Death by Capitalism

Katherine Mangu-Ward | October 9, 2009

Under the headline "Capitalism raises murder rate, says Shizuka Kamei, Japan’s Finance Minister" in the London Times:

Shizuka Kamei, Japan’s new Financial Services Minister, has launched an “astonishing”, full-frontal assault on corporate Japan, in which he charged the country’s largest companies with raising the national rate of family murders.

The domestic murder rate has advanced in Japan, he said, “because companies have stopped treating humans the way they should be treated”....

Mr Kamei’s philosophy appears to hark back to a period of Japanese corporate life when companies were encouraged to think of “sufficient” levels of profits and then circulate the excess throughout the rest of the economy, an often woefully inefficient practice that prompted many outside observers to question whether Japan was a capitalist country at all.

Many are agitating for Capitalism 2.0 in the wake of the crash, but perhaps they really want Capitalism 零.