| richardhutnik said: I will say that capitalism alone needs to be tempered by other things, or people will suffer. This is not necessarily more government. It means that people need to have other things they value besides maximizing profits. A sense of compassion would help, and people actually doing things to help their neighbor, would help a lot. Capitalism is a great vehicle to generate wealth, but then the question remains about what the wealth is to be used for. Are we to just mindlessly go for the generating even more wealth, or using it to help others? Are we to build a society that manufactures false discontent, in order to get people to borrow and buy, or strive for other things? I am of the belief a liberal will see the problems in a society, and then believe the answer is always, "GET THE GOVERNMENT INVOLVED!". There is the line Reagan said about liberals wanting to subsidize things that don't work, and tax things that do. A traditionalist (subset of conservatism), with a sense of patriotism and America first, will argue that a country needs to have values it upholds and remains true to, and the role of government is to help preserve those values. The libertarian, of course, believes all this is nonsense and it is the job of government to get out of the way, and to allow people to fail... even to the extent people die, if necessary. It is through this failing and death, that we evolve a better society, as the superior rise to the top. Anyhow, one can do a critique of Bioshock 1 and 2, to see this discussed. |
@bold,
Well that is actually a fairly easy question to address. It also highlights an aspect of capitalism that even it's supporters don't always seem to fully grasp.
Put simply wealth is NOT the point of capitalism, prosperity is.
"OK but what does that actually mean" is probably what you're thinking. And the answer is that the point of capitalism is not just to make smart people rich. The fundamental point of capitalism, like any economic system is to promote the advancement of the society's standards of living.
Capitalism promotes this by telling people that if they take the risk of believing in their ideas and they work hard to succeed they will be rewarded with wealth. But looking at just this aspect of capitalism is sort of like following a single electron flowing down a wire as a generator powers a city...you're not seeing the big picture. The wealth gained by one individual is ultimately only used for two things...1) to buy items that improve that person's standard of living thus rewarding someone else, or 2) Taking another risk to improve standards of living for everyone. Because ultimately the important thing is the accumulation of countless iterations of risk and success, which is why even the rewards people receive can eventually only go towards even more risks. It is this repetition through society that together adds up to a constant forward motion in standards of living.
It is easy to overlook but even the absurdly frequent revisions to an iPhone or a new Dell Laptop, while they may seem insignificant, are vitally important as they are funding the R&D behind miniaturization processes. And the smaller the parts get the more we can fit on a single chip, and the the faster our computers get as a result. While these benefits of a slightly faster computer, may seem like a nominal advancement to standards of living, the cumulative benefit of those incremental speed increases over time should be obvious. From a time when only a massive business or a large university would have a room-sized computer, to when lots of folks had work computers but not home computers, to when home PC's were everywhere and only a businessman would have a laptop, to now when both of my 10 year old cousins are on their second laptop as of last X-mas. It is a relentless march of incremental progress...which may be why so few seem to notice it..it is so incremental.
This process, as should be obvious now, repeats itself across all industries relentlessly. Of course, from time to time an industries may stagnate and they'll suffer as a result until they either adapt or they die off, while other industries experience a burst of new innovation and thrive as a result.
The bottom line to get from all of thus, at the risk of being a bit repetitive, is that wealth generation is the incentive for prosperity generation, and the point of capitalism is societal prosperity generation, NOT wealth generation. The difference is that wealth is a measure of an individual's prosperity relative to the rest of their society, while the society's prosperity is an absolute measurement between the the lowest standard of living and the standard of living of say a cave man without a fire.
This point can be illustrated by the fact that people in America today eat as well or better than did many King's and Emperors throughout history. While an average American today has average wealth as measured against the society's lowest standard of living, the Kings and Emperors were measuring against a significantly poorer standard of living. Interestingly in thinking about this example some it occurs to me that by in large we've moved away from the need to improve on our standards of living in the realm of food and have gone to more elaborate creature comforts in the form of electronic gadgets, cars, etc... That in itself speaks to the progress that has been made. But I digress...
Hopefully that answers your question of "what the wealth is to be used for. Are we to just mindlessly go for the generating even more wealth, or using it to help others?". As you can see, the process by it's very nature helps others. I could (and do) argue that allowing someone to fail is helping them, but the larger point I'm making is that capitalism helps everyone by improving everyone's standards of living, and I cannot think of anything else you could possibly ask of an economic system.
Specifically how people spend their money is not dictated by capitalism, capitalism merely ensures them that how they spend it will have consequences to their own standard of living...for better or worse. And if they choose, as Bill Gates and others have, to give some of their wealth away to charity then that is certainly their choice, but I would say they haven't given it away. To my view they probably got a great deal of satisfaction out of helping their fellow man. And in purchasing that satisfaction whilst helping others I'd say an extremely positive capitalistic transaction takes place. The standard of living for both sides of the transaction improve, albeit one sides gains are material and the other psychological.
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| To Each Man, Responsibility |
