Traditional capitalism is a disaster for anyone other than the power elite of America's corpocracy. This article present for more alternative forms of capitalism beneficial to everyone except the power elite.

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Part 6. Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution

The authors of Natural Capitalism argue that it is needed to "create the next industrial revolution." They warn that if we continue to ignore the value of natural capital, i.e., nature's life-support systems for humankind, there will come a time when there won't be any more life support. Doomsday may be a century or two away, but the quality of life up to that point will have deteriorated at an increasing pace.

Pursuing four central strategies of natural capitalism, these authors say, will enable commercial enterprises and communities to operate as if all forms of capital were important. The core strategy is that of radically increasing resource productivity by being more efficient, less wasteful in how natural resources are extracted and used.

The second they call "biomimicry" that involves eliminating waste in the making of things by imitating biological processes in the manufacturing process. The third is to change the relationship between producer and consumer from one based on goods and purchases to one based on a "flow of economic services" that will in turn deemphasize possession as a measure of affluence and emphasize that well-being depends on the "continuous receipt of quality, utility, and performance." The fourth involves "reinvesting in sustaining, restoring, and expanding stocks of natural capital."

In Closing

But America doesn't need the next industrial revolution. America needs a new and better capitalism that enfolds industry without its corpocracy. That's what America desperately needs!

Notes

Hawkins, P., Lovins, A., & Lovins, LH. Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution. 1999.

Part 7. The Uncommon Commons

Peterr Barnes co-founder, president, or a director of various socially responsible businesses, wants "capitalism 3.0" to replace "capitalism 2.0," the existing economic "operating system." He complains that corporations, with no resistance from "our" government, are privatizing the commons, profiting from it and externalizing the costs.

He defines "the commons" as assets we all share by inheriting or creating them together and subdivides them into three sectors, nature, community, and culture. Together they represent our "common wealth" (a most insightful concept), in contrast to our "private wealth," the latter representing all the property we inherit or accumulate individually. Private wealth collectively in the U.S. was estimated to be around $48.5 trillion in 2005. What do you think our total American common wealth is? Economists can't begin to estimate it in its entirety, but what they can estimate, Barnes tells us, comes to about $70 trillion. Is it any wonder then why, as Barnes asks, corporations on the one hand take valuable stuff "worth trillions of dollars" from the commons for short-term profit and on the other hand dump bad stuff into nature's commons and pay nothing?

His proposal relies heavily on the idea of property rights because our U.S. Constitution guarantees them, they shape economies, they produce value or wealth, and, most importantly, there's no requirement that they be concentrated in profit-maximizing hands, thus opening up the possibility of "propertizing" the commons without privatizing it (another very insightful idea). He proposes that the government assign common property rights to institutions, distinct from government and corporations that would be set up as trusts to manage the common property. A few such trusts already exist in the U.S, such as a trust in Marin County, California where ranchers can sell easements to it. For natural assets with their limited sources, the institutions would need to be capable of limiting their use. For the other two sectors with their endless potential, public access would need to be maximized and public usage fees minimized.

He introduces the idea of "commons tax credits" as a means for funneling more money into trusts by raising taxes in the uppermost tax bracket and giving its wealthy taxpayers the choice either to pay the extra tax to the government or to one or more qualified trust funds.

Barnes adapts the economist's concept of rent, or money paid because of scarcity, to his proposed trusts for nature. The trusts would sell pollution rights to polluters and get the rent in return. The trusts would limit the number of rights sold to increase the cost of their rent. For corporate polluters the cost would be high enough to create an incentive to pollute less. Some of the rent would be converted into per-capita dividends for consumer citizens. Consumers of pollution-laden products would get back smaller dividends. Moreover, rent would be recycled from over users, who tend to be the wealthier ones, to under users, who tend to be the poorer ones. This shifting of income would help alleviate what Barnes calls a pathological flaw of capitalism 2.0, the wide income gap between high and low-income groups.

Barnes also shows how there could be per-capita dividends from trusts created for the commons' other two sectors. For example, treating the capital market as common property, a trust could charge a usage fee to publicly traded corporations for selling stocks and for having been given various rights such as limited liability, perpetual life, copyrights, patents, and the like.

Over time the "propertizing" of the commons would amass a portfolio worth trillions of dollars that could be used to fund three "universal birthrights;" a regular dividend to everyone, an opportunity endowment for each new child, and health insurance for everyone. Clearly, Barnes' proposal is a very expansive one and, superficially at least, a seductive one. Barnes appeals to capitalists, wage earners, lawyers, economists, commons entrepreneurs, and others to help build the commons sector into a full-fledged capitalism 3.0 and shows how it can benefit each of these diverse groups.

In Closing

Barne's proposals are among the most unique I've ever read on capitalism. His advocacy of pollution rights, though, really troubles me. Every human being has a sacred obligation to nature and a moral obligation to generations yet unborn to respect nature.

Notes

Barnes, P. Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2006,

Part 8. Shared Capitalism

Jeff Gates wrote a book jam packed with ideas about what he calls "shared capitalism for the twenty-first century."¹ His is a decidedly populist view, not surprising since he was counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee (1980-87), working with Senator Russell Long of Louisiana, son of populist governor and U.S. Senator Huey P. Long. In this role, Gates crafted federal law on employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) and pension plans.

