Is capitalism really failing?

When talking about the economy you will hear many people, especially people on the left, talk about the failures of capitalism but is capitalism really failing? To understand how that idea spread we will have to dive into one historical figure who cultivated this idea/myth, he is called Karl Marx. Karl Marx gave many prominent critiques of capitalism and predicted its downfall, he argued at the time that capitalism was fueled by greed and often associated with the capitalist (a person who uses invests in trade and industry for profit) with greed. He also argued the only way a capitalist could acquire wealth was through the exploitation of labor. While Karl Marx ideas about capitalism are somewhat intriguing, he is however completely wrong in all aspects relating to how capitalism actually works.

Greed is not evil:

While you may hear a lot of people especially Marxist say greed is evil therefore capitalism is evil, however, this is not at all true. To a blind observer running a system on greed might seem like the craziest thing in the world, but it is because of greed that many people are living a better life than ever before. Take Henry Ford, for example, Henry Ford was looking to get rich so in his attempt to do so he made cheap cars this lead to more and more of the middle class having a car. The act of his own self-interest propelled the middle class into prosperity and luxury.

Is the use of labor exploitative

One of Karl Marx other prominent critiques of capitalism was the so-called "exploitation of labor", Karl Marx viewed labor as a means to a capitalist evil ends(profit). He also felt the laborer was being manipulated(used) and paid unfairly. He often gave pointed to workers working in factories with awful conditions as a prime example of the so-called exploitation. However, Karl Marx view on labor is fundamentally flawed. What Karl Marx forgets to realize is if the laborer feels his ability/skills is worth much more than he is being paid for he has the ability to leave and get another job that pays him decently, if the cycle continues and more and more employees are leaving due to low wages and bad working condition the employer will have to raise the wages he pays to the employee and/or improve the working conditions to attract future employees. Secondly, while the so-called bourgeois is using the laborer to make a profit the laborer is also being paid so at the end of the day both sides benefit equally.

The state of capitalism

While many people of both parties will say that the United States is a capitalistic country the truth is it is not, it is a corporatist country. We have regulations on top of regulations that are not really meant to help consumers but are actually meant to help big business. As of writing this article, there are currently 185,000 pages of pure regulations that hurt small businesses and restrict the freedom that businesses have to operate and let us not forget the thousands of hours a business has to go through to be certified. For the United States to become a true capitalistic economy it will have to remove most of its regulations if not all of all regulations and enable the free market to actually function as such, free.

Which economic system works best

As far as I see capitalism is the only economic system that actually works, it gives the individual freedom to do what he or she wants. While other systems like socialism and communism are all totalitarian and dictatorial systems that have been shown time and time again to not work, capitalism, however, has worked and is still working in many countries and allows the individual the freedom to do as they wish.