Together we can cure capitalism | Bruno Delepierre | TEDxGhent

We are living in exponential times. With increasingly smart technology and growing international competition more and more people feel left behind. In this compelling talk Bruno Delepierre explores how work and money - the ingredients of our current version of capitalism - impact the quality of your life and what we can do to make our economy work for our happiness.

Bruno Delepierre is a social entrepreneur on a mission. His big hairy audacious goal? To help upgrade capitalism so we can maximise the quality of our lives. He recently wrote “Happonomy – Roadmap to Utopia”, a book about work, money and happiness. Among other things he launched his own digital media start-up and is a talent scout, the organizer of TEDxLeuven and home of Happonomy – a movement for happiness economics.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

A couple of weeks ago
I had a coffee with Jesus.

Now, before you think I'm crazy,

Jesus is actually
an old acquaintance of mine,

back from the days when I was
studying economics in university.

His real name is pronounced
[Hay-soos], he is from Spain,

but if you have a friend called Jesus,
you call him Jesus, right?

He sent me an e-mail asking me

if I wanted to catch up after quite
some time and I said, "Sure, why not?

Let's have a coffee
in a coffee place called 'Daily bread'."

So yeah, I had a coffee with Jesus
in the "Daily bread".

(Laughter)

You know how these conversations go,
after some chitchat he asked me,

"So, what have you been up to,
what have you been working on?"

And I must admit, even though
that's quite an easy question to ask,

I had to scratch the the ample hair
I have left on my head,

and after a few moments of intense silence
I said, "I think you could call me

an enterpreneural happiness economist."

And when I said that, he started laughing,

he was like, "What, what?!
Have you turned into a softy?"

I kind of get why he said that,
because back in the days I was this guy.

(Laughter)

You know him: a little bit too brainy,
a bit out of touch with his emotions.

But obviously I had changed.

I told him about an encounter I had
with a diplomatic representative of Congo

back when I was working
at the United Nations,

who, after a meeting
stepped up to me and said,

"Belgium, what do you think of this?"

I was struck because
at that time I realized

that we're all looking for the same:

We are all looking
for a little piece of happiness

independent of culture,
race, age, or religion.

And also we are looking for
the acceptance of others to be different.

I told Jesus about the sheer joy I felt
when I started my first company.

But also I told him about the sorrow
when, after only a few months later,

both my parents died, leaving me orphaned

and having my start-up
and their business to manage.

Basically, I told him stories about things

that are not in the playbook,
things that university didn't teach us.

But since then I was still a little bit
of this guy, I wanted a new playbook.

So, for over two years I immersed myself

in the latest science
of behavioral economics,

positive psychology, cognitive science,
and even some parts of medicine.

Because I wanted to understand

how economics and happiness
are linked together.

That journey brought me here today.

I am coordinating an initiative called
"Happonomy" which can be described

as a movement of entrepreneurs,
creatives, scientists, and technologists

who all believe that happiness
and economics are not mutually exclusive.

We organize lunches, workshops,
we execute scientific research,

and we also make some noise
like I do today.

I'm sure, you can find a story
that tells how difficult it is

to properly combine
happiness and economics.

I could tell you plenty of stories.

Let me tell you the story of Dan Price.

Dan is an idealist entrepreneur,
and at a certain moment in time

he decided to give his employees
a minimum wage of 70,000 USD,

only to find himself left
by his own management,

and sued by his brother
who was also a part of the company.

I could tell you
the story of Martin Shkreli,

maybe you know the guy,

he's a bit of a poster boy
for "Capitalism gone wrong".

What he did was:
he distributes some medicine,

and at the moment he has the license
to it, he raises the price 50 fold,

only to find himself in the US Congress
having to explain himself.

Closer to home, I could tell you the story
of an acquaintance of mine

who does not speak to his own
brother and sister anymore

because of inheritance issues.

I'm sure you can find a story close to you
that actually shows how difficult it is

to properly balance
economics and well-being.

