Laissez Faire Capitalism is Disgusting and Immoral

My opponent first argues that innovation is not caused by Capitalism - a view which is profoundly mistaken. To use just some of my opponent's examples, Capitalism has allowed for the creation of computers, the internet, calculators, the mircochip, GPS, and the biro by providing an environment conducive for innovation. The reason for Capitalism's innovation is competition: "Competition in the marketplace is good for consumers—and good for business, too. It benefits consumers by keeping prices low and the quality and choice of products and services high. It benefits businesses by promoting innovation—improvements to make products different—and often, to make them better in ways that consumers want. "[1]This has been shown time and time again. For example, "Without competition Apple would have never created their Ipod, Microsoft would have never created Windows, and Google would probably be non-existent. Competition is essential because it leads to one very important thing, innovation. " On a related, but different example, "It's clear that if one company's technology held an overwhelming advantage over the mobile OS market, innovation would suffer to the detriment of all mobile phone buyers. " Laissez Faire Capitalism prevents monopolies from forming. [2][3]To conclude this point, private businesses are always more efficient in innovation than government. As this article argues, "Capitalism has made advances possible, not solely in providing life's necessities, but in science, technology, and knowledge of all types upon which human society depends. Freedom attracts innovators and explorers and gives life to their ideas. Freedom for people to act in their own self-interest is the mainspring for a diversity of ideas, innovations, and experiments that lead to the discovery of new products, services, and other means of production. "[4]As for Obamacare' supposed "positive" effect on the people, consider this: "CBO estimates that health insurance will cost $15,000 per year on average for families soon after Obamacare is fully implemented, rising rapidly from there. That is the individual mandate tax on the middle class and working people. "[5]You still cannot deny that the spike in per capita GDP happened simultaneously with the rise of Capitalism over state-control and mercantilism: [6]Further, it's economic freedom, not state control that leads to prosperity: [7]Next, my opponent argues that Capitalism is a "pyramid scheme". Admittedly, yes, Capitalis does entail inequality - but that's not bad: "You cannot achieve excellence and progress unless you have inequality and diversity. Division of labor and specialization are natural outcomes of the multiplicity of natural conditions. Economic progress requires the freedom of individuals to use the diverse talents and localized information that only they can possess. Our material abundance and opportunities for fulfilling work are largely the result of the productivity and creativity of our competitive economic system, despite the existence of many bureaucratic barriers. "[4] The purest version of a pyramid scheme is government. The government steals power from the people and gives to itself until there are a small number of powerful bureaucrats who make all of the decisions, and the vast majority who have little say how they are governed. That is not a feature of Laissez Faire Capitalism. That is a feature inherent in government because of its very nature. Next, my opponent posts this ridiculously long paragraph of, basically, an irrelevant rant. To begin with, mercantilism is not Capitalism. It has been one of the great triumphs of human evolution that the latter overtook that former. Any of the bad effects that were the result of mercantilism is not a valid argument against Capitalism - it could even be considered to be an argument for Capitalism. The industrial revolution was the transition period between the two systems. While yes, there were significant flaws in the system, it was still an advancement on the earlier system. People lived better off overall during the industrial evolution than in earlier times. The Government's intervention in the economy has not helped the people; it has lowered the economic increase over time. Finally, Russia and China were behind in their evolution because they still had too strong of governments. Both were later taken over by statist communists that ruined their economies and people to the point of collapse. Only when the markets in China began to open did China start to grow - it was not Mao's policies, but Deng Xiaoping's that helped the people of China. Russia has never recovered as it is still, overall, close to the horrible state it was in at the fall of the Bolshevik power bloc. There's more in his long paragraph that are ridiciously incorrect, but I think I've weeded it down to the essentials. At for one of the places that he should have braked for a new pargraph, he says that most of the world has not experienced economic growth because of Capitalism: [8]Most of the places my opponent mentions are not exactly in the green territory. And what does economic freedom correlate with? To start with, economic growth: [9]This pretty much makes my point. In a combination of the second and third graphs, here is a graph showing economic freedom versus prosperity with the locations of the countries plotted given: [10]Again, the places that my opponent mentions don't score high in economic freedom and they don't score high in prosperity, either. It is Europe, North America, and some of Asia that score high economic freedom (and high prosperity), not Africa and Central & South America. Finally, my opponent tries to salvage his argument that Pinochet and Thatcher are valid arguments against Laissez Faire Capitalism. Again, not only has he provided no evidence that their economic policies were bad for their respective countries, but he continues to ignore the irrelevancy of his argument, as there is a government involved. Between the reaction time of a change from socialism and capitalism and the government's forcing of it on its peoples (at least in the case of Chile), his argument is invalid. You see, "If we are to keep the term "capitalism" at all, then, we must distinguish between "free-market capitalism" on the one hand, and "state capitalism" on the other. The two are as different as day and night in their nature and consequences. Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at. State capitalism consists of one or more groups making use of the coercive apparatus of the government — the State — to accumulate capital for themselves by expropriating the production of others by force and violence. "[11]As an interesting conclusion, my opponent has aksed me to find a peaceful protest of the people for capitalism over socialism. To that, I offer my conclusion, "In a profound sense, the free market is the method and society 'natural' to man; it can and does therefore arise 'naturally' without an elaborate intellectual system to explain and defend it. "[11]Sources [1]: . http://www.ftc.gov...[2]: . http://www.jmorganmarketing.com...[3]: . http://www.eweek.com...[4]: . http://mises.org...[5]: . http://www.forbes.com...[6]: . http://capitalism.aynrand.org...[7]: . http://markhumphrys.com...[8]: . http://www.heritage.org...[9]: . http://www.youngresearch.com...[10]: . http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com...[11]: . https://mises.org...