Doug and Mike talk about the current dynamics of capitalism in reference to his book: 'Is capitalism sustainable?'

The core conflict Doug and Mike discuss is the fundamental conflict between public policy and private enterprise whereby there is an adverse incentive for business leaders to take advantage of government programs that are not broadly beneficial, but produce narrow benefits.

The core conflict is that if these managers do not participate, their board of directors have every incentive to replace them with other managers who will.

Doug's business specializes in partnering with companies and non-profits to create value and capture cost savings without layoffs to fund growth and strengthen financial results. 

You can find out more at  www.TerminalValue.biz

You can find the audio podcast feed at www.TerminalValuePodcast.com

You can find the video podcast feed at www.youtube.com/channel/UCV5a4QbT-dXhpgb-8HJHdGg

Schedule time with Doug to talk about your business at www.MeetDoug.Biz

<>

[Music]

[Introduction]

Welcome to the terminal value Podcast where each episode provides in depth insight about the long term value of companies and ideas in our current world. Your host for this podcast is Doug Utberg, the founder and principal consultant for Business of Life, LLC.

Doug: Okay Welcome to terminal value podcast. I have Michael Munger on the line here. This is actually a little bit of a moment for me. Because I have actually been a long time listener to the econ talk podcast. Where Mike has been a regular and recurring guests and one of my favorite guests of course. I think one of the first episodes I listened to was with Milton Friedman and well you know it's hard to compete with Milton Friedman. But Mike here is a world-class okie dokie guy and he has written actually a number of books. But the one that I wanted to talk about today just as a part of the conversation is his book is capitalism sustainable. Because I’d like to talk about really what the future of capitalism looks like. And Mike I’d love to get your thoughts or just kind of tee up the conversation. But just what I’m seeing is that you know I think what people call capitalism really isn't capitalism. People think of capitalism as what we have in America and that is not the furthest thing from capitalism because you know for a work trip recently, I went to China and Shanghai. Let me tell you that is very far from what we have in America. But still it's what we have now is very not a free market. There are any number of things that are very tightly controlled and not allowed to freely float, largely just because of people's political fears. And so  what I would love to get your input on is how does this project forward into the future? And is there a way that we can get to that vision of greater prosperity and opportunity for everybody. That capitalism pretends but has a very hard time delivering on due to the externalities and inevitable inequalities. So I’ve talked enough, please share your thoughts.

Michael: We make a distinction to begin with between markets and capitalism. So markets is a system of allocation and production that uses prices as signals about the relative value of resources. And one of the things that's complicated about large societies is that they have to have institutions to reconcile all of the conflicting plans and purposes of individuals. So I think I want to open a restaurant,...