Is Capitalism Sustainable?

Angry Humans. I often see well-intending, angry humans talking

about the problems in our world today. Many of them blame
Capitalism. Some of them seek a revolution at any cost. I
understand their anger, but its easy to say something is broken; its
much harder to present and persuasively
defend specific, nonpartisan, and realisticsolutions. I wrote Broken
Capitalism: This Is How We Fix It because, in the 100s of articles
and dozens of books about economic and government policy that
Ive read, Ive never found one that presents specific, nonpartisan,
and realistic solutions to resolve the political, social, and economic
problems that are causing Earths economy and ecosystems to
collapse today.

Capitalism vs. Marxism vs. Socialism. Like so many other

illusions that I reveal in the book, the great debate between
Capitalism vs. Socialism vs. Marxism, etc., is an illusion rooted in a
misunderstanding of human nature and perpetuated by ignorance of
human history. History provides examples of prosperous capitalist
states and prosperous socialist states, with many variations based
on each countrys unique cultural values and traditions. What many
people dont realize is that it doesnt matter whether we have
Capitalism, Marxism, Socialism, or any other ism if the institutional
integrity of the government suffers from distorted incentives.
Incentives always drive human behavior in every social and
economic system. The same concentration of power, wealth, and
environmental abuses will always occur as long as the
administrators of the system are not held accountable for their
performance.

Capitalism is a Socioeconomic Operating System for

Humanity. Capitalism by itself is not good or bad; its simply a
socioeconomic operating system for humanity that is very flexible
and comes in many flavors. By analogy, if the Windows computer
operating system is Capitalism, then the Linux operating system is
Socialism. Both systems work just fine when theyre configured and
administered properly, in accordance with each societys broadly
shared values and traditions.

Neoliberal Capitalism is Only One Flavor of Capitalism. If

humans worldwide were told, Henceforth, there shall be only one
flavor of ice cream, there would be violent protests in every major
city on Earth. If people would likely revolt over oppressive ice cream
policies, imagine what they will (and are) doing in response to
oppressive global economic policies. The neoliberal flavor of
Capitalism practiced in the U.S. today is misconfigured and has
been exported across the planet, which is what is destroying the
value creation process in every country today. Thats not the fault of
Capitalism; its the fault of specific culprits in each society who will
seek to misconfigure and exploit every system to serve their
personal interests at the expense of the public interest if the society
allows them to get away with it.
The River of Value. The concept of value creation is not merely a
corporate platitude invented to appease greedy investors; its at the
heart of every human civilization since the dawn of humanity. The
book explains this more vividly, but in summary: Every society must
efficiently and broadly create and distribute value to continue to
exist and prosper. Value is like a river: If its not flowing, its not a
river. A society cannot survive if it destroys its value creators and if
it does not nurture a broad ecosystem of value creators by
implementing public policies that truly support the small- to medium-
sized business community. Many countries today are failing
miserably at this task for specific reasons explained in the book.

Replacing Capitalism with Some Other Ism is Not the

Solution. Every socioeconomic framework will degenerate into
kleptocracy, plutocracy, crony capitalism (insert your favorite bad
system here) if it suffers from poor institutional integrity. Institutional
integrity can be clearly defined to ensure that the incentives of
policymakers are aligned with the interests of the humans they are
supposed to serve. Forcing policymakers in specific and politically
viable ways to stop rigging the system in favor of Transnational
Cannibals is the solution.

Politically Viable is Not the Same as Universally

Desirable. I often hear people say things like, We will never find
solutions that are universally desirable with such a divided
population. Most of the perceived division in the American
population today is fabricated and amplified by profit-driven media
companies, which is infecting the journalistic integrity of
mainstream and alternative media. All the credible polling data that
Ive seen suggests that everyday Americans are much closer on
virtually all major issues than is portrayed in the media.

Opposition Always Exists Because Human Need & Greed

Exist. We should always expect opposition from groups who benefit
from the status quo, but the status quo today benefits only a tiny
minority of the population. In a democratic society, whether certain
segments of the population agree or disagree is irrelevant as long
as actual public policies result in long-term outcomes that benefit
the majority of humans in the society. Sadly, thats not how
Neoliberal Capitalism is configured today.

Neoliberal Capitalism Has Destroyed Global Trust in

Capitalism. The mainstream neoliberal economists and the
curriculum they are still cramming down the throats of college
students worldwide today have turned the majority of humanity
against Capitalism (see also A Majority of Millennials Now Reject
Capitalism), which is a tragedy in itself. So there is no question that
the solutions in the book are politically viable because they are
nonpartisan and attractive to an overwhelming majority of humans
worldwide on both sides of the ideological spectrum.

Is Capitalism Sustainable? Over the next several human

generations, the neoliberal flavor of Capitalism that dominates Earth
today will need to be completely reconfigured because natural
resource extraction, perpetual economic and population growth are
obviously not sustainable. Additionally, as artificial intelligence
gobbles up ever-larger chunks of the global labor market, the
Capital-Labor Duality (defined in the book) requires an urgent
transfusion of institutional integrity to prevent the cardiac arrest of
Capitalism worldwide. However, the book clearly explains how
Capitalism can be configured to be economicallysustainable in all
large-scale socioeconomic conditions and to be relatively immune
to special interest corruption.

Stage 1: Re-Balancing Obscene Wealth and Power. The book

presents clear, nonpartisan solutions for re-balancing the obscene
concentrations of income, wealth, market and political power that
are distorting global trade and domestic economic policies in
virtually every country on Earth today. These imbalances of wealth
and power are the most significant factors blocking virtually all
meaningful public policy reforms. These imbalances enable special
interest groups to perpetuate the status quo. Curing these
imbalances is the first and most important step, which is why
everything contained in the book can be logically summarized as
Stage 1. Only after Stage 1 is achieved will it be possible to
achieve subsequent stages along humanitys path to sustainable
global peace and prosperity.

All Humans Have Biases and Blind Spots that Are Magnified by
Fear. Our collective vision of a fairer, more equitable, and
sustainable planet needs to occur in stages because the most
powerful special interest groups will fight back with overwhelming
force if the resistance tries to abolish the status quo overnight. If
humans living today fear that their wealth will be confiscated or
destroyed while they are still alive, they will fight much harder. In
contrast, if the reforms occur over a relatively longer period, based
on clearly defined stages, measurable milestones, and nonpartisan
principles, they will feel relatively less threatened and they will be
more likely to see beyond their own self-interest. Thats why this
staged approach is the only viable approach to achieve truly
sustainable reform on a planetary scale without triggering World
War III and multiple genocidal conflicts.

Capitalism was Created by Humans; It Can be Improved by

Humans. Capitalism is broken, but it can and should be fixed. It
wont happen overnight, but like water etches rivers into granite
landscapes in nature, we can gradually, inexorably, guide
humanitys river of value toward a more natural equilibrium. Many
books and articles have been written about the economic and social
problems plaguing Earth today, but Ive never found one that offers
meaningful and politically viable solutions. Thats why I
wrote Broken Capitalism: This Is How We Fix It, which explains
step-by-step how to accomplish the first and most important Stage
1, based on logical, equitable, theoretically sound, data-driven,
nonpartisan, and politically viable principles that any high school
graduate can understand and appreciate.
About Ferris Eanfar
Ferris Eanfar has over 20 years of experience in technical, financial,
media, and government intelligence environments. He has written
dozens of articles and several books in the field of International
Political Economy, including Broken Capitalism: This Is How We Fix
It, which provides unique insight into what is wrong with the global
economy and how to fix it. To learn more about Ferris, please visit
the About Ferris page.

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