Introduction

We are living through an era of deep disruption. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, our societies have entered a new phase of instability. Wars are flaring across continents. Authoritarianism is resurgent. Economic inequality is growing - within nations and across them. Ecological collapse is accelerating through extreme weather, biodiversity loss, and the degradation of shared planetary systems. These forces, in turn, are driving mass migration and political unrest. Meanwhile, exponential advances in technology - especially artificial intelligence - are reshaping our lives faster than our institutions, media, or civic cultures can adapt.

The result is disorientation. To many, it feels as if we are sleepwalking toward collapse. The basic idea underpinning the postwar Western civilizational model - that technoscientific and economic progress, guided by liberal democratic principles, would ensure peace and prosperity for all - no longer holds. Its unintended consequences now threaten to outweigh its achievements. And yet, in the face of this looming failure, resignation is not an option. We need a new direction.

This book offers one. It argues for a New Enlightenment - an ethical reawakening that reconnects human flourishing with the systems that shape our economies and societies. At its core is a simple but transformative claim: the business of business is doing good.

Rather than calling for the wholesale rejection of capitalism - which would be both strategically misguided and geopolitically reckless - we must undertake a revolution within capitalism. This means reconfiguring economic life so that moral good and financial success are not opposites, but allies. We need business models that generate returns by creating social and ecological value - not by depleting them. This is the vision I call ethical capitalism.

The premise is intuitive: given two companies with equal profits, we instinctively prefer the one that treats its workers well, supports its community, and produces goods sustainably. This shared moral intuition is not a luxury. It is a compass for institutional design. Ethical capitalism draws from deep philosophical foundations and is gaining traction across fields from moral political economy to corporate governance.

But this is not just a theoretical exercise. It points toward concrete proposals: ethics departments with the same authority as finance teams; expanded democratic rights - including suffrage for children; and a new digital infrastructure designed not for surveillance or manipulation, but for moral progress.

We don't need to destroy the old order - we need to reform it from the inside out. There is a path between the technocratic fantasy of controlling global market forces through regulation alone and the libertarian dream of unleashing them without restraint. Ethical capitalism proposes a recoupling: reconnecting markets, law, and liberal society in service of moral progress.

The reforms this book advocates are bold. Business must learn to govern itself through ethical insight, not just legal compliance. Self-regulation - grounded in shared moral goals - can serve as the foundation for social emancipation. The alternative is not just political chaos, but the risk of authoritarian systems co-opting capitalism in ways that hollow out democracy. If liberal capitalism is to survive, it must evolve. It must become a force for good.

This is not utopianism. Ethical capitalism is a realistic, future-oriented response to the challenges of our time. It begins with a simple truth: we are not merely consumers, voters, or data points - we are value-producing, meaning-seeking beings. Doing Good is a call to redesign our institutions accordingly - before it's too late.

The civilizational model of modernity is under mounting pressure. Its promise - that liberal democracy, powered by economic and technological progress, would lead to lasting peace, prosperity, and freedom - is breaking down. Its collateral damage is now accumulating faster than its benefits. Hence the growing hunger, across intellectual, political, and cultural spheres, for radically new, future-oriented ideas.

This book is one such attempt. It calls for a new social contract - one capable of addressing the hypercomplex, nested crises of our time. It proposes a New Enlightenment: a project of moral progress rooted not in abstraction or nostalgia, but in the recoupling of ethics and economic action. Only by bringing our markets back into alignment with our highest values can we hope to build a future worth inheriting.

The business of business is doing good

We do not need an all-out revolution, nor the dismantling of liberal democracy. Calls for systems change often underestimate the unintended consequences such upheaval would bring. In fact, for liberal societies, revolutionary upheaval would likely deepen existing crises. The core framework of our system - grounded in the liberal democratic rule of law - is not the problem. On the contrary, it remains a powerful institutional structure for advancing moral progress. But for this potential to be realized, our economic models and understanding of business must be reformed.

What we need are bold, deep innovations across every sector - innovations led by a novel vision of the good. This vision must be both grounded and aspirational, rooted in the realities of contemporary life while oriented toward a more sustainable and just future. I call this project deep innovation.1

To imagine such a future, we must look beyond the bleak horizon of the present and recover the idea of progress - not as blind growth, but as positive social change. Here, "positive social change" includes ethical enhancement. That kind of change requires a shared vision of the good: one that transcends individual preference and offers a binding ethical orientation. At present, no such vision exists. We must therefore create it - by thinking fast forward.

In modern societies, the economy plays a foundational role in shaping stability, opportunity, and the conditions of human flourishing. This book argues that the New Enlightenment we so urgently need can and must take root in economic life. Business, in this view, is not exempt from ethical responsibility - it is the very place where ethical transformation can begin.

Against the famous dictum of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman - that "the business of business is business" - it is time to change course. The business of business is doing good - and profiting from it.

This claim rests on a simple premise. Imagine two companies with roughly equal revenues. To make things obvious, let us call them Bad and Good. Bad generates high profits but does so through environmental harm, exploitative labor practices, and a toxic workplace culture. Good, by contrast, matches Bad in economic terms but distinguishes itself by fostering well-being among employees, investing in local communities, producing ecologically sustainable goods, and partnering with socially oriented enterprises.

Without hesitation, most of us would agree that Good is the better company - even though both make the same profit. This is a basic moral intuition, one we encounter across cultures and traditions: that it is better to do well by doing good. As Immanuel Kant framed it, the "highest good" is happiness that flows from moral worth - not from arbitrary or harmful behavior.

This idea is not a utopian abstraction. It is a practical guide for building better institutions. Economist Colin Mayer has argued that capitalism must be judged by whether it fulfills its original promise: to solve human problems through market mechanisms. For capitalism to retain legitimacy, it must align with our ethical lives - not just our financial interests. He argues that this means that it ought to be reoriented in light of a corresponding "moral law."2

In what follows, I draw on recent developments in the emerging field of moral political economy, which expands the very meaning of progress to include human flourishing, cooperative problem-solving, and ethical entrepreneurship.3 This vision demands new institutional structures - public and private - that enable markets to serve the common good.

The slogan "the business of business is doing good" is not wishful thinking. It is an actionable imperative - and one that is already supported by both cautionary tales and inspiring examples in the real world.

The case of social network services (SNS)

The social networking service (SNS) industry - Facebook, Twitter (now X), WhatsApp, Snapchat, TikTok, and others - stands as a paradox of our time. Economically, these companies are among the most successful in history. And yet, their business models have increasingly come at the expense of democratic stability and social cohesion.

Each, in its own way, has contributed to democratic backsliding by enabling the spread of conspiracy theories, disinformation, election manipulation, financial fraud, and mass surveillance. What began as a promise - to connect people, nurture communities, and foster global freedom - has morphed into something far more equivocal. While SNS platforms initially presented themselves as ethical projects, reality has since revealed their vulnerabilities and dangers. The...