Close to 3000 world leaders are convening in Davos at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting. 30 of them are social entrepreneurs from around the world. The theme of the meeting is "The Great Transformation: Shaping New Models". Watch what Muhammad Yunus and Wendy Kopp (Teach for America and Teach for All) contribute to this fundamental debate on the current capitalist system. "We need to expand the idea of business," said Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammad Yunus, a board member of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. "Rather than just making money, we need businesses that solve problems. We have enough technology, enough ability, and enough innovative capacity to make that happen."
Wouldn't a better market be one that was controlled, so that it would not periodically destroy itself. Wouldn't you want rules in place to prevent or even eliminate the chance of cheating, or unfair trade practices? Like all human systems, the market needs periodic upkeep.
And there is the argument on the right the periodic crashes are a good thing, that they weed out the problems, that it is natural selection, but what is so great about a system doesn't work all the time?
What I'm saying is that humans have this great ability to make self-correcting systems. We have thermostats that regulate the temperature of your house. We have refineries that use complex chemical engineering to create fuels. And if any of these systems failed or blew up, we would trash them. So shouldn't an economic system follow the same principles?
We need sound principles in place to prevent economic catastrophe. Because would you let a refinery run itself with no oversight?
I have solutions here.
http://bit.ly/y8Z0ZH
So we let the government control and regulate the market. How do we know that the people overseeing the market aren't in-bed with other corporations or have their own agenda? We could turn the state over to watch over mom and pop businesses and shut them down for not meeting a certain regulation. Is that good or bad for the economy?
Ever heard of the fox guarding the hen-house? That is they type of disastrous scenario we could turn over to the state if we allow more regulation and legislation.
Today's problems cannot be solved by turning over oversight and regulation from one power structure to another. They can only be solved by individuals taking power and control over their own lives. Otherwise we will end up with the same corruption and tyranny we started with.
I also agree that it is up to the people, or individuals, to stand up and demand that proper policies be put in place. However, I'm not talking about regulation, I'm talking about laws. I think that regulation and regulators have the effect of creating a massively bloated bureaucracy that becomes unwieldy and inefficient. Therefore, I argue to replace regulation with cold hard law. And breaking the laws should lead to stiff penalties, with which we can combat moral hazards. The problem, I think, is that corporations face limited liabilities, giving their leaders more of an impetus to bend and break laws.
Thus, my first law would be that a corporation cannot own other corporations, as they could potentially gobble up all their competitors. My second law would be that corporations do not have any lobbying rights. And my third law would be that corporations face a death penalty when they cause death.
I'm sure we could come up with more of these laws, but of course it is going to require popular support before anything changes.
Further, problem-generating economics are simultaneously overwhelming and hollowing out the power of government to solve the problems their own economic systems are creating, putting the governments of the world into a double bind.
Business has no business creating problems that neither business nor governments can solve.
And business REALLY has no business creating problems and then refusing to solve them.