I'm a part of various online 'groups' if you could call them that. Really they are just groups of people with vaguely similar ideas getting together and chatting on reddit and other forums (hopefully on steemit soon ). In these discussions there are usually many people who 'get' that we are in a predatory system and that it is not going to end well for a lot of people. For example, millions of students in the U.S. are eyeballs in debt due to taking out school loans that they will not be able to find a job to repay in the future. Millions of people have hospital debt that they will need to work decades to repay, due to both the size of the bill, and the paltry sum they get paid. Yet, through all of this, there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what the problem is and the method on solving it. So what is the fundamental problem?
Love of False Ideas
If you loved Santa Claus as a child, chances are you got happy thinking about Christmas time. You pondered over your gifts and what it would be like opening them, you even probably said a little prayer to Santa in gratitude for his upcoming winter bounty. However, all of that goodwill and feeling was based on a lie: the existence of Santa. Capitalism is Santa for adults. The idea that free market capitalism was an idyllic paradise in the past, and if we could only just get back to that and return prosperity for the common man! That free market capitalism brought 'innovation and technology' to the masses and for such should be lauded and worshiped.
This is the same manner of wide-eyed naive love that children display towards Santa. And, in the same vein as the Santa myth, you have plenty of people, adults, who are participating in the trickery of these other adults, like parents tricked their kids by 'leaving cookies for Santa' etc. Except now, they leave milk and cookies for Capitalism.
They extol the virtues of the system, they talk about the latest gadget that it supposedly put in your hand and they wax wistfully for the days when a true capitalist could do what they needed to do to get the job done without all that 'regulation'. This is not to take one side or the other of the capitalism vs. govt regulation debate, because my position is that they are fundamentally the same side; rather, this comment is to show some of the myths that have grown up around this idea.
So What's the Truth?
The truth is that capitalism is a brutal, inefficient and destructive system. Those people who talk about capitalism and its many benefits also fail to mention the millions of people killed by and for capitalist purposes. Smedley Butler wrote many decades ago in 'War is a Racket':
Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an
average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.
Let's group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the
pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly
profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000.
A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent.
Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren't the only ones. There are still others. Let's take
leather.
For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were
$3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather
returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That's all. The General
Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over
$800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000. a leap of 1,400 per
cent.
This is capitalism. Capitalism needs war, death and destruction. This is because people do not take kindly to having to move in order for a large company to extract the wealth of the resources under their feet. People don't just give the rights to the oil in the ground, rubber in the trees or fertile soil that is their heritage over. So they must be killed. And the controlled media back home must be given a story to pass on to the sleeping public. This is not to mention the standard of living under capitalism is far less than it was before capitalism. This is hard to believe but easy to prove. Before capitalism, a man would work for what he needed for him and his family. For example, if you needed a house, you built one. And if built well, you had a house for the rest of your life. It didn't cost you 100k or 200k, because you bought your own materials and put it together with friends and family.
Capitalism Is a Form of Wealth Extraction
Or food. A man would grow enough food for him and his family, no big deal. Once it was done you were done. Agriculture is hard work, but when you have a limited number of mouths to feed you have a limited amount of work to accomplish. Not so in capitalism. In capitalism you work until you can't work anymore. Our modern system has determined 8-hours of your day to be the length of work you can stand before productivity falls. Do you see this? They work you as much as they can until you can't take it anymore. In places like Bangladesh and China, they work you even harder. People live like animals in cages and their only purpose is to rise, work and repeat. None of the pursuits that cause the human spirit to soar are present, because that would negatively affect the bottom-line, and capitalism is all about the bottom-line.
The truth is that capitalism has ruined millions of lives. The lives of children forced to work 12-hour days in factories with dangerous equipment designed for maximum efficiency, while safety is an after-thought. The lives of rural people who were forced or enticed to live in crowded cities. This crowding, another side-effect of capitalism by the way, is detrimental to human mental health and spirit. Everything that destroys the human soul is promoted in capitalism. The last time I went to the beach there were scores of young people who knew no better staring at a screen. When a rare fish would pop out of the water, most didn't notice. Those who did, awkwardly attempted to take a photo of it, only to miss both the event and the photo. Capitalism is not a great good but a great evil. Something that has fundamentally transformed the way humans live for the profit and benefit of a small minority at the top.
If you agree, I invite you to upvote and share why in the comments. Of course, if you disagree I REALLY invite you to share why in the comments. I'm almost certain that I can change your mind, so let's have a constructive discourse!