From DSC:
The following article from McKinsey would be a source of a great assignment for students and faculty members who are studying Economics (and I could also add those studying Social Work, Healthcare, Political Science, and some other fields):

  • Redefining capitalism — from mckinsey.com by Eric Beinhocker and Nick Hanauer | September 2014
    Despite its ability to generate prosperity, capitalism is under attack. By shaking up our long-held assumptions about how and why the system works, we can improve it.

 

Potential questions:

  • What are the basic tenets of capitalism?
  • How is it taught?
  • What are the main points that the authors want you to grapple with?
  • Do you agree or disagree with their main points?  If so, why?  Do you have some resources that back up your viewpoints?
  • What are your views on capitalism and what it should achieve?
  • Do robotics, algorithms, and automation impact any of your arguments/perspectives?

 

Excerpt:

What problems do you solve?
Once we understand that the solutions capitalism produces are what creates real prosperity in people’s lives, and that the rate at which we create solutions is true economic growth, then it becomes obvious that entrepreneurs and business leaders bear a major part of both the credit and the responsibility for creating societal prosperity. But standard measures of business’s contribution—profits, growth rates, and shareholder value—are poor proxies. Businesses contribute to society by creating and making available products and services that improve people’s lives in tangible ways, while simultaneously providing employment that enables people to afford the products and services of other businesses. It sounds basic, and it is, but our economic theories and metrics don’t frame things this way.

Today our culture celebrates money and wealth as the benchmarks of success. This has been reinforced by the prevailing theory. Suppose that instead we celebrated innovative solutions to human problems. Imagine being at a party and rather than being asked, “What do you do?”—code for how much money do you make and what status do you have—you were asked, “What problems do you solve?” Both capitalism and our society would be the better for it.