China is a communist country.
It's one thing to hear it but it was another to experience it. There were numerous examples of intrusive government engineering and our guide had some humorous examples of what day to day life is like in a government controlled state. However, the evidence of a billion enslaved people was hard to find. For the most part, people seemed to be getting on with the day-to-day experience of living.
It made me think of Benefit Corporations, often touted as a wave of the future. These special for-profit organizational structures that will include a positive impact on society, workers, the community, and the environment in addition to profit as a goal. Cast by one side as a form of normalized socialism and the other as a more human approach to capitalism, it seems like today's China can serve as an anecdote for how a b-corp will alternately work, as well as come up short of its objectives.
As our great country continues to raise its standard of living at a pace that when I describe to kids that my friends and I grew up with at least some pieces of clothing our mother made, it generates confused looks and eye rolls, it's fun to consider what's next. I predict that as the robots come marching through the door, we're going to see an emphasis on being more human. Not only will it be reflected in day-to-day living, but in what our best and brightest look for in the corporations they work for and support.
It's going to be good stuff.
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