program to do and if you look historically across civilizations and of human societies and the time we have been given the freedom to focus on what we choose to focus on and then to be able to exchange with others we have prospered for the wasn't deny that in the ideology of socialism their idea was that your god was the highest form of freedom when you could contribute to decide and by doing so also improve your own wellbeing that was at least the ideology that was arguably never put into practice i think the underlying premise of socialism is the motion of a fixed by and therefore the onus is on the fair distribution of those limited goods or those outcomes. fundamentally what capitalism shows us and what business is all about is an expanding by that there's almost no limit to the amount of value that can be created when people come together and they cooperate and they elevates the amount of value that there's exchange constantly and if you look at an i phone

you buy it for a few hundred dollars this several billion dollars of technology that's inside of that but through the system we're able to get access to that militant really much lower amount so there is you know the opportunity to create of expanding pool of you whereby then the equal distribution of that becomes less of an issue because within that system there will be inequality doesn't matter how much you force it into equality of opportunity is one thing which we should have that equality of outcome can never be too i wonder if when we talk about conscious capitalism we are really mix and conscious with conscientiousness because if i'm a smart business leader with even a smidgen of our social intelligence i would understand that working my people into the ground and treating them unfairly is ultimately you're bad for my business but i think you have a different idea how with creating this sustainable operation focused on profit

making big difference from what you are advocating well i think. in lightened self-interest sensually is what you're talking mud which is has always been the case and very had conscious businesses for hundreds of years without using the label but i think what what god capitalism do. was this notion that economists brought to it which was the idea of profit maximisation so they somehow made that the only objective function and this is about maximizing profits and subject to all the various constraints so they essentially reduced business which is a tremendously complex human undertaking to some kind of a math problem and gave it a symbol object simple single objective function and it became a self. you talk a lot about love and care the center of company's culture and i think in your definition of. you see it as something as both renewable and reciprocal but

both love and care aren't always fairly distributed i mean there are people who can take advantage of those who show them care and i wonder how would you make sure that love and care at a workplace don't degenerate into abuse and manipulation of our think it has to be blended with wisdom and strength. so it's not about. giving in to what people want it's almost you know if you think about tough love or parenting as a as a metaphor it's knowing what's vital knowing what's good right overall. so having leaders who are able to blend strength as well as love and care is very important because if you just have love and care then as you said you know it can be taken advantage of it can be exploited so you need to be able to make the tough choices when it is necessary but even those are made from a place of caring and compassion so that even when sometimes you have to downsize

and let people go these companies will go to extreme lengths to make sure that those people have been given opportunities to find alternatives and some of the reason why i ask this question is because there are a number of countries in particular russia where western business executives find it extremely hard to implement basic western management principles and the main reason for that is that people. really draw the line here a bit in the personal and professional and it has deep roots in the russia's own history and the communist past one of these distinctions that then personal and collective was eradicated so i think what you're arguing for it comes from a totally different add these this american notion that you know nothing personal just business but i think blending the two would be just as difficult as blending any all there it's your extremes but i think it's. it's interesting that we're

getting away from that notion of phrases such as it's not personal it's just business to me business is the most intensely human activity you know it impacts people's lives not only their livelihood but it impacts their state of mind their state of being their sense of satisfaction so i think the fact that there is a predisposition in this culture to connect personal and professional i think actually plays in favor of of of this in society being more receptive to a conscious business because those businesses very much care about the whole person . well you're not alone there are certain areas i think for businesses caring about those people are as individuals it simply makes it easier for some of the employees to put personal interests ahead of the profession and that would ultimately the fact of the business is bottom line no i think there's always has to be accountability and so just because there's a caring environment doesn't mean that people up to sponsible or that they're not

accountable because they're you know the they are accountable to each other as well so if i do so if i don't deliver on my commitments i'm letting you down as my colleague and so there is a culture of very much that includes accountability along with trust so i think you know it's not either or it's really a blending of all of those things now i think if you look at animal studies and the study of evolution reciprocity seems to be the main law for any successful relationship and i think your theory your movement rather is all about reciprocity but we also know from again evolutionary studies that cheating is usually one of the first behaviors to emerge and it is always the sign of agility of mind and ingenuity those qualities that are very important for successful business i wonder if when you talk about. being prime human drivers if you are discounting you know some of the other sides of the human nature such as self interest the desire to

