I just think it's the wrong question entirely. Capitalism is only a problem in a context. Identical to how guns or hammers are a problem in a context. Here's how you distill what the true root of the problem is. Suppose you had a world full of Ted Bundy types, and their victims. This world also happened to be rich in hammers. Hammers were in. They were the hot item. It would not surprise us to learn that blunt force trauma would be a problem in this world. We'd talk of "Solving hammers" or discuss the "Elephant in the room" : The hammer. Imagine how insane it would be, to think hammers are the issue in this world? How can we know for sure? Well plug the same quantity of hammer robustness into a world that had nothing but Buddhist monks who spent decades of their life doing little other than meditating on compassion. Suddenly... anti-social hammer usage plummets, and pro-social hammer usage skyrockets. Strange...
Let's try this same experiment, but with capitalism. Imagine a world that had a truly benevolent species. One that was not drowning in selfishness, egocentrism. One that had no pathological lying or manipulation or self-serving delusion. No tribalism. This was a species that made us look like depraved, disgusting and morally inept monsters, by comparison. What would capitalism look like in such a world? Now, we don't have to imagine some grand utopia, but it should be obvious after some thinking that it would look far divorced from our world. The core reason capitalism is so crushing is because of what the species running on it, does with it. And we oppress, we ostracize, we suffocate, disenfranchize, exploit, poison, and so on. That's a function of OUR SPECIES and not a function of capitalism. That is the core confusion, but it requires honesty and sobriety and a shedding of bias to see clearly.
I'm not sure where I stand on these ideas, but... I like the meta-point here: "Capitalism" (as it exists today) is not necessarily the endgame. I'm not sure enough people appreciate this point alone... as debates about Capitalism seem to devolve into either/or thinking, which go nowhere.
My broader issue is I'm not sure how far we'll get in improving "economic flourishing" unless we see it as only ONE part of a broader concept of "human flourishing." All these ideas come with significant trade-offs, and we lose the forest for the trees when arguing within the single lane of economic systems.
To me, Capitalism may be a good economic philosophy, but a poor life/moral philosophy. So I might agree most with #9 that we need a stronger moral foundation to REALLY fix anything. Or else we're just playing around at the margin.
There's definitely something there. We can improve our baseline as much as we can. But flourishing exists somewhere beyond that (and is perhaps just as available to us now as it will be in an improved baseline scenario!)
Hard agree with @notyetnovelist. The radical idea that housing should be for living in rather than an asset for speculation!
I lived for several years in Denmark, where there is some sort of rule like this. I’d have to check the details, but investors can’t just buy up apartments in Copenhagen or Aarhus. You must be a citizen or resident.
Capitalism, whatever its locally implemented iteration, is the cult of capital/funds/money/profit as a means in itself ... a simple philosophical matter: wellbeing of finance vs. wellbeing of Homo Sapiens; the Chosen Few or the many peons ...
The current core-problem is not overpopulation but a blatant, entirely intended lack of distribution of abundance .
We desperately need more Humanism and less Capitalism !!!
Less politics and capitalism-captured politicians too !!!
Forget about Communism or Socialism ... both have and are slated to fail again and again .
I would have argued that the solution to capitalism has been the same one it's always been.
Aggressive competition bureaus, real consequences for directors of companies for malicious action, and effective anti-monopoly laws.
Capitalism's failing is when the capitalists can manipulate the legislative branch. After that... everything just starts breaking down as ineffective and inefficient systems are allowed to grow cancerous and start consuming society to feed itself.
The breadth of ideas in this piece is impressive. The suggestion "there should be a worldwide climate Superfund" particularly interesting, as it offers a practical solution with global impact. Your ability to collect and present such varied voices creates a compelling space for reimagining capitalism’s future.
My contention with this idea is that nations are already highly dependent on one another for development. There are very few isolationist countries who are trying to grow their own economies without relying on any others. And most companies, when they grow big enough, expand far beyond their national borders.
