Capitalism:  Less than the Best.  Part 0

As you can see I'm starting a series with the title above and every once in awhile I would like to expose a flaw or some kind of evil or contradiction of capitalism and hone in on it.  This post is the introduction to this series.  I chose this title very specifically to show that I'm not like many left-wingers who believe that nothing good has ever come from the free market.  I am not like that at all.  I believe that a lot of good has stemmed from capitalism -- not as much good as the right believes and not as little good as the left believes, like Baby Bear, just right.

Capitalism is like a mirage in many ways.  Conservatives feel as if we haven't really given capitalism a fair shot, that this perfect image of this ideal was never truly explored.  They believe we can look back and see that over time government intervention has spoiled the purity of this experiment -- as if  FDR and all the other commies, with there intervention, slowed down innovation so much that if they never existed we'd have hover-cars and and nearly everyone (except for the lazy bums) would be a millionaires, peace and prosperity for all.  Many liberals on the other hand -- I'm talking about the crazy ones -- can't accept the fact that the freedom and prosperity many of us enjoy is due in large part to the free market.  They haven't even given capitalism a fair look to see if it was actually a mirage at all.  They could care less about the validity of it's production.  They have blinded themselves because they haven't even opened their eyes.

Truth is, human nature will always turn a free market system into a system that isn't purely capitalistic and that will never truly satisfy either group.  Here's how a free market system devolves (or evolves):  lax or no government regulations ==> increase greed and power of industry leaders (human nature) ==> exploitation of the everyone who isn't an industry leader or manager (the 90%) ==> growing dissatisfaction by the 90% who feel exploited (because of long work hours, little pay, high price of goods, child labor, environmental damage, etc.) ==> failed strikes by the 90% because they need to feed, cloth and shelter their families and they hold almost no cards ==> the 90% turning to the government for intervention ==> the government stepping in to check industry on behalf of the powerless people.  That's it, a free market system in a democracy will become what we have right now:  a socialistic capitalism.

If there was one thing to take out of it is that a corporation is concerned with one thing:  profit.  They are not concerned with the welfare of their workers or the public, the planet's environment, the limited resources of the planet, expanding creativity and intelligence of the general public or anything else.  They only care about whether there is a plus or minus sign at the bottom of their quarterly spreadsheets and that's it.  It's not even really the greed of the 1% that would do America in if it were in a laissez-faire system.  It is the pointless minutia of scoring that little extra stock point for one's company for a competitive advantage.  It is a game -- a game that has huge consequences for the earth's entire population and for earth itself.

A capitalist might say that the invisible hand will work all of this out, that the unseen forces of the market will make sure that competition will provide for good wages and low prices.  They'll say that the economy will be balanced and fair and the environment will be looked after because, after all, the consumer will be voting with his or her wallet or pocketbook.  I stopped believing in invisible and unseen things once I became an atheist.  I say that you just can't say this for sure.  I mean, pure capitalism was an experiment that failed because it wasn't compatible with human nature.  The mixed economic system we have now naturally stemmed from capitalism's inability to make good on its promises of a good life for hard workers, the industrious and creative people.

Those on the right use capitalism as a double-edged sword.  They want to point out all the great things that capitalism, with it's government intervention, has brought about and at the same time they want to claim that this exact same capitalism, with it's government intervention, has held us back.   Honestly, they can't do this because they can't say for sure that a pure, laissez-faire style capitalism would have brought us as far as our current mixed style has.  Only a laissez-faire style capitalistic system mixed with human nature in a real-world experiment would show if it would or not.

My point is that I think capitalism WAS a great economic system.  It was a system we needed at a certain time.  It brought a measure of prosperity and freedom.  But it's overdue to be overhauled.  Humanity needs to be moving to the next step.  This series will expose the weaknesses of this economic system that should have been abandoned forty or fifty years ago for a new and better system that should push humanity even further and on to something else.