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Churchill once quipped that democracy was "the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried," and today many are saying the same of capitalism.
The line has served as both defense and warning, acting as an admission that democracy endures not because it is flawless, but because the alternatives have failed more spectacularly. Its survival proves relative success, not sufficiency for the future, and this is exactly where many see capitalism stand today.
Yet the system's endurance now collides with the growing disillusionment of younger generations. For instance, a recent survey found that 28% of Generation Z respondents said they somewhat or strongly preferred socialism over capitalism, almost matching the 29% who preferred capitalism.
This reflects a deeper skepticism that's afoot today that goes beyond policy preferences to question whether capitalism, in its current form, is delivering a viable future. Many young people feel the promises of upward mobility, secure employment, affordable housing and meaningful purpose have been deferred or hollowed out. In that light, the system appears to be creaking under the weight of expectations it can no longer fulfill.
When foundations such as stable jobs, home ownership and family formation feel less attainable, the bedrock of the system starts to shift. Capitalism's success has always depended on the promise of tomorrow; when that promise erodes, the system's legitimacy comes under strain.
And amidst the mess, some are deciding to take action to fix the system from within.
Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild is one of those who has taken that tension as her starting point. "You start where you are and you fix what you can reach," she told me in an interview. "And in my case, that means CEOs, boardrooms, and capital itself."
It is as good a manifesto as any for her mission that is by no means lacking in ambition. What she has set out to do is not to burn capitalism down, but to rewire it from within.
While critics from Rousseau to Galbraith have mapped the fault lines from inequality to exclusion and environmental degradation, de Rothschild is working on the harder problem capitalism presents today. How do we realign incentives and rebuild a sense of shared ownership in the system itself without which our modern economies would cease to function?
And the need for accomplishing this, or a version thereof, could not be clearer.
We no longer require philosophers to identify capitalism's cracks given how the seams of our social contract are under visible strain all around us. The only mystery at hand is how the backlash to capitalism so far has been so restrained, especially compared to the blood-soaked history of revolutions, many of which began for far less.
But don't confuse the calm for contentment.
On the contrary, the disillusionment is running deep, especially among the younger generations. Gen Z, more than any other cohort, is questioning the very premise of the system they've inherited. They are not storming the Bastille or flocking to Woodstock as their predecessors were, but from quiet quitting to seeking overemployment, their resistance to the status quo is no less visible or seismic in its potential impacts.
De Rothschild is blunt about what this erosion signals. "When people lose faith that the system will deliver a better future, they stop investing in it, including in the most personal ways, like starting a family," she told me. "That is the cost of exclusion. We cannot build a sustainable economy on resignation, we must do better."
Indeed, perhaps the loudest protest Gen Z and Millennials share is one where they have decided not to participate at all; continuing the game of life itself. In country after country, birth rates are collapsing to the point where annual statistical updates double as ritualised recognitions of world records no one but Malthus would celebrate.
In the U.S., fertility is at its lowest in recorded history and in South Korea it has plunged to 0.72 children per woman, far below the 2.1 replacement rate, and perhaps even further off if recent studies suggesting a 2.8 true replacement rate are correct. Japan, Italy, China, and much of Europe are not faring better by any measure. If you see a connection between late-stage capitalism and collapsing birth rates, you're in good company.
De Rothschild sees this not simply as a demographic issue but as a symptom of something deeper. "When people begin doubting the future and their part in it, when they no longer trust their institutions or feel that the system will reward their effort, they begin to withdraw. First from building families, then from building careers altogether. That is how societies unravel."
Which brings us to the workplace, where disillusionment is no less stark. In China, the "996" grind culture (9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week) has become a national flashpoint, sparking the "lie flat" movement where young people reject overwork and consumerism altogether. In the U.S., Gallup reports that fewer than one in three workers feel engaged at work. Quiet quitting, rage applying, and "coffee badging" have replaced lean-in ambition. And while older generations may sneer at this as laziness, researchers like Jean Twenge, Jonathan Haidt and many others point to an altogether different diagnosis: a collapse in meaning, agency, and trust.
It is as if the very scaffolding of meaning that once held up the economy together is faltering. And if younger generations no longer believe in the narrative, then there's no alternatives to rewriting the story of capitalism either for them, or by them.
The whole concept of a social contract assumes something shared over which the parties can contract. A sense of ownership, real or symbolic, is what binds communities together and legitimizes both duty and reward.
But modern capitalism, for all its dynamism, has largely abandoned the exploration of that shared ground. The economy hums, yes, but few feel that any meaningful slice of it belongs to them. And without that sense of belonging, why would anyone go out of their way to care for it?
As old saying goes, "nobody washes a rented car."
"The sense of ownership matters not just for the incentives it brings, but for the shared identities it can create. If people don't feel like stakeholders, why should they act like stewards? This is where modern capitalism is failing today," de Rothschild continues.
Much of what ails our societies, she argues, can be traced back to this growing sense of exclusion.
In our conversation, she lamented how "so many businesses don't take care of their people, or the communities they operate in, or the planet, and then we wonder why trust is collapsing."
The failure at hand might feel like a moral one, but it has deeply strategic effects, she notes: "If we're not ethical as business leaders, the market won't save us. We lose our license to operate. We lose our license to belong to the society around it. Fixing capitalism is not only an existential task, it's a systemic risk."
Rather understandably, de Rothschild doesn't argue for equal outcomes. Differences in outcomes, after all, can be tolerated, if not entirely desired, if there's a shared story about why it exists and a concrete ladder of mobility for those who aspire to move up. The problem now is that the story has broken down, and the ladder has been kicked off.
