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The Dignity Economy
Every era has its own ideology that creates assumptions and drives actions. At the turn of the century, titans like J.P. Morgan believed that monopolized industries provided stability against the disruptive influence of competition. More recently, the end of the Cold War was supposed to usher in a new era of capitalism and democracy.
It didn’t work out that way. Instead we got oligarchy, authoritarian populism and we lost trust in the institutions that used to govern our society. In America, even competitive capitalism has been greatly weakened. We believed that we could leave everything up to market and technological forces, but they failed us.
Today, we are in the midst of a set of profound generational shifts that will rapidly transform our society over the next decade. As we have throughout history, we will need to own up to our past mistakes and chart a new course. That will mean focusing less on technocratic solutions and more on building a culture rooted in basic dignity and respect.
The Rise Of Merit
In 1940, James Conant, the President of Harvard, gave a talk at the University of California that was soon republished in The Atlantic magazine. Entitled, “Education for a Classless Society,” it championed the idea of social mobility based on merit, rather than privilege being handed down through inheritance.
