Smarter Capitalism | Time To Get Smarter

A Summary of Smarter Capitalism:

The New & Improved Version

Its Purpose: Sustainability, Health and Happiness

Using human creativity, energy and fairness, Smarter Capitalism transforms natural resources into these economic prerequisites for health and happiness without degrading them for future generations: sufficient, quality food, water, air, clothing, shelter, healthcare and time for relationships with loved ones, friends and community.

The New Realism

Nature or Creation, however one prefers to call it, is the real World Wide Web with matter and energy recycling in great loops.

Some examples are the water cycle, creatures eating and being eaten, reaping what you sow and treating others as one would want to be treated.

In this amazing Web, every creature and species including our own is interconnected and interdependent with other creatures and species for survival.

The more diversity of interdependent/interconnected links in any ecosystem, the more long term stability and strength it has. The same is true for regional and national economies, societies and civilizations.

Natural Capital

Our Web’s energy from the sun, air, water, plants, animals, soil, ecosystems and their ecosystem services such as water purification, soil conservation, flood control and carbon sequestration is all defined as natural capital.

Our Web’s natural capital is only so big. There are limits, even to those things that before seemed limitless like air, water, soil, birds in the sky, fish in the oceans and trees in Siberia and the Amazon.

Unfortunately, our current model of capitalist civilization is going over many limits and in twelve months using and emitting more than Nature/Creation can replenish and absorb in sixteen months.

This is called global overshoot. Some of its signs are rising temperatures, falling water tables, desertification, deforestation, loss of topsoil and croplands, the collapse of most of the world’s large fisheries, seven huge, growing oceanic garbage patches and the current man-made sixth mass extinction since life began on Earth. Smarter Capitalism recognizes we must correct this “overspending” or else face eventual worldwide ecological bankruptcy.

Smarter Capitalism furthermore gives natural capital monetary value, spiritual value and acknowledges it as the ultimate foundation of every economy and by extension every company and organization on the planet.

And approximately what is it worth in dollars? When the 1987 global GNP was only $18 trillion, an international panel of scientists estimated that the world’s major ecosystems alone were providing humanity $16 – $54 trillion dollars worth of ecosystem services each year.

In other words, averaged out, Nature/Creation’s contribution each year to every economy, company and organization is worth roughly twice as much as all the work its human members do that year.

Social Capital

Smarter Capitalism recognizes that on top of any economy’s natural capital is its social capital. This includes all of a society’s past and current investments of time, love, energy and money into its people, its social groups, culture, values, mindsets and paradigms, its cities and countryside and its economy and infrastructure — schools, transportation, communication, police, fire and other governmental support systems.

As just a part of this, the annual unpaid work of women has alone been computed to be worth almost as much as an entire nation’s Gross Domestic Product, i.e. its paid sector and this was Switzerland! Presumably the same would apply to most if not all other nations as Swiss workers are some of the highest paid in the world.

So when society and the environment’s investments are added together, especially over time, they completely dwarf private investments.

Social and Environmental Responsibility Become Legal Requirements for Every Company and Organization

For this reason, Smarter Capitalism considers the environment and society (not the government) two of the largest if not the two largest “silent partners”/shareholders in every company.

Practically speaking though, because those who start and/or invest time and money in companies deserve to be fairly rewarded if things go well, Smarter Capitalism advocates that society and the environment be legally considered at least two substantial shareholders in every company and the two largest stakeholders in every governmental agency and social organization.

As a result, social and environmental responsibility would become legal requirements of every company, organization and governmental agency. With appropriate financial incentives, a new cultural consensus and new laws with strong enforcement, social and environmental responsibility would become part of everyone’s mission, mindset and way of doing business.

In general, this would mean companies, government agencies and non-profits would have to consider the interests of society and the environment in their decisions and would conduct their business using the Golden Rule and the values of honesty, fair play and loyalty.

