This is a question for both capitalist and workers to answer, I’m anti capitalist so I’m definitely curious about the answers I’ll get.
The only catch is 1) you can’t answer this question by comparing capitalism to other economic systems
And 2) State your personal experience with living in the capitalist system as a worker or as a business owner (capitalist) and why you believe it’s improve your life and why you personally believe capitalism is a moral and just system for society as a whole
I won’t really argue any opinions in this one, I’ll mostly just be asking genuine questions
Capitalism is moral fundamentally because it comes down to voluntary choice and it's only areas where lack of choice exists that you run into issues (a monopoly).
As for what's good about Capitalism, you succeed by delivering a good or service to others. Ie, you make money by helping others. This is a baseline function of capitalism and you will not make great money without delivering something to others value.
Additionally, massive innovation comes from Capitalism which after creation can be spread across the world and lift all ships. There's a reason that China just steals our shit in America. They don't have a system that allows for creation in the way America does. That's just a contrast point to enhance my point on capitalism.
Further, Capitalism gives incentive to specializing and getting really good at one thing. Something you're better at doing than others. By many people doing this the group as a whole benefits because everyone crushes what they do best, leading to higher production than if everyone did a little of that same thing.
That's a basic breakdown of the value of free market capitalism. Let's say I'm really good at growing corn but not great at growing tomatoes. But you're great at growing tomatoes and not corn. We both grow both because we want both in our diet.
But eventually we come to an agreement that if I trade you X amount of corn for X amount of Tomatoes we have a deal. So from here on out all my energy from tomatoes goes to corn and all. of your energy in corn goes to tomatoes.
In. the same time I produce in excess far more corn than you could, you produce far more tomatoes than I could. So we trade and both end up getting more of both products at the end of the season because our energy was directed in what we both do best
There is whole scientific formulas regarding this exact topic that you took the time to research you can calculate it all yourself. But that's part of the reason why China is the predominant market for putting together shoes and America is the predominant market for creating Jets and planes
We trade with one another and get far more. If the US decided we're going to start manufacturing all our shoes here the price of shoes would grow radically too high, making things worse for us citizens than simply having China do what they're good at and trading with them
Sidenote: being a worker or business owner doesn't dictate whether or not you are a capitalist. Capitalism is an economic structure and a capitalist is one who believes and supports that structure.
A worker can be a capitalist or not. A business owner can be a capitalist or not. There is no ALL workers are just works and ALL business owners are Capitalist.
At 15 you are incredibly intelligent to ask the question the way you have. At my age (50 something) I will try to be as intelligent!
The foundation of Capitalism is motivation. Without motivation individuals as well as societies have never moved forward. Capitalist are innovators always seeking better ways to do things. Capitalists are always looking for better more efficient ways of accomplishing tasks. Capitalism rewards those who create new and better ideas.
It is not uncommon that once the golden egg has been created, that people want to be allowed to grab what they want from it. The bad news is that it takes a lot of motivation to create the golden egg. Once the golden egg is gone, there i no motivation to create a new golden egg, there is no reward to for so. Both China and Russia went stagnant without an economic system that rewarded innovation. Starting after the Cold War, both countries moved there economic system more towards Capitalism where people were rewarded to excellent ideas and exceptional production.
The real world as Mother Nature has taught us is not always a beautiful place to be living. Survival is based on our ability to adapt to change, motivation gives us that ability. None of this is not to say Capitalism is without it's own faults. I truly believe there is a limit as to how much one person should be allowed to accumulate. Go back to the Robber Barrons of the early 1900's and their strangle hold on Energy (Standard Oil), Steel (US Steel), transportation (Railroads), and Communication (ATT). Today we have Tech companies (Goggle, Microsoft, Facebook) that have a strangle hold on how we think and what we are allowed to know.
The only way true Capitalism can work is to make sure we do not allow a select few to control the majority of our lives. Like we did to the Robber Barrons, the Tech companies need to be broken up into smaller entities. On a political note we also need to push the power back to the people and out of Washington.
I respect how you asked this question and set your rules.
I don’t see myself as an anti-capitalist. When looking throughout history, no other economic system has generated so much wealth for the average everyday person as much as capitalism has, not to mention the technological achievements the United States has had under a capitalist system. I really, really try to respect it, and I understand how it can be beneficial. I’ve seen it in my family. My parents and grandparents worked hard every day to ensure we were taken care of, and they’ve been rewarded for their hard work.
That said, it’s getting harder and harder to defend. I’m 27, have had my “big girl job” for a little over 5 years, and i still break even, living paycheck to paycheck in a studio apt. I’ve done everything I was told was right…go to school, get a degree, get a meaningful job, live on your own, and 6 years later I’m still a broke ass millennial no where close to home ownership, no where close to supporting myself, let alone a family. As I get older it looks like the “American Dream” is getting further and further away. This is very sad to say, but the best thing that has happened to me financially was the student loan repayment pause because of the pandemic.
Also of note: I’m not interested in being lectured by any self righteous baby boomer / gen Xers out there who want to accuse me of being entitled or tell me to leave if I don’t like it here.
Actually, THIS Generation Xer will acknowledge that you do have a point!!!
In fact, we in Generation X were the first to see this disturbing trend unfold.
