserve statistics through mid-2023. Therefore, can or should “People,” the 99%, exist as a category within the broader infrastructure umbrella, or should human beings and their everyday human concerns fall under what federal and state governments call “Social Services?”

The U.S. Department of Health and Social Services or the HHS, “oversees” programs and services that improve the well-being of individuals, families, and communities, their website explains. At the more local level, New York’s Department of Social Services (DSS) comprises the administrative units of the NYC Human Resources Administration (HRA) and the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), claiming further that “through integrated management for HRA and DHS, client services can be provided more seamlessly and effectively. The City (a government-approved five-borough flex here) leverages shared services functions across agencies, which results in better day-to-day management and building an integrated mission across agencies.”

In our first case study and follow-up investment thesis, “Farm to School,” Radical Systems discovered that initiatives funded by nonprofits and government grants and services, though extremely helpful and well-intentioned, usually, eventually need support from the private sector. Programs like Ari Stern’s Dinnerfix, which has and is currently attempting to continue to provide healthy, farm to table meals for pre-schools and eventually all public schools, needs to scale to become affordable and therefore sustainable. It is unlikely, based on Ari Stern and Dinnerfix’s labor bandwidth, as it’s connected to day to day operations, that it is in a place to continually apply for grants in order to sustain itself, let alone grow. This is why these initiatives often fail.

During this same case study, Radiical Systems became interested in Stern’s small commissary as the core solution to human and community revitalization, as it was the epicenter-the engine, home, and hub behind urban renewal. Though Cradlerock Children’s Center is of course admirable and nurturing, it’s ultimately a private facility that parents and guardians can afford to send their children to, or not. Ari’s commissary, though private, is a space to help train, nurture, revitalize and “actualize” adults. More directly, the commissary as a hub and structure, we feel, is the clear answer to community revitalization, especially cities that develop a toxic reputation concerning pervasive, metastasizing homelessness, urban and suburban decay, commercial and residential real estate blight, theft (petty and coordinated smash and grab), drug use, inflation, systemic poverty, wealth inequality, and violent crime. There is a cacophony of voices both condemning and enabling community degradation en mass, and very few real solutions.

To be more clear, we believe the commissary is the crucial link; the transformative nexus between concrete, brick and mortar infrastructure, and social services, both of which are going through massive transformations now in 2024. There is a void that can be filled across multiple dimensions by the commissary as a community hub and broker between the public and private sectors. Good Standing is the bridge between Infrastructure and Social Services, which now more than ever, need to be properly aligned and integrated.

Good Standing is looking for various kinds of contributions, not only to help sustain ventures like Ari Stern’s Dinnerfix pilot program at Cradlerock Children’s Center, which nourishes our children, their families, and their communities, but other initiatives powered by entrepreneurs, artists, activists, and changemakers like Ari who see their local Good Standing and the wider Good Standing commissary network as a home or headquarters for their own radical visions. Radiical Systems can do this in every one of the 50 United States and in cities around the world. We need us now.

“Good Standing” is the working title for the first venture or “answer” to emerge out of Radiical System’s venture capital studio and case study model. Good Standing is also the name of each individual commissary, as well as the greater network of associated infrastructure operating in various key cities around the United States and across the world. Radiical Systems is currently building a “Good Standing” application to integrate with and support its multifaceted partner spaces. The app engages and informs members of local communities in order to collaborate on and benefit from initiatives incubated within these spaces.

Our venture studio believes the commissary is the answer to urban decay and collapse and the key to a new renaissance regarding the health of humanity and its infrastructure. The failure to sustain major American cities has become a core political issue, if not an outright zeitgeist, as it’s anxiously tethered to emotional, existential, and very real (brick and mortar) notions of “late-stage capitalism,” which includes hyperinflation, automation and AI-driven paradigm shifts in labor, mainstream media gaslighting, hyperbolic alt-media fear mongering, corporate apathy, a breakdown in shared values, and rampant political corruption.

Radiical Systems believes the commissary, often defined as a “store” that sells food and supplies to the personnel or workers in a military post, mining camp, lumber camp or the like, is the answer to community, economic, and human revitalization precisely because of its fluid utilitarian nature. Commissaries, for instance, can also serve as a dining room or cafeteria, whether on the set of a major motion-picture studio feature or in a federal or county prison. These are largely 20th century definitions. Though they remain relevant to a degree, they fail to encompass the evolution of technology and humanity’s evolving relationship to it. That being said, humans and their general infrastructure, in America especially, have not evolved to the point of being unrecognizable. Instead, much of our behavior, like our infrastructure, is sadly outdated. But humans still need their basic needs met. So, why are they so often not being met?

