Strong Capitalism
Playing entrepreneur on Hard Mode
Manifesto
The strong capitalist recognizes that free markets are the best way to create opportunity, innovation, and economic prosperity, while simultaneously acknowledging that in the absence of any other operating principles, capitalism leads to non-meritocratic wealth inequality, monopoly, resource depletion, and extraction. The strong capitalist demonstrates and upholds a set of additional behaviors which maximize the health, prosperity, and longevity of the free markets, even when those behaviors make their own success more difficult - AKA - “hard mode”. The strong capitalist is an honorable competitor, a source of inspiration to others, and deserving of their returns.
This draft paper proposes the principles to which strong capitalists agree to be mutually bound, accepting of the judgement of their peers for their standing.
Operating Principles
Beyond economic competition in free markets, the strong capitalist adheres to the following principles:
Encourage and Sustain Competition
The strong capitalist considers the lack of competitors a dishonor. Where is the greatness in running a race alone? Where the weak seek to eliminate competition, the strong capitalist encourages and delights in it. More competition means higher quality products and greater welfare for all. Never take an action to weaken a competitor - only take action which improve your own products. No monopolies or monopsonies.
Fair Pay
The strong capitalist recognizes that they will often have unfair leverage over workers, as their choice of a job may well not be made in an efficient market. The former workers of a strong capitalist will recommend their former employer irrespective of the value of their stock options.
Wealth Distributed by Merit
The wealth of a strong capitalist remains proportional to their net contributions to society, not to their re-use of accumulated capital. The strong capitalist recognizes and respects that, in the absence of incremental skill or merit, money can easily be used to create more money. The strong capitalist uses accumulated capital only to make bigger bets, not to attack competitors or create moats. Where appropriate, the strong capitalist redistributes gains to others to help with their own growth.
Do No Harm
The Strong Capitalist rejects products, services, team members, strategies, investments, or design patterns which do harm to the well-being of others. These behaviors are beneath them. They strive to be recognized as successfully improving the collective wealth and well-being of society in a competitive market of others with the same goal.
No Hiding
The strong capitalist does not use secrecy unfairly. They reject dark money, shell companies, and false identities as weakness. They always share information whose dissemination is to the public benefit, and never use private information to their advantage where the same information would not also be available to a competitor.
Personal Responsibility
The strong capitalist takes personal responsibility for the actions of their companies, co-workers, and investments - treating their actions as equivalent to his or her own.
Give Back
Where the patents, software, copywrites, or excess returns of a strong capitalist would create greater collective wealth and progress by being returned to the public interest than kept, they will do so.
Want to help/join me?
I wrote this because I have been feeling like Capitalism needs to be upgraded, and it seems like creating a pledge or manifesto - a movement to strengthen capitalism - might be the fastest way to do it. Government regulations are a lot slower and less effective than a bottom-up movement where people agree to play by different rules and then hold each other accountable to them.
In that spirit - if you are an entrepreneur who might consider living by these principles and want to help me edit this manifesto and get it to more people, start by adding your comments and suggestions to the public google doc link below. I’d love to have your help. What am I missing? What is overly utopian, unrealistic, or too poorly specified? Would you agree to all of these?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Wn_hp8QK9PHw4x00XsVbI2u_v-iqLXTI1ns5ARvki_4/edit?usp=sharing
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On a game field where most of the refs are corrupt and therefore cheaters/weak capitalists have an unfair advantage, some natural laws of cooperation and accountability must be built in, as in wolf and crow societies. Just as dark money has its own networks, strong capitalists need both a signal to each other and clients (workers, customers) and a form of network threat/accountability towards weak capitalists. Eg: if in a corrupt game, all the high integrity players veer towards only playing with other h.i. players, fans will eventually stop watching the low integrity games (see: WNBA ratings post Caitlin Clark injury). This might necessitate some form of reputational metacurrency as a store of alignment value to offset likely market differentials between h.i. and low i. companies.
Love this. It feels like what Robert Pirsig would call the next moral evolution of capitalism — reconnecting free markets to Quality. Not replacing the system, but re-infusing it with awareness, integrity, and creative responsibility. Strong capitalism is capitalism aligned with Dynamic Quality.