The rewards of Capitalism, while *always and forever* better than they would *ever be* under Socialism, are increasingly lopsided (Pareto distributed) in that a few people really make out well, and the masses, while they are better off, are in a relative sense getting left behind. The much more even distribution of prosperity that we had in earlier decades, especially the Golden Age of the 1950s in America, is sadly gone.
The question is: how do we improve that, without the utter historically proven self-destructive poison of Socialism?
Jordan Peterson suggested having more infrastructure and public works type jobs, which produce something good for us all, while rewarding with relatively well paying paychecks, the people are who are hard working, but not as bright or creative, and that may be the best solution we have:
@Curmudgeon I agree. I’ve accepted that most likely in my lifetime it will continue down this path and most of my generation is just along for the ride.
@Curiousgirl2414 I think another partial solution is to get back to basics in terms of lifestyles.
IF people have strong families - nuclear and extended - behind them to help care for them when things go badly, they don't need a welfare state, or at least a lot less of one.
"Broken homes" are also much poorer ones.
IF people understand that they are in fact the gender to which they were born, vast resources are not spent trying to alter that.
The "culture wars" do, in fact, have deep economic consequences.
Historically the reason why no other economic systems generated as much wealth is because wealth under capitalism is highly artificial. It stems from the capitalist exploitation of the working class.
You are not alone in feeling unsatisfied with your job and current lifestyle. Many other Americans feel the same way and there’s a reason for that.
The majority of Americans are struggling having to live pay check to pay check just to make ends meet, working a job that they feel is meaningless and has no purpose, having little to no time for themselves after a long stressful work week. Americans are some of the most overworked people in the world: 20somethingfinance.com/.../
@Curmudgeon are you really sure the rewards of capitalism will always be greater for the average person than socialism when capitalism isn’t in favor of the average person. Capitalism favors the already rich and powerful capitalists to continue exploiting workers.
If you are curious about what it was actually like under countries that attempted to reach socialism I can explain that.
Under capitalism especially currently there is no even distribution of wealth. The wealth gap and wealth inequality is bigger than ever.
I also suggest you don’t listen to anything Jordan Peterson says, he’s a con artist who tries to pass himself off as an intellectual. He’s known for peddling outright lies.
And whenever anyone criticizes how non sense his books are he constantly back peddles about how everyone hates and misunderstand what he means. Which is contradictory, if you’re such an intellectual than instead of being vague on what you’re trying to teach and getting mad at the people reading it you should get better at writing down your thoughts more clearly.
I don’t really have anything to add outside of my original opinion. I’m relying on my own life experience, and for that reason culture wars are irrelevant to me. I have my own issues and stresses than need my attention, and I don’t have the time, patience, or mental fortitude to care about how other people live their lives.
My grandparents and parents had great success in this country. I came from a happily married home. Both parents worked 40 hrs a week…no more, no less. We didn’t get everything we wanted, but no kid should. My mom’s job as a nurse was flexible enough that she stayed home with us over the summers when school was out. I had and have the “traditional” family so to speak, and they are still very much supportive.
My brothers and I grew up thinking we would have similar lives to mom and dad, and our teachers and society told us as such. Work hard and you’ll reach that American dream!
Fast forward the clock and I’m a 27 year old traveling ICU nurse with 2 college degrees that just wrapped up a 72 hour work week. I live in a studio because it’s what I can afford. Could I go to my mom and dad, and ask for support? Sure…but that’s not how it’s supposed to work. I’m an adult…and was told that I should be looking forward to marriage, homeownership, kids, and retirement.
Instead, my main goal is to work as much overtime now, so that when school loans pick back up in February I’ll be able to break even throughout 2022.
That’s the cards that my brothers, most friends, and I have been dealt.
Capitalism is the worst system except all others, to paraphrase a phrase from Churchill.
For example a person who decides to open his own shop for shoes, handbags, decoration etc is also a capitalist person, but what is wrong with that?
one should not imagine that the capitalists are only the big companies. Besides, even the big capitalists, if they do nothing illegal and they have a moral compass, then I don't see the problem of having managed to create a big company and earn a lot of money thanks to it.
That’s wishful thinking that just doesn’t exist. The rich capitalists are the ones that do the most exploiting and constantly get away with it. Capitalism isn’t just a bad system, it’s failing and they’re willing to sacrifice our planet as well as millions of human lives all for the sake of profit.
It isn’t black and white, it’s the basics of capitalism. Go up to any capjtalist and the first thing they want you to do is higher workers, pay this workers just a little in order for you to make a profit off of them
I find philosophy boring. Science is a better way to understand human behavior. Every human society has economic systems it's part of human nature and not bad.
I’m not a huge fan of it, just because I think material/monetary prosperity is a HORRIBLE goal to set for humanity, nothing will ever cause us to lose sight of ourselves both individually and collectively like the pursuit of that. The things that are “good” about it, to me, are only good relative to that ultimate foolish and misguided pursuit.
Beyond that, I feel like capitalism really relies on selling a dream that may not be an achievable reality. Humans are actually NOT all created equal, in terms of life skills and natural attributes. Don’t tease people with a high ceiling when you know 99% of people will barely get off the floor. The capitalist myth is that all you have to do is work hard, and that’s just simply not true. And again, I don’t think what we’re being told to work hard for is an admirable goal. I just don’t think humans are either intelligent or honorable enough to operate in that kind of system.
