Economic competition results in numerous innovations that improve all of our lives

"If this argument were correct, products with major faults would stop being bought (XBox360 anyone?)" If you truly believe that the market doesn't punish companies who make faulty products then you are blind to how it operates - if Microsoft kept making products with faults, no one would buy from them. The only difference between capitalism and other systems is that capitalism provides you with the choice between many companies, rather than one monopoly. "What resource is infinite? Name one. The capitalist system works on the idea of infinite growth, yet the Earth has finite resources." There are many infinite resources - trees for example. As long as the cutting down and production of trees is less than that of their growth, they will be infinite. However I fail to see how any system other than capitalism can solve the problem of finite resources. When the Government owns a sector of the economy it has no way to calculate supply and demand by the price mechanism. Unlike market oligopolies or even monopolies the Government sets the output and price at levels not decided by the market but by central planners. The price mechanism is the only method of compiling the data of millions of people into one understandable format where businesses can set their output and prices at the most profitable levels. Because no one person can know all the information, limited information is spread throughout the economy. There is no need for a man who produces toothbrushes to know the price of coal, and visa versa. Their prices and outputs are not determined by centralised information but by only the necessary information themselves and their competitors have garnered. No central planner can hope to absorb all this information and so the price and output of nationalised industries is naturally skewered. This creates shortages and overconsumption, misallocation, bad quality, and economic chaos. The marketplace naturally tunes itself to the economic situation of the time. Central planning cannot do that because it cannot hope to compile all information centrally, regardless of the size of a bureau. "Consumer demands" merely constitutes the demands of the population to receive the goods they like at the price necessary. At the times when our society has been most cohesive, it has been because prices were low and goods were plentiful. In all historical situations, the opposite of social cohesion has come about because of economic poverty. The best method of binding a society together is to allocate resources in the provision of goods at maximum efficiency; i.e. the free market. "We are talking about whether Capitalism makes every persons life better. If I can prove that it makes even one persons life worse, I win this debate." But you can't. I honestly did not set this debate out with the plan to use the semantics of the argument to win, however as you have, I shall. There is no possible way to prove that capitalism has not benefited the lives of everyone. Although it may seem that the poor man has not benefited, how can you disprove that the invention of the Apple iPod has not helped him? For when they hire workers who then spend money on products which bring up the economy as a whole, the companies and workers invest in areas throughout the country. The poor man has been helped by higher employment through the innovation that is unleashed thanks to competition. "However, I feel strongly that the Capitalist system doesn't work at all, which is the point I hope to prove." Of course it does. In its purest form, it is the only system that has worked. It is the only way in recorded history through which people have bettered themselves. "Money IS power. You cannot get one single thing in this world without money. The more money you have, the more access to health, comfort and security you have." Correct, because nothing is free. There's no such thing as "free" healthcare - someone needs to pay the doctor's wage, the electricity of the hospital building, the wages of the nurses, the medication, the tests etc. etc. When you start raising the taxes on the rich to do this, you create economic decline. Higher taxes imposed on the rich (and the semi-rich) will not come out of their consumption expenditures, but out of their investment capital (i.e., their savings); that such taxes will mean less investment, i.e., less production, fewer jobs, higher prices for scarcer goods; and that by the time the rich have to lower their standard of living, yours will be gone, along with your savings and your job and my job —and no power in the world (no economic power) will be able to revive the dead industries (there will be no such power left). "I think you have it mixed. Only when a government abandons DEMOCRACY and one man has more power than another does money start buying power. The little man loses his rights because he doesn't have the power (ie. money) to fight, while the Stratton Oakmonts (2) of the world flourish. He was caught, but how many individuals profit from other peoples misery every day? How many individuals profit from loopholes in economic laws?" Democracy is the system that ensures one group of people (the government) have power over another (everyone else). The republican system makes sure that governments is limited to its role of protecting rights, not violating them. When the governments passes legislation to force businesses to do one thing or another, it is in direct violation of that business' property rights. There should be no economic laws. Not one economic law has produced something good - governments has no way to know what companies need and how they should provide services. "The poor suffer under our Capitalistic system. There are certainly many more poor people than rich people. So under the current Capitalistic system, more people suffer than prosper. Capitalism as it is, doesn't work." Really? http://blog.ctrlbreak.co.uk... http://freebazaarblog.com... To summarise, we didn't all start off rich and then capitalism made us poor. It was the other way about. Consumers have total power under capitalism. A billionaire may invest his billions into producing cars, but if consumers do not want them, he will go broke. Profits reward businessmen for satisfying consumers. To be sure, the businessman probably does this out of self-interest, but he still must satisfy consumers. It is not through the goodness of their hearts that the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker provide their wares to me, but I still end up with beef, bread, and candlesticks – if I want them. Capitalism is based on the voluntary exchange of goods between individuals - nothing else. All other systems require force and coercion to uphold themselves. Capitalism has taken us from this (http://assail.files.wordpress.com...) to this (http://www.library.drexel.edu...) in the space of 50 years. From this (http://www.simondelliott.com...) to this (http://www.ploynt.de...) in 30 something years. As an end-of-argument competition, guess which bit is capitalist? ... http://i11.photobucket.com...