And if we want to understand
what's happening here,

we need to ask ourselves two questions.

The first one is not a sexy one.

It is, why do we have
an economy in the first place?

Well, there's a lot of fancy talks
being told about economics, right?

But at the core, economics is simple:

we need a system to exchange
value between each other.

I have something you want,
you give me money,

I find money valuable, we exchange it,
done. Nothing spectacular.

If you felt your heart
beating a bit faster,

you're either an economist,
or you should see a doctor.

(Laughter)

So, value.

But the question that stems out of this
is a much more interesting one.

It's probably the most important question
we can ask ourselves in our entire lives.

It is, what do we find valuable?

If I'd asked this,
chances are you may say,

"Well, I find happiness
valuable, or success."

But if I'd asked,
"So what does that mean?"

Chances are you won't have
a concrete answer

because we don't give it
that much conscious thought.

Luckily, scientists
have thought about this,

and - long story short -
there are 21 pieces to the puzzle.

21 things that drive
the quality of our lives.

I'm not going to go
into the 21, obviously.

The good news is, you can
bundle them into five large groups.

The first one is simple:
you want to survive. I hope.

The second is already more interesting.

We want to feel at ease,
even though we're all insecure beings.

Number three: we want to connect,
we value social relationships.

We also want to grow. We want
to get the best out of ourselves.

And we also, finally -
last but not least -

we want to contribute to something bigger,

we want to let go.

I could end my story here

because if you're wondering
why people today

are feeling left behind, stressed out,
and increasingly frustrated,

it's because we have crafted a system
that does not truly support what we want.

I want you to let that
sink in for a second.

One of our most important systems

to drive our society
and our well-being forward

has been devised in a way
that does not deliver

what you and I exactly are looking for.

I'm from Belgium, so I'm used to
a healthy dose of surrealism -

after all, we invented the Smurfs -

(Laughter)

but even to me, that's just bananas.

And if we take a look at the two main
components of our system, work and money,

things become quite clear.

Let's start with work.

If I'd ask you why you go to work,

chances are you may say, "Well,
I go to work to pay for the bills."

And it's obviously true,

because we have linked
money and work together.

And the security that comes
out of the money as well.

But there are also three other reasons
why we go to work.

I already named them,

because they are linked back
to what we are looking for.

We also go to work to connect.

We like to have a talk over a coffee

about the latest episode
of "Game of Thrones" with our colleagues.

We also go to work to grow.

We like to have a job that challenges us

where we can learn things
and where we can apply our talent.

We also go to work to let go,
to contribute to something bigger:

to the mission of the organization.

The problem with today's system
is that we have overemphasized

the individual growth part,
the efficiency, the competition.

But we have forgotten
about the security part.

Our current system
is increasingly incapable

of providing us with the security
we are all looking for.

And at the same time

we have thrown connection
and transcendence under the bus.

The symptoms are abundantly out there.

A recent survey showed that over here

50% of people expect to burn out
during their lifetimes.

That's either you or your neighbor.

Over the last ten years, in the EU alone,

the number of people who have been working

but are still poor,

and the number of people
who just cannot find a job

for quite some time, even though
they have been looking quite well,

has increased by almost a third.

So, let's say the alarm signals are there.

Now, up to the second part: money.

Money is not neutral.

This was going to be
the pinnacle of my talk

because I planned to rip a note
of 500 euros in front of your eyes -

I actually have it with me,
it's this, look, a real one -

to show you that money is not neutral,
that you'd feel something,

that it would be like,
"What is this guy doing?"

But the problem is, my wife's a lawyer
and she told me yesterday

it's actually illegal to do so.

So, I'm going to leave the honor of being
the first person to commit a crime

on a TEDx stage to somebody else.

(Laughter)

The point I want to drive home
is that money is not neutral,

it impacts our happiness,
our motivation, even our health.

That's because our system
is debt based and scarcity based.

It seems that we don't have
enough money, right?

