What is Wrong with Capitalism?

What is wrong with Capitalism?  Nothing~

 

Attempts to reinvent Capitalism are misguided. Instead, we need to recognize the limitations of Capitalism. Capitalism is an Economic system, it is not a Social system and therefore should never have been allowed to control the social fabric of Mankind. The primacy of capitalism has instilled such a single-minded drive for material and financial wealth that our humanity has been diminished. Since by its nature Capitalism is elitist, it can never serve the needs of mankind in the longer term.

 

Capitalism has succeeded quite well in its mandate, of creating capital. It is now appears in the process of self-destruction. Contrary to the beliefs of Karl Marx and others, this self-destruction is not caused by some inherent evil in the system. Rather, Capitalism is dying because there is no longer any point to its continuation. Capitalism has run to such an extreme that the concentration of wealth is destroying any potential sources of new wealth. Rather than wealth creation, we now have increasing wealth concentration, which is a capitalist system cannibalizing itself.

 

In terms of our existence on this planet, human diversity and creativity are our greatest assets. The natural resources are merely the foundations upon which this creativity can build our future.  Instead of reinventing Capitalism, we need to reinvent our social system. We need a social value system, which recognizes the intrinsic rights to; life, liberty, and justice. The future of our race may depend on this revaluation. Without such a change, wealth will continue to concentrate and the standard of living will continue to deteriorate for most of Mankind. Already most humans are so focused on mere survival that there is little opportunity for creativity. This degradation is a criminal waste of our greatest resource. If sixty or more percent of the brains in the world are fully occupied with obtaining food and shelter, then the rate of new discovery is hugely reduced.

 

There are many aspects of human activity, which should be outside the influence of capital. We need to rationalize our society. Rather than reinvent Capitalism, we need to compartmentalize its influence. Most societies now recognize that physical slavery is neither rational nor just. The same should be recognized in the case of economic slavery. Whether a financial entity owns a person’s life through physical bondage or through the control of basic necessities like food, shelter, and water, makes no difference.

 

Capitalism is not evil, but it has spawned an evil culture of denial. The concentrated and monopolistic ownership of natural resources and means of production has allowed a few entities to practice a policy of Denial of Sustenance attacks on anyone they choose to target. These denials are the root of the cannibalistic aspect mentioned earlier, where wealth transfers give the appearance of Capitalist activity without the creation of any new wealth. The nourishing of seven billion people is not an insurmountable problem for the wealth of our world, yet about three billion people currently exist without sufficient access to food and water. There is sufficient wealth to provide basic necessities for everyone, but our current structure forbids it. There are opportunities for Capitalism to exist outside or parallel to the greater reality of universal rights to necessities.

 

The Socialist systems failed from a lack of integrity, some were always ‘more equal than others’. Capitalism has failed from a lack of understanding. The mandate granted to Capitalism was too broad, and the power of money became too great. Every judgment and every action has been reduced to a monetary value. In this structure money has achieved infinite power. An economic system should not have the power of life and death over humans. If Capitalism lost this power, we would restore a social balance without removing the incentives for creation and innovation.

 

The failure of all the economic systems is collectively the failure of our civilization. Human kind owns the failure. We have bought it with a deficit of imagination. In our myopia we have limited ourselves to only three dimensions on one very small speck in the Universe, at one very brief moment in time. We have attempted to structure our civilization based upon the personal ownership of material assets. As a result of these attempts we have created a competitive landscape wherein prestige and position are conveyed by acquiring ever greater amounts of material assets.