This blog post revisits the structure of wealth and anxiety created by capitalism, examining whether a capitalism where the people are the masters—beyond the market and government—is possible, and exploring its conditions from the perspectives of welfare and ethics.

Warm Capitalism

We have long observed capitalism’s many faces. We’ve seen how capitalism, born with Adam Smith, transformed and evolved in the face of Marx’s direct challenge, how it survived, and how we ourselves, living within it, have changed throughout that process. Observing the principles of money circulation and the greed of the banking sector, we may have instead felt powerless. Faced with an endless stream of manufactured goods and marketers urging us to “buy now,” “buy more,” we might have felt uneasy, recognizing how easily swayed we often are. We might have felt pathetic, chasing money haphazardly without truly understanding the financial products we were buying.
But how we lived until now is now a secondary issue. What matters is what comes next. Will we pass on to our children a life like that of a fish gasping for breath, waiting for death? Or will we teach them, “If you want to survive, you must take someone else’s chair”?
One measure of how civilized a society is becomes how the weak are cared for. A world where we live together—that is the very image of the happy capitalism everyone dreams of. Therefore, we have now reached the point where we must move toward the most advanced form of capitalism, namely welfare capitalism. Let us hear from Roger Lowenstein, former Wall Street Journal reporter.

“Capitalism is an engine for producing wealth. It alleviates poverty. But wealth for whom? What is it for? Ultimately, this is a moral question. Beyond the ethics of accumulating wealth, we need other ethics. For the future, it is time to reconsider ethics.”

Perhaps the word ‘ethics’ might feel somewhat old-fashioned. Yet ethics can play a crucial role in supplementing, correcting, and proposing alternatives to the myriad problems plaguing our real society. If the greed of financial capital created today’s crisis, the solution can be found in ethics. The highest level of moral and ethical awakening humanity can achieve is precisely what can compensate for the worst flaws humanity has created.

Sustainable Happiness

The times give birth to policies, and policies govern individual lives. At the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Park in India’s Yamuna Park, the “Seven Deadly Sins” Gandhi spoke of are inscribed. Gandhi identified “politics without philosophy” as the first sin that ruins a nation.
So, what do experts think welfare capitalism should look like? They speak about the necessity of welfare and its developmental direction as follows.

“Is distribution as welfare important? Of course, a welfare system is necessary. Take China as an example. Many people attribute the high savings rate among Chinese to the absence of a welfare system. Welfare and social insurance systems are far more efficient than private savings, which carry various risks. Chinese people do not consume enough to balance the global economy because China lacks a social safety net. This is precisely the domain where the government must act. Without a robust welfare system, people feel they must pay their own costs and save individually. But relying solely on personal savings for welfare costs far more than shared responsibility.”

“Famous actors appear to promote insurance products. For example, individuals pay premiums like 290,000 won a month out of anxiety. They spend large sums driven by the fear of possibly contracting a serious illness. Failing to choose a public approach, they are pushed by anxiety to find their own way through private means—yet this is not a true path to survival. Such problems must be solved through public means, and that is precisely what a welfare state is.”

“I believe focusing on education and skill development is crucial. Ultimately, it creates a more productive citizenry. There are also people who, despite doing their best, cannot keep their jobs. Support like vocational training is needed to help such people return to the labor market. Doing so benefits society as a whole. An appropriate combination of rewards for performance and support is necessary.”

Let’s look at Denmark’s case. If a person loses their job due to changes in the industrial structure, not their own fault, the government sends them to an education and training program. This process might take six weeks, or in some cases, require a doctoral degree program. The government maintains 90 percent of their previous income until the training concludes. Afterward, it arranges job placements. If the job seeker refuses that job, the government offers a second one. Refusing that results in losing 90 percent of the subsidy. What happens next? People find jobs on their own.
No system that has ever emerged in human history has completely replaced capitalism. Capitalism has been the fundamental driving force and system that created the immense wealth humanity has accumulated thus far. The question now is, ‘Capitalism for whom?’ Capitalism up to now has been capitalism for capitalists, banks, and governments. The time has come for the benefits of capitalism to flow to the 99 percent of ordinary people.
The time has come to share capitalism’s powerful growth engine for the benefit of us all. By alleviating people’s anxieties about being left behind and resolving income inequality, we can build a capitalism where more people can feel happiness. I cautiously propose that this very vision may be one of the most sustainable forms of capitalism.