A nation doesn’t have to be isolationist to still operate in a country-first manner. For example, the United States’ entire foreign policy is predicated on maintaining its hegemonic position in the global order. This necessarily requires cooperation with foreign powers but still is not world-first in its essence. A truly world-first approach to capitalism from the government perspective means embracing partnership even with countries that fall outside of your sphere of influence or that challenge your position in the global order. For example, America’s interactions with China (and vice versa) imply that neither of these countries actually approach development from a world-first perspective, preferring tariffs and trade wars over symbiotic cooperation that might change global power dynamics but ultimately still push development forward.
The U.S. relies on China A LOT. Like for almost everything! That they’ve pulled back in recent years seems more to do with not wanting to have all their eggs in one basket, as well as various security issues, than it does with not wanting to support China economically.
That America has pursued “decoupling” from China in recent years has everything to do with not wanting to support China economically. American policymakers (especially Republicans but this view is increasingly bipartisan) view an economically strong China as a geopolitically threatening China. Though some “security issues” are valid, national security has become a catch-all term to justify the embrace of populist politics in America, chiefly to counter Chinese economic progress and hinder Chinese companies’ access to the American market and American technology. In this way, thanks to its country-first approach to capitalism, America is hindering the global development progress that could be achieved through closer integration with China on a host of fronts, simply because it does not want China to one day challenge its own hegemonic position in the global order. To be clear, America is not the only country engaged in this sort of capitalism, and China itself is not a blameless victim, either. This, the desire to make the world worse-off so your own country can be slightly better-off, is a worldwide issue. Fixing it would do wonders for making capitalism better suited to solve issues like climate change, extreme poverty, and disease.
And from the company perspective, embracing a world-first approach to capitalism is really dependent on the business environment a given company’s country of origin dictates for it (e.g. through sanctions on doing business in certain jurisdictions, tariffs augmenting the real cost of doing business, requirements for regulatory approval for certain mergers & acquisitions, etc.) — so the company perspective is almost entirely downstream of the government perspective, which makes a focus on how governments frame their approach to capitalism and also their interactions with other countries more mission critical.
Madness. Capitalism is a monster which lives on exploitation and destruction. The best thing we can do is put it to death asap. Talk of making it cuddly and fluffy is just ridiculous
I am after (re)generative ideas too. But having a system which places Capital in pole position is going to destroy the entire planet, as we observe. What about a system called Planetism or Earthism, which prioritises the living substrate of our lives? That is the correct starting position. Otherwise we’re all dead.
I am afraid exploitation and destruction are woven into the very fabric of the system as it stands, and all we can hope for is that the system falls sooner rather than later so that we can start again with non-suicidal ideas.
“Capitalism has made the world wealthier than any other model”. I think by ‘wealthy’ you mean ‘more awash with money’. These are not the same things. We need to check our conditioning, which runs deep; we need to reconsider whether our definitions serve us and the planet; we need to broaden our extremely narrow, Western-centric, left-brained focus. A case in point, below:
“Abraham Maslow discovered that “for the Blackfoot tribe, wealth was not measured by money and property but by generosity. The wealthiest man in their eyes is one who has almost nothing because he has given it all away” (Coon, 2006). Maslow witnessed a Blackfoot “Giveaway” ceremony in his first week at Siksika. During the Giveaway, members of the tribe arranged their tipis in a circle and publicly piled up all they had collected over the last year. Those with the most possessions told stories of how they amassed them and then gave every last one away to those in greater need (Blood & Heavy Head, 2007)
To most Blackfoot members, wealth was not important in terms of accumulating property and possessions: giving it away was what brought one the true status of prestige and security in the tribe. At the same time, Maslow was shocked by the meanness and racism of the European-Americans who lived nearby. As he wrote, “The more I got to know the whites in the village, who were the worst bunch of creeps and bastards I’d ever run across in my life, the more it got paradoxical.” “
There is no point tinkering round the edges with this stuff. The problem isn’t the kind of Capitalism we have, it’s that we’ve lost the plot. It’s a crisis of soul, of spirit. What we’re going to find out is that we really can’t eat money.