The answer to this, or answers, are of course multifaceted and will be addressed more succinctly in our various case studies, which tackle specific issues facing America and global society. Globally, and in the United States, the answer seems to be that certain subsets of society, the marginal or historically disenfranchised, are caught in systemic cycles of degradation, built on oppressive systems like slavery, redlining, Jim Crow, displacement, discrimination in lending, inequality in policing (police violence and privatized prisons [cheap prison labor]) and employment opportunities; schooling, and the list goes on. Generally, people, individuals, not only need a “hand-hold,” they need an ongoing hearth; an infrastructural heart.

On Dec. 12, 2023, the New York Times reported on discriminatory labor practices in American prisons (putting it mildly), running the sub-header and headline: Prisoners Sue Alabama, Calling Prison Labor System a ‘Form of Slavery:’ The plaintiffs, who are all Black, contend that the state regularly denies incarcerated people parole so that they can be “leased” out to make money for government agencies and businesses. The lawsuit, filed in Alabama, accuses the state of regularly denying incarcerated people parole so that they can be, yes, “leased” out to produce hundreds of millions of dollars in profits for local and state agencies and businesses every year. This of course is abhorrent, and a perversion of our justice systems, let only our humanity.

“Redlining” is a discriminatory practice in which services (financial and otherwise) are withheld from potential customers who reside in neighborhoods classified as "hazardous" to investment; these neighborhoods have significant numbers of racial and ethnic “minorities,” and low-income residents. While the best-known examples involve denial of credit and insurance, also sometimes attributed to redlining in many instances are denial of healthcare and the development of food deserts in minority neighborhoods. In the case of retail businesses like supermarkets, the purposeful construction of stores impractically far away from targeted residents results in a redlining effect. The toxic inverse of this, is stores like Whole Foods are often weary precursors for gentrification. Good Standing commissaries can bridge these gaps.

“Reverse redlining” occurs when a lender or insurer targets majority-minority neighborhood residents with inflated interest rates by taking advantage of the lack of lending competition relative to non-redlined neighborhoods. The effect also emerges when service providers artificially restrict the supply of real estate available for loanable funds to nonwhites, thus providing alternative pretext for higher rates. Neighborhoods which were targeted for blockbusting were also subject to reverse redlining. Good Standing rejects both forms.

On the now globally infamous date of October 7th, Business Insider ran a story with the headline: Target says it's closing 9 locations over crime, but New York City crime stats surrounding its East Harlem store tell another story. That “other” story is some stores that are not closing had worse crime stats. Safety is a core issue. The stores that did close also had serious issues with crime. In May, Target’s CEO Brian Cornell called theft an "urgent issue" that was driving a $500 million increase in the company's missing inventory for the year. In August, he said store incidents with "violence or threats of violence" had more than doubled between January and August alone. "While we're doing all we can to address the problem, it's an industry and community issue that can't be solved by a single retailer," Cornell was quoted as saying in May, 2023. "That's why we're actively collaborating with legislators, law enforcement, and retail-industry partners to advocate for public-policy solutions to combat organized retail crime."

The sad thing about this is, these stores, these huge commercial real estate boxes, will most likely remain empty for some time. What’s to be done with all this space, these huge containers, when Target can’t cut it and the community can’t support it? As of 2023, Target operates 1,948 stores throughout the United States, and is ranked No. 32 on the 2022 Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. corporations by total revenue. They’re currently ranked 90 overall out of 500, with figures accurate up to 8/2/23. It’s not just one issue, it’s several compounding issues all at once.

So what’s going to happen with those barely upwardly mobile jobs, that were, probably to a negligible degree, supporting folks from the same communities as those responsible for the spikes in theft. This is simply another “kill-curve” of American infrastructure. What is being done about this decline? What can step into these structures? It’s also been widely reported that staff at Walmart are some of the largest users of welfare in America, meaning, American taxpayers have long been subsidizing Walmart’s workforce, a strictly, staunchly, anti-union company.

