Dr. Geoffrey Brian West. How post-capitalism would look like?

(based on online-discussion panel)

“What do we mean by “post-capitalism” and “business”? Are we going to be moving into a post-capitalist society?”. Does that simply mean that there’s more or less government involvement? I believe the ideas mentioned above should be defined more clearly. There is a big issue which is the transition from one extreme to another, meaning that companies are there not just to facilitate between “houses and the community” but to make a profit. That was the fundamental drive in the past. However, what has been evolving slowly in the last couple of years is the transition towards an idea of social responsibility for companies; in some ways, they are obliged to take over roles that were embodied in the culture or were the part of what governments, administrations should facilitate. Nevertheless, having said that I would say that some of the things that are very clear in the present circumstance are that, first of all, when you have a major impact, major perturbation like we are going through now, that inevitably is an accelerator of processes that are already in place. Not only it starts new things, but more importantly, it accelerates things already happening, such as the role of IT, machine learning, and AI, etc. in formulating the way businesses are managed. 

I’m not a businessman, but as an academic who has studied businesses, it is apparent that if you want your business to survive, you must keep in mind (history lesson) that all businesses eventually die. Usually, their lifetime is not very long. In the United States, even a successful business that is already posted on the New York Stock Exchange, for example, cannot expect to survive for more than about ten years. So there is already this dynamic of a relatively short life span; of course, there are many exceptions to that, but in general, if a company wants to survive, it has to learn “what kills company” lessons in crisis. What typically kills them is that they have become ossified; they tend to have a burst of energy initially, but they quickly lose that spark of innovation, get dominated by bureaucracy and administration. Thus, companies can survive the way cities survive — the only way is to reinvent themselves at various times. In times of crisis, when the propensity is to contract and to get rid of those innovative parts of the company, they should think long-term and take advantage of opportunities that undoubtedly will occur (are occurring) to maintain or reinvent oneself. There is a long history of that, in the United States, companies like General Motors and old ones are dying now, some of them were simply bailed out by the government. 

Companies should adapt to new conditions, keep innovation at the forefront, change with the conditions, that means to be more flexible and adjust to remote working in times of need.  I believe that there are a lot of lessons to be learned from this pandemic.  It is important, especially for companies that haven’t done it yet – to engender a culture of “caring,” support employees, and recognize the struggles that people are going through. 

How to make the country’s economy and business environment independent from an ineffective government?

Logically, we need government, we need law and constraints. Still, at the same time, there should be room for a sense of freedom, freedom of action, freedom for markets to work, for entrepreneurship to develop and so on, but in a way it has a human dimension to that (with social responsibility). It became relevant even more in recent years because of the development of the internet and social media, especially companies like Facebook and Google, which are in a strange way playing the role I mentioned earlier: the government’s play. In some ways, they are setting the style, providing a platform, but at the same time, they are controlling what is allowed and what is not allowed. So we’re getting this integration of confusion much more than we had in the past. I think between culture, social networking, government controls, and compliments. I don’t think there is a simple answer to this; the government’s role should be moderate, not too extreme, and not too loose. I think we have to agree that we need government, we need law, we need constraints but we also need a sense of freedom, and freedom of action, freedom for markets to work for entrepreneurship to develop and so on. But in a way going back to some of the conversation we had before in a way that has the human dimension to it, and I use the phrase with social responsibility the companies. Now they need to make as part of their culture not just a good idea of making a profit which is obviously crucially important, otherwise the company dies, but equally important is now social responsibility and their role in being able to play that. And we see that of course it’s come much more to the fore in recent years because of the development of the internet and social media, especially companies like Facebook and Google which are in a strange way playing the role as I mentioned earlier really the government’s play. Because they are in some ways setting the style, meaning they’re open they’re providing a platform, but they’re also selling a style and a modality for social interaction, for the structure of social networks. And they themselves are in that governmental role or controlling flows, and what is allowed and what is not allowed and so on. So we’re getting this integration of confusion much more than we had in the past. I think between culture, social networking, government controls and compliments. Education is key to the future. Sadly in many countries, including the United States, education has become more narrow, more superficial and in many ways inadequate for the 21st century, and dynamics that are already taking place. Ironically the idea of appreciation of real knowledge began back in time (especially in the 19th century) and somehow we lost it along the way into the late 20th century. 

Dr. Geoffrey Brian West
Theoretical physicist, former president and distinguished professor of the Santa Fe Institute. He is the author of several books among which is Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies. He is a visiting Professor at Imperial College, London and an associate fellow at Oxford University.