The Story of Capitalism or at Least One Version of It

My Trail Notes From the Scene on Radio Capitalism Podcast Series

As part of my Heart-Strong adventure I started hiking a new and long trail. Not a dirt path through the woods, though I love those. This one is harder to see. It winds through history, economics, and the stories we tell ourselves about how the world works.

I recently listened to the podcast series Capitalism by Scene on Radio. Twelve episodes in total. Hosts John Biewen and Ellen McGirt walking through 500 years of economic history.

I thought I understood Capitalism. After all, I’m an entrepreneur having started a handful of companies. And I have an MBA with a concentration in Finance.

Turns out, Capitalism is complicated. Very complicated.

This post is the first in a series where I unpack Capitalism through the lenses of love and fear. And it is part of a broader exploration of Economics & Money and how financial systems and money anxiety drive fear-based behaviors in men.

I will explore:

• Alternative economic models (cooperatives, gift economies, barter systems)

• How economic insecurity and the breadwinner burden shape masculine identity

• Wealth and power dynamics among men

• Economic structures that foster fear-based vs. love-based decision making

• The role of competition, cooperation, and emerging systems like cryptocurrency

So let me start by first telling you about what I learned from John and Ellen on this trail of Capitalism.

This is a long one, so if you want to skip the history lesson, click the button below to jump straight to my reflections.

Before There Was Capitalism

For most of human history, land was not something you could just buy and sell. People lived in villages with commons. Shared grazing land. Wood gathering. Gleaning after harvest. Customary rights passed down through generations.

Power was unequal. Lords had more than peasants. But there were limits. There were obligations that went both ways. Life was hard, no question. But people generally had access to what they needed to survive. Land. Community. Place.

Then came enclosure.

Starting in the 1500s and 1600s, elites in England began fencing off the commons. They wanted that land for themselves. For sheep. For profit. Parliament backed them up. What had historically been customary rights became trespassing. People were pushed off the land their families had worked for generations.

This created something new at scale. The wage worker. Someone with nothing to sell but their time and their skill.

Enclosure did not just change boundaries. It changed what it meant to be human. Before, you were connected to land, to community, to place. After, you were labor. A resource. Something to be bought.

The Second Big Turn: Empire and Extraction

It was not just about England. The story of Capitalism cannot be told without the story of empire building.

Early Capitalism grew through conquest and forced labor as much as through free exchange. Plantation slavery in the Americas scaled up sugar, tobacco, and cotton. Gold, silver, and other goods flowed back to Europe. Ports grew. Insurers and banks rose to handle the volume. The podcast uses a blunt phrase for this. Colonial loot.

Even Adam Smith saw it. Smith is often held up as Capitalism’s champion. The invisible hand guy. But he also wrote that colonizers used superior weaponry to commit, with impunity, every sort of injustice.

Why does this matter? Because Capitalism’s origin story is not a peaceful spreading of markets among equals. It is a redrawing of what can be owned. Who counts as an owner. And what counts as property.

Once you admit people and ecosystems into the category of things to be controlled and owned for profit, a lot follows.

Machines Meet Misery: The Industrial Revolution

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, something changed. Coal and steam created a multiplier effect. Factories compressed work into buildings. Clocks organized time. Towns exploded in size.

And that desperate workforce created by enclosure? They now had somewhere to go. The factory floor.

But the machines needed more than just bodies. They needed a new way of thinking. Here is how scholar Kate Rigby summarized it. The economic shift that was underway drove an ideological shift. She says that the idea that humans should have a free hand and that they should aspire to complete mastery and exploitation was an absolute necessity for the takeoff of Capitalism. You cannot have any taboos or limitations on how you treat the land if your economy depends upon the exploitation of what we are going to call resources.

Think about that. To make Capitalism work, people had to start seeing nature as separate from themselves. As something to use and control. Not as something they were part of.

This was not just an economic shift. It was a shift in how people thought about the world and their place in it.

The American Arc: How the System Swings

The story of Capitalism in America shows us something important. The system is not fixed. It can tilt toward fairness or toward inequality depending on the choices we make.

Think of it like a pendulum. Sometimes it swings toward concentration of wealth and power. Sometimes it swings back toward balance. Three big swings tell the story.

First Gilded Age (late 1800s)

Power consolidates with railroads, steel, oil, and finance. The only rule was there were no rules. Monopolies form. Labor fights back. Strikes are met with courts and guns. Inequality soars. Government sides with capital.

The Mid-Century Truce (1930s-1970s)

The Great Depression hits. It discredits the idea that markets alone can keep society stable. The New Deal builds social insurance, bank rules, public jobs. Unions gain rights. Taxes on the wealthy rise. Big finance gets fenced off from deposit banking.

A broad middle class expands. But it is not equitable. Black Americans are excluded from housing and employment. Women’s paid work is undervalued. But the overall distribution is less extreme.