I guess I do not imagine that life was better for tribes. Though it may have been better than feudalism. It may be true that the poorest person today doesn't live as good of a life as the poorest person in a tribe (even though I'm not sure even that much is true), but the vast majority of people who live in a capitalist society today live better lives today than the vast majority of tribe members did back then. The medical advances alone, the agricultural advances that meant people didn't need to wander and could build sturdy homes, the ability to live through the winter because we can buy and sell canned goods, the ability to trade with others who had access to advancements that would make their lives better. "Wealth" brings all of that. Trade.
Trade doesn't have to be exploitative. Sure it often was back then, but today's capitalists are a far cry from the ones 100 years ago, and an even further cry from the Wild West rogue colonizers who were living by their own laws. We have international trade that is mutually beneficial and creates jobs and wellbeing for everyone who has access to that trade. I'd be curious to know what you think about my piece studying Mondragon? https://www.elysian.press/p/mondragon-as-the-new-city-state
> the vast majority of people who live in a capitalist society today live better lives today than the vast majority of tribe members did back then
I think this is worth giving some deeper thought. What does it mean to "live better lives"? Probably the most essential question in the hunt for utopia.
If it is about happiness, those tribes probably had a head start on us. When you look at the records of first encounters with the natives, they are often recorded as being so happy that the explorers almost thought them retarded.
Going back to Maslow, who was so surprised from visiting and studying the tribes that it changed the entire future trajectory of his studies, leading to the theories of the Hierarchy of Needs and self-actualization:
> in Blackfoot society [...] he discovered astounding levels of cooperation, minimal inequality, restorative justice, full bellies, and high levels of life satisfaction. He estimated that “80–90% of the Blackfoot tribe had a quality of self-esteem that was only found in 5–10% of his own population” - https://gatherfor.medium.com/maslow-got-it-wrong-ae45d6217a8c
Doesn't that pretty much sound like the definition of a utopia?
And that was in tribes living in a reservation, already under pressure from the encroaching civilization. Wonder how it would have been when they lived in the most fertile areas, free to roam.
I can't help to wonder what we could possibly offer them that would really make their lives better (as in increasing their happiness). Sure, our medical technology would make a difference. They did have a very high infant mortality. But if they survived the early years, their life expectancy was very close to ours (and we only just caught up, after early agriculture causing a huge dip). Most of our medical system is dealing with lifestyle diseases that were introduced by civilization and pretty much unknown to the tribes.
This is not to say that they were perfect. They clearly did not have an economy that allowed to them to build up any kind of significant military power, which made them intrinsically vulnerable to be run over by cultures with more evolved economies.
I guess that is one of the challenges with utopia. If you are truly happy and satisfied, then why work for progress?
Capitalism has made the world wealthier than any other model and has alleviated poverty more than any other model. If there is also exploitation, how do you fix that part? If there is also destruction how do you fix that part?
Thanks for compiling all this, Elle! Lots of study material to get through, but I think you've covered a really broad base, so I hope to find time to delve in.
As laudable as some of the proposals to fix capitalism are, we have to be vigilant not to implement policies that are wishful thinking, Capitalism works because it recognises the frailties and the hard realities in the world.
Do you have an example of one that is? I’m not sure capitalism recognizes anything so much as it is just a natural unfolding of people trying to trade with one another.
Thank you for featuring my article!! This was a lot of fun--I want to read all the articles here and continue to develop my own theories on this. It's something I've been thinking about consistently for many years and I think it's great that you wanted to host this discussion.
