Time For Slow PR

Perhaps it would be trite to say that capitalism is in crisis.

But it seems fair to suggest it is in need of some good PR.

Certainly the disconnect between what the public wants from it and what it is actually delivering feels wider than I can ever remember.

What most voters want – a few gung-ho entrepreneurs/villains aside – is for things to get slowly better.

For them to see that if they work hard and play mostly by the rules, they’ll get ahead.

They will have better lives than their parents – their children’s lives will be better than their own.

Critics of capitalism tend to be academics, which means they get dismissed as pointy heads moralising from ivory towers without understanding just how hard it is to build or grow a business.

In his latest book, Capitalism and Crises, Colin Mayer accepts the charge while trying to offer practical solutions to both business people and governments about how they might do things better.

Mayer thinks one of the UK’s problems is that no one has a particularly big stake in anything.

Large investors own two or three percent of big companies – they don’t have enough skin in the game to really care, either financially or morally, unlike, say, Denmark or Sweden.

A review in the FT describes his position like this: “The UK is a sad counterpoint, paralysed by a financial system of absent owners, deprived of the regional banking system that shores up German capitalism and bereft of the business angels and venture capitalists who energise US start-ups.”

That isn’t a new criticism, but it seems ever more relevant.

Hack and flak land may be part of the problem. Both sides are trying to get through from one quarter to the next.

Hacks treat temporary setbacks as evidence of failure rather than business as normal. Flaks go into crisis mode.

Maybe we could all take a longer perspective. There seems little chance of that in an election year.