What Will Become of Our Capitalistic Society?

photorandy2023

3 years ago

I have written several articles on postings related to politics. A list of links have been provided at bottom of this article for your convenience. This article will, however address different aspects on these political events.

This is the second article of my commentary series. The first one was a commentary on our two party system. This article will delve into our capitalistic system. I think the timing for this subject is appropriate due to the fact that our system of government is currently being assaulted by the most concerted and organized attack to date. This attack has been in the planning stages for over a hundred years. I have discussed the ramifications of this attack in previous articles, so I won’t reiterate them here.

Ever since the advent of the industrial revolution there has been a tendency for companies to join together to become more efficient and also to freeze out competition. Rockefeller Standard Oil, J.P. Morgan Banking and Investment, Andrew Carnegie Steel, Hearst Publishing and Bell telephone are a few examples. These conglomerates controlled industries from raw material to finished product in a lot of cases. They became so powerful that they stifled all competition. Their owners became insanely wealthy. In today’s dollars they would have easily rivaled our richest people, maybe even surpassed them.

Eventually they became too powerful and corrupt. They could charge anything they wanted for their products, because they were the only game in town. Eventually the government forced them to be broken up. In the last 100 plus years there has been 15 monopolies that have been targeted by the government. They were successful in breaking up most of them.

Today we are experiencing another resurgence of monopolies, this time in big tech. Companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook have a virtual strangle hold on the internet and the electronic freedom of speech. With the left controlling virtually all the news services from newspapers to news channels, with cancel culture threatening all verbal expression, there are few avenues for true freedom of expression. To speak out against the left is to virtually jeopardize your livelihood. While Amazon.com is taking over on-line shopping, and is now in direct competition with Walmart. Walmart destroyed Sears, Kmart and just about every department store competitor in the last 50 years to become the world’s largest retailer and company. However, Amazon.com is now threatening that title. Isn’t competition grand? There is always a willing David around to topple a Goliath.

The same can be said of iur social media companies. However, they may not be as secure as they think. They ripe for replacement by new social media companies. It is because they have forgotten their roots. Many of these companies were start-ups originating in garages. The most famous being Microsoft. It toppled IBM in the personal computer industry. How many people remember Netscape? It was the interface for the internet in the 1990s. They had a huge market share, until Microsoft started whittling away its market with its internet explorer. The same thing happened to Wordperfect and Lotus. They both fell to the Microsoft products, Word and Excel.

Now in answer to the ever increasing censorship of Facebook and Twitter a new competitor has emerged, Parler is an alternative to these social media giants. Millions of users are migrating to this service. There however, is a twist with this company. The users themselves govern the content to keep it safe.

Competition is present in the news as well.

Fox news has been the most trusted news service for the past few years, due to their unbiased news coverage. However, they have been becoming more and more biased. Their treatment of President Trump in the 2020 election was deplorable, as well as was Chris Wallace’s treatment of Trump in the first debate with Biden. Viewers have since shown their displeasure by changing to the new kid on the block, Newsmax. It like Parler is exploding in popularity.

This is what makes America great, competition. This competition is driven by capitalism. If we become a socialist country with iron like controlls in place, this competition will dissappear. Look at China, the government controls every aspect of its citizens lives. What they watch on TV, what social media sites they use. Even what they say and do. Does anyone remember Tienemen Square? That is how they treat dissenters.

For a country to remain free, its citizens need options and freedom of speech and expression. With competition comes these options. Under the Biden administration they want to eliminate charter schools. Charter schools remain the only viable educational alternative for middle class Americans. Private schools are simply too expensive and are solely the relm of the wealthy. While Catholic and Christian schools are too limited in their scope to be a substitute for the public school system.

Healthy competition is good for America. Just take a look at the state of our auto industry in the 1970s. Our cars were gas guzzling pieces of shit. After 30,000 miles or so they started leaking oil. Getting A 100,000 miles on a car was unheard of. You had to trade them in around the 50,000 mile mark. Two events changed our auto industry, the oil embargo and subsequent shortage of cheap gas and the influx of highly efficient Japanese cars. Not only did they use less gas, they were better built and more reliable. Our auto industry suffered and a few companies had to go through some major changes to survive. However, the public benefited from their demise. Because the increase in competition forced the American auto industry to produce better cars. Today most people easily get a 100,000 miles on a car. Another benefit, cars don’t leak oil anymore. They get better gas mileage, they are simply better built. We can chalk this up to competition.

The same holds true with our education system. Thanks to lack of educational alternatives and to teacher unions, the quality of education has dropped substantially. Subpar teachers are protected from termination by the schools they teach in, thanks to these unions. Just like corrupt cops are protected by their unions. From the early 1900s our school system has become more and more socialist. Today it is common for public schools to teach our young children to hate our country and to despise our history.

The protection afforded our civil servants has led to poor care of our veterans. These care providers have no incentive to provide optimal care. Thanks to President Trump, our veterans now have alternatives. He has also made it possible to fire poorly performing civil servants. These employees are subsequently becoming more efficient and sensitive to our veteran’s needs.

Empowerment and lack of competition are hurting this country. These are two things that socialism will reinforce. Under socialism there is no incentive to strive harder, no incentive to do a better job and no incentive to produce more. For our country to continue to thrive we need competition, free speech and responsiveness to our citizen’s needs.

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