One recent afternoon, while visiting Universal Studios, I found myself seriously contemplating socialism. I was standing in line for one of the theme park’s most popular attractions, huddled with three or four hundred of my fellow Americans in an outdoor corral. This being Florida, it was hot. This being a theme park, it was thick with children, all of them desperate to terminate their detainment, enter the building, and ride the ride. And yet, ride they couldn’t; instead, they had to watch as another line, populated by the few and the fortunate who had agreed to shell out the equivalent of the average American monthly mortgage payment for the privilege, zoomed by quickly.
It was a lesson in abject capitalism: Everything is for sale, even the simple justice of taking your turn in line. Life is nothing but a series of transactions, nasty and brutish and not short enough.
I am a joyful conservative with a reverence for the awesome powers of the free market. I had written my first-ever book report, in the fourth grade, on Milton Friedman. I keep Ronald Reagan campaign paraphernalia on the shelf above my desk. And yet, an hour or two into the Universal Studios ordeal, had someone handed me a red flag I would have gladly taken it and stormed the park’s offices while humming “The Internationale.”
And then, we drove down to Disney World.
I realize, of course, that the House of Mouse is guilty of many (many, many) transgressions that should rightly infuriate anyone who cares for faith or tradition, to say nothing of observable biological realities or simple common sense. But, as the Chassidic masters teach us, there’s much we can learn from everyone, even the sinners in our midst, and Disney delivered a lesson for our time.
Consider, for example, the park’s popular Winnie the Pooh ride, which regularly features very long waits. Instead of some outdoor stockade that resembles a holding yard in a maximum-security prison, Disney’s imagineers constructed an elaborate setup that invites the impatient masses into the Hundred Acre Woods, where they can touch a large and gooey screen simulating a honeycomb, frolic in a playground featuring wooden bees, and read snippets of A. A. Milne’s classic tale. There’s a pricey fast pass line here, too, but it utilizes a separate entrance, discrete and all but invisible to the families waiting their turn. No effort is spared to make patrons feel welcome, cared for, and cherished.
The same is true everywhere on Disney property. Cast members—they’re never, ever called “employees”—excel at excessive hospitality, exuding the sort of sincerity that’s impossible to fake. Very little about a day in Disney World feels like a cash grab, an incredible feat considering the fact that it’s exactly that, with a gift shop around every single corner. At every step, you pay in spades—for that limited edition souvenir popcorn bucket, for that plushie of Mickey, for that elaborate and over-priced dessert—and yet, everywhere you go, you are made to feel great.
How do they do it? Disney adheres to a very different business practice than the one on display all too often in corporate America these days. Call it covenantal capitalism, a term I am borrowing from the investor and writer Michael Eisenberg. While the dreary kind of capitalism, the kind my family and I witnessed at Universal Studios, sees only the bottom line (which means that every interaction with a paying customer must be geared toward the extraction of as much money as possible with little or no regard for anything else), covenantal capitalism has higher goals in mind.
Consider the difference between a contract and a covenant. A contract, by definition, is a very limited thing: You sign it with an expiration date in mind. Once the goods or the services are delivered, the contract is fulfilled. Deal done. A covenant, on the other hand, is predicated on the promise of ongoing growth. When he first heard God’s voice, Abraham was an ordinary man. It took him a trial or ten to rise and become the moral giant the Lord had always known he could be. And the covenant does not stop with Abraham. It encompasses all of his progeny, and eventually implicates all of creation. This evolution is what a covenant is all about. It cares less about what is, and a lot more about what could be. And, when applied thoughtfully, it makes a lot of business sense.
Now, invisible as its hand may be, the market, of course, isn’t God. But it’s a mystical force nonetheless, the sum of our yearnings and possibilities and beliefs. We can choose to tap this sum, cashing in on this or that desire or invention in mindless ways until they are debased and corrupted. Or we can contemplate how to harness them toward greater future growth.
I know, I know—you’re worried that I’m trafficking in platitudes. Consider the following cases of covenantal capitalism at work. You could buy a perfectly serviceable laptop for a few hundred dollars, or you could spend tenfold more for an Apple MacBook. You could shop at Lululemon, or you could purchase stretchy exercise pants elsewhere for a fraction of the cost.
But Lululemon and Apple alike thrive because what they’re selling isn’t so much a computer or yoga apparel but a relationship. Apple devotees know that should their machine malfunction, there’s a so-called Genius Bar at every Apple Store, ready to diagnose their problem and help solve it. Lululemon enthusiasts like it when, walking into their local boutique, they’re greeted by a genuinely friendly person who would do anything in her power to help locate the perfect pair of leggings. These companies understand that making a sale today generates cash today, but guaranteeing another one tomorrow and the week after and the year after that is a far more rewarding proposition. They also understand that long-term relationships, in business as in life, require investment from both parties, which is why customers are often happy to pay a premium for the pleasure of simply being treated like human beings with desires and feelings, not like numbers on some spreadsheet somewhere to be bilked and discarded posthaste.
What happens when covenantal capitalism is ignored and that other, heartless sort takes over? To answer the question, consider bookstores. Once upon a time, independent booksellers were ascendant, and every neighborhood had its own charming little shop catering to local flavors. Then came the big, bad megastores—Barnes & Noble, Borders, and so forth—that put the indies out of business, an event deemed significant enough to merit a movie starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. But the internet, we soon discovered, could play the game of volume and traffic far better than any brick-and-mortar establishment, and the big box outlets shuttered, one after the other. The logic of crass capitalism obliterated the possibility of transactions during which you could ask a person for recommendations, or just ask how he’s doing.
Luckily, covenantal capitalism soon came to the rescue, bringing the indies back with it. According to the American Booksellers Association, its membership has more than doubled since 2016 alone, and the number of independent booktores continues to grow. It turns out that human beings crave the opportunity to browse shelves and talk to other human beings. Walking into an inviting store and having a conversation with a knowledgeable person who takes the time to listen to your queries and help you find the right volume is worth something, sometimes a lot—and people will pay for it.
Independent bookstores thrive because book buyers understand that shopping is much more than an inconvenient necessity or a frivolous preoccupation. It’s an act of faith that affirms our God-given ability to make and procure beautiful things for our enlightenment, amusement, and improvement. We can get too worked up about “consumerism.” Yes, buying can be taken to an excess. But shopping in physical stores run by flesh-and-blood people makes meaning and builds community. Shopping, in other words, is sacred, but only when buyer and seller alike approach it with due solemnity, understanding that their interaction is about much more than something fleeting like momentary monetary profit. If we invest in practices designed to make tomorrow’s shopping experiences even more rewarding, the marketplace is more human and thrives. If one instead tries to deprive the buyer of a fistful of dollars, or rush the seller at the checkout line, both lose. Buying and selling become lonely, selfish enterprises.
Sadly, entire swaths of American industry—here’s looking at you, airlines!—seem dedicated to assaulting their customers for fun and profit, generating big bucks and bigger animosity and all but guaranteeing that the customers will revolt at the very first opportunity. Let us remember, therefore, that capitalism—just like its catastrophic competitors, socialism and communism—is an ideology. Like every ideology, it, too, requires periodic rethinking so that material progress serves our humanity rather than the other way around. Reimagined as a covenant, capitalism may yet rediscover its groove.
I look forward to the triumph of covenantal capitalism. Until then, if you’ll excuse me, I’m headed down to Florida to visit the most magical place on earth.
