Over the past decade, polls have consistently shown that young people are far less enamored with capitalism than the generations that preceded them. Their crisis of faith in the system is met with consternation by their elders, who are often inclined to wonder aloud What's the matter with these kids, today? In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert explores why some of his own students at Booth seem to be having second thoughts about capitalism. He shares his insights from the classroom and explores how the Financial Crisis of 2008 made them skeptical of free markets generally and those people, in particular, who have benefited most by them.

What will the world look like for our grandchildren a century from now? The economist John Maynard Keynes famously asked this question in his 1928 essay, "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren," and the future he saw included a world of plenty and 15-hour work weeks. In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert follows Keynes's lead and looks another 100 years into the future. He envisions a world where brainpower will be passé and most people will struggle to climb the heights of what he calls a Charismocracy.

Money weighs on the minds of almost everyone from time to time, but the way a rich person tracks his stock gains and the poor man tallies his pennies is different in degree and kind. In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert takes up the different ways in which money can preoccupy us, drawing on insights of writers like John Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx, and William Shakespeare as well as his own experience cleaning dorm rooms in college.

When it was first published in The New York Times in 1970, Milton Friedman's "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits" heralded a new way of thinking about the mission of a company and helped to shift Corporate America from a stakeholder vision of capitalism to one that gave shareholders pride of place. In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert looks at some of the central claims of Friedman's essay and situates it against the backdrop of the Cold War and fears about creeping socialism. He also explores how relevant Friedman's famous arguments are to a world where Mikhail Gorbachev and the Berlin Wall are now a distant memory.

Today, when we think of craft-based products, we tend to think of high end goods: Ferraris, Ferragamo shoes, and fine wines. But are the crafts merely reserved for the super wealthy, and what can we learn from the spirit of craftsmanship in a modern mechanized world? In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert takes up the modern legacy of craftsmanship as embodied in Oxxford clothes, a century-old Chicago based maker of high end, handmade men's garments. He also explores how craftsmanship has often been seen as an antidote to the unseemly elements of cheap goods and mechanized labor.

You don't need to be a card carrying communist to appreciate the familiar tension between employees and management, but what happens when your boss is an app? In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert explores the ways in which Uber has tried to perfect the art of app based management. He catalogues the ways in which the company nudges and controls its drivers and discusses how their efforts portend a world where management techniques will increasingly be automated.

Money can buy you a lot of nice things, but what about when its power goes beyond the ability to purchase a penthouse or a Porsche? When money allows us to buy non-material goods – such as status, power, or personal advancement – how does it change the way we look at ourselves and how we decide to spend our days? In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert draws on a wide array of economists and philosophers to explore what it means to live in a world where money can seemingly buy everything. He considers not only how this changes our understanding of non-material goods, like honor and self-esteem, but also how it shapes the stories we tell ourselves about what really constitutes our self-interest.

Trust is crucial in commercial transactions. We want to know if the people we do business with are reliable, but if we don't know them personally, how can we be so sure that we should trust the individual on the other side of the negotiating table or the shop counter? In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert takes up questions of trust in business, a matter he became attuned to after a very unpleasant trip to the dentist. He shares his story and takes an historic look at how early proponents of capitalism dealt with questions of trust. He also examines whether Yelp and other social media services have helped to solve the problem of "buyer beware" in business.