A few years ago, coming up on six, to be accurate, account representatives of a large, well-known bank--with a name like a well-known stagecoach line of the 1800’s--created thousands of new accounts for their customers. Apparently, there was some kind of contest or incentive package rewarding the addition of the accounts, and the account reps rose to the occasion. The only problem was that most of the new accounts were created without the customer’s knowledge or approval. Once the scandal was exposed, flashy ads ran on television touting what the company was going to do to remedy the situation. “We will fully refund those impacted. We’ve implemented new proactive account confirmations and we are eliminating product sales contests, thus putting our customers’ interest first.” Imagine that, putting the customers’ interest first.

This is just one example of the graft and corruption that exists in some of our larger financial institutions and corporations. Indeed, there is plenty of graft and corruption among our national politicians leading some of these same politicians and others in society to begin to wonder if a centrally managed economy via socialism, communism, or some kind of hybrid might serve all of us better than capitalism and free enterprise.

The problem is that governments are and have always been horrible at managing economies, managing anything, really. The rewards available to individuals through capitalism and free enterprise continue to be the best hope for global prosperity if we could only get governments to inspire and support innovation and creativity rather than trying to control economies and people.

In America, capitalism started off the tracks during the industrial revolution as mass production and exploitation of the labor force, through low wages, began to replace the artisans and craftspeople of the pre-civil war era. The purpose of American business schools was not to create new entrepreneurs and business owners, but rather to create mid-level managers to work in the existing big businesses. The mantra of the business school for nearly 150 years has been “the most important goal of business is to make a profit.” There has been nothing in the mantra about putting an emphasis on providing useful goods and services, nor treating employees with respect nor taking care of the environment and being good stewards with the world’s resources. It’s been only about making a profit. The mantra has had a lot to do with the culture of graft and corruption that we see in big business, big tech, and politics today.

It’s not that profit is bad. In fact, profit, the idea of having something left over after paying all the bills, is absolutely necessary. Whether organized as for-profit or not-for-profit, all organizations must have money available for operations.

A change in mindset could, over time, drastically change the culture of greed, graft and corruption so commonplace today. The mantra of the new mindset would be two-fold. One, the number one goal of business is to provide customer solutions in the way of products and services that are so good that customers will gladly pay enough for them to allow for a commensurate profit. The more exceptional and innovative the solutions, the higher the profit. Two, businesses should be good stewards of the resources they use to provide these solutions. (The second concept is borrowed from the long-standing boy scouting practice in camping. “Always leave the camp site in better shape than you found it.”

In the entrepreneurship training we do with youth; we try to show them how to be empathetic in understanding the problems people have in looking for innovative ways to provide solutions. We also point out that when solutions work, customers are happy to pay for them. If they can provide the solution at a lower cost than the price people are willing to pay, bingo, they may have a viable business idea. Most youth are growing up with a respect for the environment and most will use resources efficiently thus being good stewards with those resources.

Capitalism is not the problem, it’s the way we’ve thought about it and taught it for the past 150 years. By changing the emphasis in our business and entrepreneurship training, even while acknowledging the need for healthy profits, perhaps the positive effects might eventually and gradually bubble up into our big corporations and government institutions.