Every human society requires a mechanism for the production and distribution of its goods. Humanity has so far invented only three such mechanisms: the system of delivery, the system of central planning, and the market system. The first two, separately or together, sustained humanity for thousands of years; the third is a recent invention – an "experiment in progress."

The "capitalist experiment" has imparted three unprecedented characteristics to human society: firstly, the promotion of individual profit as the dominant motivation of human behavior; secondly, the commodification of labor, nature, and money; and thirdly, the adaptation of social relations and institutions to the demands of the market. Can such a society survive in the long term? Will capitalism endure? This question has preoccupied all the great economists of the last two and a half centuries, from Marx and Polanyi to Keynes and Schumpeter; and all of them, without exception (although for different reasons), answered negatively.

The capitalist system has recently been struggling. The successive crises of the last fifty years – crises that mutate, shift, and escalate incessantly – resemble death throes. So, is capitalism truly approaching its end? The contemporary capitalist system suffers from seven serious diseases, potentially fatal: a) declining growth rates, b) extreme economic inequality, c) continuous and worsening crises, d) enormous public and private debt, e) imbalance between the financial sector and the "real economy," f) tendencies toward monopolization of the economy, and g) economic corruption. How can we treat these ailments? Bypassing conventional and overused solutions, I would like to propose here a new, bold suggestion.