Capitalism

"Basic things such as food, water, clothes, and living spaces should be provided by the government." Typically when the government provides things, they are very inefficient. Take as an example the dmv, national defense, law enforcement, welfare (both corporate and private), and more. Whereas the private sector and the free market have been proven to thrive in areas like these. Because when one works for profit, they need the consumer. When the consumer is not satisfied, the business owner begins to fail and will try to improve his product. The government doesn't work this way. If you wish to change the way things are within the government. You'd either have to vote for it, or become a politician. Both ways are both very complex and often difficult processes. "in the event of a monopoly, the suppliers can drive the consumers bankrupt simply by charging essentials as high as they possibly can in order to make a greater profit margin." With capitalism, monopolies are nearly impossible to create. That's why political parties that support capitalism such as the American Libertarian Party don't have big corporate followers, because they know that under a capitalist system they have more competitors. Again, not to insult, you may have capitalism mixed with corporatism or crony capitalism. This is when the government is in bed with corporations through lobbying and special treatment. With capitalism, the government is not allowed to grant special favors to anybody. Not corporations, not the people, no one. Most (if not all) monopolies that were created throughout history were making bargains with the government. A prominent example today is Walmart. In defense of monopolies (my only defense for that matter), is that they have proven to provide great prices. Take the 19th century "robber barons" as an example. It's an often told myth as to how they were created, which really involved government help. The government is the largest monopoly that has ever lived. "You proposal of anarchism could also potentially increase violence" This is a fallacious argument often brought up by critics of anarchist capitalism. Of course, no one can truly predict how society would handle this issue, but anarchist philosophers, economists, ect. Have offered blueprints. Like I said, I don't want to branch this out into an argument over anarchism so I will offer links for you to read if you so choose. If you still think anarchism can't handle violence, that's your choice. But what I can offer in a short argument over this is that the government has created more violence than any other organization has all throughout history. "The government will always grant special treatment to the rich in Capitalism because the rich are the ones who supply the money for the campaigns." As stated in previous arguments, this isn't capitalism. "Naturally, due to the inherent greed of humanity" Not in this debate, but maybe through private messaging we should discuss human nature. It's a topic I love discussing. "it impinges upon equal opportunity." I prefer freedom over equality. This is a morality debate. Which you can continue to debate it as you please so I'm leaving it to you if you wanna debate morality more lol. (Maybe through private message or another debate?) "trickle-down economics, which frankly, do not and were never intended to work." This is where my anarchist argument comes into play. Trickle down economics I feel like is a bad term for capitalism as it implies that the rich must give to the poor without the governments help. This isn't precisely what capitalism is in my opinion. The government often rids the incentive to give and really pushes this notion of trickle down economics. "While you are correct that SMALL businesses are beneficial, big ones simply drive the small ones out." Under capitalism, true capitalism that is, it'd be very hard for a business to buy off other companies. Imagine there are five malls. One is preferably bigger than the other four. For this bigger mall to even buy one smaller mall, it'd be a great financial burden. The owner would eventually have to pass this burden onto his consumers or his workers or his shareholders and it'd be very hard to do so. For a continuing example, let's say the owner buys it anyway and pulls it off. The other three businesses are then going to become more expensive to buy off since there are less malls now in circulation. The cycle of facing financial burdens left and right would soon come to an end once consumers start evading this business since it is making harmful decisions. "These interest rates and level of economy control would not be necessary if Capitalism were to simply be discarded." Well, it depends on if it were anarchist capitalism and limited government capitalism. Anarchist capitalism would be the easier solution, but in the went of limited government, there is still no central bank that would be able to commit such disasters to the economy like our central bank does now. "If people were to simply be offered jobs of equal work for necessities and some comforts interest and the stock market would not exist and our economy would not be so flimsily tipped over." The government still spends under what you're proposing. Which includes interest rates. Marxism proposes a national bank. I believe it's the seventh plank in the communist manifesto (correct me if I'm wrong). National banks destroy economies by controlling interest rates. In the short run, lower interest rates are better. But they prolong spending and do more harm than good in the long run. "While it would be nice for it to simply be so easy as to say "I'm going to the upper class today!" and move into that zone, reality is not so ideal." I apologize if my argument on that issue maybe made it seem like I thought moving into different classes is easy, I didn't mean it that way lol. The key word was opportunity. It is very much possible and doable to gain income under a capitalist society, whereas a controlled economy keeps everything equal and offers little to no opportunity, unless you work within the government then you can have lots of money. "As the link shows, the wealthiest of Americans control an overwhelming 85% of the nation's wealth despite only accounting for 20% of the overall population. With the elimination of Capitalism, those numbers would balance out." This is another either or argument with anarchism and limited government. Anarchism provides the better solution to this because there is no actual "national wealth" set up by governments and such. I will elaborate on my political freedom argument by using a quote made by economist Milton Friedman, "The preservation of freedom is the protective reason for limiting and decentralizing governmental power. But there is also a constructive reason. The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture, or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government... Newton and Leibniz; Einstein and Bohr, Shakespeare, Milton and Pasternak; Whitney, McCormich, Edison and Ford; Jane Addams, Florence Nightingale and Albert Schwietzer; no one of these opened new frontiers of human knowledge and understanding, in literature, in technical possibilities, or in the relief of human misery, in response to governmental directives. Their achievements were the product of individual genius, of strongly held minority views, of a social climate permitting variety and diversity." This is what my main point is when saying that capitalism and freedom are two sides of the same coin. To end, I'd just like to thank you for also being civil in the debate. As you read in my argument I'd like to discuss human nature through private messaging or something. Bringing it in the debate would make things unclear..