Why are we missing a collective destination?

Will the present economic system be able to establish an appropriate level of moral, social, and material balance in the world?  

I don't think it can.

The present system is like an impersonal sucking machine which thrives on continuously  sucking juice from the bottom to the top. The higher you are in the system, the more juice you are able to suck. It is not because bad people are running the machine; just that the machine is built that way. The system was not designed to have any moral responsibility. At least that is not in practice. Discussion on moral responsibilities is an after-thought. This machine turns people into money-centric robots.

The stock market which is the ultimate judge of business success, does not grade businesses on the basis of its moral commitment. Moral issues were never included in their reporting template.

SOCIAL BUSINESS: I have been proposing and practising a new kind of business which is based on selflessness, replacing selfishness, of human beings. This type of business runs parallel to the selfishness-driven business that rules the world. Conventional business is personal profit-seeking business. The new business, which I am adding, is personal profit-forsaking business. It is a for-profit business, but personal profit-forsaking business. I call it social business -- a non-dividend company to solve human problems. Owner can take back his investment money, but nothing beyond that. After getting the investment money back all profit is ploughed back into the business to make it better and bigger. It stands between charity and conventional business. It is designed with the objectives of charity and carried out with the methodology of business, but delinked from personal profit-taking.

Charity is a great concept to help people, and has been in use since time immemorial. But it is not sustainable. Charity money goes out, does a wonderful job, but does not come back. Social business money gets the job done and then comes back. As a result, this money can be re-used endlessly. It creates independent self- sustaining enterprises, which have their own lives. These enterprises become self-fueled entities.  

Capitalist system is justified on the assumption that making money is the sole source of happiness. The more money you make the happier you are. Money is an incentive, no doubt, but it is not the only incentive for human beings. Making money is happiness; but I feel making the world happy, is super-happiness. Capitalist system is about freedom to choose. But when it comes to looking for happiness it gives no choice. By introducing social business, to make the world happy, we give people another choice. Now they can choose.

Business schools today train young people to become business-warriors to capture market and money. They are not given any social mission. If we accept the concept of social business, business schools will be required to produce another category of graduates equipping them to become social-problem-fighters to bring an end to social problems  through social businesses. We would need to create social stock markets to attract investors who would like to invest in problem-solving enterprises, without having any intention of making personal profit.  

INCOME DISPARITY: The present version of capitalism will never deliver equitable distribution of income. A system that is built as a sucking machine cannot bring equitable distribution. It was never put in its DNA.

In today's world, 85 individuals own more wealth than all those in the bottom half. Top half population of the world own 99 per cent the wealth of the world, leaving only 1.0 per cent for the bottom half. It may get worse because technology will remain under the control of the people at the top.

INDIFFERENCE OR WORSE: Indifference to other human beings is deeply embedded in the conceptual framework of economics. Theory of economics is based on the belief that human being is basically a personal gain-seeking being. Maximising personal profit is the core of economic rationality. This encourages a behaviour in human beings which may be described by a far harsher word than mere 'indifference' to other human beings.  

By its fundamental assumption Capitalist Man does not have any other virtue than selfishness. Real Man is a composite of many virtues. He enjoys relationship with other human beings. He is a caring man. He is a selfless man. He is a trusting man. We have many good examples to demonstrate these virtues. To show that he is a trusting man, take the case of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. The entire bank is built on trust. There is no effort in this bank to establish relationship with legal glue. It is a lawyer-free bank. It lends out over one and half billion dollars a year to 8.5 million poor women on the basis of trust only. Now it works in many other countries, including in the USA, exactly the same way. Repayment rate is close to 100 per cent.

GDP DOES NOT TELL THE STORY:  As we create a world based on selfishness, people move away from each other. In that selfish world the very way we create measurements of business success, itself fuels more selfishness.

Human society is an integrated whole. Its success or failure should be measured in a consolidated way, not purely on the basis of an aggregate of purposefully chosen economic information about individual performance.

GDP (gross domestic product) does not tell the whole story. We need something else to do that. It may be GDP-minus all human problems (poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, income inequality, status of women, lack of human rights, absence of law and order, lack of technology and opportunities for all people, etc.)

As we move from national scene to global scene, we see the extension of the same behaviour. Ideally, globalisation should have been the process to create a close global human family. But in practice, it is doing the other way. It is placing people and nations in a confrontational posture, each trying his best to enhance his selfish interest.

TECHNOLOGY: If the present variety of capitalism continues, the more we advance in technology, improve our infrastructure, spread globalisation, and bring 'efficiency' in the system, the more the system will become more fine-tuned in sucking the juice from the enormously wide bottom to transport it to the sharply thinner tops.

Technologies, particularly ICT, with progressively higher level of creativity, and speed of accessing information are changing the world faster and faster. There is indeed a surprise waiting in every corner. But there is no global vision driving these changes. Great innovations are designed and dedicated mostly for commercial successes. Creativity rushes in the direction wherever businesses see market potential. Nobody is putting up any highway signs to lead the world to its destination. It raises the question, does the world have a destination, or, should it have one? MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) are probably an attempt to define an immediate destination over a short period. That was a good beginning. We should have 15-year destination, and then, 50-year destination at the same time.  For every business we may post these goals along its path guiding them to expedite in reaching the goals within time, or ahead of time, and refrain from doing anything which will be counter to achieving those goals.

There are lots of amazing breakthroughs in the world, but they don't add up to becoming an unstoppable force to get the world to its destination because these breakthroughs are not in any way linked to any destination except daily goal of making personal profit. Given the power of technology and creativity any destination is reachable today. But it does not look like anybody is seriously concerned about a global destination. We gloat and float with our selfish personal/company goals. Since we do not have any collective direction, we are likely to waste our power by putting it behind random selfish forces, or, worse still, not using our power behind great opportunities which are not visible in the selfish radars.  

Why are we missing a collective destination? To begin with, education system is at fault. Young people are never asked to engage themselves in finding out what kind of world they would like to create. They are never told that they are the creators of that world. There is no curriculum in the school to let the students imagine their dream world, what steps they can take to build that dream world. They may be asked what things they are unhappy about in this world are. What are the things that will make them happy if they happen in the world. Once they start imagining a new world, they'll start making attempts to create it.

Professor Muhammad Yunus received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.