Entirely unregulated capitalism doesn't work

Yes, businesses will maximize cost, but not at the expense of the people who work there, because if the people who work there are injured, seeking other employment, or unionizing, the business will begin to lose money. in the modern era it is unprofitable to antagonize or endanger your workers. especially considering the public backlash if you get exposed. Supply and Demand economics dictates that when a business does well, even if they have a large monopoly, overpricing is not a good long-term solution. more on that later. When you talk about monopolies, you need to realize that a monopoly is only effective insofar as people are willing to buy that one product, ifty years ago, when the American Telephone and Telegraph Company still held a monopoly on U.S. phone service, the first minute of a toll call could easily cost a dollar"the equivalent of about $5 today. But a few pennies of that 1950s dollar supported research and development efforts at Bell Telephone Laboratories and at AT&T"s manufacturing arm, Western Electric. This corporate combination was probably the most potent innovation engine the world has ever known, spawning such midcentury marvels as the transistor, the laser, the solar cell, cellular telephony, and satellite communications. And it developed almost all of the silicon technology that others used to invent the microchip. Without a doubt, Bell Labs and Western Electric laid the foundations of the information age and today"s global society. But these institutions have been declining since the 1984 breakup of AT&T. Soon that corporate colossus"once the largest company in America"will no longer exist, having been acquired by SBC Communications for only $16 billion. Bell Labs, whose physicists have garnered six Nobel Prizes for their scientific breakthroughs, is but a shadow of its former self under Lucent Technologies. And in 2002, Lucent spun off most of the remains of Western Electric as Agere Systems. A long-distance call may now cost pennies, but the nation has lost one of its leading institutions of science and technology. Many economists argue that monopolies stifle innovation. The lack of competition induces corporate somnolence, and new technologies are patented mainly to consolidate and protect a company"s dominant market position rather than to encourage the creation of revolutionary products and services. But innovation was a much different affair at AT&T, which espoused a corporate ethos of universal service"and especially at Bell Labs, which adhered to a management philosophy calculated to attract some of the world"s best scientists and engineers to work in an industrial lab. A healthy percentage of the costs of R&D were built right into the calling-rate base. Thus assured of steady financing, lab managers could afford to take the long view and pursue breakthrough technologies that might not pay off for a dozen years or more but might ultimately be of enormous value to society. AT&T"s patient capital and secure cash flows allowed the company to take the substantial risks involved in attempting sustained innovation across a broad technology front. The transistor is perhaps the best example of that process. AT&T"s managers recognized the long-range need for a solid-state amplifier and switch during the 1930s, but it wasn"t until 1947 that John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley invented the device. And it took another 15 years or so of technology development before transistors began to assume their modern form. Bell Labs and Western Electric fostered almost all the subsequent innovations this transformation required: purifying silicon, growing large crystals of this semiconductor material, diffusing layers of impurities into the crystals, patterning the layers using a protective oxide surface layer, and so on. During the 1960s, Fairchild Semiconductor and Texas Instruments adapted many of these technologies to develop the microchip, whose manufacture now adds more than a trillion dollars per decade to the global economy. These smaller, less-robust companies could never have pursued the many different innovations that made their core product possible. But they were exquisitely poised to drink from the rich technology stream flowing from Bell Labs and Western Electric. Only a large corporation such as AT&T"or others like General Electric and IBM"could ever afford to support the sustained, multidisciplinary, mission-oriented R&D efforts needed for these innovations without worrying too much about the short-term impact on the bottom line. And it was crucial that this work be accomplished in a pragmatic industrial setting, with a long-range goal of delivering better goods and services"an ethos that hardly exists in government or university laboratories. Such farsighted institutions, performing basic research and development within industry, are necessary if society is to realize fundamental breakthroughs, like the transistor, that have the potential to transform it. AT&T"s seemingly excessive charges on toll calls served as a kind of R&D tax: The company provided a reliable mechanism for diverting a tiny fraction of our everyday expenses"coming from all corners of the U.S. economy"to long-term R&D projects that eventually made tremendous improvements in our lives. as we can see, when a monopoly causes a great increase in price we see that people will innovate and create a better product which renders a monopoly useless. Thus in order to maintain a monopoly and profit it will require that one maintain the best product and a reasonable price. It's important that we define exactly what capitalism is so that we don't get capitalism restricting laws mixed up with other types of laws. capitalism is 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. Thus we can see that human rights laws are separate from capitalism laws. Furthermore, It's important to note that China in 2009 was NOT a capitalist country. They were/are a Communist country which means that it was the STATE that was determining economic policy not private owners. My opponent again confuses other laws with restrictions on capitalism. for beatings, that would fall under assault laws. which are not restrictions on capitalism but rather restrictions of violence. Moreover, the information climate of the 1800's is not even remotely comparable to that of today. a removal of restrictions on capitalism would not lead to grueling work hours because of 1. the availability of other work. 2. the media backlash if it was enforced universally which it wouldn't be. References China was communist https://www.hrw.org... Monopolies encourage innovation https://hbr.org...