Capitalism is our best explanation of the current socio-economic environment. Capitalism is singularly driven by the desire to barter and accumulate wealth or make more money. Capitalism takes the form of an expanding economic process providing a survival mechanism of exploitation, in which natural resources are converted into material wealth, typically through financial investment by corporations and managed funds with the assistance of government. Consequently the law of the land is heavily active in fostering capitalism.
Many view capitalism as an unstoppable leviathan which is conducting a terrible experiment in unscrupulous exploitation with a corporatist form of corrupt governance. In theory, increased production leads to a bigger pie, however an ongoing unequal distribution of pie remains. As industrialized civilization advanced, humanity moved from using renewable biomass to non-renewable fossil fuels for primary fuel sources. Capitalism is unfair because it doesn’t garantee or even favour the distribution of the needs for everybody. Instead this system is heavily biased to those people, organizations and countries who have money.
Capitalism does not consider any values other than exchange values and no rights other than the ability to hold a property title. Capitalism is not completely about the forging of natural resources into useful products, however. The other main source of material wealth is intellectual property. Inventors, artists and other information-providers rely on the system of patents and copyrights to allow them to exchange their ideas and creations for material wealth.
Since the largest capitalist political system is the USA, this topic is closely related to that country. On the larger scale democracy, capitalism and industrialism (all integrated into a form of plutocracy) are major forces driving the idea of the global village.
Famous Books on Capitalism
- Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations
- Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments
- Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman
Related Topics
Related Links
- Google Directory: Economic Systems/Capitalism
- Wikipedia Entry Capitalism
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