I just think it's the wrong question entirely. Capitalism is only a problem in a context. Identical to how guns or hammers are a problem in a context. Here's how you distill what the true root of the problem is. Suppose you had a world full of Ted Bundy types, and their victims. This world also happened to be rich in hammers. Hammers were in. They were the hot item. It would not surprise us to learn that blunt force trauma would be a problem in this world. We'd talk of "Solving hammers" or discuss the "Elephant in the room" : The hammer. Imagine how insane it would be, to think hammers are the issue in this world? How can we know for sure? Well plug the same quantity of hammer robustness into a world that had nothing but Buddhist monks who spent decades of their life doing little other than meditating on compassion. Suddenly... anti-social hammer usage plummets, and pro-social hammer usage skyrockets. Strange...
Let's try this same experiment, but with capitalism. Imagine a world that had a truly benevolent species. One that was not drowning in selfishness, egocentrism. One that had no pathological lying or manipulation or self-serving delusion. No tribalism. This was a species that made us look like depraved, disgusting and morally inept monsters, by comparison. What would capitalism look like in such a world? Now, we don't have to imagine some grand utopia, but it should be obvious after some thinking that it would look far divorced from our world. The core reason capitalism is so crushing is because of what the species running on it, does with it. And we oppress, we ostracize, we suffocate, disenfranchize, exploit, poison, and so on. That's a function of OUR SPECIES and not a function of capitalism. That is the core confusion, but it requires honesty and sobriety and a shedding of bias to see clearly.
Very thought-provoking!
I'm not sure where I stand on these ideas, but... I like the meta-point here: "Capitalism" (as it exists today) is not necessarily the endgame. I'm not sure enough people appreciate this point alone... as debates about Capitalism seem to devolve into either/or thinking, which go nowhere.
My broader issue is I'm not sure how far we'll get in improving "economic flourishing" unless we see it as only ONE part of a broader concept of "human flourishing." All these ideas come with significant trade-offs, and we lose the forest for the trees when arguing within the single lane of economic systems.
To me, Capitalism may be a good economic philosophy, but a poor life/moral philosophy. So I might agree most with #9 that we need a stronger moral foundation to REALLY fix anything. Or else we're just playing around at the margin.
There's definitely something there. We can improve our baseline as much as we can. But flourishing exists somewhere beyond that (and is perhaps just as available to us now as it will be in an improved baseline scenario!)
Hard agree with @notyetnovelist. The radical idea that housing should be for living in rather than an asset for speculation!
I lived for several years in Denmark, where there is some sort of rule like this. I’d have to check the details, but investors can’t just buy up apartments in Copenhagen or Aarhus. You must be a citizen or resident.
Capitalism, whatever its locally implemented iteration, is the cult of capital/funds/money/profit as a means in itself ... a simple philosophical matter: wellbeing of finance vs. wellbeing of Homo Sapiens; the Chosen Few or the many peons ...
The current core-problem is not overpopulation but a blatant, entirely intended lack of distribution of abundance .
We desperately need more Humanism and less Capitalism !!!
Less politics and capitalism-captured politicians too !!!
Forget about Communism or Socialism ... both have and are slated to fail again and again .
Wow! Thanks for including mine in your top nine! Whew! Feels like a close goal in sports!
Ha! You made it!
Oh I wish I'd seen this before.
I would have argued that the solution to capitalism has been the same one it's always been.
Aggressive competition bureaus, real consequences for directors of companies for malicious action, and effective anti-monopoly laws.
Capitalism's failing is when the capitalists can manipulate the legislative branch. After that... everything just starts breaking down as ineffective and inefficient systems are allowed to grow cancerous and start consuming society to feed itself.
The breadth of ideas in this piece is impressive. The suggestion "there should be a worldwide climate Superfund" particularly interesting, as it offers a practical solution with global impact. Your ability to collect and present such varied voices creates a compelling space for reimagining capitalism’s future.
That's the goal! There are a lot of interesting thinkers here...
