Author Description

Our socioeconomic system is broken. It leaves behind too many people, provides very little return on debilitating levels of taxation, and does not represent our interests and opinions well. It is disturbing to realize we are the most clever, most numerous on earth we have ever been, and yet we are unable to solve our current challenges. The culprit is not individualistic greed, as we are no more or less self-centered than we have ever been. The problem is our system, which enables individuals to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. Capitalism is an amazing invention that lifted countless people out of poverty, but the Common Good is simply absent from its parameters. This results in a misalignment between the individual and the collective. Democracy is in crisis. The level of discontent is so high that many people in the Western world have begun to relativize the actions and models of dictatorships across the globe. The unhappiness in the wealthiest parts of the world is so strong that countries employing systematic persecutions, totalitarianism, and even genocides do not necessarily appear to have a drastically inferior governance system. If we do not change course very soon, our way of life has a serious risk of being annihilated by climate change, artificial intelligence, social upheaval or authoritarianism. Ethical Capitalism is a proposal to fix this alignment issue by creating a correlation between individual profits and the Common Good. It keeps all of the openness and motivation of the free entreprise principles of capitalism, while adding this crucial element. It enhances our political system by adding Direct Democracy. This new model transcends the perennial left-right debate by harmoniously combining efficiency and humanity without compromise. The proposed change is revolutionary in concept yet evolutionary in its implementation, both transformational enough to tackle these severe issues, and practical enough for real-world