And my own personal experience: I’ve been labor and management. You get your soul crushed as a laborer, toiling on and on in hopes that someone will take notice, and promote you for some weak, dollar-an-hour raise that doesn’t really change your life and just causes you more hassle. As a manager, your soul is tested, as you’re told to crush others’ souls with no hesitation or remorse. My last job, I struggled with, not only my own workload, but assigning atrocious workloads to others. And these people would come to me, sometimes practically in tears, like “how do these people expect me to do all this?”, like their eight hour workday would become fourteen hours because the company’s ownership sucked, cut every possible corner, and without the boring details, that only made the lowest employees’ jobs harder. I had a top officer of the company LITERALLY say to me: “you have too many white people working this position. We don’t want white people. We don’t want black people. We want sp*cs who just came off the boat who barely speak English and will do whatever we tell them to do.” Not making that up, that was a direct quote from one of capitalism’s “winners.” Guy went onto say “we have a guy in the Georgia branch who drives eight hours to North Carolina, he packs out a few stores, sleeps in his car in the parking lot, and drives back to Georgia the next day for a full day of work.”, basically told me my guys are lazy assholes because they don’t do that stuff.” I’m like “bro…. who the fuck is going to do that for like $13/hr? Are you serious?” His answer was “that’s why you hire immigrants.” AWESOME. So that’s the kind of shit capitalism fosters, the ugly side they don’t tell you about. And these were good, decent, hard-working, already-overworked people that I was being asked to either whip or replace. All so this owner who inherited the business from his daddy, who inherited it from his daddy, can live in his mansion on Long Island, and now, he passed the general manager job of my old branch to his 26 year old son who is an absolute JABRONI. So all the people who worked so hard the almost ten years I was there are in the same position, and the promotion was just handed to a kid who was still in high school when they started working there. Oh and the best part, after all this disdain and outright racist talk about “sp*c immigrants”, guess what kind of food products they sell? Yup, you guessed it…. Hispanic foods. What a beautiful system capitalism is, really brings out the best in people🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
The advantage of capitalism is that it generates wealth. Any functional system must have capitalism as a basis. Even the soviet union was able to survive as long as it did because they used prices in other countries to try to estimate how much of what to produce. They were bleeding value left and right but the collapse was delayed by several decades because other countries didn't adopt the same absence of basic capitalist principles. It is of course a spectrum, pure capitalism would necessitate almost an absence of a central government. But to have a system that is more capitalist than not means you will let people to use real money for exchange and you do not restrict their ability to own businesses and make meaningful decisions about them and keep the profit.
The advantage of that is that it aligns most incentives towards efficiency and production. The result may be a type of production a minority of people disagre with, because they can't stop other consumers from paying for what they want. It results in inequity, because some people will end up being less productive and will therefore get a much lower share than those able to negotiate their way to the top. The good part is that the efficiency means even the less well off will be richer than they would be otherwise and the whole thing is sustainable in the long run, at least in the sense of continued production. Environment and externalities is a separate topic I will skip here. Stealing the property of the rich would not be capitalism, it will make poor people richer in the short term, but will destroy the long term efficiency of the system, making everyone poorer in the process. Allowing the government to pick winners by mandate or excessive regulation is not capitalism, its just corruption. Allowing the government to print currency is the antithesis of capitalism because it conceals shortages and imbalances in the system which would otherwise be smoothed out by price signals. Instead of regular oscilation of market prices we get the boom and bust cycles of epic proportions, because we dont know how imbalanced the market is, until it literally breaks. It is exactly the same problem a centrally planned economy would have: lack of information. There is a lot more to be said. Obviously we do not live in a solid capitalism, instead the government heavily tramples the organic decisions of individuals, this is more obvious during the covid times where businesses were literally forced to close. But even high taxes, heavy regulation and excessive printing of currency destabilizes the market significantly. But even then, despite massive population and insane complexity of our civilization, food can be expected to be consistently available, which would not be the case in the absence of capitalism. If covid madness continues, we may see how quickly the absence of market forces can lead to collapse and loss of wealth, even of basic necessities. In our just-in-time economy, few things are in big supply, so once you thoroughly destroy capitalism, literal hunger may occur sooner than a lot of people realize. You can argue that efficiency of production may be partially sacrificed in favour of other goals, that is a legitimate political question. I simply insist that most if not all interventions have that cost. Suppress capitalism = less wealth in the economy as a whole in the long run. A little can be ok. Do it too much and the whole thing will come crashing down.
Hard not to compare, when I have so much to compare to. Under Capitalism, I have been free to choose whatever work I wish to do. I've been able to set my own wages or find jobs at wages I find acceptable. New products are made all the time. Existing products are improved on a constant basis.
The only real piss off is the taxman and certain regulations that have been life unnecessarily more complicated. I try my best to avoid dealing with government & laws as best I can (not breaking laws, simply not engaging in activity regulated by laws). As an economics student, I also see the many ways life where I live in unnecessarily expensive, most causes directly or indirectly caused by laws & regulations.
