Threats to Forests - Capitalism

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

of Capitalism

The basic premiss of Adam Smith’s capitalism ideals as told in his book, The Wealth of Nations, is that the pursuit of each individual’s self-interests will lead, as if by an “invisible hand,” to a greater good for all people.  He opposed anything that interferes with pure competition, whether it is government, business, labor, companies, banks, Wall Street, or whatever.  Considering how business, labor and anyone who is anybody lobbies congress to limit competition in their favor, Adam must be rolling over in his grave these days.  Many “talking heads” and politicians today call on Adam’s name when they want to extoll the virtues of “free market capitalism,”  “supply-side economics,” “trickle down” and “limited government,” usually in an effort to get some special privileges for themselves.  Poor Adam, *sigh*. 

At its root Adam’s capitalism theory is, the individual person will do what is best for himself or herself and by doing that the entire society will be better off.  We’ll all have more “things” from food to cellphones, from roads to aircraft carriers.  But, there is nothing in Capitalism that assures it can work over the long-run in a world of finite resources, in fact, there are a couple reason why it may not and probably can’t.  Some people who think about economic stuff a lot say the whole capitalistic system must have growth because only anticipated growth attracts the investment capital that fuels every business, big and small.  If there is no promise of growth there is no capital investment; then the government would have to step in and save the businesses, or everyone would be unemployed and that would probably lead to a revolution.  That’s pretty serious stuff, so every month some newsperson tells us how much the economy grew and what the experts say about that much growth, it is never enough. Yet, nothing can grow indefinitely, well maybe the universe, so they tell us, but that is expanding into “nothing,” whatever that is.  Anything short of the universe that keeps expanding will eventually outgrow its home, in our case, Earth.   Also, it’s probably not too far wrong to say pure capitalism is mean, it takes without giving back any more than it has to; to people, to natural resources, or to infrastructure.  it’s pure competition (IGM & WM = I Got Mine & Want More)  and there’s not a lot of “giving” in that.  And, of course, there is the fatal problem of ignoring long-term effects of short-term profit-taking, that’s been called, “penny wise and pound foolish.”  

The good news is, capitalism, as an economic system, is not from nature, it is not a hurricane, not a tornado, not El Nino, not the change of seasons; people made it, so people can change it.  Considering history and the direction we’re going (toward a huge cliff), it’s time to make some big changes.

There is more on this to be discussed, or "to be continued."