Scale in the broad
In broad-based economies, what is produced in the markets reaches the many because the many produce and earn. The many do not produce or buy the same things; they participate through production and exchange. What does not continue through exchange does not scale. Scale is not a goal. It is what happens when shared expectations hold, potential to earn is visible, and income is realizable by the many on their individual PPFs. This is in the record.
What appears as scale is the spread of what is sold where the many already have income to buy. Marketing competes for buyers within income already realized or realizable. Sale, competition, and the scaling of things used to make income all follow income. Scale is not sale. Sale draws buyers toward products already within reach of their income. This we see.
Each person pursues income on the PPF through their own agency. When the potential to earn is visible, that agency is activated across the many, income takes hold, and income scales by itself. It scales at the level of place, a village or nation, because the economy is only broad when the many are in it. This is in the record.
Where income is absent
In narrow-based economies where we in Development work, the potential to earn is not visible to the many. What the many need or want does not reach them through the market because they cannot pay for it. Agency on the PPF settles on sustenance for the many. This we Question.
Seed scales because sustenance itself requires seed from cycle to cycle. Science, inputs, credit, and information do not scale with it to carry production toward the seed’s full potential. This we Question.
We expect what exists and what we add to the narrow, the public goods, services, infrastructure, science, and technologies, to work the same where income is not visible. This we do.
What we bring to the narrow, without income visible, is either what income could bring into fuller use for production, such as inputs, credit, digital tools, and enterprises, or what income could buy for consumption, such as food, mosquito nets, wells, cook stoves, and health services. Each is a response to poverty. Each stands in for what income would otherwise provide or bring into use. This we do.
Scale has not happened for what we keep trying to scale, whether it is meant to make income or stands in for income. Decades of scaling continue, and the places where we work remain in poverty because it is income that scales and it scales by itself. Poverty and low income among the majority in the narrow are features of an economy where income is not visible to the many. This is in the record.
The scaling debate
The scaling debate endures: scale harder, scale differently, abandon scale, study why scaling has not worked, innovations are only catalytic and leave scaling to others, accept that it will not happen. As the debate expands, the language expands with it. Scaling up. Scaling out. Bundled interventions. Scaling deep. Scaling innovation. Scaling science. Scaling for impact. Responsible scaling. Scaling pathways. Scaling readiness. Mainstreaming scaling. Scaling hub. Scaling sustainability. Scale the system. This we do.
Development must scale what it brings through scaling programs, governments must take it over through their own scaling programs, or public-private coalitions must carry it. Funders, partners, enterprises, governments, coalitions: the debate on who scales emerges. This we see.
Scale comes to mean reaching more people across more places, with a seed or a stove, while income remains little changed. Every debate stays inside the same frame: scale production where income is not visible, or scale what income could provide. The scale being debated cannot happen, yet the debate on how to scale continues while the places stay as they are. This we see.
The larger frame
We step in for what a narrow economy does not provide, build for what the narrow cannot, and attempt to scale those things ourselves, or expect governments to scale the same things income would provide. We are there because income is absent. Yet we expect scale from the same narrow economy where it is absent. This we Question.
How to scale remains. Who scales has emerged. Now both gather under a larger frame. Scale the system. Coalitions of funders, partners, and enterprises, with programs and investments in enterprises, gather around the system to be scaled. But what stands before us is the narrow-based economy, where income is absent to the many. The coalition stands inside the narrow. The scale sought in the narrow is what income carries in the broad. That scale cannot happen there. Poverty is a condition, not an addressable market. This we Question.
Agency on the PPF
Agency and the PPF are always at work. When the potential to earn is visible, that agency is activated, differently across people, across skills, across what each can bring. Public goods and services come into use. This we see.
When the potential to earn is visible and realizable, those with agency work for income in the production or consumption chain. What the many need comes within reach. What we keep trying to scale moves through income then, because income itself carries it. This we Question.
Scale in the narrow
Scale is not absent in the narrow. Poverty is income scaling at poverty-level income. Low yield at the level of a place, low use of what income would otherwise bring within reach, and sustenance across the PPFs of the many are all scale under the income visible there. The things we keep trying to scale spread on their own where income is visible, and do not scale where it is not. Every settled position across the PPFs of the many is already scale, until income expected ahead becomes visible to the many and changes what those PPFs make reachable. This is the record we see.
Income is what scales. Where it is visible to the many, what works reaches the many. Where it is not, nothing reaches the many beyond the income level already visible. This is in the record.
So here is the Unquestion:
If what we keep trying to scale spreads where income is visible to the many, and does not scale where income is absent to the many, what have we been trying to scale all this time?
And if poverty is already income scaling at poverty-level income, what has to become visible before scale can change at the level of a place?
If this Unquestion meets one you have carried quietly, this is the place to say it out loud, so we can see the clarity we already hold together.
The more we Unquestion, the more clarity we gain. The more we Unquestion now, the less future generations will have to.
We are not lost.
We simply avoid the turn.
Once we Unquestion, the direction is already clear.
Thank you for seeing.