Provoker
Permabanned
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2008
- Messages
- 252
- MBTI Type
- INTJ
Explain
If capitalism favor self interest and equal opportunity for all, why does so many people fail to get rich?
Because the harder one works, the more profit made by the capitalist. So even if the worker gets wealthier the capitalist gets so much wealthier that the standard for what constitutes "rich" is raised. In this sense, unless there is a redistribution of wealth there will always be a gap between the haves and have nots because this is the logic built into strict captalism. Two main solutions have been tried historically to remedy this shortcoming: Keynesian policy and socialism. Keynesian policy operates within the confines of capitalism but has the state (which in a democracy is theoretically supposed to represent the will of the people) intervene and foster the development of certain industries and so forth. The other solution that has been tried is socialism whereby the working class own the means of production. The Soviet Union is a classical example of having a vibrant welfare state that protected its citizens from cradle to grave and was the bedrock of Soviet socialism. As the moment, as a result of the financial crisis which is rooted in the shortcomings of free market fundamentalism, Keynesian economics is back in vogue which was largely responsible for the Golden Age of capitalism in the 50s and 60s, and was the underlying economic logic of Roosevelt's New Deal, the Marshall Plan, and the reconstruction of Europe. Indeed, the recent stimulus packages are based on the argument made by Keynes in the General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money which was published back in 1936. Still, captialism does not by definition provide equal opportunities for all--that's just pure Walt Disney. Adopting a Keynesian policy and/or a more equitable distribution of wealth is not being pro-communist as pundits will sometimes claim. It has nothing to do with communism--that's just political jargon to embrace the status quo. It is about democracy. That is, giving the people a say in how their resources are used. Without this, political institutions are merely a facade that merely serve the interests of the property class. And when political institutions don't properly represent the interests of the bulk of a population, that is called a democratic deficit. The deeper the democratic deficit, the more people view common solutions as politically impossible. In some places, this is to such an extent that people are even apathetic about voting and abstain from politics completely. Yet, the system depends on the obedience of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep going. If they stop obeying, the system fails. On that note, in many countries in Latin American including Ecuador and Bolivia, we've seen people turn to activism and engage in social mobilization in the form of protests, riots, marches, and so on. This has become a new way of making public policy in Latin America. This demonstrates that the status quo is not cast in concrete as the wealthy class wants workers to believe but can be politically challenged if the will power is there.
In summary, capitalism by definition does not amount to equal opportunity for all, and in most cases is unequal. As a result, different solutions have been tried historically such as Keynesian policy (which is still within the confines of capitalism but involves a bigger role for the welfare state) which was the economic groundwork for one of the best periods of growth in history, as well as socialism which has had mixed results. Solving some of the shortcomings of capitalism is not tantamount to communism, but (I'm not supposed to say this) is really about increasing the quality of democracy.