Capitalism is best, but not good enough.
Every once in a while (maybe a little more often than I should) I go about reading through YouTube comments on videos about politics and end up finding the craziest shit in there. Some of it is kind of sane, most of it is utter blabbing by people who clearly have formed a doctrine around their preferred political ideology. And let me tell you: making a dogma out of any type of ideology or personal philosophy is the worst obstacle one can put in front of themselves within their own development as a thinker. This is the reason why my vision on politics changes so much so fast, because I don't try to change things to suit my way of thinking, but change my way of thinking to suit reality (or what I can perceive as reality, really). This indoctrination of ideology happens often with a term that gets thrown around a lot within modern political thinking: capitalism.
Capitalism is, by definition, an economic system with many branches based on private property and competition as the main mechanisms that stimulate a market economy. Within the so called "free world", capitalism is the system that dominates by far, and for good reason. It allows for competition to serve as an incentive for individuals to become entrepreneurs and generate exchange of goods and services, which is good for the economy of a country and helps (almost) everybody in the long run. Business owners must deliver quality products that people want to buy or else their business falls. People "vote" with their money on which businesses they think are good or not so good. It's also possible to reduce monopolies and achieve absolute equality of opportunity for all businesses by implementing capitalism that operates in a free market, as in free from statist principles or any type of government regulation. This allows for new ideas to flourish into existence and for enterprise to be a solid part of daily human interactions. It helps reduce greediness to a minimum... or does it?
Let me stop on that last point for a second and bring up Marx real quick. A large portion of his theory was based on exploitation of labor. He believed that in order to stop business owners from exploiting their workers, private property should be abolished and the workers themselves should own the means of production, generating more fairness within the workplace. I'm no Marxist by any stretch of the imagination, but what he witnessed in order to arrive to this conclusion wasn't a crazy invention inside his head. Exploitation of labor is completely real, and not just during the industrial revolution. We have workers earning jack shit today. And this is the point that brings me to my main criticism of capitalism. What mechanisms does it have to stop enterprise owners from exploiting their workers?
Let's put ourselves in a situation. Let's say worker A is in, I don't know, the construction business. He becomes employed by a company, and starts earning much less than what he actually needs in order to survive in a capitalist society. He also works a lot more than he should. Clearly, something must be wrong, maybe this company has a greedy leader. Under most cases, worker A would either reduce his expenses in order to live with the salary he's receiving in this company, or would look for a job somewhere else, and that would be the end of it. Sadly, it's rarely that easy. What happens if he goes somewhere else to look for better working conditions, but he finds more of the same bad treatment? What happens when the whole system of companies is colluded in order for there to be no decent place for worker A to work in? And here's the big issue, this actually happens. People work and work and earn barely enough to get through the month, and then when they try to find a better job they end up getting more of the same crap. Why? Wasn't capitalism supposed to be a meritocracy, where hard work pays off? Wasn't capitalism supposed to be a system where your individual capabilities are more important than anything else?
Look. I think free market capitalism is a great economic system, it has many advantages over any other system of this nature and it could work wonderfully, but the problem I've mentioned here is real and it only shows that capitalism needs to be modified in order to benefit the working class. And that's where my confusion arises. What mechanisms could the free market operate under that would allow for more fair conditions for workers without taking away all the advantages that it has thanks to the lack of government intervention? This is where I don't know where to go. I'm no political mastermind, I'm just really passionate about this stuff. And the issue at hand here is that I haven't found an answer to this question that keeps me satisfied. Whenever I start researching about capitalism and it's complicated relationship with exploitation of labor, most people supporting capitalism just ignore the topic altogether and people who are anti-capitalist use this to their advantage, but what good is an argument if no one is paying attention? Am I just missing something really obvious? Well, maybe there is no answer. Maybe it's true that nothing, specially something as vast and more or less relative as economics can be perfect. Maybe capitalism is doomed to be the exploitist system forever, or maybe I'm just not smart enough to figure out what the answer to this enigma is. Maybe the solution is already there and I’m just unable to grasp it yet. Who knows.