dominate and those qualities are ultimately at the core of capital is this is what capitalism is based on no i think we you know we're starting to broaden our trum just the idea of self-interest alone the human need to care is a strong you know adam smith talked about self-interest in this theory of more the wealth of nations but in his other book the theory of moral sentiments pointed out that we have a need to care that is in fact even more powerful times. unfortunately have been as of the two got disconnected in other words you know in corporate. of this human capacity and need for caring into the world of work and business and hence we have this the separation i think if you bring the two together that creates an extraordinary powerful thing the notion that human beings are susceptible to these lower kinds of motivations and so forth it's always true but i think this is about harnessing the better angels of our nature you know we can operate as human beings

at a very high plane of consciousness where we are connected to those those higher motivations and militants or we can operate at the lower level now when we're operating out of fear and out of desire for survival which is really what most people are operating in work then you start to descend to those kinds of things but if you create a climate which is trusting where it is fundamentally based upon love and care not for your stress then i think you're more often connected to the higher incidence of our nature and you know things like cheating i'm cutting corners and doing those kinds of things they only work if i have a transactional relation if i have to do one transaction with you i never see you again but in a relational context where we have to do business hundred more times then those things we know are not going to work i bet it all comes back it's interesting that when you talk about. that are angels of our nature it again

brings me back to the idea of communism and comparing it with capitalism because you know you could argue that one of the main reasons why communism failed is because it ultimately refused to recognize the complexity of human nature and the underlying promise of communism was that if you serve others that will improve your own wellbeing now capitalism stars from an opposite and that if you serve yourself that will also improve society even without any deliberate efforts and. i wonder if. something like this what you are proposing. could only be implemented in a country with a fairly strong legal system with a low crime rate and ultimately more or less harmonious society because if you leave their dog you don't qualify you know people will inevitably take advantage of you or i think there may well be some some truth to that i think definitely when you have a high social capital in

a society which means people have trust in institutions they trust in the laws they can believe in contracts this property rights all of those kinds of things then it enables this form of transacting of this form of commercial relationship to happen but if there's sort of a wild west out there and you know that is it is as you described then i think there is the real possibility of of being taken advantage of that in that fashion. having said that i think most places in the world are moving towards greater order and greater rule of law and greater. of those kinds of conditions prevailing but certainly i think that that would be a moderating factor that would make it more difficult at the same time we do see companies i'm in india for example we see companies there that are one hundred plus years old that have been operating largely in this way and have been able to do it despite all of the environmental factors that you talked about by the tremendous

amount of corruption and all that so it is possible but it's more difficult mr said hey we have to take a short break now but one of the comeback should companies be given the freedom to conduct their business in their conscious way or should they be forced to do that that's coming up in a few moments on all of the hard. new york london. the whole world is. afoot the one on the end. of the corner of the end of the street another one the more transparent society gets the money or the tears become we see military and police forces mobilized against people who blend into the

city the city the more people trust electronic devices the more. fear that looks. dramas the. stories others refuse to notice. the faces changing the world. picture of today's leaves. from around the globe.

seen promises. to join me and you haven't zero in on the rest of our lives taking you staying for some cheap twenty four take. on oxy. welcome back to worlds apart from beer discussing conscious capitalism with one of the moments founders rush the thirty and mr so did i think what you're really talking about is the idea of social responsibility of big businesses and this idea may be fairly new for an american business and but in many countries around the world including in russia it is often perceived as a vestige of the old communist regime companies want to be efficient they want to

focus on that bottom line but instead they are mandated to spend their valuable resources on various social programs and they feel that it may actually hold them back what do you think about this idea of the obligatory here for your employees i think any action that is undertaken voluntarily. through a sense of doing the right things for the right reasons always has a lot more power behind it where you mandate certain things it takes it takes that purity of intent out of it to be real example in india just passed a new companies law where they have essentially mandated that you have to spend two percent of your profits on c.s.r. corporate social responsibility defined as things that have nothing to do with your business they have to be things like building a hospital in the school things of that sort and i know that companies are looking