The culture shifts too. Corporate leaders are held back not just by law but by social norms about fairness and decency. There was a “we are all in this together ethic” carried over from wartime sacrifice.

The Neoliberal Turn (late 1970s onward)

A patient political project by business coalitions pushes policy back toward deregulation. Lower top tax rates. Weaker unions. Broader freedom for finance.

Reagan and Thatcher become symbols, but the trend is bipartisan. It goes on for decades. The operating theory becomes widely accepted across the political spectrum. Let markets decide. Government is the problem.

Gains flow mostly up to the owning class. Workers see their wages grow more slowly than their productivity. They work harder and produce more, but they do not get paid more for it. Inequality climbs again. By the 2000s, the economy has grown more financialized. More profits come from moving money around than from making things.

Why does this matter? Because this is proof that Capitalism is not fixed. The rules can change. When counterweights exist (labor standards, progressive taxation, antitrust, public investment) gains are shared more broadly. When those counterweights disappear, the system tips. Gains go to the top.

The Curtain Slips: 2008

I remember where I was when it happened. Maybe you do too. Two weeks prior I launched sales for my first company Atayne. I found myself saying, WTF?!?!

That morning in September 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the government. The whole financial system was collapsing.

Half-finished condo projects sat empty. Tens of thousands of homes were foreclosed. Massive evictions. People losing everything. For many, especially younger adults, the conclusion was bleak. Capitalism was not working. It had not been working. And it possibly was not ever going to work.

The podcast asks a basic question. What are the built in incentives? Here is what they mean. When things go well, banks and investment firms keep the profits. But when things go badly, taxpayers bail them out. Heads they win, tails we lose. If that is the system, then crises are not accidents. They are built into how the system works.

Same thing happens with pollution and other costs. If firms can push costs onto workers, communities, or the future, those costs will look like growth. Until they do not.

Follow the Chain: The Chocolate Story

To see how modern Capitalism works globally, the podcast follows chocolate.

Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire grow most of the world’s cocoa. In 2019, their governments tried to raise farmer incomes. They added four hundred dollars per ton.

But companies found ways around it. They lowered what they paid farmers in other ways. The big chocolate companies like Nestle, Hershey’s, and others still made billions in profits. Meanwhile, most cocoa farmers make less than two dollars a day. Young people leave rural farms. Some risk their lives to reach Europe.

One person asks, how is it possible that we get our valuable cocoa from their country, but they are dying to leave their country to come to ours?

The lesson of it all? Power decides who gets paid. Brands, finance, logistics, retailers. Mostly based in wealthy countries. They hold more power than farmers in poorer countries. Even fair-trade labels do not change these basics.

The structures changed after colonialism officially ended. But the flow of money (up the chain, toward the countries with more power) often did not.

The Tension at the Core

So, what is Capitalism good at? The podcast suggest it is mobilizing capital and talent fast, coordinating millions of decisions through prices, and scaling solutions when incentives line up.

What does it do poorly without guidance? Handling social and environmental costs. Keeping inequality from spiraling. Preventing power from building on itself. Staying stable when everyone panics at once.

The podcast says the answer is not to pretend Capitalism is all good or all bad. It is to see the tension clearly. When a society puts guardrails in place (rules for finance, labor standards, progressive taxation, antitrust, public investment) the system can work for more people. When those guardrails disappear, the system tips. As a result, gains go to the top. And with it, volatility grows, and trust erodes.

You can see both versions in American history. The mid-century period when people believed we were all in this together. And the recent decades when the idea became every person for themselves.

Here is what might matter most. It was not just laws that created the more balanced mid-century economy. It was also how people thought. Cultural beliefs about fairness and decency. Beliefs that held down executive pay. Beliefs that said companies owed something to workers and communities, not just shareholders.

When those beliefs faded, and when laws were loosened, the old patterns came back.

The Biggest Bill: Climate

The largest challenge, the podcast argues, is ecological.

A system built on endless growth and short-term profit will treat the atmosphere like a free garbage dump. The costs show up later. Floods, fires, heat waves, crop losses, and people forced from their homes.

If it costs nothing to pollute, then the cheapest choice is to pollute. If forests have no price, then the cheapest choice is to cut them down. For centuries, a stable climate was free. That time is coming to an end.

This is not saying we should all be poor. It is saying we need to rethink what prosperity means.

What People Are Building

The podcast does not just critique. It shows places where people are already changing the rules.

Regenerative economics. John Fullerton used to work at JP Morgan. Now he teaches something different. He says the human economy is a living system. The human economy is embedded in the biosphere. If we want to sustain ourselves for the long term, we must design our economy to align with natural systems.

Recommoning land. There are efforts to move land from speculation to stewardship. Transferring property to community land trusts, including Indigenous led trusts. The idea is simple. If land is not just a gambling chip, people can plan for the long term.

Cooperatives and worker ownership. From Mondragón networks in Spain to employee-owned firms in the US. These keep profits and decisions closer to the people doing the work. They do not get rid of markets. They change who has a say.

