The idea that money-making enterprise is virtuous- or at least compatible with virtue – seems to be unshakable in the minds of the rich, for whom it is a self-justifying doctrine, and the poor, for whom it is a focus of inspiration. It is well documented in biblical Judaism, which represented worldly success as a sign of divine favor. It is the theme of many early Buddhist stories about the sanctity and nobility of merchants; for example, Jatakas, which perhaps dates from as early as the 3rd century BC.

Yet the idea was challenged by moralists and many ancient societies evinced hostility toward capitalism by practicing state controlled trade or representing trade as “tribute.” The earliest systematic defense of a capitalist way of life was probably drawn up in the 6th century BC by Mahavira, the founding sage of Jainism. Only monastic self-abnegation, in his view, was fully meritorious, but at least he regarded wealth-creation as morally neutral, as long as the rich man relieved the needs of his neighbors and labored “that many may enjoy what he earns.”

This anticipates modern capitalist theorists’ main moral justification” the wealthy “give employment to the artisan.” Their prosperity “trickles down” to enrich the whole of society.
The doctrine has remained contentious. Hindus, for instance, often represent trade as incompatible with high caste. Confucianism regards commerce as an inferior calling. Aristocratic prejudice usually despises it. Christian tradition questions capitalists’ fitness for heaven. Poverty is regarded as a qualification for sanctity in many religious traditions.

Common experience condemns unregulated enterprise as inherently unjust on the grounds that it rewards the most competitive, the most cut-throat, and the most selfish, and misrepresents greed as good. The consequence, critics say, is a society of exploitation. Socialism proposed an alternative” commerce should become the monopoly of the state.

In practice, where this was tried, it simply transferred immorality to the public sphere on a gigantic scale, creating “state capitalism.”
Capitalism has come to mean different things to different people. Karl Marx used it as the name of a historical period - phase of society in which power is concentrated in the hands of people who dispose of movable wealth, rather than those who own land or make their living from their labor. Economists treat it as a system regulated by the “invisible hand” of market forces, rather than by the state. The essence of capitalism, however, is always privilege accorded to wealth-creation.

Today, capitalism has come to be accepted almost universally as the “least worst” basis for an economic system. However, its deficiencies – which take the form of market instability, undemocratic abuses of corporate power, gross social inequalities, and the “fat-cat” behavior of some capitalists – keep people searching for a “third way,” retaining the benefits of capitalism but controlling it excesses.



Do you favor capitalism? If you don’t what other alternative could you suggest? If you do favor capitalism explain your reasons.

And as usual I will end this with a quote:

“Capitalism wisely managed can probably be made more efficient…than any alternative system…but…is…extremely objectionable.” – John Maynard Keynes, The End of Laissez-Faire(1926)


Suggested readings that I used:

K. Marx’s “Das Kapital (1867) remains the great critique of capitalism.

M. Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom” (1982) mounts an impressive defense.

A. Gidden’s “The Third Way” (1998) is the strongest – yet disturbingly vague – voice for a “third way” in economics.

M. Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (1904) advanced the now discredited claim that capitalism is peculiarly linked with Protestantism.

Do you favor capitalism? If you don’t what other alternative could you suggest? If you do favor capitalism explain your reasons.

if you're the one making all the money it's pretty cool

I could imagine, yet I wonder if any of these multi rich mongols ever have a guilty conscience sitting on stacks of money while a large portion of the world is eating rice and stale salty fish under a shack that has no clean appliances for basic necesseties?

I have the impression that if they don't see it then it doesn't pertain to them.

Well, as with everything, there is no cut-and-dried answer. The middle path is best. So it doesn't come down to a simple yes or no.

Yes, I believe that capitalism is great! To a point! And within reason.

And No, I'm not for unrestrained monopolies. I think capitalism totally sucks when it becomes nothing more than a machine for greed.

Take Bill Gates, as an example. He got away with murder, IMHO. I still can't believe that the government didn't step in and stop him dead in his tracks in the very early going.

He was selling a computer OPERATING SYSTEM!

That would be like allowing ONE PERSON to have the sole patent rights on GASOLINE!

The government should have stepped in and said, no. They should have said, "Look, we'll all work on the OS ourselves and it will be FREE to the public". You can work on things like wordprocesses and spreadsheets, etc.

It was the fact that Microsoft chained all their software down to their OS that keep the competition OUT.

I still can't believe that our government was naive enough to have allowed any single person or corporation to own the operating systems of computers.

That was a totally wrong thing, IMHO.

So, yes, capitalism can work to a degree, but it can be absued too.

When one individual ends up becoming a multi-billionaire and everyone else is struggling to get by then there's something wrong with the system.

It's one thing to have a society that's open to the opportunity of becoming somewhat well-off for those individuals who want to pursue it.

