Been listening to a book by Arthur Schlesinger called A Life In The Twentieth Century. He talks extensively of his thoughts about the political issues when he was growing up, and during his years in college. His beef with capitalism it seems follows my own views, that people and their greed work to take more than they should if capitalism is to live up to it’s ideal. Don’t get me wrong, capitalism makes sense, on paper. So does socialism, on paper. The problem both have in practice is the human factor. People are inherently lazy and greedy, and neither system takes this into consideration. Advocates of capitalism seem to, asserting that greed is what drives the entrepreneur to improvements, forcing competitors to do the same, as in shit or get off the pot.

It doesn’t always work that way though. Just a few bad apples within a large corporation can do major damage, their greed pushing them to install obstacles for competition, rather than channeling their efforts toward improvements that would drive up profits.

There is one other idea that champions of capitalism take for granted. It is the presumption that people will flock to one’s doorstep if you build a better mousetrap. I beg to differ, and there are countless examples all around. A really good example is the price of gasoline today. It is always too high it seems, and nobody would say otherwise I’m sure. Yet if this were truly the case, why is it so many people are driving the gas-guzzlers? I can understand a large family needing seating and storage area, but few Hummer owners today can actually justify the cost.

Look around at any traffic light; check out the parking lots at the local businesses where employees park their transportation. If fuel and sticker prices were really important to people, the abundance of SUVs would not be so apparent. So how is it that one would be hard pressed to find an agent for higher fuel costs, yet so many obviously don’t care?

A friend of mine says it best. “It’s not what you are doing, it’s how ya look doing it!” It is true, yet he is one of the few that would admit it to themselves, let alone to others. There are always justifications for spending the extra bucks when frugality is an option.

Personal music players are a good example. Aside from the fact that nobody in their right mind could justify one as a necessity, you still see them all around. Further still, the thing to have is an IPod, and even my chemistry professor would boast about how many tunes he’s got crammed onto his. There are companies that make cheaper versions of the little white box, but you aren’t ‘hip’ if you don’t have the white umbilical hanging from your ears. I’ve heard the justification that the quality and features are worth the extra money, but I’ve looked, and the IPod has just as many problems as the other brands, and the battery issue has had Apple’s PR people scrambling since the thing came out.

This is just one example, and there are countless others. All one has to do is look around and it is quite obvious that value is the furthest thing from the average consumer’s mind when it comes to how they spend their money. People will bitch profusely if they think they’ve been swindled, but if they’ve got to be in a vehicle it has to be a Durango, or the biggest pick-up they can possibly afford. People don’t strive for more money so they can live more comfortably; they are more interested in having more money so they can afford the status symbols, so that the perception is their ability to afford the name brands.

These are just some areas where capitalism breaks down to a certain degree. Still, it’s the best thing going until a plan is put into action that takes into account people’s need for status symbols without encroaching on their basic rights.