Capitalism

Being an economic major I am supposed to believe in capitalism and free market economics. But I am increasingly getting skeptical about these policies. I am not turning communist or socialist, but any thing in excess is bane. So, capitalism in excess is harmful to the society. The monotonous way with which U.S. and western powers continue to advocate capitalism scares me. One thing, in last two hundred years or so Europeans have created havoc across the world, so it is hard to believe in them now. Second thing, the guiding principal of current of form capitalism; greed is good, if followed, will lead to systematic destruction of the societies across the globe and not to tell, of environment too.

If the resources of the globe are constant, that means supply is constant and demand for these resources is forced to increase continuously then the strain on the supply will cross the threshold at some point and at that point, either strongest (that is western countries) will seize those resources and rest of the world will be left in lurch or quest to fulfill the demand will lead to total destruction of environment. The logging of rainforest, disappearance of coral reefs, more and more species are joining the extinct list, (at least one specie vanishes every day) over fishing in seas and in rivers, increase in barren land due to excessive crops, tremendous strain on fresh water supply, decrease in ozone layer, decrease in Ice shield in North and South pole etc. The list is long and new things keep on adding.

Apart from these obvious environment degradation, the living standard of most of the people is decreasing rapidly (I have listed few facts in a prior blog.) and wealth is getting accumulated in few hands.

I am not completely against capitalism. The effects of communism are horrendous and we can not allow communism to take hold again. But I strongly believe that, models of capitalism should change according to countries, societies and people. The form of capitalism in US does not guarantee success in other countries. Extremities always meet at the end. Communism tried to use same economic model for all situation and forced such policies on all kind of people. U.S. and western countries are doing same thing albeit, with capitalism.