Can Love Exist in Capitalism?
Agápe Story: Can Love Exist in Capitalism?, by Craig Turner
In 1963, a nineteen-year-old named Jim Grote bought a small neighborhood pizza shop called Donatos on the Southside of Columbus, Ohio. It cost $1,000 and launched Jim into business along with a radical premise: build an enterprise rooted in principles — the Golden Rule.
Jim didn't start with deep pockets or corporate backing. What he had was a fierce work ethic, self-belief, and healthy competition from neighboring pizza shops. Jim believed that with tenacity, relentless innovation, and grit, he could create a free enterprise that would endure. He built a disciplined restaurant operating system that had legs, obsessing over quality while treating every pizza as an unwritten contract with his customer.
Jim understood something that critics of business often miss: you can love your neighbor while still wanting to beat them in sales.
Southside pizza shops would lend ingredients and share resources with local competitors if they were in a bind, genuinely wishing them well. Yet at the same time, Jim channeled every ounce of his energy into making the best possible product on the block. He believed that when a competitor made a great pizza, it raised the bar for great pizza across the entire neighborhood. Excellence from everyone elevated the market and created positive momentum for all. In Jim’s mind, the goal was not about clawing away someone else’s slice — it was about increasing the size of the entire pie.
When you pour unconditional love into the engine of capitalism and the free market, something transformative happens. Over the decades, that single Southside shop grew into a network of hundreds of locations across the nation. More importantly, serving meals became a vehicle for serving livelihoods — supporting generations of team members, opening career paths for young leaders, and investing back into the neighborhoods where Donatos bakes great pizzas.
Pushback on Capitalism
“Capitalism” has become a dirty word for many. People hear it and immediately picture corporate greed, exploitation, and wealth concentrated in the hands of a few while everyone else scrambles to get by. When people feel that sting, their immediate reaction is understandable: burn it all down.
Meanwhile, a system has no soul. Capitalism does not have morals. Neither does free enterprise, democracy, or socialism. A system is an engine designed to coordinate resources, energy, and human effort. If you plug people into that engine who are motivated by fear, greed, self-preservation, and malice, that machine will reliably churn out destruction, division, and exploitation.
If we dismantle a system out of rage and replace it with a new one built on that same fear, distrust, and resentment, the new system will produce the exact same misery — just under a different banner. The issue isn’t the machinery of free enterprise. The issue is the human heart operating it.
What Are We Talking About?
People (including our own Agápe Council) often mix up these distinct ideas into one bucket. Let’s define:
Capitalism: An economic system where private individuals and companies own the equipment, buildings, and capital needed to produce goods and services, rather than the government owning them.
Free Enterprise: The legal and philosophical freedom of individuals to start, build, risk, and run an enterprise of their own choosing.
Free Market: An open marketplace where buyers and sellers freely negotiate prices and trade with minimal interference, dictated by basic supply and demand.
Business: The day-to-day vehicle organized by real people to provide a product or service that solves a problem for others.
These ideas function as a system: capitalism provides the tools and ownership, free enterprise provides the individual freedom and right to build, the free market provides the open playing field, and business is the vehicle doing the actual work.
Ideally, when aligned with integrity and fueled by unconditional love, the system gives people the agency to solve big problems, create value, and lift up their communities. When not aligned this way, redlining and discriminatory lending practices, for example, obstruct certain populations from success.
The Myth of "Pure" Capitalism
There is another reality often overlooked: America is not, and has never been, a pure capitalist system. In a purely capitalist economy, market forces dictate everything, with virtually zero government safety nets or public interventions. But check out some of the components of the American system:
Social Security supports our elderly and disabled neighbors.
Medicare and Medicaid provide healthcare coverage outside the private market.
Public schools and libraries educate for the common good.
Public works build our roads, bridges, and municipal water systems.
Public safety and emergency services protect and serve.
Workplace safety and environmental regulations set minimum standards for human decency and clean communities.
Corporate subsidies support both farms and the oil and gas industry, for example. These subsidies can be controversial.
Americans live in a hybrid system — a market-driven engine coupled with social contracts, public goods, and civic protections.
The Power of Freedom
The free market offers something irreplaceable: freedom. Freedom gives everyday people the agency to build, innovate, and direct their own labor. It allows someone with a great idea and relentless grit to start from scratch and create real value for their neighbors.
In a healthy market, competition matters. Competition doesn't have to be about crushing the other guy; it’s about demanding excellence. It holds businesses accountable. It prevents complacency, drives better service, and ensures that no single entity can sit back and treat people poorly without consequence.
Genuine free enterprise is anchored in an abundance mindset. A scarcity mindset says, “For me to win, you have to lose. There is only so much pie, so I’d better take yours before you take mine.” An abundance mindset recognizes that value isn't static — it can be created, grown, and shared. When you solve real problems for people, you expand the pie for the entire community.
Love Transcends
Capitalism, modified as it is, is the system Americans live in. It is the practical reality of our economy and our country. So the question isn't how to run away from reality or burn down the town square. The question is: How do we make our little corner of the world a better place? The answer is unconditional love — agápe.
Despite the focus of this story, the Agápe Capitalism organization and the Agápe Council that guides it are far more interested in love than economic systems. We will gladly link arms with any business — regardless of economic model — to spread unconditional love. Economic theories are tools crafted by human hands, but love is universal. Wherever human beings gather to produce, create, and trade, love belongs there.
Agápe Capitalism stands for inspiring change. We want to inspire people to change their hearts and minds and to lead with love in all of their practices. We believe a business guided by unconditional love can be an uplifting force for good.
Love Fortified by Grit
Agápe is the highest, most powerful force in the universe. But make no mistake: love in business is not weak or naive. Unconditional love should be fortified by strength.
We cannot sit back and expect someone else to fix our communities or hand us a better world. Positive change requires relentless effort and personal responsibility. Leading with love doesn’t mean rolling over and letting bad actors exploit you. It means having the moral spine and resilience to stand firm, do the right thing, and let the negativity of the world roll right off your back.
The Choice
When leaders treat others the way they want to be treated, and see profit not as the sole purpose, but as fuel to do good, commerce becomes a beautiful, uplifting force. Every single person participating in the marketplace — every founder, executive, manager, and employee — faces a choice every day:
Will you use the freedom of this system to extract as much as you can from people? Or will you use it to build a better community for your neighbors?
Jim proved it on his block, and it holds true everywhere today. Don't abandon the engine. Change the fuel. Let’s lead with love and build our little corner of the world to serve all humanity.
Photo by Mike Hindle
