Note: This post is adapted from my original blog entry The Fur Trade and Social Finance on AlEtmanski.com. Please visit the original for a longer version that includes additional context about Canada’s intellectual and economic history.

The fur trade in Canada provides a distant mirror for Social Finance advocates and practitioners on the complex effects of any new technology. It makes us mindful that every intervention has side effects, both positive and negative.

Harold Innis was English Canada's first economic historian, and his book, The Fur Trade in Canada, chronicled the benefit of the fur trade to European capitalists whose industries and economies were developed and strengthened by beaver pelts and access to other staple products while devastating Canada's first nations and aboriginal peoples.

Ironically in the process of getting rich, Europeans destroyed the very culture and way of life that made their wealth possible. European-made guns led to the rapid extermination of the beaver. European diseases like smallpox decimated whole aboriginal communities; European alcohol introduced centuries of addiction. All these were introduced in a short period of time rapidly destabilizing, in just a few decades, a natural balance that had evolved over centuries.

The inference of Innis' critique is that all new techniques and technologies have radical and disruptive effects on social organizations and culture. In later years, he specialized in less tangible commodities like media, communications, cultural industries and other knowledge 'products'. His writings on media and communications and their accompanying influence and erosion of critical thinking went on to influence his disciple and colleague Marshall McLuhan.

What does all this have to do with our exploration of social finance?

A study of the fur trade in Canada shows us there are inevitable and likely unforeseen consequences of the growth of social finance. Looking into this history has provoked the following questions for me:

• What core aspects of the culture of volunteerism must we preserve as social finance evolves?
• What are the key tangible and intangible elements of charities and non profit organizations that should be maintained?
• How do we maintain social mission by adopting the techniques of business financing?
• What are the deleterious aspects of the culture of business we must guard against?
• What are the psychic and social consequences of our social finance innovations?
• What radical, unintended side effects might be associated with the growth of social finance?

My favourite Innis quote is: "... an obsession with 'present-mindedness' wipes out concerns about past or future." In our rush and excitement to explore the potential of social finance let's also stand back, observe and assess. Standing still and rushing forward may be paradoxical but not impossible. That's the nature of complex change. And the mystery!

As present day explorers let's not repeat the mistakes of the early fur traders and explorers.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmarkham/2224772537/

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