More and more varieties of capitalism | Hinesight....for Foresight

A couple of years ago I posted about what seemed to be a flurry of new varieties of capitalism being written about. I listed 38 varieties in June 2021. Little did I know that I was just getting started. Today’s list is at 84. Granted, these are not all technically accurate economic alternatives and some are rants and some are marketing. Nonetheless, this proliferation suggests something is afoot. But what?

I see three major themes or groupings:

Advocacy: proposes a variation with a moral or “good” purpose to improve capitalism, typically expanding the benefits to a larger group of people

Critique: points out a major flaw or flaws within capitalism

Neutral: sticks closest to an economics classroom type discussion

Accountable capitalism	Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to require corporations with annual revenues of $1 billion or more to obtain a “federal charter.”
Adventure capitalism	A few thousand VC investors have funded enterprising ideas that have gone on to transform global business and the world economy.
American capitalism	The emergence of corporate behemoths like Amazon and the simultaneous shrinkage of organized labor has led to inequalities, corruption, and abandonment of the working class.
Anarcho-capitalism	Ideology of an absolutely free market and the abolishment of the state.
Asset-manager capitalism	Thanks to their mammoth scale and fondness for index-tracking investment strategies, they own a hefty chunk of virtually everything.
Aspirational capitalism	A new twist on cutthroat capitalism that is a different way to think about business success and obligation by setting out to create something truly great and lasting.
Authoritarian capitalism	China’s strong authoritarian state with wild capitalist dynamics can also be seen as an efficient form of a socialist state.
Behavioral capitalism	Human behavior, which used to serve primarily as a complementary raw material, has moved to be a production factor at the core of new business models and markets.
Black capitalism	An effort to create companies owned, staffed and managed largely by Black people that could lift up the broader community.
Cannibal capitalism	Invades all spheres of life, but might destroy itself and our own conditions for survival.
Can-do capitalism	Works by providing large taxpayer-funded government subsidies to industries that would otherwise not exist in an open market.
Capitalism without capital	Explores the extent to which value has become detached from the tangible, and the corresponding social and economic consequences.
Caring capitalism	Advocates basing the economy on a more rounded view of human nature than that one that just considers individuals as selfish calculators of utility.
Casino capitalism	When money is out of control, exchange rates and interest rates fluctuate widely and wildly and sheer luck begins to take over and to determine more and more of what happens to people.
Chokepoint capitalism	Exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others.
Cloud capitalism	Probing emotions deeply to tailor-make experiences that exploit our biases to produce market responses.
Common good capitalism	The method of achieving certain moral goods is the animating question.
Compassionate capitalism	Advocates for a contradictory machinery to run underneath the current global capitalism so that there could be some mitigating factors over the consequences for people in the world.
Connected capitalism	When companies connect the bottom line of their businesses with a social conscience.
Community capitalism	An effort to create companies that lift up the broader community.
Conscious capitalism	Believes consumers will do good if given the opportunity to do so.
Consumer capitalism	Consumer demand is manipulated in a deliberate and coordinated way on a very large scale through mass-marketing techniques.
Contra capitalism	Practices that go counter to or against capitalism.
Control capitalism	Increase in private ownership, in which owners control the enterprise and only answer to themselves, compared to public company’s owner/leaders beholden to investors.
Corporate capitalism	Disregard for the needs of workers, families, and communities; along with its contempt for regulatory and ecological boundaries.
Counterfeit capitalism	Businesses that compete solely on access to capital, which they use to create products that are worth less than the sum of their parts.
Crack-up capitalism	Holds that the world economy is a lot more fragmented and disunited than is realized, with many political actors keen on actually accelerating it.
Crony capitalism	Businesses thrive not as a result of risk, but rather as a return on money amassed through a nexus between business and politics.
Data capitalism	Aka surveillance capitalism, it is the unrestricted use of private human experience as a source of free data on human behavior and is used as a source of profit.
Destitution capitalism	The state should not regulate economic activity for the greater good but is ever more intrusive in its surveillance of the lives.
Disaster capitalism	Politicians and the private sector exploit disaster to grow richer from it.
Distributed capitalism	Decentralized systems that aim to create permissionless usage by avoiding centralized gatekeepers.
Emotional capitalism	Dual process by which emotional and economic relationships come to define and shape each other.
End-stage capitalism	Suggests the need to begin asking if civilization is going to survive capitalism in this form.
Extractive capitalism	A small elite securing an excessive slice of the economic pie.
Extreme capitalism	The rich raise too much money and leave too little for the rest of society leading to a decline in consumption and stagnation.
Fake capitalism	The result when government policies channel economic activity into small numbers of large, powerful companies.
Financial capitalism	Economic surplus is claimed by passively extracting interest or economic rents broadly rather than contributing to production.
Free-market capitalism	The laws of supply and demand, rather than a central government, regulates production, labor, and the marketplace.
Gangster capitalism	Derived from a true crime podcast that is focused on the dark side of the American dream.
Global capitalism	Suggests real transformation can only happen if those in the global north join forces with migrants and exploited workers in the global south.
Gonzo capitalism	Explores outside-the-box methods for earning money.
Green capitalism	Market-based approaches to solving the climate crisis that has come under attack from some environmentalists for greenwashing.
