Ethics of Socioeconomics [electronic resource] : Critical Observations on Capitalism through the Lens of a Lawyer / by Koen Byttebier.

Chapter 1. The principles of capitalism questioned -- Chapter 2. Revisiting some building blocks of contemporary capitalism that center selfishness -- Chapter 3. Unsustainability of the capitalist socio-economic order -- Chapter 4. Revisiting an alternative method of money creation on behalf of states and certain, international, and supranational institutions as a possible way out of capitalism -- Chapter 5. From neoliberal punitive states to states of care -- Chapter 6. Alternative methods of money creation for the benefit of the private sectors -- Chapter 7. Conceptualization and sense of reality of some new, legal models for conducting an enterprise -- Chapter 8. Final Conclusions I: Capitalism as an unjust system of socio-economic order -- Chapter 9. Final Conclusions II: Establishing a new monetary order as a foundation for a new type of societies.

Open Access

The book analyzes socioeconomic through the lens of a lawyer. In the past decade the world has witnessed some severe financial and economic crises, espe­cially the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The author states that the socio-economic order has in the past four to five decades been thoroughly redesigned, generally favouring models that prio­ritize the free market over the public interest or even, more generally, government operation. He works out that during four to five decades, globalized, capitalist societies are facing a multiplicity of fundamental problems, such as: (1) increasing debt that severely burdens both the private and public sectors; (2) persistent poverty and an ever-increasing polarization between rich and poor, in addition to (3) intractable environmental problems that, fifty years after the Club of Rome's report entitled ‘Limits to growth’ (1972), has dragged the world into what in recent years has been referred to as "climate change." The book explains why all this is the direct result of value choices made from the late Middle Ages onwards, when in the Western world the societal models of that time were increasingly abandoned for a societal model that came to rely on the primacy of economic interests. The book not only subjects the ethical choices but also examines various problems it has caused and probes for possible ways out. This is an open access book.