Good ideas but I still think mine — namely, a truly global approach to capitalism as opposed to a country-first one — is the only fix capitalism needs
Read more here: https://open.substack.com/pub/thestupideconomy/p/the-capitalist-international
My contention with this idea is that nations are already highly dependent on one another for development. There are very few isolationist countries who are trying to grow their own economies without relying on any others. And most companies, when they grow big enough, expand far beyond their national borders.
A nation doesn’t have to be isolationist to still operate in a country-first manner. For example, the United States’ entire foreign policy is predicated on maintaining its hegemonic position in the global order. This necessarily requires cooperation with foreign powers but still is not world-first in its essence. A truly world-first approach to capitalism from the government perspective means embracing partnership even with countries that fall outside of your sphere of influence or that challenge your position in the global order. For example, America’s interactions with China (and vice versa) imply that neither of these countries actually approach development from a world-first perspective, preferring tariffs and trade wars over symbiotic cooperation that might change global power dynamics but ultimately still push development forward.
The U.S. relies on China A LOT. Like for almost everything! That they’ve pulled back in recent years seems more to do with not wanting to have all their eggs in one basket, as well as various security issues, than it does with not wanting to support China economically.
That America has pursued “decoupling” from China in recent years has everything to do with not wanting to support China economically. American policymakers (especially Republicans but this view is increasingly bipartisan) view an economically strong China as a geopolitically threatening China. Though some “security issues” are valid, national security has become a catch-all term to justify the embrace of populist politics in America, chiefly to counter Chinese economic progress and hinder Chinese companies’ access to the American market and American technology. In this way, thanks to its country-first approach to capitalism, America is hindering the global development progress that could be achieved through closer integration with China on a host of fronts, simply because it does not want China to one day challenge its own hegemonic position in the global order. To be clear, America is not the only country engaged in this sort of capitalism, and China itself is not a blameless victim, either. This, the desire to make the world worse-off so your own country can be slightly better-off, is a worldwide issue. Fixing it would do wonders for making capitalism better suited to solve issues like climate change, extreme poverty, and disease.
And from the company perspective, embracing a world-first approach to capitalism is really dependent on the business environment a given company’s country of origin dictates for it (e.g. through sanctions on doing business in certain jurisdictions, tariffs augmenting the real cost of doing business, requirements for regulatory approval for certain mergers & acquisitions, etc.) — so the company perspective is almost entirely downstream of the government perspective, which makes a focus on how governments frame their approach to capitalism and also their interactions with other countries more mission critical.
Madness. Capitalism is a monster which lives on exploitation and destruction. The best thing we can do is put it to death asap. Talk of making it cuddly and fluffy is just ridiculous
I am after (re)generative ideas too. But having a system which places Capital in pole position is going to destroy the entire planet, as we observe. What about a system called Planetism or Earthism, which prioritises the living substrate of our lives? That is the correct starting position. Otherwise we’re all dead.
I am afraid exploitation and destruction are woven into the very fabric of the system as it stands, and all we can hope for is that the system falls sooner rather than later so that we can start again with non-suicidal ideas.
“Capitalism has made the world wealthier than any other model”. I think by ‘wealthy’ you mean ‘more awash with money’. These are not the same things. We need to check our conditioning, which runs deep; we need to reconsider whether our definitions serve us and the planet; we need to broaden our extremely narrow, Western-centric, left-brained focus. A case in point, below:
“Abraham Maslow discovered that “for the Blackfoot tribe, wealth was not measured by money and property but by generosity. The wealthiest man in their eyes is one who has almost nothing because he has given it all away” (Coon, 2006). Maslow witnessed a Blackfoot “Giveaway” ceremony in his first week at Siksika. During the Giveaway, members of the tribe arranged their tipis in a circle and publicly piled up all they had collected over the last year. Those with the most possessions told stories of how they amassed them and then gave every last one away to those in greater need (Blood & Heavy Head, 2007)
To most Blackfoot members, wealth was not important in terms of accumulating property and possessions: giving it away was what brought one the true status of prestige and security in the tribe. At the same time, Maslow was shocked by the meanness and racism of the European-Americans who lived nearby. As he wrote, “The more I got to know the whites in the village, who were the worst bunch of creeps and bastards I’d ever run across in my life, the more it got paradoxical.” “
There is no point tinkering round the edges with this stuff. The problem isn’t the kind of Capitalism we have, it’s that we’ve lost the plot. It’s a crisis of soul, of spirit. What we’re going to find out is that we really can’t eat money.
