Capitalism in a democratic society
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
To the Editor: What is a “capitalist”? A capitalist is a person who views the things and people in his/her environment as having value for their potential to make money. The ultimate value of anything is its possible use in making a monetary profit. Can a vacant lot be the site of a business? Can one extract ore from the ground be made into salable metal? Can a natural mountain landscape serve as a ski resort? Can you buy hours of the lives of people who will work to make money for you? The minimum price of a worker’s hour of life is $7.25 in much of the US. For capitalists the answer is an unrestricted yes. In a capitalist society, morality consists in extracting the maximum profit from available capital. For conservatives and liberals, the right to accumulate capital should be moderated in order to form a humane, fair, and democratic society.
“Capitalism” is not a real thing. Theoretically it is an economic system based on the assumption that everything has a value measurable in monetary terms. It sets up the ultimate materialistic society. A capitalist economic system is where individuals compete for profits by engaging in enterprise, or business. Capitalists use the assets of society to run their businesses. They depend on roads, energy sources, education, social order, international security, health, a legal framework for business, and many other social investments for their success.
Individual capitalist success depends on manipulating social resources. Those with vast capital, however, can hire expensive lawyers to escape their tax responsibilities for funding those social investments. They can also fund politicians to protect their financial positions. In a non-regulated free enterprise system, people of wealth can exploit government as another source of profit and capital accumulation. They see the government itself, as capital. The accumulation of capital is seductive, because possession conveys economic advantage and political power.
All capitalist systems are regulated to some degree. All societies must determine to what degree individual capitalists are free to accumulate massive amounts of capital. Capitalist governments do regulate what businesses can do to the environment, to their human capital, and how they practice their business. Modern capitalist societies seek a healthy balance between free enterprise and humane government regulation. That is what liberals and conservatives do. They debate and reach workable compromises on the balance of individual initiative in accumulating wealth, and the needed regulations in order to establish a fair and functioning social system.
In the U.S., some of the wealthy one percent are working to set up an oligarchy of wealth. They seek to use their accumulated capital to make government function to favor and preserve their dominate position. From tax cuts for the wealthy, to diminishing programs that help lower economic classes, our national government is flirting with wealth socialism called fascism. We need democratic debate, where people, not wealth, find the healthy balance between free pursuit of profit and sensible government regulatory policies. Political compromise between liberals and conservatives is essential to maintain a healthy capitalist society. That is regulatory capitalism, not socialism. Rick Lohr Marathon
