In the United States, and in most other countries around the world, there is a "money monopoly" in place. I am "free" to earn as much "money" as I want, but I will only be paid in Federal Reserve Notes. There is nothing I can do to be paid in Gold Certificates, or some other form of "money."
You do not have to be smart to be a "bank" capitalist, just greedy.
What is called economic progress is the joint effect of the activities of the three progressive groups—or classes—of the savers, the scientist-inventors, and the entrepreneurs, operating in a market economy as far as it is not sabotaged by the endeavors of the nonprogressive majority of the routinists and the public policies supported by them.
To condemn free-market capitalism because of anything going on today makes no sense. There is no evidence that capitalism exists today. We are deeply involved in an interventionist-planned economy that allows major benefits to accrue to the politically connected of both political spectrums. One may condemn the fraud and the current system, but it must be called by its proper names – Keynesian inflationism, interventionism, and corporatism.
Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven't had capitalism. A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. It's not capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules regarding mergers, acquisitions, and stock sales, along with wage controls, price controls, protectionism, corporate subsidies, international management of trade, complex and punishing corporate taxes, privileged government contracts to the military-industrial complex, and a foreign policy controlled by corporate interests and overseas investments. Add to this centralized federal mismanagement of farming, education, medicine, insurance, banking and welfare. This is not capitalism!
When we truly discover love, capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.
We are living in a phenomenal age. If we can spend the early decades of the 21st century finding approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits and recognition for business, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce poverty in the world.
I hope corporations will dedicate a percentage of their top innovators' time to issues that could help people left out of the global economy. This kind of contribution is even more powerful than giving cash or offering employees' time off to volunteer. It is a focused use of what your company does best. It is a great form of creative capitalism, because it takes the brainpower and makes life better for the richest, and dedicates some of it to improving the lives of everyone else.
...one of the most inventive forms of creative capitalism involves someone we all know very well. A few years ago, I was sitting in a bar here in Davos with Bono. Late at night, after a few drinks, he was on fire, talking about how we could get a percentage of each purchase from civic-minded companies to help change the world. He kept calling people, waking them up, and handing me the phone to show me the interest.
Well, it's taken time to get this going, but he was right. If you give people a chance to associate themselves with a cause they care about, while buying a great product, they will. That was how the RED Campaign was born, here in Davos.
RED products are available from companies like Gap, Motorola, and Armani. Just this week, Dell and Microsoft joined the cause. Over the last year and a half, RED has generated $50 million for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and Malaria. As a result, nearly 2 million people in Africa are receiving life-saving drugs today.
The challenge here is to design a system where market incentives, including profits and recognition, drive those principles to do more for the poor.
I like to call this idea creative capitalism, an approach where governments, businesses, and nonprofits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world's inequities.
As I see it, there are two great forces of human nature: self-interest, and caring for others. Capitalism harnesses self-interest in a helpful and sustainable way, but only on behalf of those who can pay. Government aid and philanthropy channel our caring for those who can't pay. But to provide rapid improvement for the poor we need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today.
Such a system would have a twin mission: making profits and also improving lives of those who don't fully benefit from today's market forces. For sustainability we need to use profit incentives wherever we can. At the same time, profits are not always possible when business tries to serve the very poor. In such cases there needs to be another incentive, and that incentive is recognition. Recognition enhances a company's reputation and appeals to customers; above all, it attracts good people to an organization. As such, recognition triggers a market-based reward for good behavior. In markets where profits are not possible, recognition is a proxy; where profits are possible, recognition is an added incentive.
Why do people benefit in inverse proportion to their need? Well, market incentives make that happen.
In a system of capitalism, as people's wealth rises, the financial incentive to serve them rises. As their wealth falls, the financial incentive to serve them falls, until it becomes zero. We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.
The genius of capitalism lies in its ability to make self-interest serve the wider interest. The potential of a big financial return for innovation unleashes a broad set of talented people in pursuit of many different discoveries. This system, driven by self-interest, is responsible for the incredible innovations that have improved so many lives.
But to harness this power so it benefits everyone, we need to refine the system.
A tension has always existed between the capitalist imperative to maximize efficiency at any cost and the moral imperatives of culture, which historically have served as a counterweight to the moral blindness of the market. This is another example of the cultural contradictions of capitalism – the tendency over time for the economic impulse to erode the moral underpinnings of society. Mercy toward the animals in our care is one such casualty.
In the early 1970s, Milton Friedman argued that corporations should not be socially responsible because they had no mandate to be; they existed to make money, not to be charitable institutions. But in the economy of the 21st century, corporations cannot be socially responsible, if social responsibility is understood to mean sacrificing profits for the sake of some perceived social good. That's because competition has become so much more intense. As to the meaning of "corporate social responsibility," Friedman and I would agree: If a certain action improves the corporation's bottom line, there's no point in labeling it "socially responsible." It's just good business.
Business skills, when well applied, can do more than just make money. They can potentially make money and do some real good, which is immensely satisfying. To do that, it's important to think outside the box, take risks, and be an entrepreneur.
