Economic systems are some of the most complicated and divisive topics with many people on either side of the divide, suffice it to say however, that capitalism is the dominant economic model in use in today’s world.
Despite its dominance, there seems to be a growing discontent among a majority of people who feel like they do not benefit as much as they believe they merit, something I find myself agreeing with more and more with each passing day.
Capitalism is an economic system that involves the use of money in the exchange of goods at its core. But this itself doesn’t seem too problematic and on the surface, it isn’t. However, a slightly deeper analysis reveals that this system has created massive inequalities. Did inequality exist before this, absolutely!! The extent of the inequality is what is of concern here. It is unconscionable for abject poverty to exist in a world in which billionaires are produced by the year yet this is the trend.
The very nature of capitalism promotes greed. The true capitalist (a great insult) is motivated only by the profits that he stands to gain. He is greedy because to be a good capitalist you must be selfish. This leads to him pursuing any means necessary to attain profits for HIMSELF alone. The existence of a company by which he makes his wealth and which have workers who must be paid are necessary liabilities he bears, a bullet he must bite to ensure that his well-oiled machine continues to run, which explains why the worker is so expendable (and yet so necessary*, what a conundrum). The worker, already viewed, whether consciously or otherwise, as a liability are bound to be poorly compensated despite their greatest efforts as they stand in the way of the capitalist and his nirvana… MORE. Greed is therefore the necessary condition for the existence of exploitation which itself is the bedrock of the capitalist system.
Exploitation usually occurs at the most critical part of the wealth creation process which happens to be the extraction of resources though it should be noted that almost all WORKERS are subject to exploitation regardless of their position in the company. This is because the worker ALWAYS generates more wealth than what he receives in return from his employer. In using this logic however, we run into a challenge. Should the owner of the company give the worker the entirety of the value he provides? No, because this is unfair to the owner who provided the opportunity to the worker to generate value and thus wealth. Obviously, the complete opposite of this is out of the question but a situation closer to this often occurs, one in which the worker generates immense value and is only offered mere pennies as compensation. This is a situation that can ONLY be described as legalised theft.
(Capitalists and owners of factors of production are one and the same😁)
Legalised theft occurs when the owners of factors of production pay their workers far below what they ought to receive. Expected pay is usually determined by the prevailing economic situation in a country and the amount of value the worker provides to the company. The usual attempted remedy to legalised theft is the implementation of minimum wages which has a sort of upward cascading effect as this becomes a trend even for higher value generating workers as they suffer the same fate of being underpaid. Minimum wages are usually determined, often indirectly, by capitalists themselves through parliamentary bodies in democratic spaces. There is a clear conflict of interest here as it is impossible for a capitalist to provide a wage devoid of legalised theft as he is in control of the parliamentary bodies tasked with getting rid of the same. He is additionally by his very nature greedy and cannot stand to see legalised theft made illegal. Hence, this is one inherent problem of capitalism and is further proof that this system does not serve the interests of the majority and is thus not compatible with social justice and ultimately threatens the entire human condition.
In light of this, we must explore other options, let’s try socialism which is pretty much the opposite of capitalism, the only other major economic system and a word that capitalists have surrounded with all sorts of propaganda and even often have trouble saying. Socialism1 seeks to do away with classes all together so that we all live in the same conditions and involves the abolition of private property2 and in essence privacy.
This is a noble idea but it is again incompatible with humans as we are inherently unequal by nature. From birth, even when we have no property or wealth attached to our names, some of us are good at things that others would only dream of doing and by having different gifts, we contribute to wealth generation differently and many times unequally. (I am tempted to say that the value of our contributions is the same, but this is unfortunately not true).
Another theory that is often floated is that humans are highly motivated by earning and owning what is rightfully theirs. Socialism cannot stand this idea, an idea which is almost as human as error. In researching this, I have also noticed a trend in which socialist societies, or at least those that try to be socialist, tend to be extremely poor which often has a lot to do with corruption in those nations but an in-depth inspection of that is out of the scope of this article.
The opposite of humanity is poverty for poverty forces man to become less than he actually is in an effort to satisfy his lowest and most basic needs and is powerless to do anything about it which adds to the hopelessness of poverty and indirectly shows how this system steals people’s humanity not through its own issues directly per se but by the issues of the human systems created by it. (Capitalism is guilty of creating poverty as well largely through exploitation of workers as opposed to corruption though both methods of "poverty creation” exist and are rampant in BOTH systems. The method around the “creation of corruption” in both systems are different and yet similar at their core in that greed is often the main reason for corruption, one due to the accumulation of delegated power in the hands of a few that corrupts their ability to strive for the equality of everyone and the other is embedded greed that must exist in capitalism and thus causes people to be corrupt). Owing to these factors, and many more which I am sure I haven’t mentioned, this system also cannot work as socialism takes the humanity from people in its attempt to give people their humanity.
An ideal economic system would be something in between the two (socialism and capitalism). This is what social plans like social health coverages attempt to do but they are ultimately unsuccessful as the prevalent system leans too much to one side in most societies (the capitalist side). The solution to this is usually to ask people who earn more to give more, and this is usually the case, just not as extreme as it needs to be in order to ensure that everyone receives just treatment since as usual, capital itself is writing the laws that allows it to retain as much wealth as it can. At this point, I have reached the end of my thinking process as I have entered a circular logic loop that I cannot escape from. How do we mandate the rich to give more of what is theirs when they are the crafters of mandates, directly or indirectly. This, however, is definitely a superior system to both as it circumvents some of the pitfalls associated with both systems. Perhaps some problems are beyond the scope of our understanding and answers for them are impossible to us.
Maybe one of my subscribers could help me:)
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A link to a basic intro to socialism and what differentiates it and communism.
This is the most common and widely accepted definition and can be found through a quick internet search