Downside of Capitalism
Mueller’s Critics
Virtue of Selfishness?
Mueller: if everybody tries to accumulate
as much as possible, the general interest
is served
 But, what actually happens is exploitation

 Capitalists
exploit employees
 Capitalists exploit customers
Capitalism and War
At the root of almost all wars are markets
 The working class does not gain by war,
only the capitalists gain
 Even the American revolution was a war to
protect the rich colonists

Capitalism is Insensitive
Capitalism is insensitive to human needs
 For example, we take land out of
production when much of the world is
starving
 Indeed, markets drive production, not
human needs

Capitalism is Short-term Oriented
In capitalism, producers are concerned
with providing to consumers in the shortrun
 In the process, many long-term harms can
be done

 Big
cars that pollute
 Disappearing farmland
 Extinction of wildlife
Capitalism and Allocating Costs
For example, who pays to recycle an
automobile?
 It is costly to recycle an auto because they
were not made to recycle
 The producer of automobiles has no
incentive to made them easy to recycle
 The cost of making the auto is separated
from the cost of disposing of it

Market Leader Advantage
The market leader in an area has huge
advantages over smaller competitors
 This can lead to takeovers, and eventually
monopolies
 The small capitalists is driven from
business

Capitalism Creates Speculative
Drones
Too many people make their money by
buying and selling stock, which is not
doing anything ‘useful’; all they do is
speculate in the market
 These people are no better to society than
welfare bums

Economic Only Focus
Under capitalism, profit becomes the only
motive for business decisions
 We could produce enough AIDs medicine
to ‘cure’ millions in Africa, but that would
be unprofitable; the drug companies
wouldn’t make a profit

Ecology and Capitalism
Capitalism has no regard for the
environment—it is driven by growth
 It has gotten so big that it is threatening
the planet’s environment

Gravity of Money
Under capitalism, money tends to flow to
those with money
 The rich get richer and the poor get
poorer
 Rich countries get richer and poor
countries poorer

Capitalist Markets are Unstable
Capitalist economies regularly go through
recessions and depressions, which hurt
many innocent people
 Even fast growth can hurt because it often
brings on inflation which hurts fixed
income people