In a report, “Millions of Full-time Workers Rely on Federal Health Care and Food Assistance Programs,” commissioned by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), found that 5.7 million Medicaid enrollees and 4.7 million SNAP recipients who worked full-time for 50 or more weeks in 2018 earned wages so low that they qualified for these federal benefits. An estimated 12 million wage-earning adults enrolled in Medicaid and 9 million wage-earning adults living in households receiving SNAP benefits worked at some point in 2018. The same people who rebut this notion, put the emphasis back on the government to tax billionaires, which is most likely still in line with Bernie Sanders’ general ethos, mission, and perspective. Still, everyone is passing the buck.

One must also briefly contend with what, at least from some perspectives, appears to be a legitimate immigration and refugee crisis. New York Mayor Eric Adams said earlier this year that the migrant crisis would “destroy” the city. This is serious language. Back in October, at a press conference, Mayor Adams offered up his take on New York’s “right to shelter” decree, a status and right currently in serious legal and functional jeopardy: “There’s two schools of thought in the city right now. One school of thought states you can come from anywhere on the globe and come to New York and we are responsible, on taxpayers limited resources, to take care of you for as long as you want: Food, shelter, clothing, washing your sheets, everything, medical care, psychological care for as long as you want. And it’s on New York City taxpayer’s dime,” he said. “And there’s another school of thought: that we disagree.”

Budgets at the state and city level are being decimated. New York City is facing a $7 billion dollar budget gap and climbing. “Let me tell you something New Yorkers, never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to-I don’t see an ending to this,” the mayor said on a Wednesday night in September this year, in his opening remarks at a town hall-style gathering in Manhattan. Adams pointed to new projections that the city’s budget gap could grow to nearly $12 billion, the same amount that city officials estimate that the migrants could cost the city over three years, the NYT reported.

On December 20th, 2023, the Washington Post ran this sub-header and headline: U.S. faces ‘unprecedented’ border surge as immigration deal stalls in D.C.: Brazen smugglers saw through border wall, coordinate travel from Africa and Asia to bring tens of thousands across the U.S.-Mexico border. In the article, the Post’s immigration reporter, Nick Miroff writes, “The broader U.S. immigration system is in similar tattered shape after decades of congressional inaction and recurring migration spikes-including record numbers of illegal crossings this month. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is surpassing 10,000 encounters with migrants along the southern border per day, an influx likely to exacerbate strains on New York, Chicago, and other cities already swamped by newcomers seeking shelter, food, and assistance.”

“The numbers we are seeing now are unprecedented,” Troy Miller, the acting commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said wearily in an interview this week, as reported by WaPo.

Some of the behaviors and situations facing the world are as old as time, but simultaneously, their untenability feels new, or rather, “unprecedented.” This calls for unprecedented solutions.

Radiical Systems believes the commissary can adapt to fit the specific and shared needs of various site-specific locations in ways that they are clearly not being met as things stand. From rampant homelessness and crime in San Francisco, to refugee and mental health overload in New York City, the commissary can adapt to mitigate and solve civilization’s mounting pressure points, which are already crossing over clear political fault lines and infrastructural thresholds.

As envisioned by Radiical Systems, the commissary, or a “Good Standing” unit or structure, should be equally accessible to community members who desperately need the services it can provide as well as by those who can and choose to help facilitate or provide those services. This might mean an immediate repurposing of those newly emptied Target locations. Users and patrons operating as seamlessly as possible across this spectrum is essential for Good Standing to itself remain in good standing. Securing the individual units and the larger network by a trust of investors from the public and private sector, is worthwhile for these exact investors, as they are often the same people lamenting the ongoing, kill-curve degradation of their cities, work centers, and offices. Many of these parties, whether political or corporate, independent of the citizenry (who too must show ongoing agency) are partly responsible for their city’s plight and blight. Good Standing is the arena of accountability at all societal vectors. Good Standing needs to make clear that, to engage with Good Standing, one must act in accordance with it.

The through-line for the commissary, regardless of its bespoke, site specific context or industry association, is the fact that it serves as a space for the community members to secure nourishment and resources, including safety and peace itself, though not shelter at this juncture.

