Capitalism is Survival of the Fittest

I can see the many good points that Mackey makes. But what every business man fails to mention is that capitalism, in its purest form, is impossible. Capitalism is a complex ideology that, like everything, is not perfect, and has both good and bad sides. The root of the problem with capitalism, Mackey states in one of the first paragraphs of his introduction, “the consumers think the prices are too high, the workers think their pay is too low.”  But the prices need to be high to ensure the workers are being paid, and the their pay can't be too high, or the business will have no money to run itself. It seems to me, that for us to live in a perfectly capital world, everyone would need to own his or her own business.

The problem with this perfect capitalist world is that for a business to succeed, it needs workers. One individual cannot hope to run a successful company on his or her own. During the discussion of China Blue, a few of us had stated that when we think of our clothes, and most other goods, being manufactured, the first thought that comes to mind is a machine.

Combining these two ideas, it occurred to me how much potential technology serves to capitalism in general. The more advanced the machines, the less hands a business requires to hire. Years and years from now, maybe a close-to-perfect capitalist world isn’t as far fetched as it sounded. The fewer jobs available to people, the more they would have to create work for themselves, which would force everyone to be innovative and competitive. Everyone would have to have a service to offer, and only the best ones would operate on a large scale. It would be survival of the fittest intellectually, instead of physically like in our caveman time.

At the same time, we would be a stronger knit community because no one could meet their need for every service. For an individual to abandon one’s own practice in attempt to fulfill all their other needs would be the demise of their practice. Mackey says we aren’t forced to be consumers, but I disagree. What else are we going to do? We don’t live in an indigenous world anymore, money is our ticket for the needs we previously scowered the earth for.

In contrast, businesses would go under and get weeded out for their insufficiency compared to those who provide service with the largest demand, and the cycle would begin again. Capitalism is like life in general in the survival of the fittest sense, which is why is appeals to the world we live in today. A world run by money. Although the technology scenario is a dreamer thought, one can see how capitalism serves both good and bad, like human nature itself. At the same time, we can also see there will never be a time that we live in a perfectly capitalist world, which Mackey fails to mention. He believes too much in the good of humanity, when in reality, we all are here for our own self-interest, and when survival is at stake is when you see us in our most primal state. Although, I do agree with him, that it really is our best option.