Let's look at an example: if there is an arbitrarily high demand for wood, the "free market" says we'll cut all the forests down to meet the demand until it's so scarce a resource, and people so aggressively defend the few remaining forests, that market prices make it too costly to pursue. In any sane system, this is not "equilibrium," this is WORST CASE SCENARIO. We've decimated our forests, destroyed biodiversity, and succumbed to the lowest common denominator with no lesson learned, no mechanism to prevent further recklessness, and no regard for collateral damage.
Think about the logical premises of this system. It suggests self-interest (rather than altruism) as the primary driving factor in human progress. It suggests competition (rather than collaboration), specifically through market share domination as the means for resource control and distribution. Think it through, if your goal is market share, the ultimate expression of a "successful" corporation is a monopoly or cartel, corruption is built into this system.
Another staple of capitalism is "private property."
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Defining terms:
Private Property refers to ownership of productive (value-producing) assets (the "means of production") by a small class of owners who subsist on the value generated by the means of production. In a capitalist economy, the surplus value takes the form of profit, enabling a small class to subsist on the resulting property income.
There is distinction between "private property" and "personal property." The former is defined as the means of production in reference to private ownership over an economic enterprise based on production and wage labor; the latter is defined as a consumer good or goods.
Many assume that the only alternative to Private Property is totalitarian government control of resources but, as with most conjecture, there aren't just two options. Democratized decision-making governing the use of the means of production or systems based on free association and access are several such ideas. Even if we decide to use centralized planning (a good idea), it need not take the form of centralized control.
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If our goal is to reward hard work, "innovation," and to drive civilization forward; how does the idea of Private Property (and in modern times, Intellectual Property) accomplish these? They inherently extract value from the work of others.
Any successes we have realized in recent times should surely be attributed to advances in scientific understanding, cheap energy (unfortunately oil in our case), and breakthroughs in engineering that have afforded us more time to pursue non-subsistence activities. Why is that we allow capitalism to take credit for our advancements and isn't it abundantly clear that there are better ways to accomplish what we THINK capitalism is doing?
