Something that annoys me a lot is the inability of people to distinguish between capitalism and corporatism.
I am a die-hard capitalist. I believe in the free market, individual intiatives, and personal responsibility. I believe that entrepreneurs are the people who keep society moving in a forward direction.
I am not a corporatist, nor shall I ever be. I do not believe that wealth should be concentrated in the hands of a few, elite individuals who control every aspect of society, from the politics to the economy to the culture. You know, sort of like communism.
That's right. Corporatism is closer to communism than it is to capitalism. Think about it. You have, as I said, a few elite individuals at the top, who have complete control over everything. Not exactly what we are at right now in the western world, but give it a decade or two, barring a severe, global natural disaster. These people have control over everything in society. They control the prices of everything in the stores. They control how much money we get to spend on these things. They control what commercials appear on the television that tell us what to buy with that money. They control what shows and music and books and culture we are allowed to consume, which consequently controls how we think, basically performing a subtle version of mind control. They control what we are allowed to see on the internet. They control what goes into our food and our drinks. They control exactly what we put into our bodies. They even control where we go. It's communism trying to say it's capitalism.
Thankfully, as I said, we aren't actually anywhere near this point yet. The TRUE free market still exists. People are still allowed to make their own economic choices, free of any coercion by any force (Mostly), and they actually have a choice of what to buy.
That's what capitalism is. Capitalism is the ability for people to make free and fair economic choices, where someone is successful in their business not because of how big they are, but because of how smart, savvy, innovative, and all that other stuff they are. It's where government doesn't give billions of dollars to companies just to give to their CEOs simply because of the fact that they are "too big to fail". It's where the government does not stick it's hand into the free market, swirling and distorting the pool with filth and corruption. Capitalism is a truly free market, where anybody, not just entrenched elites, can make it in the economic world. A true American Dream, per se. Not just the false one we seem to be getting fed right now.
Personally, I believe small businesses should run the world. But, you know, that's just like, my opinion, man.
(P.S. I'm not saying communism is evil. I am not one to call any ideology evil. I may call it misguided or naive, but I will never call it "evil" or "bad". Everyone has their viewpoints, and I'm not one to judge any of them.)
The thing is, small businesses realise that money can be saved by producing in bulk, sharing processes and joining with other businesses to be more efficient. Before you know it, you've got large businesses! Too lucrative. Small Businesses ARE a lot nicer.
ReplyDeleteCapitalism is an intrinsically reasonable thing. It's just valuing things. We work for the things that we buy. Simple, right? Money is a middle man. It can get a bit out of control. I work at a supermarket, and honestly, even though I'm not that much above minimum wage, I look at what I can buy with my pay, and it would take me far more time and work than that to make it myself. And only part of that is the first world raping other countries, the rest is the upside of large businesses.
"Corporatism is closer to communism than it is to capitalism. Think about it. You have, as I said, a few elite individuals at the top, who have complete control over everything."
ReplyDeleteExcept that's not communism. I have more to say but I'm not going to do it in the comment section (what is this youtube?)
With the idea of the (completely temporary, of course. *rolleyes* ) dictatorship of the proletariat, yes, the idea of a few elite individuals at the top who control everything is very Communist.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, I suppose for semantic's sake we should claim it's very Bolshevik/Leninist/Stalinist/Trotskyist. It's not what Marx would want to see, though, I can agree on that.
The only other thing I would point out is that the only TRUE free market that exists is the black market. What we have now is a clusterfuck of isms. Nobody seems to know which facet of our society is which ism. Thus we have the problem of having to distinguish between stalinism plain old marxism.
ReplyDelete