Example: (1) Zoning laws which mandate huge parking lots in our city for every store, creating huge spaces between the places people visit, making driving a must. (2) Zoning laws which mandate single-family homes, resulting in an absence of cheaper & more numerous apartments in complexes, with the added effect of decreasing city density, once again making driving a must. (3) Zoning laws which made land unusable for development, resulting in a lack of supply in homes & commercial buildings, increasing prices to purchase or rent, which leads to local businesses increasing their prices. (4) Slow bureaucracy. Land is bought by developers, but approval for work to commence comes only years later. My old neighbourhood had an empty field for maybe 6-7 years. Once approval was given for construction, they built the number equivalent of perhaps 1/5th of the existing neighborhood within a year or so. Now people can finally live there. That field, fenced off mind you, was just in the middle of our neighborhood (built ~2008-2009) serving no one & nothing. In my city, there are numerous such fields. They just exist. Once city approval is given, in relatively short order, a new neighborhood appears. But this takes 5-10 years for each goddamn empty, crap looking field. And we wonder why we have a low supply of housing. Meanwhile, our government encourages immigration to our cities. The market demands new housing. Developers are trying to fulfill demand (they want dat money), but so many roadblocks are placed that every project is done at turtle speed.
In St Petersburg, I saw a road paved in a single day. In my city, a smaller road had 1/2 lanes blocked off for 5 months. The new road was worse than the one it replaced. Felt like we were driving on a frontline road. Was repaved again some time ago and is finally decent. For all the talk of benefit of regulation, somehow in corrupt "We don't give a fuck" Russia, the road was paved fast & pretty well, but in "Let's approve & supervise every step of the process" Canada, the road came out to be total shit.
This is not to bash on government as government. They do have a role, even in capitalism. But they do need to know when to get out of the way, which is basically always, unless a law is being broken. Otherwise, my experience has been pretty good. The experience of almost all my peers has been pretty good. The only ones it has not been good for are those whose families were not good. Bad family = Poor Life. Anyone with a decent family has enough support to live quite well, to make something of themselves. A bad family which receives government support just burns through the money. The kids aren't any better for it. If money should be spent, it should be directed for the kids themselves. That said, charity exists only when excess wealth exists. Excess wealth exists under Capitalism (unless you deincentivize the creation of wealth). So by creating an extremely efficient economic powerhouse, you can afford to spend more on the social good. This only requires good management of wealth directed towards social needs and a proper assessment of which social needs are of highest priority.
At the beginning of a society with limited resources, capitalism is one of the best systems it can have. Supply and demand will regulate and ration resources to those who earn them and offer incentives to those who refuse to benefit society. This also allows for easier and better organization or labor with the best organizations being the most profitable, thus the most sought after and duplicated. Everyone benefits, especially society, and everything is dandy.
After the beginning of that society, however, capitalism can only hurt it. The rich get richer and maintain control of resources. Those resources, which are not actually limited, are now treated as limited because of the people with all of the power (i. e. money) forcing it to be limited to everyone they see no benefit from being friendly with. All laws and regulations are controlled by them and are altered to continue to benefit them, at the cost of everyone else. While it is not true that being rich makes you do things that hurt people, it is true that those types of personalities are willing to do whatever it takes to reach that position of power, stepping on everyone else in their way.
For a small, beginner society, I highly recommend capitalism. For everything else, I suggest looking into other economic systems.
Capitalism simply means free trade. People are allowed to want things, and productive people are allowed to make things that people want. It is an intrinsically liberal system.
Money is a system of information, it keeps track of how much you've contributed and how much you've taken out from society, as determined by agreements between you and your employer/customers and other producers.
Profit is further information derivative of money. If you are making profit, it means you provide more than you take from society. Businesses that are inefficient or otherwise unwanted lose money and eventually die out, freeing resources for businesses that better serve the public.
Free markets are great because they succinctly enable people to tell each other what they want in numerical form, fulfilling needs and wants efficiently, and provide incentives to keep individuals accountable to the economic burden, or boon, that they place on others. Capitalism organises people to help each other in the vast majority of situations.
Unfortunately, we don't have ideal capitalism, we have a corrupt hybrid with socialism, and socialism induces extremely poor incentives. Why make food when you can eat your stockpile? Until you run out that is. "They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work".
My assumption is you're referring to Capitalism as it relates to the markets of goods and services. My family's experienced both Capitalism and Socialism/Communism and the differences are way too many, so I'll focus on the important ones as it relates to me.
I am a Capitalist.
As a business owner / consumer - The consumer decides the value of items by the choices they make to purchase them or not (Supply/Demand). Consumers also have the choice of getting X item from brand A or B (personal tastes). A business owner will find "Customer Satisfaction" is a desired objective since the satisfaction of the customer will inevitably result in further trade and innovation/growth to make themselves more attractive to consumers since anyone can copy another's product or business model (imported "Made in China" versions of ours).
As a worker - The value of labor is determined by the laborer (by negotiation and/or education) as such, you 'own' your labor. Your social/economical status in society is solely based on you and your choices (work more/less, change jobs, learn new skills). If you decide to be employed under another (W2), market yourself freelance/contractor (1099), or be a business owner, the choice is yours alone and no one else's. There's no exploitation of workers because the option for workers to negotiate their labor's worth is never taken away, unless it's voluntarily given up (choice to unionize).
None of these options are available to me under Socialism or Communism.
I cannot honestly respond to this request of my experiences without writing a very long list that will span multiple 'replies'. So I will ask, do you truly want my response?
