The Great Lie: Failure of Free-Market Capitalism

Greetings all!

This post comes amid a hectic flurry for me. Last weekend, there was no post due to fears during Hurricane Sandy and strong amounts of schoolwork as my first quarter came to a close. I had originally intended to post this topic then, and then to finish October properly this weekend. However, I scrapped those plans in view of the special time with which I am posting in. Tomorrow is the presidential election date for America, and much of our future is determined tomorrow. Because of this, I felt it proper to close October in a less traditional style for this blog, and instead of doing two posts do just one. While tomorrow we decide whether we want a liberal in power or a conservative, we shall still decide within the boundaries of capitalism. Here, I intend to show a portion of why capitalism itself is a poor choice to make. This week’s quote comes from Noam Chomsky, a leftist critic of many years whom I admire.

Moving on, this post is not made to argue strictly for communism. I will solely argue against capitalism, however this will be done through a leftist vein. The main point of this post is to focus on the greatest lie capitalist societies teach us. That we can do whatever we want to if we work hard; that we can become anything we desire. Capitalism says that we can get filthily rich if we try, and that we all have an equal chance in capitalist society. This is wildly untrue. So much of your success is not determined by effort, but by wealth and connections. If you are born with rich parents, your chances of success are increased exponentially. You have access to better schools, a childhood not plagued by monetary problems, and connections in industry that the poor can only dream of. The top 1% is just that; one percent of our population. Capitalists may say that with 308 million people in America, 1% is still a large amount of people. Relatively speaking, it isn’t. Especially when you realize just how much worse the wealth gap is here, and elsewhere in the world. Because capitalism lies to us in this way, it is not worth the trouble of its existence. We would prosper much faster and in a more equal way without it; capitalism is a system of the past now. It is time to take the next step.

And now, we move on to my supplementary arguments. First, I’d like to note that capitalism inherently takes away from mass democracy and economic rights. This is mostly done through multinational corporations and their leaders. Look at the election; oil corporations and big banks have all but bought our president for us. Through political ads and direct threats to their employees, this campaign has been very much tainted by the business of voting. That is what this democracy has very much become; a system where even the government is a business. No government should function that way. A corporation or business has a duty to protect its CEOs and shareholders first; employees and customers be damned. That corporation or business must operate on a strict budget or be destroyed. And if it is destroyed, most businesses give huge going-away presents to their CEOs and nothing to the common worker. Does this sound ideal for a country? A country has its first duty to its citizens. A country must work not to better the lives of its legislators, but to better the lives of all. A country must defend its people, and a deficit is not of huge concern to a country because government should not be out to profit. That is the job of the private sector, not the public. A government should not foster wealth inequality; nothing should. The job of government is to ensure that the people are not starving on the streets without money for food.

My next point centers on exploitation. Let’s take an example in the form of a common factory worker. At the beginning, this worker had hopes and dreams. As a child, he or she likely wished to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a famous movie star. However, because they did not have wealth as a child and were not extraordinarily smart, they were not able to achieve the education they needed. Without college or connections, they were forced into blue-collar labor at a factory, where they make a measly salary for harsh work without many benefits. If the corporation that owns the factory gets enough profits, it willingly downsizes its workforce to cut away the payment of salaries and benefits it no longer desires. The worker is now unemployed, suffering every day, and there’s a good chance he’ll become homeless. And as an employee, he was not much better off. His product was not what he created in that factory, but rather it was his labor. He was selling his physical energy just to sustain himself in society. In this way, he prostituted himself to the bourgeoisie just to survive. While not a slave in the traditional sense of the word, he is not free. And he is not the only one. Countless people in America and worldwide suffer in the same way as this worker drone, and it is the fault of capitalism that such exploitation occurs. It’s disgusting as it is, and was only worse for people during the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, much of the developing world still suffers in the way laborers suffered in newly industrial Britain and Japan. Because we have other options which do not exploit workers in the same fashion, we have a duty to remove capitalism. It is in humanity’s own interest to prevent exploitation and suffering; this is simple evolutionary fact. We must protect and provide for our race because we have the ability to do so. Capitalism is no longer necessary for that, so it must be removed.

