Capitalism's Curse

Not too long ago, a friend of mine accused those who demonize the wealthy of hypocrisy. For while those critics rightly condemn the wealthy for operating from self-interest, he observed that those critics do what they chastise the wealthy for doing: they too act out of self-interest.

Self-interest is the curse of capitalism. Not that we should never consider self-interest in making decisions, we must and we all do. But in the fertile soil of capitalism, self-interest grows like weeds that eventually take over a lawn. Self-interest devours other concerns and thus can too easily become the only factor used when making decisions.  And that is especially true in capitalist economies because capitalism promises us that the Free Market will protect us from treating others unfairly when acting solely out of self-interest. Thus owners let the Free Market determine the wages of their employees rather than what their employees need to be paid in order to survive or live out of poverty. And those who fail in the Free Market are then looked on as not deserving of what others have and that can include even if that means not deserving to survive.
 
What self-interest in capitalism causes is both morally wrong and self-destructive to society. That is because self-interest in capitalism tells us that the needs and concerns of others are not our responsibility. After all, in a capitalist economy, people should only get what they earn. And to receive from the bounty of others which has not been freely donated is considered to be stealing and is destructive to both the economy and society. Of course those who have can freely donate to others, but they are not obligated to. That means that those in need survive at the pleasure of those who have. And that also means helping those in need revolves more around the egos of those who give rather than the needs of the vulnerable. 

With there being nothing immoral about ignoring those in need, suffering can abound without those who have feeling guilty. And as long as those who have don't break any laws, they can comfortably live as selfishly as they want to.

Eventually, when the needs of the vulnerable are ignored, it causes problems in society. Those problems can include violence and theft because the vulnerable will often will have learned from the haves to let their choices be more and more determined by self-interest. That shows how the haves can also cause problems in society even when they follow the law.

But there is another problem caused by reducing our concerns more and more to self-interest. The problem is that just as we learn to ignore the needs of others, we also learn how to ignore the externalities that exist in our systems. For example, we might decide to ignore the pollution caused by our way of living. Here we should note how the percentage of Americans who deny climate change compares with the percentage of citizens from other nations (click here for info). Why is that the case? It is because the more self-interest guides the decisions of the haves, the more they tend to focus on immediate standard of living consequences rather than long-term ones.

The biggest threat to our way of life and society is our current emphasis on self-interest. And the fuel for that emphasis is our economic system. Our current economic system pushes us to base our decisions more and more on self-interest. What we need is an economic system that requires that we balance our self-interest with the interests of and concerns for others. We need an economic system that distributes power between owners and workers with both groups being concerned about each other and not just themselves. We need an economic system that also takes into account both social and physical externalities. Why do we need that? It is because our current emphasis on self-interest is self-destructive.  This can be seen in the growing wealth disparity in our nation as well as the harm we doing to the environment.