Getting famished approaching mu consciousness wedding anniversary on the 24th😁😁

Why We Would Rather Have More Chefs Than More Machines.

SHS – Human First | Conscious Organization (CO)

We call ourselves Human First for a reason.

And that reason must be reflected in everything we create, everything we organise, and everything we choose to invest in.

Of course, we will have artificial intelligence. We will have advanced technology, intelligent systems, automation, and all the wonderful inventions that humanity continues to bring into existence.

But here’s a question.

Just because we can replace a human being with a machine, does that mean we should?

And more importantly, what exactly are we trying to achieve by doing so?

Because if the answer is efficiency, then perhaps we should first reconsider what efficiency actually means within a civilisation designed to benefit humanity.

Let’s take something as simple as food.

MORE CHEFS, PLEASE. NOT MORE MACHINES.

At SHS, we will not be building a food ecosystem centred around machines manufacturing meals.

We will be providing fresh food, prepared by human beings who genuinely enjoy preparing it.

And rather than spending enormous amounts of money replacing chefs with machines, we would much rather invest that money into better kitchens, better equipment, better ingredients, better working environments, and, most importantly, more chefs.

Yes. More people doing the same job.

I know. How terribly inefficient of us!

Imagine deliberately employing ten people to do something that three people could technically manage.

Well, here’s the difference.

We aren’t trying to discover the minimum number of human beings required to keep a business functioning. We’re trying to discover how many human beings can comfortably participate in keeping a civilisation thriving.

And those are two entirely different organisational objectives.

In the Old Ways Organization (OWO), having fewer employees often means greater efficiency because fewer salaries mean lower expenses.

But what happens when we remove that particular equation?

What happens when we build an ecosystem in which people’s basic needs are already covered, where money circulates through communal resources, and where the purpose of our organisation is not to extract the greatest financial return from the smallest possible workforce?

Suddenly, having more people becomes an advantage.

Not a liability.

THE LUXURY OF NOT BEING OVERWORKED

Let’s imagine one of our restaurants.

We have a kitchen capable of serving 200 people.

Under conventional business logic, we might calculate the minimum number of chefs needed to serve those customers without compromising service too severely.

Perhaps six chefs.

Perhaps eight.

Whatever the number, the objective is generally to balance labour expenditure against productivity.

But at SHS, our question changes.

What if we had twenty?

What if we had thirty?

What if the kitchen was designed to accommodate people who genuinely loved cooking, without turning their passion into an exhausting exercise in surviving the lunch rush?

Suddenly, nobody has to spend eight hours frantically producing meals.

Our chefs can rotate between stations.

They can spend time learning.

They can experiment with ingredients.

They can develop recipes.

They can take proper breaks.

They can participate in other areas of the ecosystem.

They can even decide that today they would rather spend their time in the garden, learning about the very ingredients they will eventually be cooking.

And because our ecosystem is designed to cover their needs collectively, we do not have to treat every moment away from the stove as lost revenue.

We can afford to give people the freedom to love what they do without exhausting the love out of it.

Imagine that.

A civilisation where productivity isn’t measured by how much energy we can extract from a human being before they need to recover.

Instead, we organise ourselves so that recovery doesn’t have to become the consequence of participation.

THE GARDEN, THE MYCOLOGY LAB, AND THE KITCHEN

Now, this is where things become particularly interesting.

Because our kitchens will not exist as isolated businesses.

They will be connected to our gardens, our agricultural developments, our mycology laboratories, our research, and the wider SHS ecosystem.

Imagine our gardens producing an extraordinary surplus of tomatoes.

Or our mycology laboratories producing more mushrooms than originally anticipated.

Under conventional organisation, we would immediately start thinking about storage, pricing, distribution, and how to generate revenue from the excess.

But within SHS, the first question becomes:

What can we create with what we already have?

And what better environment to answer that question than a kitchen filled with people who absolutely love cooking?

One chef might develop a new mushroom soup.

Another might experiment with fresh pasta.

