🤫 The 5 Secrets of Capitalism

My Ha-Joon Chang-inspired list

More and more I find myself asking: how can we build a sustainable capitalist enterprise? Is this even something worth doing? Capitalism has a role to play in society - but what it looks like today is unsustainable. I am not an economist, nor do I pretend to know the full answer to this question, but I think a starting point is to examine what we’ve all been socialized to believe.

Here are 5 of my favorite “secrets” or counterarguments to the accepted wisdom about capitalism:

1. Profit is not king

Investors are.

You’ve heard it said that the goal of corporations is to make a profit. Many, like the famed management consultant Peter Drucker, would disagree. They’d say the goal of corporations is to make their customers, shareholders and investors happy.

If the economy lived on profits alone, then Amazon wouldn’t have taken ten years to turn its first tiny profit, and we certainly wouldn’t be able to take Uber rides everywhere despite the company never having made a profit until October 2022…