Capitalism works... if your goal is to make destitute the workers and innovators that drive the economy.
The lie of capitalism is that it rewards the hard work of people. I will give two examples of what I'm talking about: One, famous, the other, little known, but known to me.
In the 1930s, Jerry Seigal and Joe Shuster created something new. They came up with a character we all know: he wears a blue suit with a red cape and a big "S" on his chest, and bullets bounce off his chest. Superman! After going from one company to another trying to get a some attention to their character, they finally got a deal with D.C. Comics and Action Comics#1 came out in June, 1938. They had a job, and things were great... until Superman became more popular. Then, in the mid 1940s, D.C. Comics took the creator's name off the character and fired them. As D.C. Comics raked in hundreds of millions of dollars from Superman, his creators got odd jobs cleaning up in bowling alleys for minimum wage. It wasn't until they were old men that the courts finally gave them a small, paltry sum for their creation.
The second story is about a man who invented a product also worth hundreds of millions, possibly billions, of dollars. In the 1970s and before, when you had a severe cut or injury, you would go to the doctor or hospital and get stitches. Then, you'd have to go back and get the stitches removed, a painful procedure that sometimes left scars or caused infection. Then, in the late 1970s, a man working for Johnson & Johnson invented something that changed the world: Sutures that absorb into your skin. They are now the standard in every hospital, used by every doctor.
The man that invented them: My father, who spent his life studying chemistry and microbiology in order to develop the skills to make that invention. At the time, he was making around $35,000 a year working for Johnson and Johnson. Even as the company was making millions from his product, they laid him off. He searched for another job, but was overqualified for everything. He eventually lost the house, and had to buy a trailer home that leaked and had mold problems. I used to bring him groceries. Then, one day I went to visit him. His legs were blue and swollen. He said, "I'll get better, I'll get better." I said, "Dad, you should be in a hospital." He didn't want to bother me to tell me he couldn't afford the $10 copay to go to the doctor. He died not long afterward.
Let me say that again: In our capitalist society, a man who invented a multi-billion dollar product ended his life living in poverty in unhealthy conditions in a trailer park and relying on others to provide him with groceries, and died for lack of a $10 copay to see a doctor.
I'm not saying socialism works, or facism works, or communism works.
I'm saying capitalism certainly and most definitely
does not work.
Capitalism does what you accuse other systems of doing: Punishes the workers and rewards "the moochers," who I would describe as the penny pinching folks who have multi-million dollar annual salaries, who are dishonest and whose titles have acronyms like CEO and CFO, not to mention the money changers who work on Wall Street. I do not consider poor folks who are thrown crumbs (most of whom are hard workers, by the way) moochers.
What we need is a new "ism." Better yet, to abandon the "isms." We need an concept where checks and balances prevent what happened to my father, what happened to Siegal and Shuster, what happens to millions of hard working people who are treated like slaves by big corporations only to be left in poverty . We do not need a laissez faire form of capitalism where things like this can happen to my father--or, as in the early 1900s, where rich companies can have little children working 20 hour days, 7 days a week in coal mines.
What I just described, child labor in brutal and unsafe conditions, that is unregulated capitalism. And it does not work. Unless by "work" you mean, make the rich incredibly, astronomically wealthy while making the poor destitute and the middle class nonexistent, because they're all poor.
The less you regulate, the more you create that atmosphere. Ayn Rand was wrong. Regulation is not an evil, nor is regulation socialism.
The very basis of what you are saying is logically fallacious because it assumes that there are only four business models: Socialism, Communism, Facism and Capitalism. This is the logical fallacy called the "false dilemma." It says, "These are the only choices, and only one works."
The facts are that capitalism does not work, and there are an infinite number of business, economic and societal models to choose from--indeed, there are as many ways to structure a society's economy as there are human beings with a brain and an imagination.
I'm going to paraphrase John Lennon to conclude: Everybody's talking about this ism, that ism, ism, ism ism. All I am saying is give the people a chance.
Charlie