Another might create an entirely new recipe using ingredients we hadn’t previously thought to combine.

And another might decide that today is the perfect day to introduce everyone to a dish from their childhood.

We aren’t simply getting rid of surplus.

We are allowing surplus to stimulate creativity.

The garden feeds the kitchen.

The kitchen inspires new recipes.

The recipes inspire new agricultural possibilities.

The discoveries become educational opportunities.

The educational opportunities inspire more people to participate.

And the entire ecosystem continues to develop.

This is what we mean when we talk about a circular economy that goes beyond recycling materials.

We are circulating resources, knowledge, creativity, experience, enjoyment, and human participation.

Something as simple as an abundance of mushrooms can become the beginning of an entirely new culinary adventure.

And nobody needed to sit in a boardroom wondering how to monetise the mushroom.

How refreshing!

THE CHEF’S CHOICE — A LITTLE FREEDOM ON THE MENU

Now, here’s something else I would love to introduce into our restaurants.

Of course, we will have our regular menus.

People should be able to enjoy their favourite dishes, know what is available, and have consistency whenever they want it.

But I also want something different.

A Chef’s Choice station.

A dedicated part of the kitchen where the chef gets to decide what they feel like cooking.

Not what management has instructed them to sell.

Not what a corporate menu committee has decided is most profitable.

Not what an algorithm has calculated will produce the highest turnover.

Whatever they genuinely feel inspired to create in that moment.

Imagine walking into one of our restaurants and discovering that today’s Chef’s Choice is something nobody has ever eaten before.

Why?

Because the chef just invented it.

Perhaps they discovered a new combination of ingredients that morning.

Perhaps a particular vegetable was harvested from the garden.

Perhaps they’re feeling nostalgic and want to recreate a family recipe.

Perhaps they’re simply in the mood to experiment.

And now you, the customer, have the opportunity to experience their creativity.

There is something wonderfully human about that.

You aren’t simply purchasing a meal.

You’re participating in someone else’s creative expression.

And because we have more chefs available, that freedom doesn’t have to come at the expense of everyone else’s workload.

One chef can experiment while another prepares the regular menu.

One can spend time interacting with customers.

Another can teach a younger chef.

Another can develop something entirely new.

We are not designing a kitchen around how little freedom it can tolerate. We are designing one around how much creativity it can accommodate.

And the customer benefits from that too.

More attention.

Fresher meals.

More variety.

More interesting culinary experiences.

And the pleasure of eating something prepared by someone who actually wanted to prepare it.

BUT WHAT ABOUT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?

Oh, don’t worry.

We’re not sending artificial intelligence into exile.

We simply have a different understanding of its place in our civilisation.

AI can help us understand patterns in food consumption.

It can help coordinate our gardens and kitchens.

It can help anticipate what resources might be needed.

It can help us identify emerging surpluses, organise inventories, support research, develop nutritional knowledge, and connect different departments across the ecosystem.

It can make information more accessible.

It can help our chefs discover ingredients and techniques from across the world.

It can even help us understand how to reduce unnecessary waste.

Wonderful!

But must it also be the one stirring the soup?

Must it replace the pleasure of a chef preparing something with their own hands?

Must we eliminate another opportunity for human participation simply because technology has become capable of performing the task?

Not necessarily.

At SHS, technology should expand what humanity can do, not automatically reduce how much humanity gets to participate.

If a machine can make the kitchen safer, support someone with a disability, reduce physically harmful labour, or make a process easier, fantastic.

But replacing people for the sake of replacing people?

What exactly have we gained if our ultimate objective is to create a civilisation in which human beings have more opportunities to participate, develop, create, and enjoy their existence?

We would rather use technology to make the human experience better.

Not use the human experience as something to be progressively eliminated by technology.

THE ECONOMICS OF HAVING MORE PEOPLE

And this brings us back to the larger SHS economic model.

Because I want people to understand something about what we are creating.

When we talk about building an ecosystem where people can live without personally needing money for their everyday existence, we are also talking about fundamentally changing how we calculate organisational value.