Companies that met various benchmarks in social and environmental responsibility and self-governance would receive financial incentives from government to encourage this process.

This smarter capitalist respect, honesty and fair play for employees of course also extends throughout the economy to customers, suppliers, investors, partners and affiliates.

When Society is a Substantial Shareholder:

Better Pay, Working Conditions and Respect for the Average Joe and Jane

In particular, it would first mean implementing these values with the part of society that most directly contributes to all organizations — the employees. Specifically, this would mean employees having significant representation in management as has been the case in Germany for decades where it’s called co-determination. This leads to better and safer working conditions, better benefits and employees being treated respectfully as real people, not as easily discardable hands, brains or numbers.

It would also mean, among other changes, freedom in the workplace to vote without intimidation for or against collective bargaining, more checks, balances and freedom within unions, requiring good cause for termination, employee stock ownership programs and last but not least, redirecting a larger portion of profits, dividends and current executive compensation to the vast majority of American employees who like the vast majority of Americans, 95%, make less than six figures.

Note: In 1965, the average CEO working no less harder or smarter than today’s CEO made 24 times the average non-managerial employee. In 1978 they made 35 times more and in 2004, 431 times more! Had minimum wage risen as fast as CEO compensation since 1990, in 2004 it would have reached $23.03/hour and the average employee making more than minimum wage would have been making $110,126/year instead of $27,460!

Lower Taxes for the Average Jane and Joe

Not only would wages for the average employee go up, but Smarter Capitalism also means smarter, progressive taxation where the civic responsibility and yes, burden of paying taxes is shared equally. But an equal responsibility and burden for everyone doesn’t mean the same tax for everyone. A 30% tax for someone making $40,000 is much, much harder to bear than for someone making $400,000 or $4,000,000 a year. Smarter Taxation means in general everyone should share and feel the same burden and weight.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case for a long time. During the 50’s when the American middle class and America was arguably at its strongest, the average American earning $2992 a year paid income and payroll taxes of around 23% and the top tax bracket for the wealthiest few was 91%!

Fast forward to today when, combining federal income, payroll and Medicare taxes, the average Jane and Joe making between $34,000 and $82,000 pays around 32.6%. Now, the wealthy and super wealthiest taxpayers are (supposed) to pay only around 36.5% in income and Medicare tax — plus not a dime in payroll tax after their first $106,800!

But it’s even worse than that. Now many of the wealthy and super-wealthy pay percentage-wise about half what the average Jane and Joe pay, because capital gains, taxed at the criminally low rate of 15% is the lion’s share of their earnings. Here’s how one of these super-wealthy, billionaire Warren Buffett described it at a $4,600-a-seat fundraiser. “’The 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter.’ He went on to say that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made last year, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent.” Warren Buffet summed up the situation this way. “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

With smarter taxation though, everyone including corporations will share the same responsibility, burden and weight of taxation. The average Joe and Jane would pay lower taxes than currently and the wealthy and super-wealthy would pay progressively higher taxes than at present. Aside from making our taxes much fairer and our society more stable and sustainable, it could also start to lower our budget deficit.

The Result of Society as a Substantial Shareholder

Every company, governmental agency and social organization gains happier, more productive and loyal employees,

Society becomes more just and hence more secure and sustainable.

Government of the people, by the people and for the people where the majority is supposed to rule becomes stronger as the wealth and power of the majority of the people becomes stronger.

The Environment as a Substantial Shareholder

And what does it mean when a company considers the environment as a major shareholder? Again companies, governmental agencies and other organizations in general will need to directly consider the impact of their decisions on this major shareholder but there is another very key way that will automatically take much of society’s and the environment’s long term interests into account – Real Cost-Benefit Pricing.

Real Cost-Benefit Pricing means on the cost side, if something, like coal compared to solar, is more expensive to society and the environment in the long run — after taking into account all government subsidies and other production, consumption, emission, disposal, health and security costs — then it should cost more upfront in the short run.