The commissary is also a place to develop useful skills. In the case of Ari Stern’s Dinnerfix for instance, which operates out of a 1,500-square-foot commissary in Baltimore, handling food prep, inventory, packaging, menuing, management, cleaning, shipping, cooking, sales, outreach, and so on. These are all applicable in the “normal” community business sphere, especially in Hospitality/Food & Bev. In the commissary, especially as it grows and evolves, members can evaluate their ongoing role and standing amongst their peers, while investigating new interests, tools, and work (business) acumen. American cities could utilize the commissary as a “purpose-driven” hub for transformation across every problematic 21st century dimension, from homelessness, addiction, food scarcity (deserts), lack of primary resources, unemployment, bad or no credit, suicidal thoughts, need for sanctuary, crime, misappropriated energy and anxiety, fear of gang violence, and general malaise or despair. The commissary gets you off the couch, out of trouble, and off the unemployment line.

What is a “store?” A store can be a retail establishment selling items to the public. It can be a quantity or supply of something kept for use as needed. And it can be a verb, as in to keep or accumulate (something) for future use. The commissary, again, can be all of this and more. Where it stands apart from a “general store” operating within standard fiat models out in the open market, is the commissary is designed to nurture citizens who can engage with standard transactional USD models of goods and services exchange, but more importantly, it is specifically designed to revitalize those who have fallen out of good standing in different ways. Members without initial capital or credit can retrieve (extract) goods and services while being afforded clear channels to contribute services or time, as a means to remain in good standing.

Good Standing is not anti-capitalistic, it simply wants to help those who are not succeeding under capitalism’s hegemony (and this is clearly the case in certain cities, countries, and demographics), by providing goods and services until members can partake fully. We ask that they enter into a reciprocal relationship with the commissary itself to remain in good standing. This requires that Good Standing, powered by Radiical Systems, interfaces directly with local businesses and other organizations, public and private, to tackle various issues on the ground. Good Standing is the new 21st century community hub on the block. Its spokes are numerous.

The commissary is a place for members of a community to remain in good standing with the community itself, but what is “community?” A community could be a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. One could also feel a sense of community or a fellowship with others as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. The commissary is the hub, nexus, portal, and perpetual incubator to discuss and align on these concerns and goals, while also putting the effort needed to achieve these goals and ameliorate these concerns into actual practice. Radiical Systems and Good Standing believe that human beings want to be treated as human beings first and foremost and therefore, Good Standing is boldly planting its most conspicuous flag in the corner of humanity. Good Standing also understands that certain communities have and do face different if not more pronounced issues. Bridging universal human concerns with site-specific, intersectional, geographical, racial, and cultural concerns requires the responsibly aggressive introduction of truly radical systems built on a foundation of empathy, common sense, common courtesy, and common decency.

“Good standing” as a state of being is regarded as having no financial obligations. A business entity that is in good standing has unabated powers to conduct its activities, which can include business endeavors. Similarly, a person who is in good standing within an organization or educational institution may take advantage of the benefits of membership or enrollment. Beyond having your paperwork in order, in membership organizations, or voluntary associations, there may be criteria for becoming a member and maintaining membership. Such criteria may include payment of dues or attendance of meetings. Failure to meet these criteria may result in loss of "good standing" within the organization or loss of membership in the organization altogether.

Unless the organization defines "good standing" and what causes a member to lose good standing, a member has all the rights of membership even if in arrears in payment of dues. “Arrears'' is a financial and legal term that most commonly describes an obligation or liability that has not received payment by its due date. Being in arrears may not have a negative connotation, as in cases when payment is expected after a service is provided or completed, not before. It is essential that Good Standing, powered by Radiical Systems, is clear on all its terms.

In any circular economy, or in the Stable Credit Protocol, having a specific place for community members to report to in order to remain in good standing is essential. The commissary must clearly articulate and provide real goods and services, as well as mutual incentives, for the system to work. Walls of financial assurance and vague speculation about barter systems is not and has never been enough to prevent system collapse. Good Standing, the commissary unit and eventual network, is the substantive IRL key to system durability.

Good Standing is not allergic or antagonistic to the open or free market, it simply shows up and holds space in the free market’s blind spots, which, like wounds, are urgent and need to be dressed.

Radiical Systems is interested in placing “Good Standing” directly in the title, as it feels most human beings have a deep emotional and instinctual desire to remain in good standing with their peers and with their community. Humans in poor standing, the idle, the aggrieved, the dispossessed, in the 21st century, are highly dangerous. Human beings want to take pride in their communities, as they feel it is a reflection on themselves. They need to take pride in their role in their community and in their household. If one’s house, village, city, state, or country is in poor standing, it is difficult to feel productive, useful, happy, and healthy at the individual level. This is largely what is sending 10,000 immigrants across the United States border. Immigrants and refugees feel unsafe and degraded in their home-countries, and after traveling for hundreds if not thousands of miles in fear and pain, they are treated like sub-human aliens upon arrival.

