A sensible alternative to ESG

Capitalism Reconnected, a book by Jan Peter Balkenende and Govert Buijs, is a must-read, a tour de force of analysis and policymaking.

Why?

The book is an accurate assessment of our world currently, both in Europe and globally. Intellectually, it rests on very firm foundations of fact – historic and current.

Second, it delivers on giving the reader practical but farsighted, idealistic but feasible, implementation proposals for businesses, governments, and non-governmental organizations.

It is a roadmap laying out before us organizational structures and key performance indicators at the macro, meso, and micro levels of human endeavor. It assigns roles and responsibilities with clarity and conviction, making collaboration among multiple actors much more feasible.

Third, the book is values-based. It gets to the very heart of the human experience on this planet, generation after generation. The authors correctly recognize that outcomes (global warming, economic inequality) result from behaviors. and behaviors are the residual of values.

But its call for values is not unrealistic, ideological or myopic. The book just provides comforting common-sense approaches to understanding and policymaking.

The book is a deft exercise in what Aristotle called phronesis – practical wisdom, and virtue. Aristotle said that the mark of a prudent person is the ability to “deliberate rightly about what is good and advantageous.” Such deliberation has as its end action in the arena of human goods.

The insights of Capitalism Reconnected should supersede ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance) as the mantra for our times. ESG is but gossamer, a display of prettiness to attract but is only a superficiality that falls apart in a