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Capitalism

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Capitalism and socialism are not completely polarized ideas. No single country executes a pure form of capitalism. Even the United States employs a hybrid economic system, comprised mostly of capitalist ideologies, with a generous sprinkling of socialism thrown in. Socialism, as an economic system of its own, typically does not exist as a pure system, either. Socialism is the evolutionary middle ground between capitalism and communism. Think of the three systems as being on the path of a pendulum, capitalism at one extreme, and communism at the other extreme. Socialism is like the vertex of the pendulum, where the momentum is carrying it always to the other side.

Capitalism is an economic system in which constituents have all of the control of what is called the "free market." The system contains money, goods, and services, and the people are free to pursue as much of all three as they like. If someone wants to open his own business, he is free to do that. If someone wants to simply work for the business owner his whole life, he is free to do that as well. The ownership of private property is also a major characteristic of a capitalist system. Constituents are allowed to purchase land, houses, cars, buildings, boats, whatever. In a purely capitalist system, the property would belong solely to the constituent, until he or she decided to sell it to someone else, or until he died and left it to his children.

Socialism, on the other hand, removes the right to private property, in an effort to create a society less defined by class distinction. In the United States, while the right of private property still exists to some degree, it is almost entirely an illusion. If you don't agree, just stop paying your real estate taxes and find out what happens. Your real estate taxes are essentially rent paid to the government for the right to continue living on your land. Stop paying them and you will eventually be evicted. But private property ownership has not been completely removed from our economic system, for in a predominantly socialistic system, the land would be distributed evenly among rich and poor alike. Or more likely, the government would own most of it and then would disperse a tiny amount of it for the citizens to use.

History has proved over and over again that socialism always evolves into full-fledged communism. Communism is the other end of the economic spectrum, but instead of the people having control of the financial sector, a very powerful, elite government has the control. Communism seeks to place the control in the hands of a few, rather than in the hands of a majority. And if the "few" always turned out to be kind, selfless people, then communism would be the best possible scenario. Unfortunately, because power-hungry, evil people exist in the world, the Utopian dream of communism cannot ever come to fruition. Communism has always proved to be a nightmare, rather than a happy dream of everyone holding hands.

We are left with a choice. All of the economic systems have their flaws. Capitalism gives people the freedom to be generous as well as greedy. Socialism removes the right to private property and plants the seeds of communism in the economic soil. Communism makes room for an evil dictator to come onto the scene. At the end of the day, capitalism always proves to be the best possible scenario, or if you prefer, the lesser of all evils.

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