of new polls or trying to figure out what one of their activities can be can be put into that or how they can avoid that i think and of course the idea that what you do in society has to be disconnected from your core business i think is fundamentally wrong because there are things that if you were in the food business you were able to do that are related to food that are essential and important a big impact. but are you not allowed to do that under the under that kind of mall so again i'm up against the idea of mandating these things i think when you do it out of a sense of enlightened self-interest and genuine caring then it has a lot more power and has it has a lot more effect but on the other hand i think the idea of free choice even in western societies is a big call for my eyes now especially given the recent economic crisis because it was believed that you know there's big business is big banks should be trusted to make their free decisions and self regulate and look where it got us and i would

make an additional point that. american taxpayers were mandated essentially to bail out some of the banks and companies nobody asked for that pain and so it seems to me that you may be allowing for more freedom for big business is that american taxpayers american people are currently being afforded and i think it's a very valid point i think. industries and companies have to sort of. on the right to be able to regulate themselves and when that doesn't happen then i think there is obviously room for in light and form of well thought out and somewhat limited regulation to say here are some abusive practices that should not be allowed so i definitely think it's not about a blanket amount of license to operate freely there are constraints and there always will be in society we have to apply but in a sensible way i think what happens in the us as well when there's

a problem that happens the regulatory response to it can often be heavy handed a model. and can impose a larger burden on the system rather than solving the issue that it was intended to solve and they don't have a sunset clause so these are lost forever unless you know fifty sixty years later you for a lot of changes you often side example of whole foods as. a company that fully embraced the principles of conscious capitalism and yet there are also many critics who suggest that by now the. emphasis on sustainability and ethics has essentially become a marketing tool and i wonder isn't that ultimately you know natural life cycle we all start out as idealists. by the end of the middle of our lives we tend to become pragmatists and me maybe even cynics interesting. you know i think with

any of these kinds of things there's always a need for renewal and commitment. rediscovering your innocence and you're hired. and of course no company is perfect just like no human being is perfect so wholefoods i'm sure we can find examples of things where they have not lived up to that but but i do think that they try and they have certain processes for example they just completed a few weeks ago a process called future search which is something they do every five years so they bring together all of their stakeholders four hundred people for seven days so they have employees of different levels the customers at work community members of our suppliers investors board members then they dream about the future of this and what should the future of this company be where we wish to go from here so this is a collective process with the entire community of stakeholders all of them come together and collectively dream about what that should be and the company has implemented a lot of those things over the years so that's one way in which they try to renew

and stay connected with all of their stake holders i wonder if we can to make it easier for the viewers to understand what really makes for conscious kept ours whether we can compare whole foods for example mcdonald's because men don't also sees itself as a company with a mission as a company had that tries to implement its vision through various charitable causes they try to source from local producers and yet the food culture that they seem to be promoting it is that odds of a beef with culture that whole foods are noting at the moment do you think both of these companies could be recognized as companies better thouse conscious capitalism i think at this point although i would certainly say that mcdonald's is moving in the right direction i would say over time if you look at the number of the offerings that are available in mcdonald's they're sold over the periphery of their

menu the core of the menu essentially remains what it has been in some of the dilemma we just talked about with whole foods so i think they are like most companies that i know are moving in that i don't actually. i'm moving in the right direction but the consequences of their day came along operations are very detrimental to the national health in the united states and that food culture is taking all over the world the rates of obesity are growing all over the world and those companies you know i place partially responsible for that i agree and therefore i would not label them as conscious businesses today i think there is a way for them to become that way over time but they have to move faster they have to move more broadly and they have to look at the core of their business not just at the periphery of the business but i know a lot of companies are trying to figure out you know how do we keep the business going while we start to align with what society really needs going forward and all these businesses when they started they were aligned with society we're going to

start to we didn't have the diabetes crisis we had a problem with finding food when we were traveling that was safe that was affordable that was predictable convenient and so forth and so they made a real leap just solved in companies that do need even tobacco companies metal real need of helping people relax did not know about the cancer side effects and the question is once we become aware that society has shifted and the consequences of our products which we didn't know we know once we become conscious of those then we have to act differently and i think that's the real test now muhammad yunus who won the two thousand and six nobel peace prize for his microcredit work and i know it's held in a very highest i mean your movement argues that socially oriented business or socially conscious business should not make a profit off poor people and he did earn a small interest rate on things like or credits but as far as i understand it there