Inclusive capitalism	Investment that delivers positive economic and positive social outcomes is the best way to achieve progress at scale by enabling more people to benefit.
Industrial capitalism	Capitalism based on production of goods in contrast to financial capitalism based on finance.
Intangible capitalism	Corporate returns, productivity, and economic growth will increasingly be tied to a dematerialized, digitized, knowledge-driven world.
Intellectual monopoly capitalism	Knowledge, which should be a (non-rival, non-exclusive) public good, has been privately appropriated by top companies as capital.
Internalized capitalism	Idea that our self-worth is directly linked to our productivity.
Late capitalism	A catchall phrase for the indignities and absurdities of our contemporary economy, with its inequality and super-powered corporations and shrinking middle class.
Low-road capitalism	Wages are depressed as businesses compete over the price, not the quality, of goods; so-called unskilled workers are typically incentivized through punishments, not promotions; and inequality reigns and poverty spreads.
Modern capitalism	Skeptics say too many businesses extract value from the economy rather than add it by using monopoly power, or favorable treatment from conflicted or ideologically friendly regulators.
Money-centered capitalism	Critics say more weight should be placed on the value of cashless exchange, including self-sufficiency, barter, and gifting,
Monocapitalism	Aka financial capitalism, which focuses strictly on the financial aspect and decapitalizes the entire system.
Multicapitalism	Proposes a move to a system value view where six different types of capital are created and maintained within systemic interconnections.
Neoliberal capitalism	The current capitalist Baseline, which is defined by privatization, deregulation, free trade, commodification of public goods, and managed by international institutions, and using other decentralized institutions like NGOs and think thanks to influence public opinion.
Naked capitalism	Capitalism’s tattered and moth-eaten clothes have fallen off, revealing a naked body that serves only the privileged few.
Nationalist capitalism	A new recipe in which a large sector of private enterprises co-exists with a large sector of state-owned enterprises.
Network capitalism	Emphasizes multi-stakeholder networks, and the ability to engage in meaningful stakeholder partnerships.
New capitalism	Japan’s program of driving growth via an economic strategy focused on investment in human resources, science and technology, innovation, and start-ups, as well as green and digital transformation.
Participatory capitalism	A system where power and economic rewards are distributed between participants.
Patriotic capitalism	Notion of putting the best interests of the country at the top of the pecking order.
Perfect capitalism	Michio Kaku’s concept that the wealth of society comes from physics and will eventually produce infinite knowledge of supply and demand.
Platform capitalism	A system where power and economic rewards are distributed between networked participants.
Post-Covid capitalism	Regression playing out in India with the contraction of the economy, massive job losses and ruinous medical expenditures.
Predatory capitalism	Characterized by businesses that prey on each other, people, and the environment and that destroy or absorb their competition.
Psychedelic capitalism	People making money off medicines that, in the case of some psychedelics at least, have existed for millennia.
Racial capitalism	Process of deriving value from the racial identity of others, harms the individuals affected and society as a whole.
Rainbow capitalism	Economic involvement in the appropriating and profiting from the LGBT movement.
Ransom capitalism	The process of capital (e.g., IMF, World Bank and multinational corporations) holding the public for ransom during financial, energy and even public health crises
Regenerative capitalism	Looks beyond net-zero emissions and setting eyes on leaving a net-positive impact on the planet.
Rentier capitalism	Having and owning – thereby controlling access – is enormously more profitable than making or serving.
Responsible capitalism	Operates at the intersection of commercial, social and sustainable development.
Satoyama capitalism	Japanese concept that fills the gap of truly money-centered capitalism by putting more weight on the value of cashless exchange, including self-sufficiency, bartering and gifting,
Savage capitalism	Capitalism is at a decision point where it will be decided whether the human experiment on Earth will continue in any recognizable form.
Spiderweb capitalism	The shadowy, international web of political and economic elites and the secretive and corrupt practices they use to make and protect their money.
Stakeholder capitalism	The idea that businesses have a responsibility that extends beyond their shareholders.
State capitalism	Originally conceived as a transitional stage en route to a socialism different from and beyond state capitalism that has come to define socialism.
Surveillance capitalism	Unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data for economic use.
Sustainable capitalism	Integrates sustainability into the traditional capitalist model to maximize profits while minimizing negative environmental and social impacts.
Twenty-first century capitalism	Capitalists are not by and large reinvesting their profits to develop new capacities to expand output or increase labor productivity.
Values-based capitalism	Advocates changing the dynamics of politics, towards a system where businesses are active participants in shaping a better society.
Vulture capitalism	Nurtured in US, focuses wholly on corporate survival and success for shareholders at the expense of workers, managers, communities, and country.
White capitalism	Black activist term for the economic system and the racial structures that are connected with policing that literally kills black people.
Woke capitalism	A form of marketing, advertising and corporate structures related to sociopolitical standpoints tied to social justice and activist causes.

Varieties of Capitalism …A. Hines

The majority of the varieties were critiques (n=49) or 58%. Next were the advocacy proposals (n=20) or 24%, and finally the neutral analytical varieties (n=15) or 18%. In short, there is a large and growing chorus of complaints about capitalism. There is a smaller set of ideas on what to do about it, and fewer yet serious proposals. This absolutely fits with my sense of the state of play today. — Andy Hines

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