Capitalism Ain’t All That
Some of you may read the title of this post and think to yourselves, “Oh boy, another leftist fanboy with his granola eatin’ head in his ass.” Well, nothing could be farther than the truth, having already earned a degree in economics and working on an MBA I think I know a little more about this little religion called Capitalism than you might first think. First off, let me say that I’ve read Adam Smith’s book “The Wealth of Nations” cover to cover and discussed it at great length. I enjoyed the book and agree with the foundations of capitalism that Smith laid out.
Remember though, this was at a time when mercantilism was the main economic theory. Smith probably didn’t have the ability to predict how human nature would take the foundations he laid out and twist them to some deformed version. “Communist!” You say? Hardly, I’m all for free enterprise, and healthy economic growth. But I still have a few issues with what some deem “the end all be all economic theory.”
1.) Consumption: Capitalism (at least today) is built on the basis of ever increasing consumption. What does that mean? Well, in short hand, it means you will never buy anything that will outlast you. Everything consumers buy is designed to have a certain life-span that dictates that the consumer must continue to ‘consume’ that product if they wish to use it. Don’t think there’s a problem there? Well, think for a moment about how far technology has come in the last 100 years. We certainly have the ability to create durable items that will outlast us, but that isn’t in the best interest of companies that create those products. So it follows that capitalism actually retards innovation.
2.) Corruption: Probably the main reason I don’t lean to the Libertarian way of thinking is I think I have a pretty realistic understanding of human nature. Allowed to run completely free and unchecked, corporations and individuals would find every law on the book that they could bend or break to increase their profit-margins. Some may say that “I know what’s in my own best interests better than the government!” And that’s probably true. But if you believe your own self-interests involve taking money from people that have earned it by creating something of value with a promise of health insurance that will never materialize, then we have a problem. I think the biggest fault in logic of those that promote big business regardless of the cost, is that they have no sense of where a person’s personal power comes from. The power of the people is derived from their government. As bureaucratic and wasteful as some governments might be at times… they are an ABSOLUTE necessity. Where else is someone supposed to gain the power to have some recourse against some multi-million dollar company that bilked them out of their life-savings with fradulent premiums? Say what you want about keeping governments out of business, but if there were no checks and balances we’d be soy bean share-croppers in China in no time.
So the next time someone tells you the government is against big business and free-enterprise, ask them to compare the number of news stories in the past year involving great accomplishments of huge multi-national corporations to the number of stories about fraud and scandals committed by those same companies. You see, the same reason socialism would never work as an economic model is the same reason truly ‘free’ enterprise (i.e. zero government intervention) would never work: human nature.
[tags]politics, commentary, economics, rant, business, capitalism[/tags]