Radiical Systems believes communities and cities around America and in other international cities desperately need a designated hub, a beacon, or a brick and mortar clarion call when they feel they or their loved ones are falling out of or have fallen out of good standing. This might be a veteran returning from Afghanistan; a recently laid off tech worker; a chronically unemployed son in law; a sister-in-law on parole; a daughter finished with community college and awaiting her next move; a teenager avoiding gang affiliation and recruitment; someone on the brink of homelessness, a refugee working through our legal immigrants apparatus, members of Indigenous reservations, bands, and chapters looking to integrate with the wider economy, etc.

We also feel those with means who are looking to give back are desirous of a trustworthy and consistent entity to help them do so. Most importantly, Good Standing has to be honorable, it has to be accessible, and it has to be fun. It must be cool. Good Standing is not the DMV.

Infrastructure, meet Social Services.

Infrastructure has become a hyperobject, much like climate change. Where this can be debated, involves the components of so-called infrastructure that can surely be seen, measured, and touched. When politicians talk about infrastructure, for instance, or more recently, when they go on about “building back better,” one might still envision bridges being built, roads and dams being repaired, and other salt-of-the-earth, pedestrian, 20th century notions regarding actual hard-hat-wearing construction projects. For some, infrastructure as a political issue might involve notions of reconstruction, both as it pertains to fixing real things, as well as its context in the greater philosophical or metaphysical abstract. For true revitalization of American infrastructure, both are necessary (the fixing and the dreaming), as we solve the riddle of what to do after late-stage capitalism ends and systems collapse; and if it does/they do, what begins?

But what even is “infrastructure” as it’s perceived in America, or around the world in various countries, states, cities, communities, and villages, as we stumble trepidatiously into what is sure to be a wild and critical 2024? What exactly is being built back better domestically or abroad and is it compatible with 21st century notions of usefulness, social consciousness, consent, transparency, efficiency, and sustainability? How does it connect to, integrate with, or incorporate the United States’s various industrial complexes, globally infamous (nay pernicious) as they’ve become (and perhaps as abstract)? What industries, structures, and institutions do we really want and need to build or sustain? Who wants these things built or sustained and who benefits most should they be? Are politicians, government officials, CEOs, non-profit-types, and the American public even on the same page regarding incentive, intention, mission, and vision as it pertains to so-called infrastructure?

As of this writing, Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, now the executive chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling shareholder of Meta Platforms, is facing global scrutiny after plunking down over $100 million dollars (some say as much as $400 million) on a secure compound and state-of-the-art apocalypse bunker in Hawaii, a state that was most recently in the news for a series of disastrous, unprecedented wildfires that prompted evacuations, caused widespread damage, and killed at least 100 people, leaving four persons missing in the town of Lahaina on Maui's northwest coast.

VC firm Y Combinator’s Peter Thiel, an early investor in Facebook, faced difficulties from local councils and environmental activists as far back as 2018, after attempting to build something similar in New Zealand. “Second Star, a New Zealand company owned by the PayPal co-founder (Thiel), had applied to build the sprawling lakeside complex in Wanaka, an alpine South Island region known for its natural beauty and isolation. The plans were fiercely opposed by conservationists, who claimed in submissions that the lodge would “destroy our beautiful lake environment,” Tess McClure reported for The Guardian in August 2022. There have been numerous articles on this growing phenomenon or fad since. Perhaps it’s time to introduce a new fad and investment phenomena for bored and fretful billionaires?

To be fair, one could offer here that it’s a billionaire’s prerogative to build the Ubermensch man cave bunker compound (apparently with a network of Zuck-approved discoidal tree-houses) of their libertarian Bond-villain dreams, but unlike Ayn Rand’s seemingly valiant if not slightly aloof protagonists in Atlas Shrugged, who actually cared if the world and its infrastructure went to hell, if systems failed and the lights in Manhattan went out, the Zuckerbergs of the world not only seem not to care, they’re accelerating its demise. One can point to the Cambridge Analytica fiasco, the erosion of privacy, or social media’s influence on child and teenage psychology, which means dangerously unstable suicide rates, especially for young women. Here it might make sense to say, ‘One could only speculate what could be done in Hawaii with half of that money;’ but we shouldn’t have to speculate. There are people on the ground who need help now. It’s time to stop reacting to catastrophe and start preventing it. At the individual and global level. Radiical Systems believes the commissary is both proactive and responsive as a model.

