At Davos, Bill gates issued a call for a kinder capitalism which he calls “creative capitalism“. By now this is old news, but I have to comment.

First of all, I can’t think of a single system, program, etc. in the world’s history that has allowed more creativity than capitalism. If anything, the word “creative” should be a part of the definition of capitalism. With capitalism Bill has all the room in the world to be as creative as he wants - capitalism has always allowed him to do exactly that! Nobody stopped him in the past and nobody is stopping him now. This goes for Muhammad Yunus’ “Complete Capitalism” as well. Thanks to the “incompleteness” of capitalism Muhammad can also go and create his own version of what he considers to be a “complete capitalism”. John Mackey of Whole Foods seems to be doing what Mr. Gates and Mr. Yunus are trying to get at - more power to him.

I wonder if Bill either took no time at all, or racked his brain and frankly “creative”was simply the best he could come up with. In preparation for a talk at an event like the World Economic Forum in Davos, I like to think that Bill would have spent some time thinking about the word he would use to define the central concept in his speech. If so, then his choice just goes to show that capitalism can not be qualified with a human quality.

Can capatalism be creative? No. Can capatilism be loving? No. Can capitalism be mean? No. Can capitalism be funny? No. Why? Because capitalism is an inanimate economic system, and can not take on humanistic qualities. It’s amoral, apolitical, areligious, aetc. On the other hand - Can capitalism be modified as free-market? Yes.

What Bill should have said, and what would have made 100% more sense is - “we need kinder people in capitalism”. Aaaah, now that makes a little more sense. But, that would have admitted guilt. It wasn’t Bill that was oblivious and unconcerned with the poor when he led Microsoft - IT WAS THE CAPITALISTIC SYSTEM!

Although “kinder people in capitalism” makes more sense, I have to admit, it is still confusing, because, what does “kinder” mean? A boss may think it would be kinder to fire a low performing employee, because it would be good for that employee and would give the best possible chance for other higher performing employees to keep their jobs. As for the low performing employee, he or she may think it is kinder for the boss to let him or her keep the job at the expense of others. Bill has a huge problem here, and I am incredibly skeptical it is even possible to improve upon capitalism’s ability to most efficiently organize and allocate resources.

If Bill is talking about changing the system by implementing policies and laws that would “incentivize” and regulate corporations in an effort to coerce or force them to be kinder - then we’re going into dangerous territory. This reminds me of forcing companies to stop producing incandescent bulbs, for the “betterment of society”. If the new energy saving bulbs are so good, why does there have to be a law that forces a market to conform. Is this a market failure? If “market failure” means consumers aren’t well behaved like “the experts” says they should be, then we might as well adopt socialism in this country right now.

As for incentives, the government is absolutely and completely ineffective at “incentivizing” people to take a sincere interest in the poor. It is IMPOSSIBLE! Kindness, creativity and other human qualities are created from the inside out through the influence of sincerely kind and creative people, not by institutions. A little bit can be accomplished in this area, but like I said, it would on the whole be ineffective.

Can a person create programs, instiutions, frameworks, structures, etc that speak to the goodness in other people and therefore entice and inspire them to participate? Yes! This is one of the reasons Whole Foods is doing financially so well. It isn’t Whole Foods, the inanimate object, that deserves the credit, it is the creator, and the people the creator was able to attract?

There are millions of quick-fix solutions to satisfy Bill’s “impatient optimism”, and I’ll predict he’ll find a few with incentives and regulation that “work”, and then I’ll predict that every one of them fails. If Bill can make the paradigm shift from “kinder capitalism” to “kinder people in capitalism”, he will help himself and many people in the world to get away from a blame the system or blame other people mentality, and instead blame themselves. Excuses and anything else used to wash hands clean of personal responsibility is extremely destructive to society. “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”- right?

Any thoughts on who runs the best programs in the world for building good people?