Is pure capitalism a religion we have taken too far? George W. Bush may wish to talk about God as much as he wants, his track record and the one of his family, up to his grandfather and great grandfather, speak for themselves. The Bush family has only one God and one religion, it has nothing to do with Christianity, but everything to do with making money. Pure capitalism and pure greed to the extreme is our only religion.
I feel it is difficult to speak of capitalism as a whole, without falling in numerous traps and being accused of not knowing what I am talking about. So first thing I did was to go on Wikipedia, then I stopped myself. Don't get me wrong, I will read it and say what I think of it, but first capitalism must be, before anything else, what the people inside really feel it is. Not the perfect book definition that we all wish it to be, because in practice we know capitalism has evolved into something else, that many consider a real monster and threat to humanity.
This point becomes clearer when we read Karl Marx and his ideas of a perfect socialism, which in real life has been the breeding ground of corruption and governments' hidden agendas, who drove us all to utter failure. I read a bit of Karl Marx a long time ago, I like to say I didn't, and yes, I was charmed by it. In reality, what I have observed of what we have done in his name, has alarmed me so much, the only solution I could see was to discredit the man, because no one ever again should use Karl Marx as any kind of authority to justify the worst atrocities and injustices this humanity has seen. I may talk more about this one day, right now I wish to define my own definition of capitalism.
What is capitalism in your own mind? What is it in my mind? Well, it is our new religion, it is all that we believe in. We claim it is our way to freedom, the liberation of the masses, our chance to succeed beyond measure at becoming filthy rich and powerful, no matter our background, our education, our social class. Capitalism can be reduced to the American Dream.
In my total ignorance of what exactly is capitalism, I have to say, yes, capitalism is wonderful! I want that chance to freedom, I want to become filthy rich and powerful, I want to do what I want to do in this life, nothing else. At this point I realise that I need to dig further. What else do we believe it is?
Well, it is a system, an economic system upon which our existence, our corporations, our governments base everything they think and do. What it seems to be about is capital, making money, as much as one can, to the detrimental of just about everything else in life. If the one at the top prospers, we all prosper. A rich company will create jobs and should in theory pay its employees well. The private sector is where capitalism is applied, though even government agencies think in capitalist terms, and if there is a way to make a profit in anything, we should certainly go for it and make tons of money that could be re-invested somewhere else.
When I was child, my parents never had with me the big talk about capitalism and what it meant. They never told me what was expected of me in such a system. Haven't they? They certainly pushed my sister and I to the limits. We had to have a great education, we had to succeed at any cost and attend the best universities, we had to become rich and have a great status in this society, the best job one can hope for. Medical, law and engineering were the only obvious choices available to us. However, in retrospect, they were misguided. No one becomes rich being a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. Poor shadows of what capitalism truly means.
Capitalism means starting your own business and building it until it becomes a huge corporation employing thousands of people worldwide in some sort of wonderful perfect globalised world. Lawyers in Canada can eventually do that, they can start their own law firm. Engineers can do the same, creating their own engineering consulting firm. Doctors in Canada cannot really go private, in the United States however they can, as it is all mostly private. This led to horrifying results, where doctors became nothing less than advertising agencies for the almighty pharmaceutical companies, pushing half baked drugs that they all know don't work, and in many cases, make the patients worse.
Perhaps capitalism should never have been applied in certain areas of our society. There is no need to become extreme, like in the United States, or we will eventually reach a point where everything will come crumbling down to dust, as we are witnessing right now in the stock exchange market and financial sector. Too much greed will be our downfall, just as it has always been throughout the ages.
At its most basic definition, I think it is fair to say that what comes to mind to anyone when we talk about capitalism, is this law of the offer and the demand. Let's forget here about advertising and marketing, forcing us to wish for things we would never have thought we needed in the first place. We live in a society of consumerism, highly materialistic in nature, where your only goal in life is to acquire as many possessions and assets as you can, as it is how you will be judged and respected in society. How much wealth you have will define how great a man or a woman you truly are, your worthiness to exist. This is what the meaning of life has been reduced to under capitalism, a game of Monopoly, and I dare you to deny it. It is such a shame, as I do love to play Monopoly on my Nintendo DS. I am a product of my generation, well, almost.
It's okay, I am still not criticising capitalism that badly, who knows, maybe it is the way to go. After all, what other system has brought us anything better? None. Might seem a bit superficial, plastic, meaningless, and so on, and on, and on. If one wishes to be the devil's advocate in this case, my God, that one could go on forever about how misplaced this whole philosophy of life can be, and how more important stuff are actually... well, much more important. Like, I don't know, emancipation, happiness, finding a meaning to our existence and figuring what is this place, the universe we live in. Finding some peace about who we are and what we are supposed to do here, if anything.
Freedom and happiness are still key to everything, we should never forget that. I believe they tried to convince us that it was embedded in the whole capitalism system. You are free to become a civil servant doing admin for the rest of your life, or create your own business and become as rich as your imagination and cleverness or shrewdness will lead you to.
Then, I suppose, capitalism only becomes a real problem to you if you are just a civil servant with no thirst to becoming rich and controlling the planet. Otherwise, wow, what a great life you can have, a real challenge that will answer all your prayers, assuming you have totally espoused the capitalist way of thinking. You might find later on in life that this was after all a bit meaningless, but who cares. Whilst you were in the thick of it, it seemed right, it was fulfilling, it was exciting, you can be proud of yourself and your achievements, you certainly cannot be faulted for it, you will be envied.
In order to get a better idea about how great capitalism is, we need to turn to our models and heroes of capitalism. I reckon, that should be anyone who has made over a billion dollars and who took the time later on in life to write his or her autobiography, or at least who have given us enough to understand how they truly felt about it. Then, we also need to assess if they have not simply continued to play the game and are not just telling us how great and successful they have been. I mean, a real turn around to assess exactly and honestly how they feel about it all.
