Capitalism Isn't Broken—It's Working As Designed

Jack Welch didn’t hijack a healthy system—he just ran the playbook to its logical end. If that playbook leads to mass layoffs, wage suppression, and record CEO pay, maybe the problem isn’t who’s calling the plays.

What if the issue isn’t that capitalism was broken by one ruthless CEO, but that it was always designed to work this way? This isn’t a story about bad actors—it’s a story about a system that rewards extraction, and the collective power it will take to change it. Image: Simon & Schuster

When The Man Who Broke Capitalism came out three years ago today, it pointed a finger at one man: Jack Welch. The book argues that Welch, as CEO of General Electric, turned American business into something colder and meaner. He made layoffs common, sent jobs overseas, and focused only on boosting the company’s stock price. The author says Welch destroyed the idea that corporations should care about their workers or communities.

But here’s another way to look at it: maybe Jack Welch didn’t break anything. Maybe he just followed the rules that were already there. And maybe what he did wasn’t the start of something new—it was the end result of a system working exactly as designed.

Welch didn’t invent the idea that companies should focus only on making shareholders rich. That idea had been floating around for years. But he did make it his entire strategy. And the system rewarded him. Wall Street loved it. Business schools praised it. The press called him a genius. His wealth grew, and so did his power. He didn’t go rogue. He did what the market wanted—and got rich doing it.

The problem with blaming Welch alone is that it makes it sound like everything was fine before him. That corporations used to be kind and fair, until one tough CEO came along and ruined everything. But the truth is, the only reason companies treated workers better in the past was because they had to. Unions were strong. Workers had power. Government rules protected jobs. Public pressure mattered. It wasn’t corporate kindness. It was pressure and resistance that kept things in check.

The book talks a lot about the values and personalities of corporate leaders. It focuses on how business culture changed at the top. But it doesn’t say much about what was happening on the ground. It barely mentions workers—and when it does, they’re often treated like background characters. The story is told through boardrooms, not break rooms.

That’s a big problem. Because the real power struggle in capitalism isn’t about which CEO has the most heart. It’s about who has power—and who doesn’t. When workers had unions behind them, they could demand better pay, safer conditions, and a real share of the company’s success. When unions weakened and regulations were rolled back, companies didn’t suddenly get mean. They just stopped pretending.

The book holds up companies like Unilever as examples of doing things “the right way.” It points to CEOs who tried to be more thoughtful, more generous. But again, that still puts all the power in the hands of executives. If your well-being depends on whether your boss is nice, that’s not a stable system. That’s not fairness. That’s luck.

Even when companies find out their own employees are struggling, the response is often a report or a program. Maybe they create a financial wellness seminar. Maybe they give workers stock instead of a real raise. But they rarely do the simple thing: just pay people more. And they almost never support unionization, which would actually give workers the power to ask for what they need—without waiting for permission from above.

The book wants us to see Jack Welch as a turning point in history. But the bigger story is about how power shifted—from labor to capital, from workers to bosses, from the picket line to the shareholder meeting. Welch didn’t make that shift happen. He took advantage of it. And the fact that he could do that so easily—that he could be celebrated for it—is what tells you the system wasn’t broken. It was doing exactly what it was built to do.

That’s why the answer isn’t to find “better” CEOs. It’s to change the rules of the game. That means stronger unions, better labor laws, and a shift in how we think about fairness. It means moving power away from the boardroom and back to the people who actually do the work.

And if you’ve benefited from the way things work now—if you have a good job, if you’re comfortable—it’s worth thinking about how this system stays alive. It doesn’t survive because of people like Jack Welch alone. It survives because enough people are doing well enough to keep it going. That includes some of us.

So yes, Welch made choices that hurt a lot of people. But the real problem isn’t just what he did. It’s that the system made those choices profitable. If we don’t like where that leads, the answer isn’t nostalgia—or outrage. It’s building power in new places, so no one person can shape the lives of so many with so little resistance.

Jack Welch didn’t break capitalism. He just stopped pretending it was something it never was.