Within our intended system, resources are collectively managed.

Housing, food, education, healthcare, recreation, tools, and the necessities of life are provided through the ecosystem.

Money remains useful for interacting with the outside economy, purchasing external resources, supporting expansion, and maintaining our operations.

But internally, our purpose is not to continuously redistribute money as wages so that every individual can independently repurchase the necessities that our civilisation is perfectly capable of organising collectively.

Instead, the resources flow into the communal infrastructure.

And the communal infrastructure supports everyone participating within it.

So, when we look at having thirty chefs instead of ten, we aren’t simply multiplying a salary expense.

We are increasing the number of people who can contribute to the same ecosystem from which they also benefit.

We gain additional culinary knowledge.

Additional creativity.

Additional cultural experiences.

Additional capacity.

Additional flexibility.

Additional opportunities to share responsibilities.

And, perhaps most importantly, additional human connection.

Because those chefs aren’t confined to being chefs.

They are human beings.

One might be interested in agriculture.

Another in chemistry.

Another in education.

Another in developing kitchen equipment.

Another in hosting community events.

And because we are creating an interconnected civilisation rather than a collection of disconnected workplaces, those interests can become contributions to other parts of the ecosystem.

The more people we nurture, the more possibilities we introduce into the system.

Provided, of course, that we organise the resources and infrastructure to support their participation.

And that is precisely what our economic architecture is intended to achieve.

WHEN EFFICIENCY STOPS MEANING ELIMINATION

I find it fascinating how much of modern innovation is celebrated for its ability to eliminate the need for people.

Fewer employees.

Fewer interactions.

Fewer responsibilities.

Fewer human hands.

And we call it progress.

But perhaps there is another form of progress worth exploring.

What if we measured efficiency by how comfortably human beings could participate in the systems they depend upon?

What if having more people available meant nobody had to be overworked?

What if having more chefs meant more fresh food, greater creativity, fewer bottlenecks, better use of garden surpluses, and more opportunities for people to learn?

What if the efficiency of a kitchen wasn’t determined by how many meals each chef could produce per hour, but by how well the entire kitchen contributed to the health, enjoyment, development, and continuity of the community?

Suddenly, the mathematics of civilisation begins to look rather different.

And that is exactly the point.

We aren’t creating SHS to reproduce the same economic calculations under a different name.

We are creating SHS to explore what becomes possible when humanity itself is no longer treated primarily as an operational expense.

People are not the cost we are trying to eliminate. They are the reason we are building the system in the first place.

And if our civilisation is going to cover humanity, then our organisational designs must reflect that ambition.

Not by seeing how few people we can get away with.

But by creating enough opportunities for as many people as possible to participate meaningfully.

After all, if we have already organised a system in which everyone can eat, everyone can have shelter, everyone can learn, and everyone can contribute, why would we deliberately limit the number of people allowed to enjoy the experience of creating those provisions?

We have spent centuries developing technologies to free humanity from labour.

Perhaps it’s time we explored what humanity might actually do with that freedom.

Because freedom doesn’t necessarily mean doing nothing.

Sometimes freedom means finally having the opportunity to do something simply because you love doing it.

And sometimes that something is cooking.

So yes.

We’ll have the AI.

We’ll have the technology.

We’ll have the intelligent infrastructure.

But we’ll also have more chefs.

More gardens.

More creativity.

More fresh meals.

More human connection.

More people doing what they genuinely enjoy.

And somewhere in one of our restaurants, there will be a chef who woke up that morning with absolutely no idea what they wanted to cook.

By lunchtime, they’ll have invented something extraordinary.

And we’ll all get to enjoy it.

Not because it was the most profitable thing to produce.

Not because an algorithm recommended it.

But because someone felt like creating it.

And we had the organisational freedom to let them.

Now, that’s what I call Human First.

SHS – Human First
From Old Ways Organization (OWO) to Conscious Organization (CO).
Foreseeability. Initiative. Prevention.