The Problems with Capitalism

Capitalism gets a lot of heat from those who believe that something else is better. As previously discussed, any belief is a myth unless proven to be true. So, most who oppose capitalism oppose it on the grounds of belief and myth, not truth or even statistics. What follows is a critique of capitalism from a reasoned position.

1. If you don't do something that other people value (or you aren't aided by someone who does/did something of value) then you will starve. Those who cannot, will not or are excluded from producing something that others are willing to pay for will be at the mercy of those who produce. Capitalism gives no intrinsic "value" to a human except in how that person is able to add something that is valued. Children, the severely disabled, and those excluded by reason of social bias (ie, minorities in the past, now some majority due to affirmative action) are dependent upon a moral or ethical value system within the society to maintain their lives. If you happen to believe that all lives are of equal value, this would seem unfair.
2. What is valued may not fit one's particular moral code; there may be a disconnect between the value of the service and the respect for the provider. For example, prostitution has been a valued service for eons, but the prostitute usually does not achieve respect. One could apply the same logic to garbage collectors and other occupations that do good but are not highly esteemed.
3. Capitalism does not reward flow. Flow, or the feeling one gets while solving moderately hard problems, often is not part of the work experience. Flow is one of the key drivers to the open source movement in software and on the internet. People do things that makes them feel "flow" even if that does not produce capital gain. It is the lucky person who can make their occupation one that is replete with flow. The absence of flow is what makes jobs so stressful and unfulfilling and creates the need for leisure and hobbies.
4. Capitalism is time fixed. Reward must be provided within a specific time frame. Profits must occur within a time window. For a publicly traded corporation, it may be 3 months. For an employee, it would be a pay period or perhaps a year. For a person, it would be perhaps 40 years. This limits consideration of longer term impacts on things such as employee health, the environment, raw material supplies and other sustainabilities.

It should be noted that there are counterarguments to these points. For example, capitalistic societies tend to be more wealthy, to have more distributed wealth, which can be used for social aid and valued programs (consider charities and public gifts such as the libraries and museums donated/funded by the tycoons). Further, capitalism enables the diffusion of goods and services as profits are often tied to the size of the population that can afford the item. A company that can provide a luxury at a price the average person can afford will be more profitable than one that can only provide its goods to a small elite segment.

The challenge for our societies is not to control capitalism, but to try to incorporate into capitalism interest in overcoming its shortcomings. Employees in flow will be better workers and will provide more value for less money. Societies must find ways to make us all aware of the nobility or need of occupations that normally are frowned upon. Lastly, something must be done to increase the time horizon of capitalists. One option might be to link capital gains taxes to the duration of an investment (the longer you hold a security, the lower the taxes).

Nothing I am aware of beats capitalism, and certainly central command and control is vastly inferior.

Addendum: DocBrain was paid nothing for this blog; it was written in the state of flow; I don't care if anyone reads it; and it will exist until google takes it away.