Hello there, I'm Ed Butler.

Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC.

Today, one of the world's best-known economic contrarians

offers us his alternative to capitalism.

Maybe it is possible to combine efficiency with economic democracy.

If you have one share, one vote per employee,

and creating this kind of democratic corporation,

it would be unleashing the creative power of the market. A new vision for the company, Blue Sky Thinking, here on Business Daily from the BBC.

The collapse of the Soviet Empire back in the late 1980s created a bit of a problem, frankly

for some people, on the left of the political spectrum. Communism, it seemed, had decisively

failed, and radicals were left struggling to find an easy, clearly articulable alternative to

the standard mode of wealth creation,

the market. Capitalism, in other words. But right now, amidst the pandemic and all of the

special economic measures by which governments and central banks are trying to protect us from

the fallout, is that changing? Could something new, different, what you might

call post-capitalism, be with us rather sooner than we think? Look at financial markets at a time

when the real economy has tanked. There is a complete decoupling because of the role of central

banks and governments.

That's not capitalism. It's not what Adam Smith had in mind. It's not what Milton Friedman had in mind.

It's not what Friedrich von Haig had in mind.

So we're already, in my estimation, something that can be reasonably described as post-capitalism.

The question is, is it working?

...