When the perceived rules of the game feel rigged or incoherent, the legitimacy of the game itself begins to erode, which is why de Rothschild calls for action on behalf of a better form of capitalism, not debates about competing systems that have been found ineffective in doing what we want done.
"This system has lifted more people out of poverty than any other in human history. It took us to the moon and put individualized health trackers on our fingers," she told me with a smile. "But that doesn't mean it's perfect, or even that we should tolerate its fixable faults. We should have the courage to repair what's broken. We should have the guts to dream bigger."
To de Rothschild, dreaming big does not mean waiting for systemic revolution. Nor does she believe that reform can be imposed top-down by regulation or academic theory. Instead, she is intent on rewriting the system to be more inclusive than before, and that starts with the narratives involved.
What makes de Rothschild's position on the matter particularly compelling is her own story which combines that of a self-made American executive, as well as member of one of Europe's storied banking families. Born to a middle-class family in New Jersey, de Rothschild graduated Columbia Law School at a time of corporate upheaval, first working in commercial law and media startups before becoming one of the most eminent leaders of our economy.. And yet, here she is, not defending the system's excesses, but trying to rewire them from the inside.
"America succeeds when it is good," she begins. "And when we lose that moral compass, business cannot function in a terrible world. We need to lift up the standards across the board, one company at a time."
As an emissary of a more inclusive form of capitalism, de Rothschild sits at the rare intersection of high finance, global diplomacy, a life lived within the bowels of the system and principled dissent. She's putting her vantage point to use, not by burning capitalism down, but by rewiring it from within with the Council of Inclusive Capitalism at the center of her efforts.
What began as a response to Pope Francis' 2019 call to action, has ballooned into an initiative that covers more than 500 members with over $10 trillion in assets and 200 million workers across the globe. When she launched the Council for Inclusive Capitalism to bring together CEOs, faith leaders, and economic thinkers committed to building a version of capitalism that serves the common good, the impressive metrics she's hit today were of much less importance than the impact the initiative has generated.
It's no accident that the Council has an almost spiritual take on its mission given how Pope Francis helped shape its core ethos. "The world needs more poetry than quarterly financial reports," de Rothschild told me. "CEOs often think they are speaking in prose, but all that comes across is jargon. We move people only when we inspire them. Pope Francis gives us that inspiration, and we've been building on it for half a decade."
The core inspiration behind the initiative may seem understated, but at the core, it is as bold as mission statements come. Making capitalism inclusive can either be an oxymoron or a pipedream depending on who you speak to, and it takes courage to stand against the tide in defense of a model that de Rothschild believes can only be fixed from within.
"The CEOs are in the best place to do this," de Rothschild begins. "I know that many of them want to. But they don't see the path forward, and some are stuck in short-term expectations, beholden to markets that penalize long-term thinking before it has time to pay off."
She is adamant that real change won't come from sloganeering, noting how recent attempts to dress marketing efforts as transformations have failed. "When ESG pretended to be a costless panacea without downsides," she said, "of course it failed. Doing the right thing comes with tradeoffs. The question leaders should ask themselves is whether they are willing to invest in the long term, and to commit to a future where the story of success is a shared one."
It is this socially shared storytelling where the Council for Inclusive Capitalism shines. Less a think tank than an operating table, the Council is where Fortune 100 executives, major investors, and faith leaders come together not just to talk, but to act.
After decades of excess, erosion, and institutional fragility, Inclusive Capitalism may just be capitalism's own self-correction reflex, reasserting a moral framework before the social body begins rejecting the system outright.
But can it clear the disease without killing the patient?
As Yuval Noah Harari aptly put it, all of the most powerful systems in human history have been hallucinated into being. Corporations, markets, even capitalism itself are legal fiction, narratives of a potential order, and they exist in the real world only to the extent we believe in them, enforce them, and teach them.
"We can choose to follow different norms tomorrow, if we so desire," de Rothschild says, echoing the sentiment. "It may not feel like it for the individual consumer, but we can decide what kind of economy we want to reward."
The main challenge, of course, is inertia. Systems don't shift easily, especially not ones designed to protect incumbents. Capitalism, for all its adaptability, has ossified in recent decades around quarterly returns, shareholder primacy, and regulatory arbitrage.
Few others know this topic as intimately as Professor Michael Posner, Director at the Center of Business and Human Rights at NYU Stern and author of Conscience Incorporated who reminded us in a recent interview of how "the system we have today is the direct product of the choices we made yesterday."
The choices companies make in their daily operations have consequences. As Posner posits in his book, the growing public awareness of corporate malfeasance hasn't led to meaningful reform. At best, transformation has been replaced by cosmetic gestures.
"Consumers are essentially living in a paradoxical state," Posner notes. "We know more than ever about how business harms people and the planet, but that hasn't translated into accountability. Instead, we're watching ethical failures in high resolution, while still checking out at the register."
Posner posits that regulation, while necessary, is not enough either. Markets are fast, laws are slow, and the damage to societal trust is done in the gap between them.
"Businesses need to devote far more of their resources to protecting basic human rights," Posner argues. "Building in a conscience to the corporate operating system should be considered the cost of admission."
It is statements like these where de Rothschild sees a new kind of leadership taking shape.
"This is how we change the story," she told me. "We help make CEOs the chief storytellers of a different kind of capitalism that doesn't just serve the few, but includes the many. One that people can believe in again and feel a sense of pride and ownership in."
The goal at hand isn't building a perfect society but one everyone feels worth participating in. And if Inclusive Capitalism works, it might just reintroduce meaning, dignity, and direction into a system that millions have begun to drift away from, not with rage, but with resignation.