Third, capitalism inevitably fosters imperialism and therefore suffering in one way or another. Initially, this was very easy to see and most historians agree on it. At the inception of capitalism as a global force and throughout the Industrial Revolution, the empires in Europe and Japan spread their influence over the world. This drove the populace of colonized areas into deep submissive poverty, forcing them to produce raw goods and purchase high-priced finished products. Entire native populations were literally enslaved and subjugated to do this, causing global suffering on unprecedented scales. People were beaten and killed, all while comparatively nothing was done for the greater good of humanity. Capitalists may say that the progress in technology, medicine, etc. makes up for this suffering, especially in light of the fact that it does not exist as much today. However, this is not even true. Slavery does still exist today, and it very much is just as bad as the past. Even though those technological breakthroughs have occurred and education has become better, these things do not occur because of capitalism. I’m certain if you ask the creators of great vaccines, the creators of great innovations, that they will not tell you they did these things solely for money. Take Dr. Jonas Salk for example; he created the vaccine for polio. He didn’t do it for the profit; that wasn’t even on his mind. He wanted to help cure a deadly disease for mankind’s greater good, and this is why he claimed no patent on his vaccine. Instead, he preferred it given away to people as much as it could. He wanted to help remove a deadly disease, not make money. Even as he aged, he didn’t look for profit; instead, he tried to find a cure for AIDS. My point is as follows. Capitalism is not responsible for these advances; people are responsible for these advances. The good nature of some human hearts is enough to cause progress, with or without capitalism in place. Therefore, because capitalism hurts people along the way, it is not worth its existence and omnipresence. It should be removed. Don’t worry; progress can very much happen without it.

My next point concerns market failure and instability. Market failure is often described as the failure of capitalist society to produce enough quality goods and services for all people. Market instability is the tendency for capitalist nations to experience periods of growth, followed by recession and suffering. Even in these periods of decline, the rich rarely suffer at all. In fact, they are often responsible for this decline and sometimes benefit from it disproportionately. Market failure on the other hand is best shown through the case of India. In India, hundreds of millions of people are starving, and yet the country is a big food exporter. Shouldn't India feed its own suffering masses before the well-to-do in other nations? I rest my case on this issue.

And now, we come to the last two points I wish to make, notably sustainability and inefficiency. As a system, capitalism not only exploits workers, but it also exploits our planet. Through industrialization and negligence, our Earth has become wildly polluted. Many species have gone extinct, and humanity increasingly finds itself presented with the dangers of a warmer world. The evidence is overwhelming; the Earth has warmed considerably in recent years, and our pace is not slowing sufficiently. The danger of this is obvious; storms will increase in strength and number while general sustainability of the planet will decline with pollution. We cannot live in a world which becomes a desert without much produce. Humanity is growing; we need more food, and a healthier environment if we wish to avoid mass starvation and disease. On the issue of inefficiency, this is clear in many common households of America. We have recycling bins, but most of us don’t use them as much as we should and often use them improperly. We are a very lazy people; there’s a reason we rarely have voter turnout beyond fifty percent. We’re also a very obese people, not just due to genetics and the availability of fast food, but because we’re often too lazy to change small things in our diets. This inefficiency and waste is promoted by capitalism; how many commercials do you see promoting vegetables as compared to those promoting McDonald’s? The ratio is ridiculous, especially because the number of commercials for legitimately healthy foods is almost zero.

That is about it for now, even though I didn’t cover some topics in full, including property and inequality. But you probably know my views on that already if you’re a regular reader. I’d also like to announce something here as well. At the beginning of the next year, this site will undergo two critical changes. First, the name of this site will be changed. My name on this site is no longer “SuperJew McLovin,” so the URL will be switched to KnoFear. The usual blogspot.com will follow, of course. KnoFear reflects more of who I am and is my universal name on many sites, so I’ll be using it instead. The name of the blog will be switched from “A Nerd’s Life” as well. This blog no longer reflects my original intentions of being a daily blog about my life, but instead reflects my political beliefs. As such, the name will likely be changed to some awful pun about communism or something like that. This message will be repeated at each blog post until then to remind all of you about the impending changes. I hope I won’t lose any of my readers with this change, and such is why I will say this message over and over again. I wish to avoid confusion. And now good night, and this is KnoFear signing off. Remember to vote!