There is an urgent need to replace the laissez-faire ideology that justified measures generating extreme inequality and insecurity with a superior vision that promises greater equality, freedom from unemployment, democratic freedom in the workplace, and richer community life, while preserving capitalism’s two principal institutions of private property and free markets. This urgency stems from disturbing evidence that democracy appears threatened as elites use their political muscle to head off public policies that would reduce their wealth, income, and privileges, as had happened between the mid-1930s and mid-1970s. Wealthy elites have always opposed democracy because it could be used to create greater equality. Democracy is, in fact, already in retreat worldwide in the wake of soaring inequality. If democracy were critically diminished, or ended, humanity might lose the ability to take the needed measures to avoid ecological Armageddon, arguably the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. Measures to address ecological degradation are hampered because they would not be in the short-run interests of wealthy elites. Accordingly, they use their disproportional political power to stymy implementation of necessary ecological measures.