My ultimate dream is to manage a set of businesses that all are born out of a purpose bigger than their product. I believe that is what my particular journey is about. I am somewhat tired of going to meetings where spiritual people talk about how the world can be a better place but with very little evidence of any tangible outcome. Maybe I'm impatient, maybe I'm intolerant, but I like to see things change in front of me. I want to see physical manifestations of spiritual intent. My greatest sense of spirituality or connectedness is when I'm with people who come together for a cause much larger than themselves and do great work. In fact, I probably prefer action with only partially good intentions over intentions only partially acted upon. And the best way I know how to do that is to keep identifying, managing, supporting, and helping businesses that have a purpose bigger than their product. I believe wholeheartedly that a new form of capitalism is emerging. More stakeholders (customers, employees, shareholders, and the larger community) want their businesses to think, to act, to feel, and to be connected with a larger context. That is spirituality in action. And that is what I am about.
It is possible for a company to pursue multiple bottom lines if it’s closely held by a group of like-minded shareholders--that was the case at my former company, Working Assets. But once a corporation goes public--that is, sells stock to strangers—the die is pretty much cast. Strangers want a stock that will rise when they plunk down their money, and profit is the sure path to doing that. It’s just a matter of time, then, until the profit-maximizing algorithm kicks in.
When capitalism started, nature was abundant and capital was scarce; it thus made sense to reward capital above all else. Today we’re awash in capital and literally running out of nature. We’re also losing many social arrangements that bind us together as communities and enrich our lives in nonmonetary ways. This doesn’t mean capitalism is doomed or useless, but it does mean we have to modify it. We have to adapt it to the twenty-first century rather than the eighteenth. And that can be done.
How do you revise a system as vast and complex as capitalism? And how do you do it gracefully, with a minimum of pain and disruption? The answer is, you do what Bill Gates does: you upgrade the operating system.
Alliance (noun)
In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply in each others pockets that neither can seperately plunder a third.
We need to graduate from the ridiculous notion that greed is some kind of elixir for capitalism - it's the downfall of capitalism. Self-interest, maybe, but self-interest run amok does not serve anyone. The core value of conscious capitalism is enlightened self-interest. As Jim Cramer on CNBC says, "Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered."
We've now become conscious of the uncalculated social, economic, and environmental costs of that kind of "unconscious" capitalism. And many are beginning to practice a form of "conscious capitalism," which involves integrity and higher standards, and in which companies are responsible not just to shareholders, but also to employees, consumers, suppliers, and communities. Some call it "stakeholder capitalism."
The only way to enter the market is with helping hands. The voluntary exchange of goods and services is a mechanism that rewards those who are ready to serve their fellow men. Contrary to all pseudo-spiritual, socialist and fascist arguments, the marketplace is a space of freedom where human beings can cooperate in a spirit of mutuality. Whoever enriches himself (legitimately) in the market is someone who offers goods and services that are appreciated by those who buy them.
”We're all afloat in a boundless sea, and the way we cope is by massing together in groups and pretending in unison that the situation is other than it is. We reinforce the illusion for each other. That's what a society really is, a little band of humanity huddled together against the specter of a pitch black sea. Everyone is treading water to keep their heads above the surface even though they have no reason to believe that the life they're preserving is better than the alternative they're avoiding. It's just that one is known and one is not. Fear of the unknown is what keeps everyone busily treading water. All fear is fear of the unknown. If someone in such a group of water-treaders betrays the group lie by speaking the truth of their situation, that person is called a heretic, and society reserves its most awful punishments for heretics. If someone decides to stop struggling and just sink or float away, every possible effort is made to stop him, not for the benefit of the individual, but for the benefit of the group. To deny at all costs the truth of the situation.”
--Jed McKenna
There are those who see the free market as an enemy. But the market is an invaluable instrument for human development. Every act of commerce is an act of mutual service. Even though it can be motivated by personal interest, the market system channels that selfish energy towards assisting others.
Natural capitalism is not about making sudden changes, uprooting institutions, or fomenting upheaval for a new social order. Natural capitalism is about making small, critical choices that can tip economic and social factors in positive ways.
...countries don't create economies. It is entrepreneurs and companies that create and revitalize economies. The role of the governments should be to create a nourishing environment for entrepreneurs and companies to flourish, not to get in the way of economic development.
Welcome to the Dawn of Conscious Capitalism--a popular, decentralized, broad-based crusade to heal the excesses of capitalism with transcendent human values. Every day Conscious Capitalism wins new converts in the paneled boardrooms of global business.... Equally important, the actions millions of us take, "from the supermarket to the stock market," are drafting a more wholistic brand of free enterprise which will forever outshine the Chicago School--and win someone somewhere a brand-new Nobel Prize.
"I think it solidified my capitalistic thinking( Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged"), in that I believe very strongly that people are generally selfish, but that selfishness can ultimately benefit many, many people."
Economy is the basis of society. When the economy is stable, society develops. The ideal economy combines the spiritual and material, and the best commodities to trade in are sincerity and love.
Capitalism is the bastard child of democracy.
