When we look at the current state of our planet, it should become clear to us that business as we have practiced it for the last two centuries is a thing of the past.
- The way we do business is damaging our planet. As a result, the climate has changed, the soil is already depleted in many places, and our soil and water are becoming increasingly polluted.
- The way we distribute corporate profits makes a few capital investors and entrepreneurs rich and, in return, exploits many workers. The exploitation of the poor is sometimes invisible to us in the West because it hits hardest those in third world countries who contribute their share to global value creation. No one benefits from this type of distribution. What rich person is truly happy with their wealth unless they use it to do good?
At the end of 2020, 1.2 percent of the world’s population owned around 47.8 percent of global wealth. In contrast, around 53 percent of the world’s population owned only 1.1 percent of global wealth.
Source: Statista
- The entire system is always geared toward the optimum for individual participants in the economic system and never toward the common good. Collateral damage to planet Earth is not factored in.
- A number of products and services that we offer do not really make our lives better, but are designed to create dependencies.
The current form of our economy survives on mass markets that produce products that serve artificially created needs, do not fulfill any real need, and are designed to be short-lived.
From the trend study Neo-Ecology by the Zukunftsinstitut
- Many products are only made to last for a limited time. Durable products and service-free or low-service products are a threat to the “more, more, more” business model of many companies.
- The conflict between companies and other companies, as well as between employees and their colleagues and superiors, weakens the whole. This in turn harms each individual.
- The way we do our work in companies is damaging our minds and our health. The real and mental assembly line work and the stress we cause ourselves and each other are problematic. A UN study on stress in the workplace reports 745,000 deaths worldwide each year due to overwork.
- Another problem in this context is the lack of influence that individual employees have on the company’s results and processes. As a result, many employees find it difficult to identify with their company and see themselves as victims of a poor working environment.
With all the knowledge we have at our disposal, has humanity really not come up with anything better? Let’s imagine we had to present this economic system to extraterrestrial visitors as representatives of planet Earth. Could we proudly say, “This is the result we’ve been working on for two centuries”?
I believe that many people also see a number of the points I describe here. However, too few people dare to call a spade a spade. Too many people still behave like the characters in fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes.
This economic system has no future if we want to have a future. One principle we should abandon particularly quickly is the principle that making money is the purpose of our economic activity, as stated in the Friedman-doctrine.
What we need instead is a change in consciousness and new principles that are superior to those we have had up to now. We need a model that gives people hope and inspires them. We need a model that will make those involved enthusiastically throw all the outdated principles of the previous economic system overboard.
Find out more: A new business model for a new age