What If We Make Capitalism Purpose-Driven not Profit-Driven

In profit-driven capitalism, the stock market is pretty much a betting market. You’re betting that the company’s profit line will keep going up, and if that happens, everyone else agrees your shares are worth more. You get voting power. not to do good, but to vote for whatever will make the profit line go even more up.

the reason profit = value is simple, Investors collectively agreed that projected profit is the currency of this game. (unless devidence is involved)

But what if we swap that currency? Instead of projecting profit, what if the stock market valued companies based on how much good they actually do for society.

This sort of currency swap already exists tho. In sport, a lot of football clubs like Manchester United or Borussia Dortmund are publicly traded. You can literally buy their shares. But the “currency” there isn’t profit, it’s performance and glory.

If a team keeps winning matches and tournaments but isn’t making much profit, the shares still go up and become worth more.
Because investors decided the thing that matters isn’t money, it’s performance. If you’re trash on the field but making decent profit, your stock is still worthless unless you open up to a commercial market.

When you buy shares, you vote for what’ll make the team play better, not what’ll make it more profit.

Let’s take another example like decentralized prediction markets. If I buy shares on what's the weather gonna be tomorrow, the currency is not which weather will get the most money its which weather I predicted

So there you go, a currency other than profit is actually possible. We’ve already seen it.

But money in a lot of times, is actually a good indicator of how useful something is to society. if people find value in what a company does, it usually makes money. But it’s not always the case.

Here’s where the system starts breaking down:

McDonald’s makes billions not just by feeding people, but by engineering addictive foods that keeps you eating even when you’re not hungry. Most frequent customers will regret it long term but even when they do, they won’t be able stop. it’s designed that way.

Polluting industries dump trash into clean water and still get rewarded for being “efficient.” Maybe they'll save some money short term, but long term the government (or the people) is who'll have to deal with that shit

Insurance companies make billions by finding legal loopholes to deny payments. They get rewarded with the same

Social media makes money off dumb addictive algorithms that keep you stuck in echo chambers and fuel nonstop political division

So the stock market isn’t always measuring goodness, health, or harmony.

It’s measuring how good a company is at turning human vulnerability into money.

We need something where company’s stock wouldn’t rise just because it’s making money, but it would also rise when the company is actually improving life or go down when it exploits human vulnerability

We could track this with some sort of mix of real-world data that measures impact, wellbeing, and sustainability alongside profit. Call it Usefulness Index

The goal here isn’t to replace profit, it’s to upgrade it.

Profit still gets most of the weight, obviously. But if a company’s doing damage or adding nothing useful, that should effect the price too.

Profit + Small Usefulness Factor = THE NEW CURRENCY

Now, “Can’t ethical behavior in a profit-driven market be just controlled with laws and regulations?”

Sure, laws do help but they can’t really cover everything, and they’re full of loopholes.

Take social media algorithms, they're full of Echochamber divisions and trick users into spending hours there. but how do you regulate that exactly? Without violating certain freedoms or making confusing laws, you can’t. not cleanly

But a market signal could. If investors and users see a platform’s usefulness score dropping, its stock value would fall automatically, no law needed. Corporations will have to figure it out themselves, without the government spending tax money investigating it.

Plus, in this system, charity itself would become an industry as giant as tech or entertainment. Not only charitable people would run it, but money-hungry people would also have an incentive to get in and compete. Laws alone can't make that

"It’s hard to measure usefulness…"

Well, we already do actually… (sort of)

There are existing metrics like ESG scores, impact investing reports, social indices, and GDP contributions that try to quantify a company’s positive impact. These aren’t perfect and aren’t tied directly to stock value, but they show that measuring usefulness is possible.

We also already measure things that are much more complicated, like economic output, climate models, inflation, or even complex financial derivatives. If we put enough effort we could create a usefulness metric that’s moe accurate and good enough to integrate into the market as a currency mixed in with profit.

"The market’s decentralized, how can we even influence it?"

True, the stock market is decentralized, we can’t just tell companies to behave.

But markets follow incentives, and governments can gradually steer behavior using small, targeted laws. Once the market is opened, we can give the companies swapping to a “Usefulness × Profit” market lower taxes, favorable contracts or incentives funds to invest in it. Other investors will see it as the next big thing and will follow through.

If enough people think about it, debate it, and iterate on the idea, we could actually find much better solutions

We could also add in an extra market on the side that's only focused on usefulness-first no profit involved

People bet on charity performance the same way it is in the sport market

It's much easier than forcing everyone to swap

"What about other countries? Wouldn’t this only work in the West?"

Actually, that’s the beauty of it.

Most of the world’s wealth and investment power is in the West.

If the West adopts this “profit + usefulness currency,” other countries with weaker laws or regulations would make their companies tank in the new market because they wouldn’t meet the transparency standards

Eventually, they’d have to catch up & reform, or they'd lose access to global capital.

It’s a decentralized form of international pressure for good.

If we actually mixed profit with usefulness, charities and social projects could become giants, not out of pity but because helping people would literally make money. Affordable housing and education would finally be worth investing in. honest news coverage would rise while clickbait and outrage farming would die off. Humanity would finally evolve from a capitalism of consuming to a capitalism of contributing.

What do you think?

If we rewire incentives so capital chases usefulness, the winners of the economy will finally be the ones that make life better.

Imagine waking up one day to see “Earth Index: +3% Today” 🌍💚

Not just the rich would benefit. everyone will be smiling, because the world literally got better overnight.