How to Fix Democracy with Daniel Markovits

Since its origins, democracy has been a work in progress. Today, many question its resilience. The Bertelsmann Foundation and Humanity in Action have teamed up with Andrew Keen, author of How to Fix the Future, to launch How to Fix Democracy: a video and podcast series exploring practical responses to the threats facing democracies around the world. Host Andrew Keen interviews prominent thinkers, writers, politicians, technologists, and business leaders who enlighten and challenge us as we seek the answers to How to Fix Democracy.

Human capital-ism | Daniel Markovits is Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School. In this interview with Andrew Keen, he explains how the accumulation of human capital–the skills and education that enable advanced economies–has been captured by the elites. But, he argues, because these skilled workers in fields like law and finance are also laborers, they find themselves alienated in the Marxist sense, despite also achieving higher and higher incomes. To help fix democracy, Markovits says, this concentration of human capital can be addressed with education and labor reform.