Capitalism (Reboot)

'Capitalism Is Contradictory To Itself'As my opponent refers to this point in his rebuttals, I will respond to it later in this round. 'Capitalism Calls For Immoral Behavior'Not if there is proper government regulation to enforce moral behaviour. In response to the point that you have to educate people to accept hierarchy and that this causes miniature hierarchies, I would argue that these hierarchies are not necessarily immoral so long as they are not abused. Hierarchy is not an immoral concept in and of itself; any bullying, murder or assault that may result from it is from abuse of hierarchy, but this happens in socialist countries as well. 'Hierarchy Is Unnatural'I fundamentally dispute this premise. In pretty much every single human culture there is a hierarchy of some form or another. In primitive tribes there was always a chief and various levels of subordination. George Orwell's novel 'Animal Farm' portrayed very well just how unrealistic a non-hierarchal society is, as hierarchy is a part of human nature. (1)Finally, my opponent presumes that alturism and hierarchy are mutually exclusive; this is an unwarranted assertion. 'Capitalism Benefits The. .. Benefited? 'The existence of people such as Li Ka-shing refutes this statement. Li fled China to Hong-Kong in 1940 with no capital at the age of 14 and eventually founded a business out of sheer hard-work and industriousness. He is now worth almost $32 billion (2). Whilst it may be the case that capitalism generally favours the rich, we must consider the fact that the rich are rich generally due to hard-work and their own achievements. Rewarding this is not a bad thing. I will now respond to my opponent's rebuttals. 'you're not given an incentive to work, you're forced to work. 'I never said that the incentive was to work, I said that the incentive was to work in difficult jobs such as doctors or lawyers. 'Those who can't work. .. live in persistent poverty'This is, as it were, a necessary evil. If one could live fairly affluently without working then there would be little incentive to work; therefore it must be made more rewarding to work than not work. Besides, it is possible to not work and not be in abject poverty with the help of a modest welfare state like what is in place in Britain. 'more greed to push [the rich's] attempts for more capital to a higher point. 'In a capitalist society, the best way to accumulate capital is to work harder. Therefore this greed would encourage people to work harder. This is not a bad thing. 'For example, a C. E. O. .. receives more pay than, for example, someone who works on an assembly line. 'This is because a CEO is a very difficult job. It may not be physically straining, but it is mentally straining. I argue that there is a necessary correlation between difficulty of job and salary. For if a job is difficult then few people will want to do it, hence the salary is increased to incentivise people. If a job is easy then many people will want to do it, hence the salary is decreased so the business can minimse costs. This means that there is a general postive relationship between salary and job-difficulty. 'That incentive is also quite natural; to survive'That is only an incentive to work full-stop. What is needed is an incentive to work in difficult jobs. 'Humans all have their dream jobs. 'Few jobs are 'dream jobs'. Maybe the classic ones such as 'fireman' or 'footballer', but most jobs such as 'chiropractic nurse' or 'financial consultant' are not considered to be peoples' 'dream job', so a monetary incentive is needed to get people to do these jobs. I would also argue that salary is a key factor in one deciding their 'dream job'. 'the incentive to be a doctor, for example, is to help people who are in need of medical help. 'I don't deny this, but society is always in need of doctors and it is not enough to just rely on the existential passion of particular individuals to fulfil the demand. There must be a pay-incentive to incite more people to become doctors otherwise there won't be enough. Besides, it is a lot easier to pay doctors more in order to attract more potential-doctors rather than attempt to inspire people to do a difficult job that is no more rewarding than an easier job. 'in Communism, there is no currency, as currency leads to a class society. Communism instead uses trade based on utilitarianism. 'A trade-based economy might have worked in an isolated community with limited resource variety; but it is impossible in our global market because we need currency to trade with other economies and faciliate small-scale business. The truth is that we have a huge variety of different resources these days. A trade-based economy could only work where only a small number of resources such as raw materials, weapons or clothes are produced. 'Capitalism cannot self-regulate as it requires a state as well. 'It can self-regulate insofar as the government allows it to; it still self-regulates because it does not require constant maintenance and state-intervention like a communist system would. 'food demand will go down with a low population, and supply of food will go up. 'Why would supply of food go up? If farmers see that there is decreasing demand then they will decrease their supply accordingly to avoid wastage. 'This means that the population will also rise dramatically. 'Increased supply of food will not increase the population, at least not directly or dramatically. 'demand for food will spike too sharp for producers to match 'Population increase is something that happens over generations; definitely not fast enough that producers can't keep up. 'With a lack of currency, no profit can be made because there's no supply and demand process either. 'Without a concept of supply and demand there would be huge wastage in some products and scarcity in others, as producers would not produce according to demand. For example they would produce a set amount of tractors even if there is no demand for tractors. 'people regulate the quality and affordability of products, not Capitalism'Capitalism is the only economic system in which the people are able to regulate products. Capitalism does not regulate it, but it is a system that allows the people to do so. 'Therefore, Capitalism is not self-regulating, it relies on systematic oppression offered by a state and consumer choices. 'It is self-regulating given certain conditions; such as state and social approval. These are not difficult milestones to achieve as capitalism works well with both the state and society; as shown by the relative prosperity of capitalist countries throughout history. 'Communism is not concerned about economic growth, as Communism is focused on the people, not money. 'There is a significant correlation between the economic prosperity of one's country and one's happiness, so capitalism is helping people by helping the economy. (3)'Considering that currency and the Capitalist system in general has only been around for 200 years compared to the near 1,000,000 years of human existence'The human civilisation of thousands of years ago is very different to society today, and so economics has evolved accordingly. I would argue that capitalism was NOT the best economic system for a tribal society with little external trade and product-diversity. But today we need capitalism because of the nature of international trade and the huge variety of products that exist. Besides, currency has been around for more than 4000 years (4). 'But this is not the case, because humans have been observed to practice altruism. 'Altruism still works in a capitalist society; hence why pretty much all the major charities have been formed in capitalist countries. 'Altruism in humans negates the argument that humans are naturally greedy. 'Not really, I can be altruistic at times and greedy at others; the traits are not mutually exclusive when it comes to human nature. 'It's true that humans seek to accumulate resources, but keeping these resources to ourselves instead of sharing our resources with the others was not what happened. 'Capitalism still allows for sharing of resources, so long as it is not systematically forced. 'What you make is yours. 'In communism, what you make is taken from you and redistributed. 'those who are poor and thus no money to spare are left with a class barrier that prevents them from being an entrepeneur. 'In a capitalist society, bank loans exist for this very purpose. 'China isn't Communist. Nor is Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, etc. 'Does this not beg the question of why no country is actually communist, considering it is supposedly such a good system? 'The government must also convince people that Capitalism is the way to go'Not if the people are already convinced. Besides, there is no evidence that the education system is disproportionately promoting capitalism. 'However, the state is not completely separate from Capitalism,'Agreed, but so long as the economic system is not totally under state-control then the state's power is curbed. 'Abuse of state power can't be stopped by something that relies on the state'This would be the case if the state could forcibly disband capitalism. I doubt this could happen without some coup being carried out. 'This is because they aren't actually Communist. 'This brings me back to my earlier point. Surely the fact that no single country is actually communist is testimony to the fact that it is a poor and unworkable economic system? I apologise for lack of clarification on some points, I am nearly out of characters. (1) Orwell, George : 'Animal Farm'(2) . http://en.wikipedia.org...(3) . http://www.economist.com...(4) . http://en.wikipedia.org...