Joe: Capitalism is broken. We hear it everywhere. But what if the solution isn't to burn it all down, or to double down on greed? What if the real fix is something much older, something we've forgotten: a sense of duty. Lewis: A sense of duty? That sounds almost quaint, like something out of a black-and-white movie. In today's world of hyper-individualism, that feels like a pretty radical idea. Joe: It is! And that's the central, provocative argument in Paul Collier's book, The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties. It’s a book that’s been widely acclaimed, even praised by figures like Bill Gates, for trying to find a pragmatic way forward. Lewis: And Collier is a fascinating figure to be making this argument, right? He's not some anti-capitalist revolutionary. He's a top-tier economist at Oxford, a former director at the World Bank. He’s an insider. Joe: Exactly. And he brings this incredible personal perspective, which is what makes the book so compelling. He grew up in the heart of industrial Sheffield, a city whose steel industry thrived and then collapsed, and then he spent his adult life in the elite, booming world of Oxford. He has lived the very divide he writes about, which gives the book this powerful, authentic core. Lewis: Wow, so he’s seen both sides of the coin firsthand. The winners and the left behind. Joe: He really has. And that personal experience is the perfect entry point into his core diagnosis of what he calls the "new anxieties" tearing our societies apart.

Lewis: Okay, so what are these "new anxieties"? I mean, haven't we always had divides between the rich and poor, or between different regions? What's so new about it? Joe: That's the crucial question. Collier argues that what's new is the nature of the divide. For about a century, up until around 1980, the gaps between regions were actually narrowing. But since then, we've seen a violent divergence. You have these booming metropolises—think London, New York, Paris—that are sucking in talent and wealth, while at the same time, many provincial cities and towns are falling into disrepair and despair. Lewis: So it's not just a gap, it's a chasm that's actively widening. Joe: Precisely. And it's not just geographic. It's also educational and moral. There's a new class divide between the highly educated, who thrive in this new economy, and the less-educated, who feel left behind and, frankly, disrespected. Collier has this brilliant, cutting line where he says the new revolutionary force isn't the working class, the sans culottes, but the less-educated provincial, the sans cool. Lewis: The 'sans cool'. That's brutal, but it captures that sense of cultural stigma, doesn't it? That feeling of being looked down upon by the metropolitan elite. Joe: It really does. And his own life story is the most powerful illustration of this. He was born in Sheffield in the 1960s, a city that was a world leader in specialist steel. It was prosperous, proud. His family was part of that. On the very same day he was born, his cousin was born. They started at the exact same point. Lewis: Okay, I have a feeling this story doesn't have a happy ending for everyone. Joe: It’s a story of divergence. Collier was bright, he worked hard, and he got out. He made it to Oxford, became a world-renowned academic, knighted for his work. He lived the metropolitan dream. But his cousin's life took a different path. Her father died young, she became a teenage mother, and her life was a struggle. She stayed in a city whose economic heart had been ripped out. Lewis: Wow. That's heartbreaking. It really shows how two people born on the same day can have their lives diverge so completely based on a mix of luck, circumstance, and location. Joe: Exactly. And for Collier, this isn't just an anecdote; it's the central tragedy of modern capitalism. It's created these deep rifts that have shredded our sense of shared identity and mutual obligation. We have the educated, who are hothousing their own "trophy children" to succeed in this system, and the less-educated, who are watching their communities and families fall apart, leading to what he calls "deaths of despair." Lewis: And this despair is what fuels the anger we see in politics, right? The populism, the sense that the system is rigged. Joe: Absolutely. He says anxiety, anger, and despair have shredded people's political allegiances. And when that happens, nature abhors a vacuum. That vacuum gets filled by populists and ideologues who offer easy answers and someone to blame. But Collier argues their passionate 'cures' are often worse than the disease.

