Reimagining Capitalism
Marc Fischer, in Capitalist Realism, exposes us the quote,"it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.” If Capitalism is to be the economic system that will define humanity going forward, we must acknowledge what it is, the pros and cons, and how to make it more equitable.
Highlights the issues that can arise even within a fair trade framework
some of the very people who are developing search algorithms and architecture are willing to promote sexist and racist attitudes openly at work and beyond, while we are supposed to believe that these same employees are developing “neutral” or “objective” decision-making tools.
We need to move from competitive ideation, trying to push our individual ideas, to collective ideation, collaborative ideation. It isn’t about having the number one best idea, but having ideas that come from, and work for, more people.
Wiltshire arrives at similar results: Workers in counties where a Walmart opened experienced a greater decline in earnings than they made up for with cost savings, leaving them worse off overall. Even more interesting, he finds that the losses weren't limited to workers in the retail industry; they affected basically every sector from manufacturing
... See moreOne-fifth of the market has been made effectively invisible to investors, the media, and regulators. Information as basic as who actually owns a company, how it makes its money, or whether it is profitable is “disappearing indefinitely into private equity darkness,” as the Harvard Law professor John Coates writes in his book The Problem of Twelve
... See moreMeanwhile, interest rates have reached a 20-year high, posing a direct threat to private equity’s debt-heavy business model. In response, many private-equity funds have migrated toward even riskier forms of backroom financing. Many of these involve taking on even more debt on the assumption that market conditions will soon improve enough to restore
... See moreNearly a century ago, Congress concluded that the nation’s economic system could not survive as long as its most powerful companies were left to operate in the shadows. It took the worst economic cataclysm in American history to learn that lesson. The question now is what it will take to learn it again.
Across the economy, private-equity firms are known for laying off workers, evading regulations, reducing the quality of services, and bankrupting companies while ensuring that their own partners are paid handsomely. The veil of secrecy makes all of this easier to execute and harder to stop.