I ask, because not only will I need to write a wall of text, but it's very personally taxing and emotional experience relaying my experiences and spending time in Socialism.
If it's something you really want to know, for you, I will build that wall of text.
1) Spurs innovation and creativity and individualism 2) Creates a meritocracy (which in my opinion is the best thing you'd want - Equal opportunity and you go make it happen) 3) People who came from shit such as myself can actually get better and better (all the while I don't have to hate the "rich" or anyone) and now I'd say I'm easily high middle class while at 17 my house looked like a warehouse 4) Doesn't make the economy vulnerable due to being stale in the long run 5) No high taxes - If the more money I had the more money would be taken from me I'd stop working 6) Doesn't make us slaves to the government since that everything would be controlled by the state otherwise (minimal government involvement and more private ownership) 7) I'd say that freedom and capitalism and intertwined in a way since that you'll be free to do what you want without it being illegal 8) more competition aka more people giving out their best 9) profit oriented which might be morally wrong but looking at how humans work profit is arguably the best motive to get things moving (look at big companies especially health related, if it wasn't for capitalism they wouldn't be working on anything) by the way I hope you give us a list of what is good about socialism or whatever system you'd have in mind so we could also talk about that
It isn't perfect and it has its issues but capitalisms allows for the labor force to organize and collectively work to improve working conditions and pay. It is happening right now across the USA, wages are shooting up drastically this year, especially on the lower end jobs no one wants.
Unions are not really allowed in other forms beyond capitalism, often people going on strikes get shut down.
The best part about it though is it encourages people to do better, everyone has the chance to improve themselves rather than just being told to go to work and you can never do better than that.
My personal experience is that I used to think it sucked, I wanted stupid things that I also knew would never happen. Like all jobs to give a living wage, until I realized that not all jobs are meant to be a living wage, just not possible. One can however change their profession or job for a better one. I was able to make that change 20 years ago and move into a decent company that got me going from there.
One does not have that kind of freedom in other systems. It also motivates people, some want to be doctors or lawyers and get paid more, anyone can do literally anything if they put their mind to it.
Granted not every dream will come true, I would love to run my own small business but that won't happen due to inability to get funding to start a business, plus I would have to take a pay cut as most small business owners don't make much of anything the first several years until it takes off real good, assuming it does.
Best part though is it eliminates lazy people, if you don't want to work your going to have a really hard life.
Just curious who told you anti capitalism is bad? If it wasn’t for capitalism this website and others where people post communist views probably wouldn’t even exist. GAG operates for profit. It makes money through advertising. The founder didn’t invest his time, money and effort just to be nice. And the money he used came from capitalism. Given that your young it doesn’t surprise me that you would post something like this. You are getting brainwashed by far left teachers, the mass media and leftist culture in general. But can you find one just one truly communist country that is the envy of the world and where everybody wants to move to? Honestly is cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, the late Soviet Union and China places people are just dying to live in? Why is that so many people try escaping communist regimes vs. moving to them?
You need to get educated on what communism as really done to people in history. You are talking mass oppression, mass murder purges, societal wide misery, etc.
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I answered this on another question I’m going to copy and paste it. It was on an Alex jones question, but it kind of answers the question. I’m too lazy to explain it again. So sorry if it seems out of place “He deserves it. And America never had true freedom because having crazy people threatening and slandering people is bad. You have freedom of speech until you start slandering and threatening people. In order for a society to function you need sacrifice some of your freedom for security. The pizza gate situation is a good reason enough why he should have his freedom taken. Most countries are socialist as much as a lot of the right wingers like to believe American is capitalist. They just hear the word socialist and think it’s communism. If we have true capitalism we would have a Hong Kong situation. Hong Kong became so rich and wealthy, but as soon as China got jealous they just walked in and did what they want with Hong Kong. That’s because they have no military. We need the draft and we need to pay taxes for security. And I’m not left wing. I am a political atheist.”
I you were asking "genuine questions", you wouldn't restrict a comparison amongst various economic theories. but I digress - - - - - -
I am a Capitalist as opposed to other repressive economic theories. I am free to be an employee if my services (which I have been). I am free to be a business owner (which I have been with my own businesses, and which I continue to be). I make a profit by providing services to people who want to pay for them. If people do not like or want my services, I won't make a profit. I do not need- nor do I want- a government butting in and telling me what I can do or not do, etc.
Whenever someone opens a business, they are taking a (calculated) risk, but they are willing to TAKE that risk because they are of the mind that they will overcome most problems and make a profit, sometimes a very sizable profit. In some cases, the owner will simply keep a certain lower level of profit. In many cases, however, they will re-invest some/all of the profits and increase the scale of their operation, such as a restaurant, food store, or ice cream stand, who opens second, third or fourth locations, or even more.
It is this expansion that provides jobs for people and profits for the investors/owners. If it is a publicly owned and traded company, shareholders may join in the risk-reward system via purchasing shares of stock- small "pieces" of ownership in the company. No one is being immoral and forcing anyone to start a business. But , please do not expect successful business owners to support the "lifestyle" of the lazy do-nothings, because that is what they do - nothing- to help the economy and society "as a whole".
