There are a great many people that have been brainwashed into supporting capitalism because they believe it leads to innovation. In fact, that’s the most common argument for capitalism is that without it we wouldn’t have all the great technology that we have today.
This couldn’t be furthest from the truth, but I guess it depends on how much tunnel vision you choose to have and what side of the fence you’re standing on. I encourage you to stand directly on top of the fence for the rest of this article and view both sides equally so you can see the larger picture.
Capitalism is only good at innovating new delivery methods and systems to ensure goods, products, and services can reach as many customers as humanly possible in the most efficient ways feasible.
What it does not do is create new products or any innovation outside of that.
If you’re thinking that sounds absolutely absurd, then you’ve hopped down from the fence and are on one side or the other again, please climb back up to the top of the fence for a few more minutes.
A lot of the technologies we have today (smart phones, electronics, vehicles, and pretty much everything else) don’t exist because of capitalism. Sure we have access to these things because capitalists took these innovations and created a delivery system or method so they could make a profit off of these innovations, but capitalism did not create any of these things and never can.
Capitalism is actually responsible for stunting technological growth. It keeps products and services in the dark ages.
Capitalism is why we still have gas powered cars that have had minor cosmetic, technological, and mechanical improvements slowly added to them over the last 50 years — just enough to keep us coming back and buying their products again and again.
In fact, innovating a new type of car would not be in the best interest of a company that dominates market share and sells millions of a type of automobile already because a new innovation could leave them stranded with a large inventory that they cannot sell.
Instead, they continue to produce the same stuff over and over again with very minor improvements until there comes a laughable point when it’s time to move on.
“If it’s broke don’t fix it.”
Capitalism is happy selling you the same stuff for as long as you’ll buy it.
For the automobile industry, finally it’s time may have come with the Tesla / EV push. Are electric cars a new idea? Nope, they could have been producing them decades and decades ago, but why put time and money into a new type of car when the ones they had were selling just fine.
Do you see where I am going with this?
Did capitalism create Tesla’s electric cars? Sure didn’t, in fact the capitalists that were invested in the bigger companies did everything in their power to keep companies like Tesla from forming, but gas powered cars are now finally at a point where it’s laughable and it might be time to move on.
Would we as a society be technologically impaired without capitalism, did capitalism have as big of an impact as we think it did, or were humans progressing regardless of the system we implemented?
I like to think we’d be further ahead in a lot of areas if we weren’t seeking profits. There are a lot of world problems that aren’t solved yet and hardly anyone is working on because there’s no money in it. Problems that if they don’t get solved could lead to the end of humans altogether.
There are a lot of people enslaved in the for profit system that if they were ever freed (like from the matrix) we’d have a lot more people available to work on a lot of these harder issues that need to be solved.
Not everyone who wants to go to Harvard can go to Harvard, and lots of people just take jobs because they can’t afford college at all. Companies are not actually employing the top minds of the world but rather the top of a very small elite group that had access to that college in the first place.
Believe me, there are a lot of intelligent people, and the best minds may not even be in the job market right now, they might be in a factory or working some dead end job because they have a family to feed.
Yes, there are special circumstances where people work hard and get ahead. People will raise the banner and say if Elon Musk did it I can too. But using these rare cases is just more illusion and false hope to distract us from the problem. The chances of you making it ultra big are rare. For every Elon Musk, there are a thousand people as smart as him, that worked as hard as him, and just didn’t catch any of the breaks or have the right idea. Using these very rare cases to claim capitalism works is absurd.
We need to free the people, it’s the only way we can solve the modern issues of today. Capitalism has brought us lots of prosperity and products to our door-step, but in doing so they have caused more destruction than any religion ever could. The only difference is now we get to pick our slave master, but for most of us, the reality is we still have to work for one reason or another.
Capitalism is also largely responsible for environmental destruction and keeping people in poverty. If people didn’t have to worry about their basic needs anymore, a lot of people would be free to solve some of the most pressing issues of our time without worrying about profits. This is the major downside to capitalism, it stunts technological growth and innovation.
Capitalism didn’t create airplanes, that was done by a couple of brothers that had a dream of flying. What capitalism did do is take that idea, advance it, and bring it to market at an affordable cost so it could be enjoyed by all.
Capitalism is the reason we don’t have flying solar powered cars and are still using gas powered engines. When something is found to be profitable companies go to ends to destroy competitors and keep their products on the market with little advancement.
To make matters worse, we came up with a patent and copyright system so now free spirited people can’t even take these okay/good ideas and make them better without being sued.
So while capitalism is really good at bringing things to mass market, it gets a straight F on innovation. The only innovation it achieves is how to sell the same products for more profit by finding cheaper wages, increasing prices, or changing a few things and remarketing them with advertisements. It’s a vicious cycle.
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