The examples that illustrate
that this has an impact

on our biology and psychology
are abundantly out there.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

In Europe alone over the last ten years
over 10,000 people have committed suicide

because of financial problems.

A study from South Carolina shows

that students with large amounts
of student debt perform cognitively worse

than those who don't have such a debt.

And the most striking one to me
was the research from researchers

from Stanford and Berkeley that showed
that toddlers of not even two years old,

their memory is impacted negatively,
their language development is hindered.

So basically, what this shows
is that our current system -

causes brain damage.

You may wonder, where does that leave us?

I mean, it sounds like we're stuck,
stuck in a system where people

have to work more and more
to achieve less and less.

And at the same time we have
this big bag of debt on our backs.

Well, the good news is that
it's going to be our generations

that have the ability to choose
whether we're going to deploy

economics and technology
for the sake of our well-being,

or whether we're going to sacrifice
our happiness for the sake of economics.

There are plenty of solutions out there.
We don't need a revolution.

I'd like to provide you
with four types of solutions.

The first one: We can reset the place
we give work in our lives.

I want to do a very short survey here.

How many people have checked
their work e-mail today?

It's a Saturday. Let me see some hands.

I already see quite some.

And how many have checked their work
e-mail during their last holidays?

Come on, don't be shy. Even more.

Can you imagine that a company
would forward and delete your e-mails

from your inbox when you're on a holiday?

You would have zero reason
to still check them,

and as an added bonus
when you'd come back,

well, no e-mails waiting for you.

This may sound improbable,

but that's exactly what
a company like Daimler does today.

So, it's basically an e-mail policy
with a software feature.

Solution number two.

We can upgrade our monetary system.

Obviously, this is going to take time
but we can get rid of this debt monster.

And this can start today by using
the complementary currencies

that are popping up everywhere
in the cities we live in.

We could take an example of Croatia,

a country that said
to its 60,000 poorest citizens,

"You don't have to pay
your utility bills anymore,

you don't have to pay your taxes anymore."

Because they knew, the government knew
that those poor people wouldn't be able

to pay it back anyway, and it caused
troubles in the organisations involved.

Or we could step out of the box.

Can you imagine that a doctor
would say to a patient, "Look, your loan,

you don't have to pay it anymore
because I noticed that you have

an overdose of stress from it."

Can you imagine a system where doctors
prescribe debt relief for medical reasons?

Solution number three:
We can use our rewards -

I'm talking about wages,
I'm talking about bonuses -

to make sure that all reasons
why we go to work are restored.

It could be as simple as being
transparent about how much we earn.

If organisations are transparent
about this, studies have shown,

that the differences between
the wages become smaller.

So, it's kind of social correction.

If you want to take it a step further

you can link the lowest wage
with the highest wage.

If the CEO gets a raise so does
the entry level employee.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want
to make a plea for communism, far from it.

People don't want equality,
people want fairer inequality.

If you're wondering what's fair,

would it surprise you that there
is a scientist who studied this already?

An interesting study
from Dan Ariely showed

that in Denmark it's a coefficient two,

and in Taiwan it's a coefficient 20.

So, it means that it is
culturally determined.

I realize that the majority
of the solutions I've provided

are mainly related to work and money,

and people who can impact us:
I'm talking about HR managers,

CEOs, entrepreneurs, politicians.

But there is one solution
that everybody can work with.

It's the most important,
but it's also the most difficult one.

We can upgrade the perspective we have
on work, money, and happiness.

And I'd like to leave you
with two invitations.

The first one is,
I would like to invite you

to think really hard
what gives color to your life.

See how money and work impact this.

And have the courage to decide
for what increases your quality of life,

and not necessarily only
the numbers on your bank account.

Finally, I'd like to ask you
to dare to speak up.

Because it's only by speaking up
that we will be able to upgrade

a system as important as our economy.

Discuss this with your friends, family,
colleagues, even your boss.

Because if we have enough voices,
we can cure capitalism.

And one day we will be able
to wake up in a world

that puts happiness first.

That's all I have.

(Applause) (Cheers)