Capitalism creates financial capital, not capitalists, he notes. Moreover, most financial capital is held by institutional investors, the absentee owners of public corporations. This, he says, creates a "detached and disconnected capitalism largely on automatic" with investment decisions devoid of longer-term concerns, including the costs of externalization.

Unshared capitalism, while made to order by the corpocracy, is totally unfit for a democracy. His solution is to make widespread ownership a specific goal of national economic policy. His opinion that people take responsibility for what they own resonates with me, having watched for two decades party-going renters misbehave and scar property in an ocean-side condominium where my wife and I owned and never rented a unit.

Achieving inclusive ownership on a national scale will take, he believes, a political era like the progressives and populists of the 1930s and a leader like FDR, or like President Obama possibly. Gates identifies six strategic initiatives: a public opinion poll that asks the right questions about inclusive ownership and informs politicians about the public will, which he believes would support populist capitalism; a government declaration of widespread ownership as a national economic goal; a bipartisan commission on economic empowerment, which he believes will conclude the desirability of widespread prosperity; a government office of asset ownership; a regular assessment of what the impact of inclusive ownership has been; and an annual ownership survey to determine who owns what.

In Closing

Who among advocates of more responsible forms of capitalism can disagree with Gate's solution to make widespread ownership a specific goal of national economic policy?

Notes

1. Gates, JR. The Ownership Solution: Toward A Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century. 1998.

Part 9. Spiritual Capitalism

Dana Zohar and Ian Marshall, who wrote the book, Spiritual Capital: Wealth We Can Live By, are a fascinating, couple married to each other. Zohar is broadly trained and thus taps into diverse resources such as classical literature, physics, religion, and psychology. Marshall is a Jungian-oriented psychiatrist and psychotherapist.

The authors recount the story of a neuroscientist who was probing his temporal lobes in the laboratory and claimed to "have seen God." This neural mass, or "God Spot," apparently is where "spiritual intelligence" is hardwired so that the more meaningful and deeper questions of life and organizations can be pondered, as long as all other parts of the brain, including rational intelligence and emotional intelligence, are functioning in harmony with each other at 40 Hz oscillations. If not, the God Spot can be a trouble spot triggering "borderline schizophrenia or manic episodes." Well, readers, what can I say other than what else would we expect from a Jungian and a wife who dabbles in religion?

The authors argue that material capitalism, the kind that predominates in America's corpocracy, is unsustainable, depleting our natural resources, creating political and social instability, eroding our moral standards, and degrading the very meaning of life in terms of its deepest values and aspirations. Rather than reject this conventional capitalism altogether, however, the authors advocate transforming it into a more positive, sustainable economic system that they call "spiritual capitalism" in the secular, non-religious sense.

It's defined as the amount of knowledge and expertise available about "meaning, values, and fundamental purposes." It produces not material wealth that ultimately consumes itself but a self-sustaining wealth "that enriches the deeper aspects of our lives." The authors list 12 qualities that companies "high in spiritual capital" would possess. For example, they would be "self-aware," "vision and value-led," and "compassionate" and would "have a sense of vocation."

Are there any companies high in spiritual capital? The authors don't cite any companies that possess all 12 qualities or even most of them, which is an opportunity missed because they developed a set of descriptors that could have been built into a good survey instrument. They do give very short accounts of three American corporations that supposedly "accrue spiritual capital," Merck Pharmaceutical, Coca Cola and Starbucks, but they are dubious choices at best in my opinion.

Maybe their examples unwittingly help to validate their assertion that material capitalism is in a state of crisis. They call it a "crisis of negative motivations" and claim that the four primary ones are self-assertion or competitiveness, anger, craving or greed, and fear. Most of the book, therefore, is devoted to explaining Marshall's "Scale of Motivations" and in speculating on how it, along with emotional and spiritual intelligence, can be used to raise motivation to a sufficient level among a sufficient number of business leaders to produce a "great transformation" first in their own companies and then for capitalism as a whole.

In Closing

There is much about Zohar and Marshall's views and ideas with which I agree, such as their view that the capitalism prevailing today is unsustainable and thus needs to be transformed, not totally dismantled. The authors are creative thinkers who forced me repeatedly to think outside my own relatively narrow paradigms.

At the same time, the authors' analysis of the problem and their proposed remedy are too unbalanced and insufficient. Material capitalism is far more than a crisis of motivation. Many other factors contribute to the failings of traditional capitalism. Relying on a critical mass of business people to shift upwards their spiritual intelligence is naïve and simplistic.

Notes

1. Zohar, D. & Marshall, I. Spiritual Capital: Wealth We Can Live By. 2004,

What's Coming Next?

Part 10. The Peoples' Capitalism, the last of the 10-Part Series. In this last part the commonalities among the alternative forms of capitalism presented in the first nine parts will be highlighted, before launching into my ideas on "the peoples' capitalism."

Authors Website: http://www.911rescueamerica.com

Authors Bio:

Retired organizational psychologist.

Author of "911!", The Devil's Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy in the Lur ch; America's Oldest Professions: Warring and Spying; and Corporate Reckoning Ahead.

I may be aged but I am still an indefatigable foe of America's power elite who are ruining our nation and the world. If they wrongdoing and evildoing are not stopped there will be no humanity later this century. My newest book, "911!" explains why America needs rescued from the death grip of the power elite and proposes a detail plan for rescuing America and creating a new People's America.