So firstly, it seems like you’re equating business owner with capitalist. That’s not the meaning of the word. The etymology comes from communism. Being a communist word, that makes “capitalism” heavily loaded. This is also why I prefer not to use the term. What I would say I believe in is free enterprise.
Rather than argue directly for a philosophy, we can begin from first principles and consider a theoretical system which is based in two ideas: people getting what they need/want, and honoring people’s rights.
Private property begins with your own body and your own labour (the things you do with your body). If I wish to trade my labor for someone else’s then that’s a private affair. We quantify our labour with a trade medium (money or otherwise) for ease of trade. My accumulated wealth and my ownership of is therefore as natural as the labour itself or the ownership of my own body. By extension, my trading is also highly private. To infringe on any of these things, from my body to my trading is to infringe on my freedoms (protected by negative rights).
I’m free to pursue any path I choose, to work as hard or as little as I like and be responsible for myself. Those who choose to work harder and/or smarter are doing more labour and/or more valuable labour. Naturally, their measure of debt owed to them by society for their contribution accumulates. They are free to trade with this extension of their labor to buy what they want, even put it into infrastructure: Just as people can buy better tools in order to make their labor more valuable, people who have accumulated years worth of excess labour can trade that massive amount of labour for oversized tools such as factories and pay others to operate those tools. Eventually you can get to the point where your labour becomes allocating your amassed resources, there’s also value from your potential to lose all that wealth for no gains. The risk you take itself has value.
Each person in the system is attempting to optimize their own output from it. This allows for a very large and complex system which is self-optimizing for a very large and complex set of desired outcomes, which would otherwise be impossible to accomplish. Since value is relative to the item/labour and its owner, the ability for people to govern their own trading habits creates value. I forget who book and the author where it was said, but essentially, it’s argued that people trading the things they want less for the things they want/need more and thus creating value through a mutual exercise of freedom is thus a moral good.
As a check on this, we can ask: what if they receive what they want, but not through a mutual exercise of freedom? Well, that could be theft couldn’t it? We can extent theft of a person’s accumulated wealth – which they earned from their labour to be in a way the theft of labour itself, which is slavery. So, this model successfully identifies theft and slavery as wrong. What if people don’t get what they need even though their freedom was unmolested? Well, this would be unproductivity. Being unable to feed people for example would be bad. So the model also recognizes productivity as a good thing. Where there are gaps in what people desire, there is higher value to be found. So the self-optimizing nature of the system sees people naturally shift to providing the system and the people with what they want most (such as food) and those that go to that effort are rewarded through the high value of that labour in that moment.
Not only would theft of labour be wrong but imposing a change in the value of something across the whole system also becomes wrong as it is an indirect theft of labour. Things must necessarily be permitted to change in value naturally if the self-optimization of the system is to function – it is a moral bad which erodes the system. To molest something’s value or someone’s labour is to interfere with people getting what they need and/or interfering with their freedom/rights, which is a violation of our fundamental principles originally outlined.
Which economic system aligns with our theoretical model? Free enterprise. Now of course there are a plethora of issues in society that can be addressed, and different systems use different levels of free enterprise, but any good economic system will necessarily make good use of free enterprise. Social liberalism is about as far leftward as you can go before free enterprise breaks down. But obviously if you go too far upward on the political compass you stay into authoritarianism as well, which begins to infringe on the fundamental principles again. So the moral foundation of the system outlined here also lets us decern virtues on the cultural axis as well, which speaks to the veracity of that moral foundation. And that is another aspect where many systems (wink wink, nudge nudge) which attempt to extol their virtue will fail. So either these other systems hold the same values and fail, or don’t hold the same values – and where there is an opposition in elementary principles there can be no true reconciliation.
The main merit of capitalism is that it functions, whereas other economic systems are inherently incapable of functioning sufficiently well.
The main essence of capitalism is the free market, which solves/mitigates the issue of asymmetric information. There is no algorithm and no economic understanding to accurately calculate supply and demand in the economy, let alone more than a few specific markets (such as market for a few products). In modern times, even projecting basic economic growth for a few years is very difficult. If you can’t project sectors well, you cannot project allocation of labourers, money and such well. And with that, people are more unemployed, less wealthy and the government also becomes poorer.
We do not have a mathematical or economic understanding to plan economies well, which is why there is a free market. And that free market inherently implies a capitalist economic system. Hence, the main merit of a capitalist economy is that it works and there has never really been any alternative that functions as well
As for “moral and just”, I don’t much care. Even if we assume large wage inequality is extremely bad, I’d rather have the average standard of living increase with inequality rising more quickly than to leave far more people in poverty.
Capitalism is good in that it generally distributes wealth amongst to hardest working and most skilled in society. It allows for competition which produces superior products and technologies.
Now if you use America as an example we no longer have capitalism, we have a weird half capitalism half socialism that takes basically the worst aspects of both systems and forces them down everyone's throats. Businesses like Facebook for example never have to fear competition because they can A. Buy out any rivals. Or B. Petition the government through bribery to shut down thier competition. This happened to parler back in 2020.
Now if I may I'd like to offer my opinion on why socialism is terrible. On paper it sounds great everyone gets taken care of and nobody wants for anything. In a world with unlimited resources thus might be feasible. But we do not love in a world with infinite resources, in fact we live in a world with extremely limited resources. This is why in nations with universal Healthcare getting treatment for things such as cancer is basically non existent. Sure they put you on a waiting list for 6 months. For a lot of illnesses especially amongst the elderly thsts the difference between life and death.
