The Defenses and The Sidetrack

These are the arguments put forth in favour of capitalism:

1. Capitalism provides fertile grounds for innovation and provides adequate incentives for people to innovate.
2. The capitalist system is much more efficient in accomplishing things than government bodies.
3. Many Entrepreneurs have come up because of a successful innovation, and the profit is thus a credit for such innovative work.
   
4. The industrial capitalists are not being paid for production, but for providing employment to the people.

Capitalism does have many advantages. Namely, it encourages innovation and provides an efficient way of handling large projects.

But while all these points are true within the capitalist framework, we must not stop our search for better alternatives. This is because capitalism, along with its merits has plenty of demerits, some of which I have outlined in the previous two posts.

There have been many experiments which have dealt with finding ways of replacing capitalism. One such infamous experiment is the concept of communism. The fact that it was a complete failure should not make us conclude that there are no alternatives to capitalism. To the contrary, we must take it as an opportunity to learn from the mistakes and formulate a better system with the experience we have had with this project. Another major source of experience is the past. We must remember that capitalism is a modern concept, and hundreds of other systems have existed in the past. These systems might provide us with new ideas and concepts.

There also have been many modern experiments, some of which have been a great success. One such example is the various self-help-groups that we see in India. For example Umang is an organisation that consists of around 150 self-help-groups (SHG). This generally consists of a group of 15-17 neighbours and friends who meet regularly to support each other on a financial and personal basis. Umang is a part of Grassroots India. For more details visit http://grassrootsindia.com/

Cooperatives do show a great promise for replacing capitalism in the future. A proper structure for a cooperative functioning needs to be developed. I, being a student do not have any of the skills required to do so. So please try to develop a better system, which can replace capitalism. Thus avoiding the problems, while keeping the advantages. I will try my best to list the resources and make information available in this blog.

If you have any ideas please share it with the world, and perhaps even with us in this blog.

Justified Injustice

Industrialists set up industries and employ labourers. In many cases with meagre salaries and with poor working conditions, particularly in some economies. This is especially true for the unorganised sector, where often, even the basic subsistence requirements of the workers are not met. Even for labourers in the organised sector, the incomes levels keep them just above the bare subsistence level.

This is not due to a lack of market value for the goods produced, or due to a lack of profits, because the industrialists themselves earn a lump sum. And they earn this without doing half as much work as their employees.
Some known arguments raised against this statements are:

Argument: The industrialists have invested a lot of money, thus they deserve a higher return.
Counter-argument: The fact that they have enough money to invest is just a matter of accident of birth, and not because of any personal merit. Even if they were not rich by birth, and worked towards it, their incomes are still disproportionate to their effort.

Argument: The industrialists are taking a huge risk of losing the business and therefore are entitled for higher returns. Whereas an employee takes far lower risk and stress because of the predictability of their income.
Counter-argument: Let us look deeper into this risk vs. return argument:
If the employer (industrialist) loses profits, he/she still has the basic necessities of life, and the drop in lifestyle is not much. However, in such a situation, the employee loses even the basic necessities. Thus the employee is taking a much greater 'risk' for hardly any returns.

Argument: It can be argued that in some cases the profits go back into the business for expansion. This benefits the employees.
Counter-argument: The expansion of the business will result in infrastructural development and more employees being hired. The increase in the pay, if at all it is there, will not be in proportion to the amount of work already done by the employee, and cannot equal the money he/she has been deprived of.

Conclusion:
Thus we can see that the core objective of any industry is to increase the share holder's value. The results obtained due to the efforts of the employees do not go to them.

Failure Of Success

What constitutes Success and Happiness

Success constitutes power and the availability of wealth. And happiness constitutes success.

This is the general philosophy of today's capitalist world, and not only the philosophy of businessmen, but also of the employed. So let us have a deeper look at what the general components of success and happiness constitute:

Wealth

The reason for the want of wealth, is obviously a desire for a better lifestyle and more comfort. This is the commonsense answer, but is it really why we crave for wealth? Maybe not. Despite all of the innovations that have greatly improved our lifestyle and increased our comfort, we still crave for more and more.

This can be explained away with the mention of human nature by saying that the want of humans is never satisfied and we want ever more. This may be partially true.

But how can this explain behaviour such as - The tendency to wear expensive clothes that may look good, but are not half as comfortable as cheaper ones, the tendency to spend on lifestyle products to create an image that is perceived as high class at the cost of comfort, affordability, convenience etc.

Market research has revealed that consumers, besides seeing the quality of the product also look at its price, and to generally conclude that a costlier an item is the better it is going to be. How can this be explained.

The reason people behave in this manner is that:

The motive is not to have as much wealth as possible, the motive is to have more wealth than the rest.

Having made this conclusion, let us look at the other aspect of success:

Power

Power is the ability to change the world, shape it and rule parts of it. More often then not the 'world' consists of people. For one person, 'A' to be powerful, many need to be less powerful than A. So again we can conclude that:

The desire for power, is the desire to be able to control people, and hence, to have more power than they have.

Conclusion

Now we have arrived at the following conclusions about the two elements of modern success and happiness:

• The motive is not to have as much wealth as possible, the motive is to have more wealth than the rest.
• The desire for power, is the desire to be able to control people, and hence, to have more power than they have.

This means that everybody cannot be happy and successful at the same time, because for one person to be happy (ie. having more wealth and power) others need to be unhappy (ie. having less wealth and power). Thus the modern idea of Success and Happiness is flawed and can never be attained.

Thus the definition of success and happiness in society needs to be changed. This calls for revolution and rebellion!! It is my belief that this can be achieved with the abolishment of capitalism, the core evil of this time.

It is my belief that capitalism is the root cause of this problem, and thus it needs to be changed.