I can think of two great examples, perhaps the greatest ever, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. It does not matter who they are and how they made it. If you do not know who they are, forget it. All you need to know is that they made billions of dollars and build up the most successful corporations this world has ever seen. And later on in life, they both seemed to have suffered from some sort of existential crisis, and realised that perhaps life and our values were not all that they should have been.
So now they have decided to turn the table around and help the world with their fortune, by squandering their money away to every loser on the planet who has never heard of capitalism or cannot even dream to ever find out. The people who most probably suffered greatly at the hand of capitalism, since no system ever could sustain itself without exploitation of others and some sort of slavery in the form of cheap labour. Capitalism is not the exception here, I'm afraid.
Capitalism is a system of voluntary interaction between people. It's that simple. All other systems are based on force or the threat of force, which is what leads to their downfall.
The US is far from pure capitalism. Even those who claim to be capitalists aren't. From the master of capitalism, Von Mises:
A note about your idea that your beautiful country, Canada, has struck the right balance. Are you aware that in the past when Canada was more capitalistic it had the fastest growing economy in the world?
When I say “capitalism,” I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism—with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.
by
Darren Wolfe (7 articles, 225 quicklinks, 110 diaries, 810 comments)
on Saturday, July 26, 2008 at 3:11:19 PM
You may be right, and I may need to learn more upon the subject. Interesting links, it certainly gave me some food for thought. I may one day study all this further.
What I am worried about is that many systems look great in theory, but in practice, as soon as it goes too far, too many people find too many loopholes to the point that the system is no longer what we think it is.
Perhaps this is what you are saying, that if it was truly left to itself, capitalism would work better? That a purer form of capitalism, free from the government's hand might work? I just don't know.
I know it worked in Germany where State and Finance were separate entities. And it is the reason why the European Union trusted Germany in money matters, they had the best economy in Europe.
But even then, Germany like Canada is not that capitalist compared to America, it has a lot of socialism in it, and certainly Germany has a great standard of living and is a rich country.
You can not separate government and the economy. Capitalism and Socialism exist in every Democratic country. It is government that decides the balance of the 2.
The Capitalism part of the economy is in private hands and run in the interests of private owners whose main objective is to maximize profit. This is an essential component of economic growth. Governments main function should be to preserve competitiveness and prevent exploitation of the environment and labour through regulation. Capitalism is good when properly restrained.
The socialist part of the economy are for those aspects of an economy deemed too important to the welfare of the nation and it's citizens to leave in the hands of for profit business. Congress was given the constitutional duty to safeguard the general welfare of it's citizens. The military, public education, health care and social welfare, firefighting, police, etc. have all been socialized in most countries. In fact, federal government spending accounts for more than 50% of all domestic spending, so we are more than 50% socialized. Our government spends more than almost any country with national health care on a per capita basis, with very little to show for it.
The medium of exchange for any economy is money. The constitution gave Congress the right to create money. Congress has allowed the for profit private banking monopoly called the Federal Reserve System to control the nations money creation. So instead of creating money for infrastructure development and social welfare, which has little profit in it, they create money for sub-prime loans that get bundled up and sold to their shareholders as securities. Big banks that have a couple of years losses after many years of profits get bailed out. Government can only borrow money at interest or tax it's citizens to spend money. Corporate citizens only pay tax on it's profits, and income generated abroad is untaxed unless they bring it home to invest in the US. Thats why citizens pay so much more of the tax burden than corporations today.
Whats given capitalism a bad name is crony capitalism. This is when government decides it's corporate citizens have more rights than its working class citizens, and when those in government profit as a result of their favouritism. This is the kind of capitalism in America today. Crony capitalism allows cartels and monopolies in the favoured industries, and allows excess profits due to the lack of competition under the guise of free markets, despite it being against the interests of the welfare of the nations citizens. Another name for it in it's most advanced form is Fascism.
by
pft (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 576 comments)
on Saturday, July 26, 2008 at 11:56:47 PM
Thank you Mr. Wolfe, but I don't understand. The link you provided is such a negative critic of the book by Naomi Klein "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism", as to annihilate anyone's wish to read it. Surely this is not the link Mr. M wanted to provide?
Or please tell me what is your position about this book and shock doctrine. Do you believe, as that economist reviewer says, that the book is more or less unconvincing and bordering on fiction?
Even whilst reading between the lines of that critic, I can feel this book might be right and that Ms Klein has written there an intelligent assessment of what capitalism has become. Actually, I might find many answers in that book.
The book seems also to answer other questions I have about capitalism, that you can read in my other article published almost at the same time as this present article on OEN (it was headlined yesterday and the day before):
Are recessions just a transfer of money, are stock market crashes artificially created?
In other words you are saying that capitalism works just fine and we may still be able to salvage it (after, say, a huge stock market crash), as to eliminate this Crony capitalism which has taken over the game.
Worth considering, I would certainly hate to have to replace capitalism with something else, there does not seem to be anything else to replace it with.
As to America being socialist as well as capitalist, I agree. It is just not to the same degree than many other nations. As long as health care is not free, and is based on capitalism, I think we can safely say that the country is far from socialism.
Health care and other social welfare programs should not be subject to capitalism, at least not 100%. This is an example of where we should remove profit. Today, the US government pays more on a per capita basis for health care that many "socialists" nations with far less to show for it. For those who want more than the US socialist programs would provide for, capitalism can step in and offer better services for those willing to pay for it. Many countries with national health care for all, also have supplementary insurance and priority care services that charge extra for those who can afford it.
by
pft (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 576 comments)
on Sunday, July 27, 2008 at 11:36:13 PM
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