Earth Inc. Definitions

Public Sector: The portion of the economy composed of all levels of government, and excluding businesses and households.

Private Sector: The portion of the economy composed of businesses and households, and excluding government.

Commons Sector: An organized sector of our economy. It embraces some of the gifts we inherit together, but not all. In effect, it’s a subset of the given commons that we consciously organize according to commons principles. It’s small at the moment, but Earth, Inc. seeks to enlarge it.

True Profit: Every human's well-being, established by sustainable use and enhancement of natural, social, human and built capital. Earth, Inc. moves beyond the traditional corporate concept of profit and even beyond the concepts proposed by advocates of the Triple Bottom Line. We propose a new way of measuring profit as "true profit," which is the net gain across these four capital types.

Natural Capital: Land, water, atmosphere, and the many natural resources they contain, including ecological systems with biotic and abiotic components. Natural capital provides the energy, raw materials, and waste absorption/filtering that are critical to the modern human economy, and human life on earth.

Social Capital: Networks of human individuals and groups, formal and informal, which add value to civic society and include the sharing of information. Established cultures and institutions compose the mosaic of interactions that constitute this resource.

Human Capital: Includes, but is not limited to, the physical ability of an individual human and his or her intelligence and knowledge, which clearly might contribute to industrial production. Human Capital also captures human dimensions that contribute to well-being such as health, education, and happiness.

Built Capital: A measure of traditional infrastructure including housing, roads, electricity grid, goods and services traded in markets, and all other human-constructed elements that comprise communities. Built capital is commonly measured in two ways: physical assets or stock, and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or flow.

Stakeholder: Every individual human, institution, and community on Earth. Earth, Inc. serves stakeholders through its actions, and is mindful of the well-being of their future generations.

Shareholder: Every individual human on the planet, deserving of a fair piece of Earth’s assets.