Capitalism Is Moral
Questioning the Morality of Capitalism: Moral, Immoral, or Amoral?
"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except to those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss -- the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery -- that you must offer them values, not wounds -- that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchanges of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when live by trade -- with reason, not force, as their final arbiter -- it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability -- and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is that what you consider evil?" (Rand, 1957)
Capitalism is an economic system that is responsible for a great deal of the industrialization in the 21st century world. With the downfall of feudalism came the epic rise of capitalism over the western world. Primary elements of capitalism include wage labor, competitive markets, the ownership and privatization of means of production, accumulating capital, and producing goods or services as means for income and/or profit. Capitalism may be referred to by several other names, some of which include a market economy, a self-regulating market, or a free market. These and other terms may be synonymous for capitalism. Over the centuries, there has been great protest and great support for capitalism and its effects. This paper will provide a comprehensive understanding of capitalism and question the morality of capitalism -- is capitalism amoral, immoral, moral, or something else altogether? The paper will endeavor to answer this question and justify a moral critique of capitalism.
Arguments:
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admission for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?" (Rand, 1957)
What is morality and what is its place in business practice? The focus of morality is upon people's actions, intentions, and decisions. Morality differentiation what, among those, are good and which are bad. Moral codes provide cultures and societies contexts within which to interpret and predictive characteristics and behaviors. Moral codes are systemic; they are systems of structured beliefs in service to instruct those who abide by the code the constitution for good life. Morality is related to values, which vary a great deal by culture and throughout human history. Lal describes how an economist would perceive the function of morality in business practices:
"From an economist's perspective morality is best looked upon as part of the institutional infrastructure of a society. This institutional infrastructure, broadly defined, consists of informal constraints like cultural norms (which encompass morality) and the more formal ones which are embodied in particular and more purposeful organizational structures." (Lal, 2002)
Lal is aware of the direct link between what the norms and values are in a culture and the culture's sense of morality. Therefore, morality is somewhat flexible, bending to a new shape that is appropriate for the times. Lal wonders if morality matters when it comes to economy: "Given the multiplicity...
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