But it's quite another to have it set up where one person can monopolize an entire culture. That's totally uncalled for. No single human being needs to be that filthy rich!

That's just disgusting, and it actually robs other people from opportunities!

So there needs to be some restrictions and some way to keep overly-greedy people from running away with everyone else's opportunities.

One overly-greedy person who monopolizes a market is holding other people DOWN!

It's also true that the richer someone gets the easier it is for them to monopolize. For example, how many people who are trying to just start out in business are going to be able to compete with something like Wal-Mart. It's just not going to happen.

In some ways those big monopolies actually discourage people rather than making them feel that they could achieve the same success. I personally wouldn't even want to run a company that large. I'd rather run a small "Mom and Pop" business (if you could manage to stay in business with a Wal-Mart next door).

You just can't buy your raw products cheap enough to compete with Wal-Mart's prices because they buy in HUGE BULK.

So how does that work out for incentive for the little people?

There are ways of dealing with these issues. But it's going to require a major change in thinking, not only in government, but in society as well.

It seems that the governments as of the international banks have us where they want them.

With that being said, these huge monopolies know that the majority of the people around the world cannot afford too much and set prices to encourage most of the people to come to them.

I mean the mentality for most is "if it is cheaper then I will go there" to get whatever is needed.

For example now that Christmas is coming around "Walmarkt made sure to advertise their christmas trees as the cheapest to get for most city folks. I could imagine for the country folks they just go out to their backyard and chop one down.

I too favor small businesses for they are more personal. I like the idea that a store represenative can call out your first name and offer a good quality service that guarantees you are not being ripped off at the moment as I have always experienced thus far in Miami when going to these corporational stores.

How this issue can be resolved. Perhaps it is a bit too late now, yet also perhaps the power of the corporations will also crumble one day from so much greed that it will go back to small stores again.

With a population of 6.6 billion, I feel that corporations will strive economically strong because the majority of those people are poor or below average and can only afford the prices that are offered.

Then we look at Germany. Now their motto is "quality" before "quanitity" and for some reason it works. It works so good that this small country has managed to be one of the biggest exporters in the world surpassing a couple of years as the biggest exporter, yet what I think it is, is they just concentrate on selling primarily to the rich who have the money or credit as oppossed to for example China, Indonesia, Mexico, and India who want to serve primarily the poor and middle class income.

Whatever the cause I certainly don't see any peaceful alternative in stopping monopolies in going their course, yet I would be interested to see ideas that don't start wars (if even possible) if anyone has them.

let them eat cake

I support the right of a person to the fruits of his own labor and to determine how those fruits are disposed.

That’s pretty much the basis of my philosophy on wealth and it’s distribution.

Now politically speaking, I don’t support any particular “ism”, per se, but the financial concepts inherent in Capitalism align with my philosophy on wealth moreso than any other “ism” I am aware of.

capitalism rocks. like these easy ones.

This is a mistake that is made by most when discussing Capitalism. There are two kinds of monopolies: Natural and harmful. Capitalism can only produce the natural monopoly. A natural monopoly is always in danger of being destroyed by another natural monopoly, so it's prices are regulated by self interest. This price regulation limits the interest in a second party creating a new natural monopoly to compete with the first natural monopoly.

Example: Soandso invents a widget. Everyone needs a widget, so sales are good. Soandso's business does very well. Soandso decides to double the price for the widget to make more money. That influx of money to the widget market prompts new inventors to seek for an alternative to the widget. Then along comes Thatotherguy and Whatshisname to create the wonkit and thingamabob respectively. Now Soandso has lost his monopoly and maybe his whole business for being greedy.

Harmful Monopolies have nothing to do with Capitalism. They are actually the product of Government regulation. Capitalism is self regulating to achieve the lowest possible prices for the customers along a range of qualities. But government regulations make it possible for a single company to grow into a harmful monopoly. The harmful monopoly is the product of fascism, not democracy or capitalism.

Examples: A harmful monopoly might be the government dictating which companies can make which products. Or it might be a highly regulated industry like Casinos. This regulation prevents small casinos from opening, because the licensing fee for a casino is 100 million dollars or more. (around 300 million is the standard in the US). With a government created and protected monopolies, the company has no incentive to charge lower prices, because there is no possible competition. Price gouging results. Of course, the fix is always more regulation. Which feeds the egos of the politicians who can now claim to have fixed a problem...never mind that they are the ones who created the problem.

There is a perfectly legal form of monopoly that is protected by laws around the world: Patents. The owner of the patent is the only entity allowed to produce the product. Such an entity can then sell the product through only one business, thus creating a monopoly.

Keynes actually favored a fascist economic structure, where the companies were privately owned, but heavily regulated by the government.

