One of the great injustices of our time is how capitalism has been misrepresented, both by the establishments in the west, and by those who oppose capitalism fundamentally. I can't help noticing time and time again that mainstream and mainstreet understandings of capitalism are either inadequate, misunderstood or plainly incorrect. This is a big problem: How can we have a meaningful debate about something which is so crucial to our prosperity and well-being, when so few actually understand what capitalism is - and as importantly, what we currently have now.
What we currently have is not capitalism. Nor is capitalism a system where you can choose to exclude parts of it, expecting the system as a whole to perform without problems. It is worth understanding that governments by definition act outside of free markets, and in this day and age actively disrupt them in ways that are both very subtle and hard to trace, but also in the interest of the establishment to misinform the public about.
In a system which is supposedly about the voluntary interactions between free people, who can succeed and fail by their own merits. In a system which is supposedly fair and balanced, we have governments who pick winners and losers. Governments can now publically give special treatment to big corporations and expect no meaningful opposition. With enough money, you can lobby the governments and successfully have a completely unfounded and unreasonable legislation passed into law which gives you an unfair advantage over any would-be competitors. Elected officials proceed with policies against public opinion, knowing that there is a revolving door between government and big business with all of it's perks. No matter what the successes and failures of past government policies (which are often misrepresented / hidden) have been, the answer is always to give government more control and power.
One must understand that what we have in the west currently is definitely not capitalism. Whether you're a socialist/statist or a capitalist/libertarian (or somewhere in the middle), you will have the same good intentions as each other. But please, don't argue that what we have now is capitalism, and that it hasn't worked. There is as much capitalism (free enterprise) as there is state control in the west these days - you only have to look at the proportion of GDP that accounts for public expenditure vs private expenditure to illustrate that.
It also wouldn't be fair to argue that the China or the USSR are good examples of Socialism either.
There are a lot of problems in the world, but we won't get anywhere until we start having a meaningful debate about these things. There are too many people who have a conflict of interest and can't have a meaningful debate on these issues. Governments around the world and the BBC come to mind.
A good start would be for people to start holding their politicians and leaders more accountable to their feelings on the issues of the day. I think we're seeing more people around the world waking up and making themselves heard where it counts. It's good to see, but I just hope people throw down their political prejustices and seek to understand what capitalism really is, and why it works. There's really more to it than most people are aware of, and we don't currently have it.
