IS IT TIME FOR A NEW CAPITALISM?
I cannot help but wonder if the current global (and it truly is global) financial crisis is an opening for building a new form of capitalism that is based on sound values?
It would seem to me that capitalism, which was based on financial speculation, was in essence an immoral system that misused and distorted the logic of free enterprise and entrepreneurship. My own feeling is that capitalism needs to find a new moral values (based on something more than the maximum short-term profit) and that we must be willing to acknowledge a stronger role for government, particularly in a regulatory and “watchdog” capacity.
In the United States, many people including myself were surprised at how quickly politicians from both the Republican and the Democratic Party were willing to bail out banks and insurance companies when they began to go under. Very few of those in a position of power were willing to take the risk of letting the banks collapse due to their own mismanagement, misjudgment, and excesses of their management. One cannot really know what the consequences could have been. The choice to save the banks from the consequences of their own errors indicates a shift in values, away from the alleged wisdom of the market. There were so many who said not to worry, that the market was not the economy, but it would seem that such was not necessarily the case. The market was the American economy and they got it very wrong, particularly in matters of financial securities. They got it terribly wrong.
Will the downturn produce a deeper shift in the values of consumers? Some experts have seen the global financial crisis as an evolutionary necessity, in fact, desirable, specifically because it is producing such a change. The hope of those experts is that the trend will now be to put family ahead of work. Certainly this is something very much needed in the United States where for example, workers have fewer holidays than those in any other industrialized nation, and certainly Japan must also be considered, based on the number of hours the average Japanese worker must spend on the job each day, despite many more holidays. The French on the other hand, have already had shorter working days, shorter workweeks, and longer vacations in place for a very long time, and have been the major focus of criticism by American business management.
Americans especially, have a tendency to scoff at the French, yet France may indeed be a good model to follow. The French have for a very long time tended to be less inclined to go into debt. When they pay with “plastic”, they are inclined more to use debit cards, thus drawing on money they already have, rather than credit cards. We can now better appreciate the realities of not spending money we don’t have.
Excess is out of style, meaning that there is currently less luxury spending. There are cutbacks on the retail sale of luxury goods everywhere, even the large department stores of London, New York, and Tokyo. Cartier reports that it is facing its toughest market condones in 20 years. One cannot help but wonder, however, if this change marks a permanent trend in values or merely a temporary reduction forced on consumers by investment and income losses as well as continued economic uncertainty.
President Obama said in his inaugural address that, “The time has come to set aside childish things”. We must choose the noble idea that “all are equal, all are free, and all people deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.” He may be right. It is time for the world to restore some proper sense of what is truly important.
Do we, particularly in the United States and Japan, buy luxury items more because of the status they bring rather than because of their intrinsic value? I think so. Could the current crisis serve to help us appreciate that there are indeed more things that are more central to our happiness than our ability to spend money on Rolex, fashions and fine dining? As a Buddhist, I cannot help but wonder if we cannot take it one step further and become more aware and more active in seeing to the needs of those who live in real poverty and thus are far worse off than we will ever be.
I see a danger however in that the possibility for real change will be corrupted, as has happened to the environmental movement. “We’ve gone green” has become an advertising catch phrase with no real value behind it. Will greed utilize the crisis as another opportunity to make money? If you look and listen closely, you will see that there are already steps in that direction by big and small businesses alike.
It gives one pause to think.
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