Also socialism dosent reward hard work or innovation. If you produce a massive crop yield great you still just get to keep the same as the guy who produced only the bare minimum, worse yet the guy who produced nothing gets the same as the people who worked to produce. This just tells the farmer or the worker to just do the bare minimum or hell do nothing at all, whats the difference. This leads to cultural stagnation and supply shortages and kills people in the millions in the long run.
Capitalism isn't a perfect system I'd never claim it to be, but in an imperfect world its the best system we've come up with so far.
Some things. - Capitalism indeed creates wealth fast, but in no way to the most hardworking and skilled. You can be the hardest working person in the world and you won't leave middle class. - Socialism is expensive. For sure. But also if you go to a public hospital your treatment is free. Pay a lot of taxes, but the state gives you lots of perks. - Socialism does reward high effort. Otherwise there would be no social classes among people with high socialist degree. Even in countries with communism you have people doing the same thing with very different amount of rewards.
My opinion. Both fail because of the same thing... People are greedy fucks. If the market could regulate itself, capitalism would be the best thing ever! If governments were not corrupt, socialism would be a close second.
But honestly I trust government more than I do big companies. And counties with high levels of socialism actually are some of the best places to live in. They have capitalism with a big dose of socialism.
Economics is the study of how to use scarce resources as efficiently as possible in any part of production. Capitalism is simply the private ownership or control of production, in other words letting the common citizen take charge in how they can handle their business.
This allows you to work for or start and run a business however you please (although there are rules to it). You make yourself useful so you can gain currency to spend on other things other people have started businesses to produce, the prices of which have been determined by the economic value of the raw materials used to make it, the labor that went into making it, how it follows the law of supply and demand and how it's competitors price them.
I think the reason why we are seeing a rise in people who end up being against capitalism is because, due to many different factors like corrupt monopolies that the government refuses to dismantle despite the antitrust laws we have, things that shouldn't cost an arm and a leg does.
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Anonymous
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*sigh* well, I some other posts here that brought up an important point. The reason a lot of people have become "anti-capitalist" now is because our capitalist system has been corrupted. When anti-trust among other laws are blatantly disregarded by the government organizations designed to prevent them, it f*cks the whole system up to a point. But still, with capitalism, what I work for and earn, are for the most part, mine. The incentive to work hard and "make gains" is still there for me in a capitalist system. If everyone was getting "distributed" $3,000 a month or so, and it didn't matter how much or how little you worked or what you did-- if you even did anything, then the incentive is gone for people to do anything, which does in fact kill innovation and growth because why would someone waste the time and effort if they'll only receive the same as the guy who watches 140 hours of tv a week in a "non-capitalist system"?
Right now, if I study, learn, work harder to find ways to improve my business in a capitalist system, I can gain competitive advantages for my business which make ME more money, so the incentive is there.
It gives everyone the chance to grow a business and become financially independent or allows anyone to reach any wealth bracket. I'm very much pro-capitalism. If it weren't for capitalism, we wouldn't see nearly as much positive growth in the world. In fact I'd argue that because of capitalism, we actually have a real chance to solve some big world problems, technology can grow soon enough to fight climate change or transport us to mars (i admire MOST billionaires/philanthropists). or hell even solve global hunger. and clear the ocean.
if there was no reward (or little reward) for working harder/smarter or growing a business to solve a problem, then i would assume the world would start to sink in terms of productivity and we wouldn't have a chance when all the lazy people are faced with something like a nuclear war (hypothetically, ik this is unlikely).
anyone, my philosophy is that billionaire status should be allowed and that there are dumb people who hurt the world and geniuses who know how to help the world and give people jobs and boost the economy. let those people grow in power, they will make the smartest moves in terms of positive change.
Your anti-capitalist LMAO Ok. Find some Cubans and ask them why they chose to risk their life on a raft and paddle 90 miles across the Caribbean Ocean to flee from a socialist country to a capitalist one? Instead of listening to the TV or your favorite celebrity, talk to people who actually have experienced it. These are people who literally risk their lives so you have to ask yourself what is it about their life and they're living situation in the country they come from that makes them want to risk the lives of themselves and their children? Must be something! Could it be that they're just not as intelligent as you and need someone to come and educate them? Tbh its probably a little more than a 15-year-old American girl can comprehend (I assume you're American). At 15 you haven't even paid bills yet let alone have the wherewithal to make the decision between living in horrible poverty and risking your family's life for a possible better life across the ocean. It's not really something that someone as privileged as yourself can quite grasp. But you're right socialism is great! why don't you take your 15-year-old self and go tell all the 30 year-old Cubans how great socialism is and maybe they will come to their senses and decide not to flee their country. You could also look at Venezuela and look at their hyperinflation and how their money is worth almost nothing and how they had to resort to eating zoo animals and family pets and how the price of chicken and beef skyrocketed astronomically to the point where only the rich could afford meats (other than the kangaroos giraffes water buffalo and Fido and mittens those were first come first serve.)