Keynesian economics went out of favor around the world by 1979, but most of the intrinsic regulations were left in place. The regulations continued to weight down economies. Economists had given up on Keynes, but legislators hadn't. With the economic troubles of today (caused by regulations on the housing market and various other examples of government regulation), Keynesian economics have come back into fashion. It's actually kind of funny that we are looking at the continued failure of Keynesian economics, but Austrian school has gotten the blame. It would be a whole lot more funny, if it wasn't such a clear road to disaster.

absurd. a monopoly that cannot survive as a monopoly was never a monopoly in the first place. it took the government to break up ma bell before their monopolizing practices could be eliminated and competion, read lower prices, could occure. if a mistake is being made as you infer at the beginning of this post then the mistake is your's. monopoly is similar to being pregnant. you is or you ain't. there never has been different flavors of monopoly, natural, harmful or otherwise. monopolies exist or they are broken by legislation or other forces.

if as in your example, soandso raises prices on it's widget and all that thatotherguy has to do is build a wonkit to replace the widgit then where was the monopoly that soandso had. a monopoloy dominates a market segment in such a manner that no new players can play. had soandso had a patent on it's designed that covered similar designs that might replace it as your wonkit and thngamabob did and could control the infrastructure of the market, as at&t did for more than a century, then yes, soandso would have a monopoly in that market. but that was not your example was it? theotherguy and thatotherguy had no problem playing in the same game and sharing the market did they? why? because soandso, thought the only producer for a time, did not monopolize that particular market in the first place.

Laissez-faire capitalism FTW!

Well said, sir!

Bell was a government sanctioned monopoly. It started as a natural monopoly, but the government stepped in to help them solidify their monopoly. The government worked against itself. While the Justice Department tried to take down the monopoly, the legislators helped to prop it up. It's all out there to read. The president of Bell believed in using government intervention to hold market share and he was able to buy enough legislators to make that possible.

Why don't you google monopoly and do a bit of reading? Your statement is itself absurd. You post these silly gratuitous assertions as if you know what you are talking about.

It's not even a theory that natural monopolies form. It's a known fact. Patents and land ownership are natural monopolies. It's also known that government intervention creates harmful monopolies called coercive monopolies.

Now maybe you don't know anything about monopolies and you were just giving an "opinion". Let me assure you that opinions don't apply to this particular subject. You can debate all day and night on which school of economics is right, but you can't claim that natural monopolies don't exist. It's arguing against the facts and is properly labeled a delusion, not an opinion.

Educate yourself, I'm not going to waste my time doing it for you.

So I am going out that everyone who posted in here believes that capitalism is good invention.

Spider,

While I'm suspicious of the sweeping nature of your statements, and am not entirely convinced of the truth of many of the individual claims you make... still I cannot think of a single harmful monopoly which did not get there in part by exploiting government regulations; and it seems to me that most achieve their monopoly status primarily by exploiting government regulations.





Well said.

Smiles,

I favor private property ownership, but I dislike having large, powerful entities who 'ultimate decision makers' follow the ethics implied by the question "Whats in the best interest of the share holders?".

I wonder what the world would be like if corporations were tied to indvidiuals from beginning to end - with the individual being ultimately responsible (liable even) for the companies activities. What if it was simply impossible for corporations to live for hundreds of years? What if a company could not shake off the consequence of 'bad actions' (such as public dis-approval) simply by changing ownership, or changing their branding?

I realize that fitting these ideas into 'how things are' immediately creates impossibilities... thats where greater flexibility of mind comes into play - what if we had started off on very different directions with capitalism two or three hundred years ago, leading to a world in which the previous ideas might work?

I personally believe capitalism is not a good invention, which would probably make me a socialist just for saying this and probably would create quiet a few people who will despise me for saying it here on mingle2. Oh well, then at least I know who enjoys my company.

I think capitalism would be good if monopolies wasn't allowed to be created. Capitalism just doesn't allow the newbie a chance to open up a business without having a tyrannt corporation stomping all over him and driving him out of business before even having a chance to compete.

Where is the creativity in this?

Perhaps I have seen too many unfair practices and influences with mega corporations to have come to this conclusion. As the bulk of the population buys their Gap shirt for $20 or the pair of Nike shoes for $80 the Indonesian, Mexican, Chinese, Bangladesh, and Indian worker works 36 hours straight to go home with just enough money to buy some rice and salty fish for their family under a shack with no clean appliances for basic neccesseties.

I favor small or mid size businesses that really offer quality service then a impersonal mega corporation that focuses on earnings that will drive out the common man to starvation.

As I stated in my starting post, I would be the one looking for a different alternative that would bring in fair practice and opportunity for everyone to ensure equal rights to the common man. I am not convinced capitalism is the solution, although like you said, if it would have had a different direction two or three hundred years ago that ensured fairer practices and opportunities, I might have enjoyed capitalism very much.

In otherwords I would prefer a "third way" invention. Maybe one day such a system might be created that will be popular amongst the many nations around the world.