Just like Marxist communism, the theory is a wonderful utopia of cooperation and respect for others. The reality is broken beyond repair. Government interference with business is only limiting businesses not big enough to buy favors. Free trade with countries that essentially own their workers, not to mention the entire production chain of goods, tip the balance against honest businessmen. Regulations protecting small businesses just starting out are being wiped away so that multi-billion dollar conglomerates can shut them down, monopolising the markets. Capitalism in America today is poisoned by the no-longer-hidden plutocracy, it's now the old Golden Rule joke, "He who has the gold, makes the rules."

Capitalism is a shitty system that transfers wealth into the hands of a few and is based entirely on consumption rather than efficiency.

Just wait for everyone to tell you how capitalism is evil while simultaneously ignoring the fact that it's ushered in the modern age and a greater general prosperity and quality of life. Just wait.

[quote]Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. It is the basic, metaphysical fact of man’s nature—the connection between his survival and his use of reason—that capitalism recognizes and protects. In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions, and interests dictate. They can deal with one another only in terms of and by means of reason, i.e., by means of discussion, persuasion, and [i]contractual[/i] agreement, by voluntary choice to mutual benefit. The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the [i]right to disagree[/i] that is crucial. It is the institution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree—and thus keeps the road open to man’s most valuable attribute (valuable personally, socially, and [i]objectively[/i]): the creative mind. It is, by reference to philosophy that the character of a social system has to be defined and evaluated, corresponding to the four branches of philosophy. The four keystones of capitalism are: metaphysically, the requirements of man’s nature and survival—epistemologically, reason—ethically, individual rights, politically, freedom. Capitalism demands the best of every man—his rationality—and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him. His success depends on the objective value of his work and on the rationality of those who recognize that value. When men are free to trade, with reason and reality as their only arbiter. When no man may use physical force to extort the consent of another, it is the best product and the best judgment that win in every field of human endeavor, and raise the standard of living—and of thought—ever higher for all those who take part in mankind’s productive activity. The economic value of a man’s work is determined, on a free market, by a single principle: by the voluntary consent of those who are willing to trade him their work or products in return. This is the moral meaning of the law of supply and demand. The essence of capitalism’s foreign policy is free trade—i.e., the abolition of trade barriers, of protective tariffs, of special privileges—the opening of the world’s trade routes to free international exchange and competition among the private citizens of all countries dealing directly with one another. Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships. By the nature of its basic principles and interests, it is the only system fundamentally opposed to war. The nineteenth century was the ultimate product and expression of the intellectual trend of the Renaissance and the Age of Reason, which means: of a predominantly Aristotelian philosophy. And, for the first time in history, it created a new economic system, the necessary corollary of political freedom, a system of free trade on a free market: capitalism. No, it was not a full, perfect, unregulated, totally laissez-faire capitalism—as it should have been. Various degrees of government interference and control still remained, even in America—and this is what led to the eventual destruction of capitalism. But the extent to which certain countries were free was the exact extent of their economic progress. America, the freest, achieved the most. Never mind the low wages and the harsh living conditions of the early years of capitalism. They were all that the national economies of the time could afford. Capitalism did not create poverty—it inherited it. Compared to the centuries of precapitalist starvation, the living conditions of the poor in the early years of capitalism were the first chance the poor had ever had to survive. As proof—the enormous growth of the European population during the nineteenth century, a growth of over 300 per cent, as compared to the previous growth of something like 3 per cent per century.[/quote] Truth ^

I think it is the best economic system, but I also think social programs that protect our rights to common goods dictated by and through democracy or republic is a necessary check and balance to the practicalities of capitalism.

Capitalism is the cause of a rapid depletion of resources, rather than using them efficiently.

If everyone takes care of themselves then everyone gets taken care of

Thank you OP for describing everything I believe in *sheds manly voluntary tear*

Tl;dr the more money you have the more power you get.

So you want a pure capitalist system?

Pure capitalism doesn't work the same way pure communism doesn't work. Pure capitalism doesn't work the same way monetarism, Keynesian economics, classical economics, tricke-down economics, behavioral theory, and rational expectations theory don't work by themselves in the modern economy.

AdVenture Capitalist is a great way to learn about capitalism. By the way, the US is capitalist and socialist, as in it has economically socialist policies and a capitalist lack of restrictive policies. It is on a spectrum, not black and white.

It's also the system used by cavemen and by the idea that "God created man perfect and everything he's done since has been a fuсk up" ideology

Too bad she died as a socialist lol

Communism > bacon > capitalism

Nice copy/paste