The speaker claims that a capitalist system “allows the mobilization of knowledge that’s dispersed in millions of minds across an economy, but yet coordinates them to take into account of other people’s plans”. This is a very powerful and somewhat complex statement to make. As I am to understand, the speaker is describing a system where ideas can be freely shared and stolen. This idea that if you want to succeed and have a lucrative business, you must out-think your competitors. Because of this competition In order to create the most lucrative product of business, ideas are combined and new things are created that are unique. This system allows the creation of incredible products and innovations that would most likely have never been created in the first place without a capitalist economy.
The speaker contrasts this idea with a socialist economy, claiming its policies are to “abolish private property in the major factors of production, and replacing it with some form of collective ownership and or control”. Because of this system, the speaker argues that ideas are not able to be shared in an economy where profit is not an incentive. He backs this idea up by saying an iphone would not exist under a socialist economy, as entrepreneurs would not have the incentive to give the idea of an iphone value, thus leading to its invention and optimization to the market’s needs. I agree with this argument because as an engineer, I see the value in money. During my time here at Okstate I have been told over and over again that my missions and goals in life should align with my moral code. That I should go down a path in my career that fuels my soul, inventing and making a mark in engineering to help make the world a better place. However, place a 250k contract in my pocket to work for Lockheed Martin in creating autonomous drones that level entire villages, and suddenly my moral code goes out the window. I mean you see this all the time in the military, incredible feats of engineering are reached on a daily basis, surpassing what we previously thought was possible. And all this can happen because of the immense amount of money being poured into the defense budget. The current day space race is also a great example. Compare Elon Musk’s SpaceX creating Raptor engines efficient enough to launch a rocket into space, then landing back onto earth, ready to be reused. Jeff Bezos investing billions into Blue Origin, attempting to create a self-sustaining society in space. Both of these companies are separate from the government, they compete with NASA, and are funded by their own means. If we lived in a socialist country, these incredible feats would not exist. These brilliant scientists, physicists, mathematicians, aerospace engineers, etc., who are building these marvels of engineering, are funded by hungry entrepreneurs who see value in it, not by a moral code. So I think the speaker makes a brilliant argument as to why capitalism is a superior system over socialism.
However, the very system that allows the marvels of engineering to exist also allow corrupt monopolies to silence others who dare dream dampen their profit margins. What happens when a company gets so big and powerful that it no longer has any competitors? Companies that get to such a scale eventually buy out other companies in order to gain more profit. Smaller businesses gain a large amount of money with a buyout, but then what happens to that unique idea they had in the first place? It ends up just merging into whatever the monopoly decides to do with it, killing off that new idea. Or, what if a company refuses to be bought out. What’s stopping that monopoly from using its immense power to control the systems that would help the smaller company compete otherwise? An example of this could be the oil and gas industry and the topic of global warming. Funding large media corporations to spout an agenda that controls the population’s opinions on oil and gas, these corporations have effectively put a stop to any major attempts at correcting what we have done to the Earth. Take Nuclear energy for example: Chernobyl happens, and the events that took place were a pure result of poor decision making and carelessness by the USSR. However, the engineering of the facility was far less than what we are capable of achieving with fusion nuclear energy. But because of the mass propaganda funded by oil and gas companies attempting to change the world’s perspective on clean energy and the minimal effects oil and ga has on global warming, boosted by the risk Chernobyl presented, companies and research facilities worldwide lost the proper funding they needed to improve nuclear energy. This act set us back in the race against time as the globe continues to heat up, and only now are global politicians beginning to make greater efforts to reverse these effect, but it may be too late.
Overall, the speaker stance on a capitalist country allows for the creation and spread of ideas is true and a good thing, I do believe there are major drawbacks to this system.