is the primary goal was to sustain his operations rather than earn. a profit i wonder if you also apply moral. judgment profits is there such a thing as too much of a profit for a company were absolutely. profiteering profiteering is different than having profits so if you're taking advantage of people lack of information or a lack of choice if there were no plea then clearly there is a moral dimension to that but if you are creating a superior amount of value and as a consequence of that or you are earning higher profits than some of your competitors might be then i don't think there's anything wrong with that because ultimately the profit is not a bad thing. if you don't have profits you don't have taxes if you don't have to it says you don't have money that governments can use to spend on infrastructure and education public health and all of the other things if you don't have profitable

businesses ultimately you don't have employment you don't have again the ability of people to donate to charities and all the rest of it so profits are essential but they're not the purpose if i could pick up on basepoint conscious capitalism seems to put a lot of emphasis on more democratic more egalitarian style of management but at the same time you recognise the role of leaders and you argue that over time there's been a transition from a military leaders driven by power it's universal leaders driven by profit by money making to missionary leaders driven by the sense of higher purpose whom you believe to be the most effective and i wonder who do you think should be the ultimate safeguard. the mission of any particular company doesn't go right specially as the companies are getting global and as their influence spreads around the world should it be left to competition as it is usually done in capitalism or should it be

regulated maybe self regulated or regulated by the government i don't see how the government can come in and tell a company what its purpose should be. i do think it has to be. the choice that the company and its leaders stakeholders make and if they make the wrong choice then the market is pretty effective but for example let's take a fast company you know that many governments have to invest a lot of money into their health care systems and diabetes heart attacks take a lot of public resources so for example as a government if i want to limit operations of this change am i am not entitled to decide especially because i'm paying for the consequences of their business interests but i think a better approach is those targeted taxation so just like we tax alcohol and tobacco at a higher rate to discourage consumption of those products as well as to use some of that money back to. them to. dealing with the consequences of their use i think

it's perfectly legitimate to say that there are some products that do have mega defects in our health most of them others do and therefore they should be higher taxes on those on that money a portion of that at least should be earmarked back towards education and so forth i think that's legitimate but for the government to come in and say you cannot do this i think that you know that's a slippery slope we always have to be wary of the opposite track is just a slippery as the recent economic crisis when you give companies too much freedom they they may abuse it at the end then you seem to have this very idealistic very positive view on human nature but i think you would also recognize that socially there's always a pretty stable distribution of good and bad and the proportion of those enlightened business leaders is also pretty limited emin you may have a very expansionist plans for your movement but ultimately you know that. you know

do gooders still contain it is come to me but i do believe in lot of the data and evidence supports the things that is that we human beings are not staying still as a species that we're evolving so even though there's always a spectrum. i think the trajectory is upwards i we are becoming more intelligent there's no question about that and i q's are rising but also our consciousness are rejecting off while and so for various kinds you know all of the data are pointing to are operating at a higher plane of consciousness and better connected to the higher angels of our nature so i do think that over time the proportion of people who will be resonant with these themes will grow and has been growing relook at the young generation today is the most meaning and purpose driven generation i met so many a year here in russia as well where you idealistic young people and the same is true in india and in the united states of europe so there is this something happening with us that we are moving towards towards these that's right yes well.

since to be a very optimistic. note to finish the program on and if you like the show please join us again same place same time here on the world. economic down in the final. deal and the rest of life.

if we. want. pleasure to have you with us here today i'm sure.

we we will. see you will know about. almost entirely in the olympic village. committees who will tell the i.o.c. where the. secret laboratory was able to build a most sophisticated robot which doesn't sound anything to mission to teach creation why it should care about humans. why you should care

only. russia's figure skating team claims the host nation's first gold as the second day of the winter games wraps up and so on but aside from the celebration of winter olympics sports. the western media dishes out criticism raising questions about whether the concerns and panic are justified plus in the weeks. assistant secretary of state has apparently been caught on tape trying to direct ukraine's political future. you know. at the same time what's believed to be victoria nuland also caused outrage in the e.u. with the german chancellor calling them unacceptable. and switzerland votes narrowly in favor of a controversial plan to put a limit on immigration.