Lewis: Okay, so the diagnosis is pretty grim. We have these deep, painful rifts. Capitalism is delivering for some but leaving others in despair. How on earth do we start to fix it? It sounds like we need more than just a new government policy. Joe: We do. And this is where Collier makes his big move. He says the problem is fundamentally ethical. We've stripped morality out of capitalism, reducing it to a system of "economic man"—greedy, selfish, and lazy. He argues we need an "ethical reset," and he applies this to the family, the state, and most powerfully, the firm. Lewis: The 'ethical firm'. That sounds like an oxymoron to a lot of people. A company's job is to make money for shareholders, full stop. Joe: That's the Friedman doctrine that has dominated for 50 years. But Collier says that's a recipe for disaster. He contrasts it with firms that have a real sense of purpose beyond profit. And the best story he tells to illustrate this is the Johnson & Johnson Tylenol crisis in 1982. Lewis: Oh, I've heard about this. This is where someone was lacing the capsules with cyanide, right? Joe: Yes, in Chicago. Seven people died. It was a terrifying, unprecedented crisis. The standard corporate playbook at the time was to deny, deflect, and protect the bottom line. But Johnson & Johnson did something radical. Lewis: What happened? Joe: The company had a 'Credo', a moral statement written by its founder back in the 1940s. It said their first responsibility was to the people who use their products. It wasn't just a plaque on the wall; it was embedded in the culture. So, before top management in New York could even convene a meeting, local managers in Chicago, acting on that credo, went to the stores and pulled every single bottle of Tylenol off the shelves. Lewis: Wow, without even being told? Joe: Without being told. They took a massive financial hit, around $100 million, which was a huge sum back then. The media predicted the Tylenol brand was finished. But the public saw what they did. They saw a company that valued human life over profit. And what happened? Johnson & Johnson not only recovered its market share, it became the gold standard for corporate responsibility. The chairman even received a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Lewis: That's an incredible story. But it does feel like a relic from another era. Could a company do that today with activist shareholders breathing down their neck every quarter? Is an 'ethical firm' just a company with good PR? Joe: That’s the skeptical take, and it's a fair one. But Collier's point is that this ethical purpose is actually a massive competitive advantage. He tells another story about the car industry. For years, General Motors couldn't figure out why Toyota was making better cars more cheaply. They thought it was robots. Lewis: It's always robots. Joe: Right? So they set up a joint factory. Same factory, same workers, same car. But the Toyota-badged cars were built better and sold for a premium. The difference wasn't technology; it was trust. Toyota's culture was built on respecting its workers and giving them responsibility. Their mantra was "faults are treasures." GM's culture was adversarial. They didn't trust their workforce, and they couldn't replicate Toyota's success. Purpose and trust weren't just nice-to-haves; they were the secret sauce.

Joe: And this idea of purpose over pure ideology isn't just for companies. Collier argues it's the only way to fix our broken politics. Lewis: So he's basically saying both the far-left and far-right are selling snake oil? That we need to stop looking for a magic 'ism' to save us? Joe: Exactly. He says an ideology offers the "seductive combination of easy moral certainties and an all-purpose analysis." It feels good, it feels righteous, but it's a trap. He critiques the modern left for being captured by middle-class intellectuals who push policies based on abstract rights, ignoring the values of ordinary people. And he critiques the right for its worship of the market and its disdain for those who fail. Lewis: I can see that. It feels like politics is just two groups of people yelling about their moral superiority. One side feels morally superior for being compassionate, the other for being 'realistic'. Joe: That's a perfect summary of his point. He says an identity of being ‘on the left’ has become a lazy way of feeling morally superior, and an identity of being ‘on the right’ has become a lazy way of feeling ‘realistic’. He argues we need to escape this and return to a "pragmatic center." This isn't about bland compromise; it's about being grounded in evidence and in the shared moral sentiments that most of us actually have—a sense of fairness, loyalty, and reciprocity. Lewis: So how do we build that? How do you create a shared identity in a world that's so diverse and fragmented? Joe: Collier's answer is surprisingly simple: we build it around place. Not ethnicity, not a narrow set of values, but a shared belonging to our neighborhood, our city, our nation. He argues for a revival of patriotism—not nationalism, which is based on hating others, but patriotism, which is based on loving your own place and people and feeling a sense of obligation to them. Lewis: So it's about shifting the focus from "what are my rights?" to "what are my obligations to the people around me?" Joe: That is the absolute heart of the book. He says for one person to have a right, someone else must have an obligation. We've become a society of rights-claimers, and we've forgotten that a flourishing society is built on a dense web of mutual obligations. The ethical family, the ethical firm, the ethical state—they are all just mechanisms for generating and fulfilling these obligations.

Lewis: So if you had to boil this all down, what's the one big takeaway from Collier's vision for the future of capitalism? It feels like a huge, ambitious project. Joe: It is ambitious, and critics have pointed out that his solutions can feel broad. But the core insight is incredibly powerful. It's that capitalism is a tool, perhaps the most powerful tool for generating mass prosperity ever invented. But like any tool, it needs to be guided by human values. For the last 40 years, we've let it run on the single, corrosive value of pure self-interest. Lewis: And it's chewed through the social fabric. Joe: It has. Collier's argument is that we need to rebuild it on a foundation of reciprocal obligation—our duties to each other, in our families, our firms, and our nations. It’s not about destroying the system, but about giving it a soul again. It's about recognizing that we are not just consumers or workers; we are citizens who owe things to one another. Lewis: It makes you wonder, what's one small obligation we've been neglecting in our own lives or communities? Whether it's to a family member, a neighbor, or a local institution. It's a powerful question to sit with. Joe: Definitely. It shifts the focus from what we can get to what we can give. We'd love to hear what you all think about this idea of obligation. Is it a realistic path forward? Join the conversation on our socials and let us know. Lewis: This is Aibrary, signing off.