17th March 2010, 5:08 PM
I think one of the problems with capitalism, and there are problems, is that it assumes that every participant is acting in self-interest and is motivated to compete. And I just don't think that's entirely true.
1. There's a lack of motivation from a large portion of the populace. People that don't care about their social position and have no desire to change it.
2. Capitalism assumes that the workers act in their own self-interest and cannot be "tricked" into acting against their self-interest. This happens all the time it seems, where big companies throw their considerable capital around to convince the workers, and the politicians [who in turn will also convince the workers] that something which actually hurts the workers continued to remain in place or gets put into place instead of something which helps the workers.
There are other issues as well, but I think those two are among the most important. There's no perfect system, only one that works better than the others.
1. There's a lack of motivation from a large portion of the populace. People that don't care about their social position and have no desire to change it.
2. Capitalism assumes that the workers act in their own self-interest and cannot be "tricked" into acting against their self-interest. This happens all the time it seems, where big companies throw their considerable capital around to convince the workers, and the politicians [who in turn will also convince the workers] that something which actually hurts the workers continued to remain in place or gets put into place instead of something which helps the workers.
There are other issues as well, but I think those two are among the most important. There's no perfect system, only one that works better than the others.
Sometimes you get the scorpion.