Andrew Yang has been a champion for the notion that society must change capitalism so that it focuses more on what humans really want and need and less on creating wealth. He proposes an economic system, like the one in Singapore, that relies on the government to set investment policy, rather than an “invisible hand” offered in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. Traditionally, a country’s economy is measured using Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and economic progress. However, people then focus their time and energy to improve in those areas, rather than focusing on “normal life” activities. Under a new system, like the one Yang proposes, economic policy would be structured to maximize and also prioritize human well-being and fulfillment first—human capitalism. For Yang, human-centered capitalism would follow three core tenets: humanity is more important than money, the economy measures each person (particularly their well-being) and not each dollar, and markets serve human goals and values (not the other way around). As Yang eloquently put it, “Instead of having our humanity subverted to serve the marketplace, capitalism has to be made to serve human ends and goals.”
