Wholeheartedly agree. At heart, capitalism (as I see it—my definition) is a system of providing goods and services to society (the ultimate goal) by, 1) using profits as a gauge of current success and, 2) redistributing profits to companies—in the form of investment—based on the perception of future success.

This inherently forward-looking aspect of capitalism accounts for its massive success. The narrowly focused ‘profit’ aspect accounts for its horrid failures.

Profit as currently calculated ignores huge arenas of social costs incurred chiefly (I think) from active companies chronically underpaying employees in the name of profit (they call it competition). There are also the often onerous costs of rehabilitating sometimes entire communities, including land and infrastructure, when companies move or go bankrupt.

Capitalism already includes intangibles in its investment opportunity spreadsheets. Why not similarly use intangibles in calculating social costs?

The use of local, regional, and national ‘economic boards’ to calculate and provide investors with estimations of social costs would change but not impede the dynamic of investor money flow. By charging those costs to companies in the form of taxes, or perhaps deposits into escrow-type accounts that could be drawn on, or by other means, the worst aspects of capitalism could be tamed, allowing capitalism to truly operate ‘in reference to society,’ as you put it.

My take. Thanks for the read!