#my take#politics#article
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Capitalism
2021-02-10 · 4 min readThe age old debate of whether capitalism is the best economic system.
Why does capitalism sound so appealing? Logically speaking, it should be the best system, were anyone with an idea can make things and money, as well as places where people. can make money by investing in people and so forth. While studying for my world history class, I was drawn deeper into the capitalistic fantasy, where technically anything can be solved by the market, because of the idea that it's just the amalgamation of humanities desires. In poverty, need investments? It would be profitable to create income share agreements with people in poverty, as well as make venture capitalist firms. Rather than searching stuff up reasons on why capitalism is flawed (at least in our current society), I tried to think of reasons by myself.After some thought, my main indite to capitalism, is that it requires everyone to be rationally evil, or perfectly greedy. That basically means, no one would really hate anyone, or like anyone, everyone would just want money. This would come before any relation you have, including family, friends, your city, and everything. Thus, the main thing that hold back capitalism, is tribalism, where we form groups within the human race, and try to serve them. These can be based on race, ethnicity, wealth or income. The reason people haven't already started an income share agreements is the pretense that "the poor" aren't as smart, or wouldn't be able to profit, as with other tribal assumptions. Some people may point out that these ISA companies have already started to pop up in tech, like Lambda School, among many others. Although they aren't marketed as much to people in poverty, it's a good example of how tribalism is slowly fading away. As people and lifestyles start to homogenize, and we find fewer things to find "different" about others, tribalism will slowly fade away, as we can see right now. Once that happens, I believe we could probably live in a utopian capitalism society.So what should we do now? I hear some people talk about communism, but even though it may sound good, it's just a variation of the same problem, as it feeds off rational altruism. Communism could only work if everyone was the same, and if tribalism was conquered. If that does happen though, I still believe a capitalist economy with progress based off greed would progress further, without any of the drawbacks we see today, as they all stem from some form of tribalism. Thus I come to the conclusion of socialism, which is neither purely capitalist, or communist, but a blend of the two that match reality. Just as humans are neither perfectly altruistic, nor perfectly greedy, an economic system shouldn't be based on humans being either. Socialism is a great alternative that most societies use today (even the US with its welfare programs), where we can stay until we transition out of tribalism. After then, if we have the choice to choose between the two extremes, I would pick capitalism, as it wouldn't have many of the downsides that come with capitalism.Overall, this is just a quick jot down of my thoughts on all three, and my opinion on what the main problem is that stops us from progressing as a society. But always remember, these ideas are always subject to change, as opinions usually are, and I'm happy to hear any differing thoughts on anytime!Update April 2021: I've been thinking about this more, and the link between the capitalist free market and democracy, therefore justifying capitalism because democracy good. I agree with the relation, but its not always right to believe democracy to be the "100% best no questions asked" idea. The problem here, is the free market is like early total democracies, where every single person would vote for every legislation. There would be chaos, and people wouldn't be able to make proper informed decisions in every area (hence why the US is a representative democracy). This is the same reason why the free market is flawed. This can also be applied to socialism, which can be related to a representative democracy, where everyone may not get a direct say in everything, but can indirectly influence the market (ie. standardized healthcare prices). Just adding this in there as a thought I had recently.Thanks for reading! Liked the story? Click the heart
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