Capitalism’s Characteristics In Great Britain

As soon as our nation experiences an economic downturn the media floods us with stories about protestors marching on Wall Street. We turn on our TV and every news station shows images of signs saying things like “Wall Street is the Real Weapons of Mass Destruction” and “Ban Corporate Greed, We’re not Peasants”. It appears that everyone in the working class agrees on one thing, the financial sector is destroying our country. I do not believe this a valid judgement to make.

The primary objective of the common financier is not to scam hard working people contrary to how they are often presented. There is an art behind the processes of business that improves our nation’s well-being. Business professionals view social problems as an opportunity. These opportunities turn into profitable markets for businesses, fulfilling a need formed by society. This is possible due to our nation’s economic structure of capitalism. Capitalism allows for our nation’s economic structure to be controlled by the private sector rather than the government.

Our current economic model was formed intertwined with faith. The spirit of capitalism is based off the “Protestant Ethic”. Our founders, influenced greatly by religion, believed that worldly success denoted that God was on your side. This allowed individuals to justify their pursuit of success and wealth. Capitalism is a natural force rather than a contrived ideology that springs from instincts deep in human nature. Wealth creation is essential for men’s wellbeing but cannot in itself make people happy. People cannot be at ease with themselves unless they are fulfilling, however vague or imperfect, a moral purpose. In this respect capitalism is inadequate. Capitalism has an indifference towards the notion of moral choices, and is apathetic to factors such as class, race, color, religion, etc. Capitalism is materialistic and impersonal.

Capitalism’s characteristics sound abysmal on the surface to an individual with basic moral values, but for a nation that is interested in economic progress there is no structure more appropriate. This presents us with a dilemma - How do we practice capitalism within the framework of a society that recognizes morals? Some legislation is already present in an attempt to correct the excesses of capitalism such as monopoly and fair-trade regulation. Too much modification to the system, however, can be detrimental. Paul Johnson, a British historian, explained in his speech at the American Enterprise Institute that between 1945 and the end of the 70’s Great Britain attempted to give capitalism a moral purpose by redistributing wealth. The system was termed as “The Mixed Economy” and it was completely inefficient. Great Britain struggled economically until Margaret Thatcher was able to disassemble their mistake.

Most people portray financiers as greedy individuals and that businessmen are always the villain. Financiers find ways to make their money work for them. It’s the idea of building up our assets to create a constant flow of money. Money itself is an asset but a smart businessman does not pursue that as a measure of their success and overall wealth. Instead the term we use is asset-turnover. Are the assets we own making us money. Your goal may be job security but pursuing this cannot lead to financial freedom. If our only asset is hard cash coming in the form of a paycheck that is immediately diverted into our expense column then we will never gain financial freedom but instead cling onto paycheck after paycheck.