I guess I do not imagine that life was better for tribes. Though it may have been better than feudalism. It may be true that the poorest person today doesn't live as good of a life as the poorest person in a tribe (even though I'm not sure even that much is true), but the vast majority of people who live in a capitalist society today live better lives today than the vast majority of tribe members did back then. The medical advances alone, the agricultural advances that meant people didn't need to wander and could build sturdy homes, the ability to live through the winter because we can buy and sell canned goods, the ability to trade with others who had access to advancements that would make their lives better. "Wealth" brings all of that. Trade.
Trade doesn't have to be exploitative. Sure it often was back then, but today's capitalists are a far cry from the ones 100 years ago, and an even further cry from the Wild West rogue colonizers who were living by their own laws. We have international trade that is mutually beneficial and creates jobs and wellbeing for everyone who has access to that trade. I'd be curious to know what you think about my piece studying Mondragon? https://www.elysian.press/p/mondragon-as-the-new-city-state
> the vast majority of people who live in a capitalist society today live better lives today than the vast majority of tribe members did back then
I think this is worth giving some deeper thought. What does it mean to "live better lives"? Probably the most essential question in the hunt for utopia.
If it is about happiness, those tribes probably had a head start on us. When you look at the records of first encounters with the natives, they are often recorded as being so happy that the explorers almost thought them retarded.
Going back to Maslow, who was so surprised from visiting and studying the tribes that it changed the entire future trajectory of his studies, leading to the theories of the Hierarchy of Needs and self-actualization:
> in Blackfoot society [...] he discovered astounding levels of cooperation, minimal inequality, restorative justice, full bellies, and high levels of life satisfaction. He estimated that “80–90% of the Blackfoot tribe had a quality of self-esteem that was only found in 5–10% of his own population” - https://gatherfor.medium.com/maslow-got-it-wrong-ae45d6217a8c
Doesn't that pretty much sound like the definition of a utopia?
And that was in tribes living in a reservation, already under pressure from the encroaching civilization. Wonder how it would have been when they lived in the most fertile areas, free to roam.
I can't help to wonder what we could possibly offer them that would really make their lives better (as in increasing their happiness). Sure, our medical technology would make a difference. They did have a very high infant mortality. But if they survived the early years, their life expectancy was very close to ours (and we only just caught up, after early agriculture causing a huge dip). Most of our medical system is dealing with lifestyle diseases that were introduced by civilization and pretty much unknown to the tribes.
This is not to say that they were perfect. They clearly did not have an economy that allowed to them to build up any kind of significant military power, which made them intrinsically vulnerable to be run over by cultures with more evolved economies.
I guess that is one of the challenges with utopia. If you are truly happy and satisfied, then why work for progress?
Capitalism has made the world wealthier than any other model and has alleviated poverty more than any other model. If there is also exploitation, how do you fix that part? If there is also destruction how do you fix that part?
We’re after generative ideas here.
Thanks for compiling all this, Elle! Lots of study material to get through, but I think you've covered a really broad base, so I hope to find time to delve in.
As laudable as some of the proposals to fix capitalism are, we have to be vigilant not to implement policies that are wishful thinking, Capitalism works because it recognises the frailties and the hard realities in the world.
Do you have an example of one that is? I’m not sure capitalism recognizes anything so much as it is just a natural unfolding of people trying to trade with one another.
Thank you for featuring my article!! This was a lot of fun--I want to read all the articles here and continue to develop my own theories on this. It's something I've been thinking about consistently for many years and I think it's great that you wanted to host this discussion.