Critique of Capitalism II

In my first critique of capitalism post I laid out my dislike of big business. Now I would like to address some of the aspects of capitalism (read American style capitalism) that I feel foster the creation of big business. The first issue regards the treatment of our national resources. It seems to me that capitalism does not have the proper respect for the natural environment. Capitalism values nature only insofar as it can be taken and made into something more productive. To my knowledge I can't think of anyone trying to value nature in and of itself (i.e. what is the value of having oil in the ground not for future use but rather just to have oil in the ground). If nature is not being "used" in some fashion to produce a product it has no value in capitalism. It seems this is a product of the pre-modern world, when Adam Smith developed the theory of capitalism it seemed rational to assume that nature and its resources were infinite, but now we know that our resources are not infinite and thus the raw resources need to be valued somehow, not for their future use but rather in their existence.

Second I feel that modern capitalism is almost zealous in its pursuit of efficiency. Efficiency is not an evil thing, in fact I would consider it a good thing, however it is not the greatest good and should take a back seat to decreasing the inequality gap among other things (i.e. the market economy should be set up in such a way as to help the fruits of society be spread around more individuals (or families maybe...) even if the rules decrease the maximum efficiency the market could achieve). I don't mean to be proscribing the perfect economic system that is not the topic of this post, nor do I actually have a clearly defined one in mind only that efficiency is not the greatest good in a rational economic system.

In the end my problems with capitalism stem out of lack of responsibility and the belief that bigger is always better and continuous growth is always good and the misuse of the market economy (and those who support that misuse in the government and elsewhere). This series isn't finished and I plan to continue to come back to this topic from time to time when I have new ideas and thoughts in this area.

(my thoughts on this point were formed by reading Reinventing the Bazaar by John McMillan and Third Ways by Allan Carlson and how they interestingly seemed to mesh)

Critique of Capitalism I

Now no one would ever mistake me for a communist (at least I don't think anyone would.... well maybe Texans!) but I have always been a little uneasy with American style capitalism (from hence forth referred to as just capitalism because I feel it is the form of capitalism that is most prevalent in the world). Now I don't have an issue with market, nor private property I am very much in favor of both of those aspects of capitalism my issue and worries are focused on big business. Big business is not totally evil, but its presence in an economy puts strain on government and freedom in all societies.
Big business is problematic for one because of its immense size. With their large amounts of money, large businesses wield immense amounts of power. Now wealthy people also wield immense amounts of power but there is a big difference between a corporation and a person: a corporation is practically immortal. There is not much that can truly "kill" a large corporation even bankruptcy. If the company has enough money it can just lobby the government to rescue it which leads me to my second point that bothers me about big business. Freedom is immensely important to me and the biggest threat to freedom is the state, one of the problems with big business is that it requires a large government to properly maintain it. All markets require some sort of government to help them properly function, but as a business grows in size in power the government must grow as well in order to keep the market working. As the government grows it expands into all aspects of life.
Large companies also sabotage one of the principle tenets of the capitalist system, they stifle competition. All companies are always looking to best competition and when companies are relatively equal in power this is a good way to make sure they police themselves and work to better the life of their customers however when a company becomes so large that they can easily quash and buy out start up companies that would attempt to be competition they distort the market and no longer have incentives to serve their customers except through dictates from the government, which brings us back to point 2.
Capitalism has in many ways been a wonderful advent to the world, it has lifted many millions out of poverty and continues to do so to this day, however it was developed in a time when many of the problems it brings us today were unthinkable because they were impossible given the technology at the time, therefore a re-look at the fundamentals and assumptions is in order. Next time I will look at some of the assumptions capitalism makes and offer my critiques on them as well.