Capitalism is bad

Capitalism is Bad First the Offense. Capitalism is the root cause of war- war is a specific, powerful method of destruction of excess capital in its commodity form, of value that cannot be realized in times of peace. Their main contribution to an upturn is not through employment and the extra production of surplus value (which are modest because of their high value composition) but through the destruction of surplus capital: the more commodity capital is destroyed (both as weapons and as the other commodities that are destroyed by those weapons), the more commodity capital can be subsequently created. At the same time, this expanded reproduction is spurred by the higher rates of exploitation, and thus of profit, induced by wars. Wars make possible the cancellation of the debt contracted with Labor (e.g., inflation destroys the value of money and thus of state bonds) and the extraction of extra surplus value (the laborers, either forced or instigated by patriotism, accept lower wages, higher intensity of labor, longer working days, etc.). Wars thus create the conditions for an economic upturn. Capitalism needs weapons and thus wars. If capitalism needs wars, wars need enemies. The imperialist nations display great ingenuity in finding, or creating, new enemies. Before the fall of the USSR, the pretext for the arms industry was International Communism. After the Fall, International Communism has been replaced by Arab Fundamentalism and International Terrorism. As the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq show, the substitution is now complete. The attacks of September 11, 2001, were a golden opportunity for the arms industry and U.S. imperialism. This shows that political and ideological factors are of paramount importance for the modes and timing of the conflagration, but they themselves are determined by economic factors. The notion that wars are caused by extraeconomic factors is simply wrong. Capitalism is the root cause of environmental degradation- The central problem, it is becoming increasingly clear, is a mode of production whose main dynamic is the transformation of living nature into dead commodities, creating tremendous waste in the process. The driver of this process is consumption--or more appropriately overconsumption--and the motivation is profit or capital accumulation: capitalism, in short. It has been the generalization of this mode of production in the North and its spread from the North to the South over the last 300 years that has caused the accelerated burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil and rapid deforestation, two of the key man-made processes behind global warming. The South's Dilemma: One way of viewing global warning is to see it as a key manifestation of the latest stage of a wrenching historical process: the privatisation of the global commons by capital. The climate crisis must thus be seen as the expropriation by the advanced capitalist societies of the ecological space of less developed or marginalized societies. This leads us to the dilemma of the South: before the full extent of the ecological destabilization brought about by capitalism, it was expected that the South would simply follow the 'stages of growth' of the North. Now it is impossible to do so without bringing about ecological Armageddon. Already, China is on track to overtake the US as the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, and yet the elite of China as well as those of India and other rapidly developing countries are intent on reproducing the American-type overconsumption-driven capitalism. Thus, for the South, the implications of an effective global response to global warming include not just the inclusion of some countries in a regime of mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, although this is critical: in the current round of climate negotiations, for instance, China, can no longer opt out of a mandatory regime on the grounds that it is a developing country. Non-capitalist economies are more productive and create more wealth than capitalism- capitalist countries are not distinguished by high levels of wealth. The somewhat more socialist economies and more corporatist economies of Western Europe reach wealth levels exceeding the levels in the capitalist economies. The reasons are familiar. One of the major drivers of wealth, the propensity to save, is higher in Luxembourg, Switzerland, Belgium, France and Germany than in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada – despite the high security offered by the continental welfare system. The other driver of private wealth, namely, the level of productivity, is also equal if not greater in the former group of countries than in the latter group. A proposed explanation is that while the capitalist exemplars may be at or close to the "technical frontier," thanks to their "lead" in cutting-edge innovation, they "waste" much of their output potential in false steps, in the costly processes of marketing, and in over-investment caused by the winner-take-all competition of costly R&D projects.7 Furthermore, the top-down techno-nationalist projects that some relatively corporatist nations have substituted for discoveries bubbling up naturally from the business sector may do well on that score thanks to the resources saved by avoiding "wasteful competition" for new products involving parallel development work and marketing efforts. One has to conclude that "generation of wealth" is not special to capitalism. Corporatist economies are quite good at that. Now the Defense. First off you make this big argument saying " It helps America because it's not only good for the economy, but it helps in everyday life. You can Serve God if you want to, you can really do anything you want without the government being in the way and stopping what you want to do in your life." THIS IS ENTIRELY NOT TRUE! There is no such thing as the Capitalism you define all the government does is regulate and intervene with peoples personal lives?! HA you also say you can serve god if you want to but i think "capitalist" america has killed about 100,000 thousand god serving Afghan citizens so i think you lose the "capitalism let's you serve god debate" AND CAPITALISM IS TERRIBLE FOR THE ECONEMY! Because Capitalism structurally guarantees repeated economic crises- What we have to understand is that the real substance of it in a capitalist system is the accumulation of capital. That's why economic growth is necessary; it has nothing to do with wealth of nations per se or the promotion of human welfare. It has to do with the expansion of capital, the accumulation of capital in ever larger amounts, and the growth of profit. In order to have profits, you really have to "expand the pie" of the economy. If you don't expand the pie you can't get profits. The only way you can get profits in a pie that's not growing is to change the share, which has been done in recent years. But, basically, profit comes from growth. Anytime the economy doesn't grow, you have a crisis under capitalism because the accumulation of capital, profits, aren't being generated. When the world economy doesn't grow by at least 2.5%, they call that a world recession. It's considered to be a world crisis of capitalism, and this is built into the system. So seeing that you have no offense left in this debate round i err the voters to vote aff on presumption and the fact that she provided no evidence CHECK MY SITES THERE FANTASTIC! http://www.greenleft.org.au... http://www.robnewman.com... Rethinking Marxism, Volume 18, Number 1, January, "The Fallacies of Keynesian Policies," p. 77-78