In August, earlier this year, Forbes reported that, “Priscilla Chan, co-CEO of the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative and wife of Meta founder Zuckerberg, announced in a Facebook post Friday afternoon that the couple donated $400,000 to the Hawaii Community Foundation and encouraged others to follow suit. Zuckerberg and Chan have previously donated or pledged approximately $25 million to the Hawaii Community Foundation.”

Where this money has gone, beyond greasing the state’s wheels to build Love Island: Ernst Stavro Blofeld Edition, can perhaps be traced to the foundation’s “Strengthening” page, which highlights their initiatives and grant programs.The commissary, in a place like Maui, could be the hub to heal commercial and residential destruction and yes, mounting resentment, while providing social services and rehabilitation training in all relevant sectors. The commissary would liaise with organizations like the Hawaii Community Foundation, helping to support its various initiatives and support its contributors and grantees. Why can’t the US government and the top ten percent of earners in the United States, who held 66.6 percent of total wealth as measured in the third quarter of 2023, fully unite on this front? Can there be a singular initiative, a crucial extrapolation, to put America and the diverse, shifting demographics that make up “Americans“ in good standing?

The Whitehouse’s official website, on a page dedicated to Invest.gov, an initiative that directs private corporate capital to seemingly government-approved infrastructure initiatives, declares: “For decades, the U.S. exported jobs and imported products, while other countries surpassed us in critical sectors like infrastructure, clean energy, semiconductors, and biotechnology. Thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda – including historic legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden such as the American Rescue Plan, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (Build.gov: Maps of Progress, last updated - November 2023), CHIPS and Science Act (Fact Sheet: “Will Lower Costs, Create Jobs, Strengthen Supply Chains, and Counter China''), and Inflation Reduction Act – that is changing.”

The Biden-Harris administration appears to be interested in “Manufacturing the Future,” reads a subheading on the same web page. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, private companies have announced $628 Billion so far in commitments to invest in 21st century industries like: $232B in Semiconductors & Electronics; $152B in EVs & Batteries; $74B for Clean Energy Manufacturing; $20B in Biomanufacturing; $132B for Clean Power, and $17B in Heavy Industry, the division perhaps most associated with the aforementioned 20th-century notions regarding infrastructure. “Heavy Industry” relates to a type of business that typically carries a high capital cost (capital-intensive), high barriers to entry, and low transportability. The term "heavy" refers to the fact that the items produced by heavy industry used to be products such as iron, coal, oil, ships, etc.

Strangely, or rather, not so surprising, is companies like the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, through Invest.gov, seem to be investing money in biotech start-ups and building factories. This is a bit misleading, as it’s more accurate that Pfizer is investing in their own infrastructure. This feels more aligned with Reaganomics or the “Trickle-down” effect. That big companies invest in themselves and the citizenry reaps the rewards. But does this model really work? This is one of Invest.gov’s misnomers, or at least it’s murky. An info-map on the same site points to various private investments in infrastructure. One node points to Pfizer investing $470 million in Pearl River, New York, most likely in the renovation and expansion of the building that houses one of their biggest East Coast research facilities, which focuses primarily on vaccine development and research in “Antibody Drug Conjugates.” Without derailing this report, the Covid pandemic drove Pfizer's 2022 revenue to a record $100 billion, almost $57 billion of which was driven by its vaccine and antiviral pill Paxlovid, the company itself reported in January 2023.

It’s important to reconcile that the American public largely funded the vaccines, as stated by the National Library of Medicine on their official government website: “Despite ownership of the patents on these lifesaving vaccines lying now mostly in the hands of private companies, US taxpayers funded the fundamental innovations that made mRNA vaccines possible. As the US healthcare system tries to manage the daunting logistical challenges of vaccine distribution and public health officials and physicians work to communicate the importance of getting vaccinated, the government should leverage its position, patent rights, and substantial investment to ensure continued vaccine supply at a fair price both domestically and internationally.”

