The Buddha on Wall Street

Our current neoliberal capitalist economic system is based on unethical values. The twentieth century economist John Maynard Keynes recognized this and wrote of a time in the future when we could transcend those values. Unfortunately Keynes believed that this would somehow happen automatically, and did not grasp the necessity of the need now to directly challenge the values on which our society is based, instead of simply waiting for them to fade away. The Buddha identified the vital importance of working to uproot the poisons of greed and hatred in the human psyche and in human society, and to replace them with their counterparts of generosity and loving kindness, in order to allow a different society to come into being.