After hearing every lame excuse under the sun for why communism has never provided the same economic benefits as capitalism, why is everyone down on the free market system? Singapore is leading the way in Malaysia, South Africa has lead the way in Africa, Hong Kong and Japan have lead the way in Asia and what system are they all using? No matter what communist aplogizing professors say, capitalism will always out perform Socialism. Look what's happening in Europe right now. Those whining bed wetters are all upset because they're getting pulled off the govenments tit. Well, as Fats Domino sang, ain't it ashame. :roll:
The problems that I have with the idea of Capitalism are systemic problems, the way the system is set up.
Companies and corporations require more returns on profit than previous quarters, growing profit. We have reached a point in time where this is no longer possible via legal means in many cases and where illegal and monopolistic means are the shortest roads to higher profits. Almost every single company currently doing business in the American market has, at least once, been fined or otherwise penalized by the government for illegal actions. These actions taken as a direct means to either attain more profit or to avoid having to part with large sums of money that would negatively affect profit. Companies are forced to either die or do illegal or immoral actions to, in the words of their spokespeople, "Stay competitive." Many companies will publically own up to this if asked directly about why they have taken a particular course of action that is immoral (Illegal actions usually elicit denials and pass-offs of responsibility), the claim is made that it was to "keep the company competitive in a very competitive marketplace." When it has become an industry practice to cut corners wherever humanly possible, regardless of legal or moral implications, that is a symptom that something is very seriously wrong.
Marketing and the way products are presented is another sign. Marketing is an all-pervasive aspect of our lives. But only in the last decade or so have marketers run into a real problem. There are only so many places you can put a logo, only so much airtime you can buy, and only so many ads you can place. Advertising has to get clever to stay competitive, going to the lengths of inserting products into entertainment such as movies, music, and TV shows or even surreptitious product placement in our everyday lives. This gets taken to the VERY extreme of destruction of private property for advertising in the form of spyware, malware, and adware. Marketing has gotten to the point where the new ideas have all run out so the best that can be developed is to actually destroy the private property of other people to market one's products. This is leeching over into our cultural heritage as well, many things are now known by their corporate sponsor rather than their actual name.
This increasing demand for a spendy public is starting to manifest problems in our money as well. As almost everybody knows, it’s getting harder and harder to get by on a living wage. Minimum wage has risen by only a few dollars in the last decades whereas inflation has driven prices up exponentially. There has also been extremely novel new ways of spending money, allowing it to be spent even faster than before and in greater quantities and making it very easy to go into debt even if you are actively attempting to avoid going into debt. The cost of living has placed many necessary things such as health care, insurance, good legal representation, good schools, a good home, and decent food out of the reach of many people in America. Advertisers have enlisted the help of scientists, psychologists, sociologists, statisticians, even ordinary people, to help them sell their products as fast as possible and to as many people as possible.
Some people say "But the market evolves, it creates new products, its always moving, always going upwards." The deer with an arrow through its stomach staggers on a few more steps while trailing blood and intestines behind it. One should not confuse actual progress with the frantic scrambling of self-preservation. The market has had to develop not only new products, but new WANTS for consumers. Not only that, but they've had to SELL them to us, to convince us that, yes, we really do want seat warmers and air-cooled gloveboxes even though most of us had no need for these things before they arose and civilization will not be any better off for their actually being there. The market is struggling to come up with new things to sell and new ways to sell it to keep itself alive because if it stops for one second, it dies. BILLIONS of dollars every year is spent on R&D and marketing to make new products with goal being only to sell them and with no consideration if there is any actual need or desire for the product. Companies know that if the need isn't there, the desire can be MADE.
One of the biggest clues that the end is near for corporate America is the massive backsurgance against it and it's methodology. Mass protests and media dispersed all over the Internet that highlight companies wrongdoings and failings. These things are forcing companies to either shape up or face red ink. This new global communication is making it much more difficult for companies to hide information when all it takes is one determined blogger to spread the word of an illegal purchase or a court case a company wants kept quiet.
These are problems that we've never seen in our economic system before in this quantity and this pervasiveness. This is a problem and it needs to be taken care of as soon as humanly possible
One thing I hear frequently in regards to business or products that I dislike or find distasteful because they are made in an ethically compromising way or something about them makes me not want to buy them because I have concerns about the product is "Just dont buy it."
This attitude of "vote with your wallet" seems to be the democratic way. "The market will punish bad companies." But I was thinking about this today and...that doesn't seem very democratic at all.
The people with the greatest VITAL vested interest in many of these things dont have much money and therefore dont have as much "voting power". People WITH money are usually going to ignore ethical concerns about their products (unless its fashionable or you can get it cheaper by adressing them) and have MORE voting power and are thus going to "vote" (buy) in a way that supports them having to spend as little as possible while saving as much as possible.
This...seems fairly un-balanced and seems to protect the company that makes the cheapest stuff. I dont see the punishment that the market allegedly provides to corporations who do bad things.