The mechanism Smarter Capitalism uses to bridge the gap between coal’s real cost and its current, unrealistic market cost is by scientifically assessing its real, lifecycle costs and then increasingly reflecting these social and environmental costs through Anti-Pollution Tax Taxes (APTT’s) .

That way, reducing pollution (and ones APT taxes) becomes more profitable than polluting!

The resulting game changer — eco-friendlier products and services across the economy underprice, outcompete and replace their more polluting counterparts. To short, Clean and Healthy replaces Dirty and Dangerous across the economy.

So by all of us, consumers and businesspeople, saving money buying less expensive, eco-friendlier alternatives, we also help save our society and civilization from global ecological bankruptcy. In short, Saving Money Helps Save Civilization!

Smarter Capitalism’s Alternative:

The Free and Responsible Market

Which is Free of unrealistic pricing which leads to profiting at the expense of everyone else, including future generations, the environment and future profits. This is also known as the privatization of profit and socialization of costs.
Free of the huge unacknowledged, literally killer tax that pollution, mostly by the private sector, levies on society
Free of the huge deferred taxation without representation that it levies on our children, grandchildren, future generations and the children of other societies
Free of our current deficit spending where we’re using up natural capital and emitting more than Nature/Creation can replenish and absorb
Free of rules and laws that stifle competition and encourage monopolization and market over-concentration leading to companies “too big to fail”
Free of the corporate takeover and undermining of government regulatory agencies by the very industries they’re supposed to regulate, aka “captured agencies” that act as lapdogs instead of watchdogs.
Free of inadequate regulation leading to risky behavior, market anarchy and subsequent, periodic bail-outs at the expense of the Average Joe and Jane
Increasingly free of the current, grossly inadequate regulatory system that doesn’t require all chemicals, products and medical procedures to first be tested for safety before going on the market but waits until it’s too late and the injuries, deaths and destroyed lives and families can no longer be ignored or covered up.
Instead, in a free and responsible market, they’re first thoroughly tested by independent labs not paid by the manufacturers; then only if found safe can they be sold. This is known as the Precautionary Principle.
In short, a free and responsible market consists of socially and environmentally responsible businesses ever competing to make and provide better quality, lower true cost goods and service with a government acting as a check and balance to business and dedicated to the long term, as our Constitution’s Preamble states, general Welfare.

As we all heard from our parents, with freedom comes responsibility. Thus, the Smarter Capitalism version of Milton Friedman’s famous dictum is that every company’s purpose is, in a socially and environmentally responsible way, to maintain or increase sustainable returns over the long term to its shareholders which now include two substantial shareholders, society and the environment.

Which is to say, on the income side, every company’s purpose is to maintain or increase the quality and/or quantity of its socially and environmentally beneficial goods and services. On the costs side, every company’s purpose is to reduce both its internal costs of production, operation, turnover, miscommunication, waste, social inequities/internal friction as well as its external costs of pollution, waste and ecological footprint. The difference between the two is a socially and environmentally responsible and sustainable profit.

In short, every company’s purpose is to maintain or maximize its net benefit to society and the environment.

The Result of Smarter Capitalism

Because Smarter Capitalism reinvents our economy for the common good and the long haul, it’s more sustainable and has a better chance of surviving than the current model.

We invite you the reader, President Obama, Congress and the international commmunity to a conversation on this very important and timely topic, including the development of more principles and ideas for Smarter Capitalism, followed by timely, effective legislation with teeth and specifics.

Acknowledgments

Smarter Capitalism and many of the other ideas in this website are in some ways original and in other ways a reframed and abbreviated version of many ideas already out there. Some of the people whose similar ideas have already been circulating or have inspired or influenced us are Hazel Henderson, Herman Daly, David Korten, Amory and Hunter Lovins, Lester Brown, Thomas Friedman, Robert Reich and Mark Schapiro. Much praise and credit to all of them and apologies to any inadvertently left out.