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The process through which we choose leaders neutralizes and reduces the capacities we want most in them. It’s cumulative as well; the longer you are in it, the more extreme the effects are likely to be over time.
We trumpet gross domestic product as the barometer of economic progress. Even the inventor of GDP, Simon Kuznets, said at its invention in 1934 that it was a terrible measure of national well-being and cautioned against using it as such, and here we are riding it into the ground eighty-seven years later.
Bobby Kennedy famously echoed this idea, saying that GDP “does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play…[I]t measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”
We are the purpose of the economy, not its fuel.
Human capitalism has three core tenets: Humanity is more important than money. The unit of an economy is each person, not each dollar. Markets exist to serve our common goals and interests.
