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.