Meritocratic capitalism and sustainability

I believe the next decade will be critical. Business and investors can and must do more to build a resilient, healthy, fair and zero-carbon economy that’s sustainable.

DURING the ravages of WWII, intellectuals were pessimistic about the future. Among them was George Orwell (of Animal Farm fame) who begun to write 1984 – he saw the future as “a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

Events didn’t turn out so bad. Social-democratic capitalism, which dominated the mid-20th century, had evolved into a Liberal form of “Meritocratic Capitalism” (LMC) in the United States in particular.

As a political system, LMC was more egalitarian than classical capitalism; but it inherited a tolerance for inequality as societies got richer. This is in contrast to illiberal political capitalism as it emerged in China and Vietnam.