HUFFINGTON
10.20.13
SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES
Voices
PAUL
POLMAN
Where Our Moral Compass
Meets the Bottom Line
I
T WAS WINSTON CHURCHILL who famously said that
“democracy was the worst form of government apart from
all the others that had been tried.” Much the same can be
said for capitalism, particularly the form of capitalism that
has been practiced over the past 20 years. ¶ This form of
capitalism certainly has some strong points. Over the past
50 years or so capitalism has been directly responsible for
lifting nearly half a billion people out of poverty, for revolutionizing health and medical care and for the creation of
digital technologies that are transforming the lives of people everywhere. ¶ But modern capitalism has also resulted
in huge extremes of wealth, significant debt at both individual and government levels, creation of financial instruments that have no social value at all and the unsustainable use of scarce physical and natural resources.
Occupy
Wall Street
protesters
demonstrate
at Zuccotti
Park on the
movement’s
second
anniversary
on September
17, 2013.