Capitalism is an often criticized ideology, regularly blamed as the cause of many of the injustices that occur in the world today. From inhumane working conditions to the degradation of the Earth, many point the finger at capitalism as the driving force of such problems. As the common saying goes: money is the root of all evil. Or so it may seem.
Even the skeptics will admit that capitalism is unmatched in its results within the realms of productivity. Private industry is, without a doubt, the strongest innovator of effectiveness and efficiency when it comes to providing people with things that they want. Yet, the truth of the matter is that we do not live in a truly capitalistic society (yes, I am referring to modern day America) and it is debatable that a truly free capitalistic market has ever existed. During America's original founding it was certainly more capitalistic, yet there were still restrictions in place upon people that kept it from being capable of being considered so.
The main thing standing in between the free market and its success is governments. Governments entirely defy the idea of capitalism, as well as the bureaucratic institutions (such as the FDA, the EPA, and the NSA) they create to further impose on the free market. In a free market, the consumers will purchase services they value directly from the institutions who provide them, and are significantly more capable of assuring their dollars support institutions that they do.
The government, on the other hand, has its income relatively fixed. Bureaucracy cannot grow by being more effective as the private industry does. As bureaucracies are usually free of competition in the specific fields they are made to govern, there is no motive for them to be effective. Profit has empirically proven to be the most powerful motivator in innovation, as well as the looming fear of failure keeping firms effective and efficient.
Even if the people working within these bureaucratic entities in the government genuinely want to make the world a better place to live in and are brilliant individuals, they lack the proper incentive structures to make it into a reality.
The truth of the matter is that the people can choose how they want things to be done better than assigning a government to decide how they imagine the people want things to be done. People will support the institutions that serve them and their lives in the best way, such is the source of American success that we lost long ago within excessive regulation limiting the entrepreneurial ability of the average American.
As a collective, humans are staggeringly brilliant, and the specific knowledge of time and circumstance that each and every one of us has will find its way to serve its most useful purposes if we simply provide people with the liberty to act freely. The government could never harness this specific knowledge as well as the individuals themselves, as it does not know, and cannot know, where to find it or apply it in as effective of a way as the free market in the time necessary.
How could a government planner know what we ought to do with lumber better than the logger who has been doing it his entire life? The knowledge generating process he has undergone learning how to log better as well as where to ship it to and organize the workers as well as all the other technical, specific knowledge necessary to successfully run the lumber industry has left this logger who is now running the company as the best person to do so.
Although capitalism often gets a bad rap, its a way of life that has benefited us all in countless ways, and will likely continue to do so if we let it. As long as we continue to strive for liberty, there will be no limit in the ways we will find ourselves working together within a massive mutually beneficial trade network.
