Sunday, February 19, 2006

Pyramid of a Capitalist System

Cross posted at http://urbansiege.blogspot.com


Saw this poster when browsing through wikipedia, in the article, Economic Inequality. This was a campaign poster used by the Industrial Workers of the World, for protesting against the evil effects of capitalism and its ignorance of the marginalised and underprivelaged. Their main aim was to bring up a workers' union, and to gain support for it.
This poster is relevant even today and it is so sad that this is so... What is Capitalism, Globalization and Technology when such systems has not resulted in considerable positive change in Human Welfare?
Pyramid of a Capitalist System

4 comments:

jal said...

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Jason said...

still better than communism hierarchy in my opinion.

Unknown said...

I've seen this poster before. It was intended to be a propaganda piece from the beginning, reflecting at best a gross charicature of reality. Something to get the uneducated (especially in economics) masses riled up, playing on their senses of greed and envy in a bad way.

I think capitalism has done wonders for the poor, in spite of (not because of) gov't interference. In Asia alone, just compare the quality of life in more capitalist countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, etc. with the quality of life in places like Vietnam, China, North Korea, etc. And even in China the rulers are seeing the real value of capitalism; China now has something it didn't have before under the communists, a booming middle class. Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe India also has a fast-growing middle class now.

Capitalism isn't a perfect economic system, though a lot depends on how one defines "perfect." But it is provably, demonstrably better than communism. As for socialism, that is more a midpoint between com. & cap. than a distinct economic system of its own. If one compared factors like worker productivity, per capita GDP, or unemployment rates, capitalism appears to outperform socialism as well. One can see this by contrasting the US to Europe, or British Hong Kong to Britain itself.

As I said capitalism isn't perfect, but many problems in capitalism can often be traced back to the gov't, or other non-capitalist sources. Things like caste systems, excessive taxation, and regulations can prevent the lower class from being able to advance.

If this response is too off-topic for this group I apologize. Anyone wanting to discuss in further economic detail can contact me via email at live.the.future at gmail dot com.

gP said...

way to go andrew...that was a good argument. in a dynamic world, systems...theoratically works...and practically fails. maybe we should visit back the barter systems...