The truth is, private corporations do the majority of the leveraging in America, usually at the expense of the citizenry and for the benefit of a small group of board members, execs, and major shareholders. By May 2021, Covid-19 vaccines created at least nine new billionaires after shares in companies producing the shots soared. As per a CNN report: “Topping the list of new billionaires are Moderna (MRNA) CEO Stéphane Bancel and Ugur Sahin, the CEO of BioNTech (BNTX), which has produced a vaccine with Pfizer (PFE). Both CEOs are now worth around $4 billion, according to an analysis by the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a campaign group that includes Oxfam, UNAIDS, Global Justice Now and Amnesty International. Senior executives from China’s CanSino Biologics and early investors in Moderna have also become billionaires on paper as shares skyrocketed, partly in expectation of profits earned from Covid vaccines, which also bode well for the companies’ future prospects. The analysis was compiled using data from the Forbes Rich List. How much wealth actually trickles down from the Forbes Rich List?

Could, should, why aren’t some of these profits, at least an amount on par with the initial funding, given they were funded by the public, be reinvested back into revitalizing infrastructure, specifically into the preventative health programs for those who were most at risk?

In 2022, Tim Bierley, a pharma campaigner at Global Justice Now said: “It’s nothing short of pandemic profiteering for Pfizer to make a killing while its vaccines have been withheld from so many. Pfizer is now richer than most countries; it has made more than enough money from this crisis. It’s time to suspend intellectual property and break vaccine monopolies.”

The top 1% of American earners now control more wealth than the nation's entire middle class, federal data shows. More than one-quarter of all household wealth, 26.5%, belongs to Americans who earn enough money to rank in the top percentile by income, according to Federal Reserve statistics through mid-2023. Therefore, can or should “People,” the 99%, exist as a category within the broader infrastructure umbrella, or should human beings and their everyday human concerns fall under what federal and state governments call “Social Services?”

The U.S. Department of Health and Social Services or the HHS, “oversees” programs and services that improve the well-being of individuals, families, and communities, their website explains. At the more local level, New York’s Department of Social Services (DSS) comprises the administrative units of the NYC Human Resources Administration (HRA) and the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), claiming further that “through integrated management for HRA and DHS, client services can be provided more seamlessly and effectively. The City (a government-approved five-borough flex here) leverages shared services functions across agencies, which results in better day-to-day management and building an integrated mission across agencies.”

In our first case study and follow-up investment thesis, “Farm to School,” Radical Systems discovered that initiatives funded by nonprofits and government grants and services, though extremely helpful and well-intentioned, usually, eventually need support from the private sector. Programs like Ari Stern’s Dinnerfix, which has and is currently attempting to continue to provide healthy, farm to table meals for pre-schools and eventually all public schools, needs to scale to become affordable and therefore sustainable. It is unlikely, based on Ari Stern and Dinnerfix’s labor bandwidth, as it’s connected to day to day operations, that it is in a place to continually apply for grants in order to sustain itself, let alone grow. This is why these initiatives often fail.

During this same case study, Radiical Systems became interested in Stern’s small commissary as the core solution to human and community revitalization, as it was the epicenter-the engine, home, and hub behind urban renewal. Though Cradlerock Children’s Center is of course admirable and nurturing, it’s ultimately a private facility that parents and guardians can afford to send their children to, or not. Ari’s commissary, though private, is a space to help train, nurture, revitalize and “actualize” adults. More directly, the commissary as a hub and structure, we feel, is the clear answer to community revitalization, especially cities that develop a toxic reputation concerning pervasive, metastasizing homelessness, urban and suburban decay, commercial and residential real estate blight, theft (petty and coordinated smash and grab), drug use, inflation, systemic poverty, wealth inequality, and violent crime. There is a cacophony of voices both condemning and enabling community degradation en mass, and very few real solutions.

To be more clear, we believe the commissary is the crucial link; the transformative nexus between concrete, brick and mortar infrastructure, and social services, both of which are going through massive transformations now in 2024. There is a void that can be filled across multiple dimensions by the commissary as a community hub and broker between the public and private sectors. Good Standing is the bridge between Infrastructure and Social Services, which now more than ever, need to be properly aligned and integrated.

Good Standing is looking for various kinds of contributions, not only to help sustain ventures like Ari Stern’s Dinnerfix pilot program at Cradlerock Children’s Center, which nourishes our children, their families, and their communities, but other initiatives powered by entrepreneurs, artists, activists, and changemakers like Ari who see their local Good Standing and the wider Good Standing commissary network as a home or headquarters for their own radical visions. Radiical Systems can do this in every one of the 50 United States and in cities around the world. We need us now.