Capitalism

First I will define Capitalism: an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. With capitalism, more choice is provided than ever before. You can eat low fat food, organic food, free-range food" and you know exactly what you"re getting due to the statistics on the packet. There are plenty of diets easily accessible and gyms with top of the range equipment, unparalleled in other countries. There is greater awareness than ever of the importance of fitness due to government campaigns. All of these contribute to an extremely fit society, and, in desperation, one can always resort to liposuction or some other sort of surgery. Which is why everyone is thin and healthy " on the front of magazines, at least. It might seem at first glance that everyone is selfishly working for their own money, but dig a little deeper and it becomes apparent that every job has a benefit for someone else. Factory workers produce the products that we can"t live without; hairdressers perform a service that benefits us body and sould; and the police work to protect us and make sure we live in a lawful society. Even unpopular and "overpaid" professions such as city bankers and sportsmen have a positive effect on society, whether it be helping us manage our money, entertainment or something else. The bottom line is that no matter the job; highly or poorly paid, glamorous or dirty, competitive or "easy"; everyone can have the satisfaction that they, as much as the well-known public figures, are doing their bit for society. No matter where you start in life, everyone has an opportunity to make it big. The basic principle is that the harder you work, the greater your reward. Arguably no-one epitomizes this better than Li Ka-shing, who fled China in 1940 and entered Hong Kong with next to nothing. His father having died, Li left school at the age of 14 and labored 16 hours every day in a plastics trading company, where his sheer hard work and attention to detail allowed him to found Cheung Kong Industries in the 1950s, after which he never looked back. Li"s net worth today is $26.5 billion. Most of you reading this list will have grown up in a world-class education system and taken it for granted that you can choose whatever career you want. At school you selected your favorite subjects and could study them as far as you wanted, followed by applying to a job you chose from the widest variety ever seen in history. This is capitalism at its finest: freedom to live your life the way you want. However, some argue that advertising infringes on one"s freedom. Don"t like advertising? Don"t switch on the TV or the radio and don"t walk around large towns or cities and you will never meet any. That is the beauty of freedom. One of the greatest things about capitalism is that it works perfectly with democracy: everyone gets 1 vote, and thus equal power politically, whatever their race, political views or gender. In Britain, recent legislation has even allowed some prisoners to vote. Once you reach a certain age, you have as much power to choose the new government as everybody else above that age " whether that be your father, your boss or Bill Gates. Right? If you look at this happiness map published by scholars from the University of Leicester, you can clearly see that the foremost democratic, capitalist countries like the USA, Canada, New Zealand and the whole of Europe are the happiest in the world. This is because in these countries, thanks to the free-market, whatever products people want, they can get. Where do all these thousands of products come from? Well, the less happy countries like the Asian Tiger economies tend to be the main exporters of consumer goods. In conclusion, all these unhappy countries need to do is start consuming more than they produce, like Europe, and the wealth and happiness will start flowing in. R32; Source: http://listverse.com...