Does capitalism have a future? Well, it certainly has done a number on billions of working people over the past few decades. But, a network of people are grappling with this question: Can there be a Next Generation of capitalism that looks and acts differently?

That’s the topic of a panel tonight in Melbourne. Yours truly is taking part. Here are some questions we’ll be addressing:

• What do you think the world learnt from the GFC?
• The pursuit of profit at any cost by business is on the nose around the world – Can there be a Next Generation of capitalism that looks and acts differently?
• Are the objectives of maximizing shareholder value and pursuing social purpose diametrically opposed – can they ever be reconciled?
• Can business truly deliver profit as well as social and environmental outcomes to solve some of world’s wicked problems?
• Do we need alternative business models – like the cooperative model – to re-emerge and grow?
• Can this social business movement really become the mainstream? Or can it comfortably co-exist?
• What do you believe the 99% movement was really saying?

Enablers / barriers to a new form of capitalism:

• Does capitalism need to be transformed through different business models or is it enough for social enterprise to influence the way corporates do business?
• What’s the motivation for an entrepreneur to establish a social enterprise rather than a purely profit driven business?
• What is standing in the way of this Next Generation of capitalism?
• How do you make the business case that more responsible capitalism benefits shareholders?
• What’s the role of shareholders in this new world of ‘more responsible’ business?
• What’s the role of government’s in this new era of more responsible capitalism?
• What are B Corporations in the US? Should Australia be introducing the same kind of legislation?
• What’s already working?  How can it be built upon?

Growth vs responsibility?

• Are you saying it’s time to stop chasing growth and start pursuing happiness?
• Have societies forgotten how to cooperate?
• What flow on benefits might society reap from a more diversified business landscape?
• Should economies still measure their performance according to output using Gross Domestic Product, or instead use measures such as quality of life, security, social justice and sustainability?

The role of the consumer:

• In what ways has consumer thinking changed?
• How can we make the economy work for us, instead of the other way around?

What do YOU think? Leave a comment here.

— Jonathan Tasini
@jonathantasini

Why I spoil my appetite — a good lunch salad is a sad thing to waste — by reading drivel is always a mystery. But, if you make the mistake of reading the Fantasy Review — among bankers it’s known as the “Financial Review” — you run that risk. Today, it was Jennifer Hewett’s fault. While we live on the planet of reality, where actual facts matter, Hewett inhabits the world of mystery and alchemy, where things get mixed together and stuff just happens.

Hewett is annoyed, as anyone can tell from her tortured column today, by yesterday’s speech by Wayne Swan, which I previewed yesterday with a modest observation that Swan was simply stating the facts that about Clive Palmer, Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest: “One tycoon is using his money to challenge the principle of fair taxation through electioneering; a second is using his money to challenge it through the courts; and a third is using her money to challenge it by undermining independent journalism”.

Hewett is entitled to disagree. But, the problem is that  she — and a whole host of transcribers of press releases (what we formerly used to called “journalists”) — don’t bother to connect with the reality-based world when making arguments. They pretend as if shit just happens, as naturally as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.

Let’s look at a few examples from the column (subscription to the Fantasy Review is required). First:

It is true that manufacturing jobs in both countries have been in long-term decline and are being hit particularly hard now. Those changes are partly due to a changing global economy and the rise of Asian manufacturing, partly due to the excesses of a debt-fuelled consumer and banking binge in the US and Europe.

Aha. “The changing global economy”. Well, wait a minute. The”global economy” changes because rules change. It isn’t a natural phenomena, nor magic. Those rules that were changed, mostly via so-called “free trade” agreements, set up a new regime based on one thing, and one thing only: where could companies find workers who could be exploited by paying them the lowest wage and forcing them to work in the least regulated, most dangerous conditions. The decline, then, was in wage standards, which, then, triggered the “rise” of Asian manufacturing.

Then, Hewett goes on:

Adapting to this inexorable shift and being able to ride the waves of change without falling off is the hard part for any country, any government, any company.

“Inexorable shift”. What utter nonsense –it isn’t a natural phenomena. It’s only inexorable, ironically, precisely because of the point Swan made, which Hewett hates: tycoons set the rules. Their rules say: we reap the money, we set the terms, we drive wages as low as possible.

Well, of course, like all good “free market” idealogues, you knew this one was coming: when all else fails, blame Europe:

Nor does he reflect on the rather elusive economic benefits of that model of government intervention – high taxation and economic and political paralysis in Europe. That’s equality of a different sort.

It’s almost boring to have to point out that the austerity destroying millions of jobs and the livelihoods of millions of workers, impoverishing generations of people and threatening the stability of at least Greece and Spain, has almost nothing to do with taxation — actually, that’s not exactly true since part of the crisis has to do with rich people refusing to pay higher taxes — but actually the problem is that the financial implosion created by greedy bankers wiped away trillions of dollars in wealth, triggering an economic meltdown.

Lastly, and this is Hewett’s dumbest point:

Yet this Treasurer is not at all taken, for example, by America’s extraordinary capacity for innovation in a range of industries, its economic flexibility and its ability to generate new sources of growth.

If this country wants to adapt the American Disease, which has killed the middle class, diverting 30 years of wealth growth from the people who created the value into the hands of the few so that more people live in poverty in the US – 46 million – than at any time in the half-century the US government has measured that figure, well, fine. But, deal with the facts of what the American model accomplished — not some fantasy version of what you’d like to happen.

Why bother with this? A fair point. The problem is that too many people have bought this idea of the “free market” and the notion that de-regulation is the way to happiness. Except the facts don’t support that fantasy.

— Jonathan Tasini
@jonathantasini