Capitalism’s Problem
Capitalism, Webster’s Third International Dictionary tells us, is “an economic system based on corporate ownership of capital goods, with investment determined by private decision, and with prices, production, and the distribution of goods and services determined mainly in a free Markey. “ And I would add, it is “a system founded on honesty, decency, and trust.”
What’s at the root of the problems of American capitalism. First, something changed socially, I quote teacher Joseph Campbell: “ In medieval times, as you approached a city, your eyes was taken by the Cathedral. Today, it’s the towers of commerce (or once towers of commerce). It’s business, business, business”. We have become what Campbell called a “bottom-line society.” Society came to measure the wrong bottom line: form over substance, prestige over virtues, money over achievement, charisma over character, the ephemeral over the enduring, even mammon over God.
Our bottom line society has some accounting to reconcile in the exchanges mentioned above. I quote chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks: “When everything that matters can be bought and sold, when commitments can be broken because they are no longer to our advantage, slogans become our litany, when our worth is measured by how much we earn and spend, then the market is destroying the very virtues on which in the long run it depends.”
What has gone wrong? I quote William Pfaff’s description of a “pathological mutation in capitalism”. The classic system owners’ capitalism had been based on a dedication to serving the interest of the corporation’s owners in maximizing the return on their capital investments. But a new system developed – managers capitalism – in which, Pfaff wrote, “the corporation came to be run to profit it’s managers, in complicity if not conspiracy with accountants and the managers of other corporations.”
The age of managers capitalism has had dire consequences for our sense of fairness in western society. As one comedian has said, “somebody gonna get hurt here”. This hurt is seen in the rise in the gap between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots. Some facts: In the mid – 1970, the wealthiest one percent of Americans owned about 18 percent of the nation’s financial wealth. By the close of the twentieth century, the share owned by the top one percent has grown to 40 -(forty) percent, the highest share in the nations history. A society that tolerates such differences in income and wealth is a society that faces long-term financial problems.
I do not claim to be a financial guru, but I do read and love research. I plan on continuing this blog on Capitalism, as I believe our children will be faced with solving the global unfairness in the distribution of wealth. With out solving or understanding these problems we will continue to face riots and disturbances leading to more wars in the coming future we leave to our children.
There is a moral justification for Capitalism, and it is decidedly not altruism. Its existence stems from rationality, it protects man's survival and its ruling principle is justice.
ReplyDeleteCapitalism demands the best of every man and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him. Success depends on the objective value of the work and on the rationality of those who recognize that value. When men are free to trade, with reason and reality as their only arbiter, when no man may use physical force to extort the consent of another, it is the best product and the best judgment that win, and raise the standard of living and of thought ever higher.
The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve “the common good.” It does (most of the time)but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system that reflects man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival verses man, and that its ruling principle is: justice.
It's funny you are writing about capitalism. I just started reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (this will be my third reading). I don't believe there is a better articulation of the social and financial dynamics of capitalism.
Just another opinion.
Brian Brittsan
Nice input on the subject...well said and in reality very true. I simple get discouraged with the unfair distribution of wealth on this planet and often feel that the misuse of financial gain, plus the unfair methods of gaining it, mixed with unfair distribution, brings me to my knees.
ReplyDeleteMy feelings about capitalism are symptoms of a much deeper disease, the greed of our human nature left uncontrolled.