The fix for capitalism is here.

I recently had a realisation of how Monzo Bank could change the World. It was published in the Yorkshire Post newspaper, so I’ll share it here, and send a copy to Tom, the CEO.

People talk about how capitalism is broken, how it’s destroying the World. They’re not wrong, capitalism is problematic, especially when taken to an extreme. Extremist Capitalism, the idea that money is more valuable than life, is clearly foolish, yet mainstream in practice. Money is prioritised over life continuously in our societies. It’s an inverted system and spiritually corrupt. The love of money (over life) (and God) is indeed the root of all evil, at least in the World as we understand it. It’s clearly visible every day.

The spiritual solution is to prioritise God, and life, then all else will be added.

The practical solution is to create a new commercial sector of Humanitarian Service, and integrate it into existing processes. It would have huge social, personal, and commercial value and impact. It would change lives, society, and the World.

Currently, the supply line of goods and services ends with what we call ‘the consumer’. This is problematic, because the finite resources of Earth cannot be infinitely consumed. And besides, consuming is in itself a means, not an end, the system is clearly incomplete, which is why people feel incomplete when they engage it in. How then to remedy this unhelpful situation, without collapsing the Global infrastructure of commerce? That’s the big question of our day. 

Here’s the solution I envisage. It’s very doable, it requires adding another stage to the supply line. The stage of service. And whilst consuming cannot be infinitely sustained, service can be. A massive service sector is required to offset, indeed re balance, the processes and consequences of consumption. And it needs to be commercially viable.

I mentioned Monzo. One of the challenger banks, and probably the most ethically minded of them all. Now here’s where it gets really exciting. I’m using Monzo as the example here. They’re one of a handful of companies who could implement this quite easily and genuinely change the World quite quickly.

In the banking app, customers could be asked if they would like to support Monzo Humanitarian Services. Every time they spend money on their Monzo card, a percentage, let’s call it 1%, is used for doing good. Let’s say this is popular, and a million of their customers say yes, with an average spend of £20 a day, 1% of which is 20p. One million customers times 20p = £200,000 a day to be used for Humanitarian Service.

Monzo could then recruit 100 people from their highly loyal and enthusiastic customers to do the Humanitarian Services as a job, paying them a generous £200 a day. That’s a total of £20,000 a day in wages, leaving £180,000 a day in donated funds to use. That’s equal to £1800 per employee per day being used for amazing good deeds, humanitarian services, and transformative actions. Add in a live streaming video channel so Monzo customers can watch the action and see real lives being changed on a continuous basis and it’s done.

That’s with just a million customers chipping in 20p a day. 

It could easily grow to ten times that. A hundred times that, a thousand. Monzo aims to become a Billion customer bank. One day in the near future Monzo could have 100,000 people doing Humanitarian Service with a combined budget of £180M a day. That’s a humanitarian intervention force like nothing on Earth. That would become the point of the Bank, its reason for existing. To heal and transform lives at extraordinary and unprecedented scale.

Not just a bank of money.

A Bank of Life.