Utopia For Realists: Compassionate Capitalism Can Save The World in Crisis

It is an understatement to say that the world is in crisis. Indeed, from climate change to gross inequality and wide inequities to conflicts and war creating desperate refugees and the present pandemic, there are no dearth of problems and crises befuddling the world. At the root of all these crises is the neoliberal capitalistic tendency to put profit before everything else and the rapacious greed and the sheer craziness of neoliberal market fundamentalism is such that naysayers and even those doubting the “system” are dismissed as cranks and worse, shunted out and persecuted as heretics. So, if we have to find solutions to our problems, we have to start with reforming the way our societies are ordered around the insatiable quest for money at the expense of everything else.

Loony Lefties, TINA Factor, Dream Hoarders, the Dying American Dream

Before I am dismissed as a Leftist Crackpot dreaming of revolution, let me say that I have been a part and parcel of the very model and I too have benefited from it. Moreover, there is also the TINA (There Is No Alternative) to neoliberal capitalism argument, of which I agree to some extent. In addition, I am not a Luddite who sees technological innovation as anti life or who is upset with the very deserving individuals getting their just rewards due to the inherent democratizing impulse that is a feature of capitalism. However, what I am against is the notions of the market as the sole arbiter of economic and social activity as well as the belief that more growth is the only panacea for the ills plaguing our world. Of course, I also have a bone to pick to those who are dismissive of “lazy” workers and the underprivileged being undeserving of affirmative action.

So, where do I stand in the rather one sided debate over neoliberalism? To start with, what I have cribs about is the fact that neoliberal capitalism is terrible at equitable distribution of wealth. The “winner take all” system under which we operate where the median pay gap between the CEOs and the rank and file employees is so wide that even a “yawning” gap characterization is wholly inaccurate. Indeed, our neoliberal approaches have widened the wealth disparity to such an extent that the Top 1% now owns more wealth than the combined half of the…