Capitalism kind of

If humans weren't such greedy scumbags at times, free markets would be epic. But American history shows that a laissez-faire system leads to horrible working conditions, horrible treatment of workers, discriminatory hiring practices ("Irish need not apply"), and child labor. You may have encountered some of this in school if you read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." In his book, Sinclair detailed the appalling working conditions in meatpacking factories that were ridden with disease and generally unsanitary. While a laissez-faire system and a free market are not the exact same thing, they do go hand in hand in some respects in the sense that there is little to no government intervention or intervention by some governing body or authority.

The Library of Congress identifies that the time between 1894-1915 is when many ideas (ideas which were considered progressive at the time) like women in the workplace, reasonable hours, safe working conditions, and vacations were born.

Now, there are elements of a free market that are good - the government should not be telling companies and businesses how much they should charge for their products and services - but a free market with no regulations, as we've seen before, results essentially in slavery as this Reddit post points out (yeah I know, cringe linking to a Reddit post but it does a fairly good job describing what I am referring to). It's also funny that conservatives will acknowledge this (but only in response to black people complaining about racism and past slavery as a pivot or deflection, essentially answering criticism with criticism) but then totally ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist when someone critiques capitalism and unregulated markets.

Adam Smith is known as the father of modern economics and a lot of his work informs America's current economic system. Smith advocated for laissez faire markets with little to no government interruption or regulation because of an "invisible hand" that refers to a market's tendency to regulate itself.

Saying a market will regulate itself is like saying a children will raise itself - yes, in a way it will but it'll become an unhealthy, stupid, terrible person if they even make it to adulthood.

Smith also argued that dangerous or undesirable jobs tend to pay higher wages as a way of attracting workers to these positions, or "jobs with disagreeable characteristics will command higher wages," as this paper puts it. So, if this is true, why is it that retail jobs, jobs at fast food restaurants, janitorial positions and maids and housekeepers, are all some of the lowest paying jobs in America. These all have disagreeable characteristics so why has the market not corrected itself to pay these people more?

Don't get me wrong, hard work and a strong work ethic are certainly valuable qualities to have but American capitalism exploits them. It seems that American capitalism has instilled a belief in people that in order to acquire or deserve the bare minimum/essentials of life like food, water, shelter, et cetera you have to work your ass off 40+ hours a week. The concept of hard work has been turned into a dick-measuring contest with people comparing how exploited they're allowing themselves to be in order to make ends meet. t's ironic that many of the same people who think a fetus has a right to life for merely existing don't think humans that have been born have this same right and must earn it through working five days a week.

Anyways, what inspired me to write this section was a look at this message/comment board (on a Texas A&M website of all places) after learning about the Pope calling for universal basic income and a shorter working day, among other things. The comments you see below in Figures 1 and 2 in particular really blew me away.

In Figure 1 the commenter calls the Pope lazy for wanting more for less. This underscores my previous comments about the belief American capitalism has instilled in people because working less than the norm is seen as "lazy" and wanting people to be better off financially constitutes some kind of insult. Does this commenter not want more for less and get more value? To me, this is just virtue signaling - this person is trying to show how much of a hard worker they are and how strong their work ethic is by insulting someone who is challenging the norm. However, I'm sure they would rather pay $5 for 12 rolls of toilet paper instead of $8 for 10 of the exact same rolls of toilet paper and not insult an employee for treating people as "lazy" by offering them this deal. I'm sure they shop around for the best value and buy things on sale, making them "lazy" by their own words here.

Figure 2 is just kind of funny because the Pope is essentially saying "hey, we should improve working and living conditions for people" and the commenter labels this way of thinking as a mental disease and the Pope is "terminally stupid." Sheesh.

It’s very confusing that these people are not just arguing against, but insulting those who express a desire for the lives of their own and others to be better and a little easier. Maybe these people are just virtue signaling how hard working they are in respect to other “lazy” people who aren’t willing to work 40+ hours a week to barely afford to feed and clothe themselves, maybe they’re just hoping one day they can be in the power position and become “rich” through exploiting others the way they are being exploited and see progressive ideas as a threat to these goals, maybe they’re just stupid and can’t fathom a life outside of life as they know it, maybe they think these things will only improve life or others and are jealous that others may have a good life, or maybe it’s something else.

The iPhone is not capitalism. The iPhone is a piece of technology and innovation manufactured by labor. Technology and innovation and labor have existed long before capitalism and will exist long after. Labor made the iPhone, not capitalism. The type of "ism" just determines who gets paid and how the labor is treated.

The technology that makes an iPhone is not inherently capitalist, nor is the technology and innovation that created the iPhone solely reliant on capitalism. Capitalism is not conducive to the iPhone, or innovation in general. Various societies and people have innovated and created new technologies without capitalism. People can be motivated to innovate to just generally improve quality of life rather than just to make a profit. So, the existence of the iPhone is not a product of capitalism. The child workers (Apple relied on this for three years) who are exploited to make the iPhone are products of capitalism. The suicide nets in the apple factories - sweatshops is perhaps a more accurate term - are products of capitalism. The numerous violations of labor laws associated with the production of the iPhone are products of capitalism. The use of forced labor to manufacture the iPhone is a product of capitalism.

While this is certainly a very specific and kind of cherry picked example, it's still worth mentioning the differences between how a capitalist views education and how a Marxist (Karl Marx) views education. As you'll see in Figure 3 below, they have two very different takes. John D. Rockefeller once said "I don't want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers," and Marx expressed a much different view. Conservatives often harp on education for "brainwashing" or "indoctrinating" children and say that people should think for themselves, and while this is mainly an excuse for why there are so many more educated leftists than conservatives and why leftist beliefs are more present in academia, it's ironic to think that a very famous American capitalist makes the exact opposite argument.