Capitalism

***1) Capitalism works Con does not challenge my assertion that the United States is successful, but puts her efforts into differentiating the United States with capitalism. The success of the US, therefore, must have more to do with something else. Con cites tariffs as this entity, and cites the success of the US steel industry on the back of tariffs which gave US steel mills an advantage. She also insinuates that Japan's economic success is due to governmental intervention as opposed to free market mechanisms. Tariffs were very important to the US economy - during the US's least successful times. The US rose to superpower status after WWII, which also marked the decline of the use of tariffs [1]. In 1947, the US passed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) "to minimize tariffs and other restrictions, and to liberalize trade among all capitalist countries." Apparently the great depression had the effect of causing us to change our act, and after we did, well, the rest is history. The United States, with its increasing use of free market mechanisms, became the greatest economy the world has ever known. We started taking advantage of comparative advantage, for example, and watched our television manufacturing sector slowly disappear completely to Japanese companies [2]. Instead of panicking and regulating the industry back into existence, we realized that while the Japanese can make televisions more efficiently than we can, we can make other items more efficiently than the Japanese - and therefore we maximized the efficiency of both nations. This phenomenon is unique to capitalism and largely explains our post WWII success. Con has failed to introduce enough evidence to substantively differentiate the US's success, particularly that of the late 40s and beyond, from free market mechanisms. Although a radical "libertarian socialist" like Noam Chomsky would likely disagree, I don't think the generally accepted economic explanation of the US's prolific economic growth over the past century would fail to put the free market's role as one of the cornerstones of our proven success. ***2) Capitalism is the most benign method to keep everyone in society productive Con insists that people will continue to be productive without capitalism, in order to attain fine goods. Her entire argument seems to be under the paradigm that socialism can be capitalistic, and therefore capitalism is not necessary for people to capitalize financially (in order to work harder and thus achieve a higher standard of living). I would like Con to go into more detail about how someone capitalizesunder a socialistic system. Seeing her walk this tightrope will be interesting, because what she really is describing is capitalism mixed with socialism. Socialism does not inherently reward the successful with wealth unlessyou add capitalist elements to it. Secondly, I have made a clear point here, and backed it up with evidence: capitalism is the best method to increase productivity. What is more productive and why should we use it instead of capitalism? ***3) Market interference - Con: "He notes that with government regulations of business, "business can afford to be sloppy sometimes" and mentioned the BP oil spill and government bailouts of big business as examples to prove his point. However, the government bailouts of business are exactly what capitalism is AGAINST. A true capitalistic society would have let the corporations fail instead of guarantee help from the tax payers." I'm not sure how this is supposed to damage my argument; of course I would agree with you that capitalism is in solid disagreement with the concept of bailouts, and that the bailouts allowed a liability loophole that screwed over our country. 3 Cheers for capitalism. Con then blames capitalism directly for the oil spill - "Corporations controlling vast social resources make decisions affecting millions of people (and animals / the planet) on the basis of profit. Had the government imposed various safety regulations beforehand, measures would have been taken [to save the planet]..." Decisions in a society will have to be made by someone. I can understand the more specific point that you thus must be making, which is that businesses are not the proper institutions to get the job done. Tell me who should be making these decisions and why they are more capable. As far as "safety regulations" are concerned, the limited liabilities they are enjoying are only possible because the free market has been tampered with. Safety, therefore, is a variable that the free market takes into account; it was simply removed by the cap on liability and gave them a parachute in case something went wrong. IOWs the government intervened and caused the oil spill, not capitalism. "government intervention (especially via tariffs) helps economies develop and grow" Con says "many countries have been far more successful" because of tariffs but does not provide examples for me to scrutinize. Ensuring jobs and controlling cash flow/where people spend their money through tariffs are not as important as preserving the market mechanism of comparative advantage. For example, if the United States had tariffed Japanese televisions they would have offset the comparative advantage of the Japanese companies (especially when you factor in cost of S&H). American companies would have kept making TVs and made inefficient use of their resources and we likely would have felt the effects to some extent throughout the entire economy. Inefficiency isn't helpful to development and growth. "Investing in infrastructure, manufacturing and even education also helps in ensuring an educated society with the ability to work and make a living for fair wages." That is up for debate, actually. If there was no such thing as public schools, private schools would simply be more predominant. Manufacturing is already privately run so I'm not sure what your point is there. Infrastructure could be easily handed over to the private sector as well. Businesses in town will be interested in improving conditions conducive to travel and will be therefore financially motivated to fund infrastructure. Businesses would also be able to advertise through these improvements; IOWs businesses will have natural capitalistic motives to improve the town due to the increase in tourism and the branding of being a community building business. Public infrastructure funding destroys the market's ability to take advantage of this natural positive alignment of interests. Con next employs a moral analysis of capitalism, declaring that since dollars are votes our interests are being weighted unfairly. To that I say that the fact that someone can impart more influence than another is simply a fact of life. Whether it is a mother controlling her daughter, a politician voting a law into existence, a judge deciding a man be put to death, or a businessman renting billboard space, there is going to be more influence and power concentrated into certain individuals. The only thing up for debate here is whether letting currency decide who this is is a good method or not. So far you haven't introduced anything to better control the balance of power in the nation. Exploitation - There is always going to be exploitation, and yes, capitalism is certainly more likely to increase the occurrence of it compared to socialism, for example. But if the system is running smoothly, like America's historically has, then people are still going to be well-off, exploited or not. Americans are "exploited" by capitalism but enjoy a fairly high standard of living, on average. Perhaps we will always feel exploited in one way or another... 1) http://en.wikipedia.org... 2) Roberts, Russell. "The Choice: A fable of Free Trade and Protectionism". 2007 Pearson publishing