Chuck Blakeman
Aug 26, 2017 · 2 min read

Two understandable fales premises here:

  1. Ms. Chen is describing industrialism (win-lose, scarcity, competition that leaves others less well off, etc.) as capitalism. It is not. Capitalism has been around for thousands of years, functions on a local basis via the velocity of the dollar by people adding value to the world around them, and everybody benefits. Industrialism focuses on the accumulation of wealth, even at the expense of adding value if it can. Adding value creates expense — why do that if you can accumulate without adding value? And it takes the dollar out of circulation back to some obscure headquarters somewhere else. Wall Street and a good bit of the Walmart type companies are practicing industrialism, and have nothing to do with capitalism.
  2. 2nd false assumption — the game (of capitalism) seems self-absorbed and pointless. Again, industrialism, accumulation for the pure sake of accumulation, at whatever cost to others, is that self-absorbed and pointless game where competing means destroying challengers and defeating others, which is her sports analogy. Capitalism is motivated by adding value, and only gets paid as a demonstration that it has done so. It is directly involved in building a better world for those around it, and is motivated by that very meaningful external impact, not by how much it can extract from the world around it.

People need to stop throwing stones at things they haven’t done the work to understand. Industrialism is not capitalism, and people rightly disdain it for it’s self-absorbed, seemingly pointless need to extract (leaving others less well off), and destroy (beat the competition). Industrialism lives in a world of scarcity and zero sum games that does not reflect the real world around us. Capitalism lives in a world of abundance, addition and improvement that is exciting, motivating and enduring.

Industrialism and capitalism have little if anything in common. Ms. Chen’s book is about industrialism. I just wish she knew that and would have presented it that way to people, who now have one more false equivalency for hating capitalism, when they actually rightfully disdain industrialism, and almost certainly love capitalism, but don’t know it. Ms. Chen’s book will only serve to reinforce that misunderstanding.

)

    Chuck Blakeman

    Written by

    Founder of Crankset Group & 3to5 Club | Author, Speaker, Business Advisor | ChuckBlakeman.com