Mission finance and public banking. Directing money toward housing, small business, and green infrastructure. If the only rule is maximum profit now, money chases risky bets. If the rule becomes fair return with public benefit, you get different results.

The point is not to say these examples fix everything. It is to show that Capitalism has always been a set of rules. If you change the rules (what counts as success, who gets a vote, how costs are counted) you change what happens.

What I Am Wrestling With

So that is the story of Capitalism. Or at least a version of it. I have been sitting with this for a few weeks now. And what keeps coming up for me is not answers. It is questions.

Questions about love and fear. About whether the system I have built my career in can actually create the world I want to see.

I have a complicated relationship with Capitalism. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a professional basketball player. By eighth grade, I realized that was not going to happen. So, I decided the next best thing was to be a doctor. Financial security while also helping people.

I doubled down on science and math. Went to college as a biology major in the pre-med program. Then my sophomore year, I took an education class. Everything changed. I no longer wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to teach. I could change the world one student at a time.

Then my junior year, I read a book. Double Dip by the founders of Ben and Jerry’s. It changed my perspective completely. The book said business is the most powerful machine in the world. It can be used as a force for good or bad. And it could be one of the most powerful forces for positive change.

That captured my attention. That was it. I wanted to get into business. I wanted to start a company like Ben and Jerry’s. A company that would drive positive change in the world.

After college, I worked in marketing. Then I got my MBA. A couple years later, I launched my first company, Atayne. A running and cycling apparel company. We made everything from recycled or organic materials. All our manufacturing was done in the US with people getting paid a living wage. All our products were made on demand. We only made what was sold. We were a certified B Corp.

My whole vision was to change the apparel industry. Make it less harmful to people and the planet.

I soon realized that the strict environmental and social values we put on the company made it very hard to thrive in the traditional capitalist system. But I never left my beliefs. I am proud of what we did. But I never achieved the success with Atayne that I wanted. We did not change the apparel industry.

After exiting from Atayne, I started a consultancy with my wife. We help organizations align around their purpose.

My entire career has been based in the capitalist system. And I have always seen myself as a social entrepreneur. Someone trying to use Capitalism as a force for good. After listening to this podcast, I have really started to question whether it can be that way.

All throughout my adult life, I have told people that Capitalism is neither good nor bad. It is all about the people practicing it. It can be used as a force for good. It can be used as a force for extraction.

I do not know if I believe that anymore.

When I look at the actual history of Capitalism, I see how it is rooted in extraction and exploitation. That is what made it work. That is what enabled it to be successful. The ability to externalize costs. To push harm onto others. Onto workers. Onto communities. Onto the planet.

And when I think about wealth supremacy, I see how Capitalism enables a few people to hold so much power and resources. Just like patriarchy and white supremacy, wealth supremacy concentrates power in the hands of a few. And Capitalism is the primary structure these days that makes it possible.

The thing that really gets me is this. Culturally we seem willing to accept that for some to be successful and “thrive”, others literally have to suffer or die. We seem to be fine, myself included, living in a system where a few do really well, and most do really badly.

I am sitting with a lot of complexity. A system that is really good at moving resources up but not so good at taking care of the masses. That does not feel like love to me.

I feel at odds with a system where the scoreboard does not include the whole scoreboard. In most cases, we are only measuring what we produce based on extraction. The US measures gross domestic product. It does not even take into account what the human, let alone environmental, value of that product is. We could be manufacturing exclusively cigarettes and GDP could go up.

There is absolutely an argument that Capitalism has helped raise more people out of poverty than any other system. At the same time, it has created great inequality.

So here are the questions I am sitting with. The questions I will be unpacking in the coming weeks and months.

• What would it look like for Capitalism to be a love-based system? Or is it inherently a fear-based system?

• Is Capitalism the best way to create a love-based world?

• If Capitalism required humans to separate themselves from nature, to see land and people as resources to exploit, what does healing that separation look like? Especially for men who have been taught to dominate, extract, control. What would it mean to learn to steward, care, and tend instead?

• The breadwinner burden. The scarcity mindset. The equation of worth with earning power. How do we learn to relate to money from love instead of fear?

• What might shift if we approach money as a currency of love?

• If markets only care about those with money, how do we build systems that respond to human dignity rather than purchasing power?

• Men still hold disproportionate economic and political power. What role can men play in moving from an extractive economy to a regenerative one?

• When freed from fear-based thinking, what could men build with their economic and political power?

I certainly do not have any answers yet. But I think the questions themselves are worth sitting with. Maybe you have questions too. Maybe some of this lands with you. I would love to hear what comes up.

This is all part of the Adventure. Following the Economics and Money trail. Listening, learning, and asking better questions. Because if we want to heal the world, we need to heal men. And healing men means understanding the systems, including economic systems, that shape how we think, feel, and act.

Thank you for walking with me through this.