I’m literally Cuban.. the majority of Cubans do not want capitalism despite what you’re believing from western media. The reason why Cuba’s leaving is because of the crippling embargoes that the US has forced on to Cuba as well as forcing us allies to embargo us. It has made it impossible for our economy to grow and allow us to just govern however we want to govern. They’re trying to force Cubans to participate in capitalism just like they forced Vietnam and to justify there imperialist tactics they’ll brainwash Americans into thinking these countries are authoritarian and you get shot if you aren’t communist or whatever bs.
And trust me My family is from the carribean so it’s not like you’re preaching anything.
You’re so ignorant you choose to get outraged at me saying I’m anti capitalist and can’t possibly fathom that a 15 year old could care about politics and want change and revolution on the socioeconomic and geopolitical level?
This is simply you spewing hate, I came with an open mind and instead of simply answering my question you choose to question my intelligence, and call me privileged as if I’m not aware. I’m aware I’m privileged in certain areas in my life and I choose to use that privilege to uplift others voices and be as active politically as possible because once you grow old and grey my generation will be forced to clean up the mess left from your generation.
You could’ve explained your opinion without insulting me, the whole point of me asking this question was for me as an anti capitalist to engage in rational discussion with capitalists yet that idea flew right over your head.
The only have to look to the USA , and the UK , and even China to a degree to understand that capitalism is by FAR the most efficient system. Why do so many yearn to get to the USA? Opportunity , and that opportunity exists due to the systems of free enterprise , how did China lift so many out of poverty? By copying some capitalistic ways. Everybody has an opportunity to succeed at some level , and improve their standard of living , and USA is by far the best example. Had I had exactly the same standard of career in USA , instead of Australia , I would be 10 times wealthier ( I've done okey , but not as I would have ) this would have allowed me to spend more , to create opportunities for others , to invest more , to donate move , and so the wheel turns. Now , no system is ever perfect , but I've never seen a better , fairer , creative , incentivised system , than that of a wonderful capitalistic system.
tricky question... but, what's good about it? well
many and SO many of the good things in this world, are here due to capitalism, that's the truth, and yes... the cost of those good things is a very high price to pay, but still
in my personal experience, it does give you plenty of chances to have a decent and modest lifestyle
a moderate and sustainable lifestyle is possible if that's what you're going after
and with that being said, no... I don't like one bit, not as capitalism is today, but well, I still have to live in this world and here's where we are... the United States of Capitalist America
What specific good things that we have in this world do you believe is due to capitalism, what do you define as being a modest lifestyle and how do you believe under capitalism people can obtain a modest lifestyle.
-- every good and service we have access to... it is possible due to capitalism, if were able to pay for it and get it, it's because it was available, and it is available due to capitalism, some things we get them without paying for it
-- a more, modest lifestyle is for example... I do not drive a truck that will spend more money on gas in one week, than I would spend in a month with food... I do not get a new phone every single year either, I do not buy clothes that I will use just once or twice and then move on the next trend, I don't spend hundreds or thousands on things that will keep me entertained for it to become expensive... I don't spend that much money on things that are overpriced or that I just won't actually use
-- and how do we obtain a modest lifestyle... well, that's what the middle class is, which is the majority of the people
consider everyone here at G@G... to be here you need at least one device and internet service that yourself or someone else was able to afford, for you... if you have time to "waste" at G@G, then you sure have time and resources to get ahead in life... in many ways that actual poor people cannot afford
And do you think that it’s moral to put a price tag on every single good and service in the name of capitalism?
Especially in cases irl happening right now when it comes to food where the grocery stores will just throw away food if theirs no incentive to sell them. Do you believe we should waste food in the name of capitalism and allow human beings to go hungry simply because they can’t afford to buy food?
To put this into context, around 30% of food in American grocery stores are thrown away. With only 23 US retail stores generating about 16 billion pounds of food waste every year.
As for the middle class being the majority of people, that’s also a myth made to cause division amongst the working class. It doesn’t matter what job you work or how much money you make, if you work for a wage and don’t own the means of production you are a working class person.
I also challenge the idea that the majority of Americans are middle class as the majority of Americans fear they won’t be able to afford healthcare, the majority of families in the US can’t even afford a home in most parts of the US, and around 55% of consumers in the US are working paycheck to paycheck.
How can we claim the majority of Americans are living comfortably in this imaginary middle class category when the average American is struggling to live? It just isn’t realistic
I don't see it from the point of morality... because morality does not really have a place in the economy, what you refer to is a part of capitalism yes, and that is consumerism and that's what I dislike the most about capitalism, I think it is first.. disgusting, and then it's unfair and extremely opportunistic.
and when it comes to the middle class, well... there will be many and plenty of different definitions of what the middle-class implies, parameters there will be many but I do not go by any of them
in a more simplistic view... I see the middle class as the ones that are stuck in the middle, regardless of their income... they are comfortably numb in between whether is by choice or circumstance, their opportunity to move up to the upper and elite is not available for the vast majority of them and at the same time, they will not go broke either, they won't be poor, again... not the vast majority of them
I am not claiming that the majority of the USA is comfortable living with the middle-class range because that's just not true... what's true is that... the vast majority of the people in the USA has the opportunity to struggle to live within the middle class
in many other places people struggle to survive and to simple exist... even a homeless person in the USA has more access to so many services and assistance that are above the living conditions of many working people from other countries... and that is possible and thanks to the USA capitalism
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