Humans as a whole tend towards excess and self inflicted calamity. But is this the fault of capitalism? Or human nature?
This is only true when people are forced into competing for the basic necessities of living. Those who aren’t insecure in their ability to provide those necessities are allowed to think in broader terms of what benefits the society, and themselves by extension. Once we agree that the entire society is made better by everyone being secure in basic food, clothing, shelter, etc we can then make that a goal of the collective (ya, I know, another “communist” term) and achieve it more easily. Having the entire society then able to focus on higher-order priorities creates true social progress, not just material gain from extraction/destruction.
In a democratic system that creates its own sovereign currency, any suffering by any individual that can be mitigated with that currency is entirely a political decision, not economics. We have been misled into believing that the currency is a product of commerce and capitalism for so long that it is now accepted by even most trained economists. This misconception serves the capitalists very well as they are viewed as the source of prosperity and given great latitude and privilege because of that view.
This privilege of wealth has become the basis of our economic/fiscal policy as every suggestion for making society better without first benefiting someone’s bottom line is immediately challenged with the “How will you pay for it?” question that assumes we must go, hat in hand, to those who have the most money to retrieve enough to fund our nation’s needs. Until we can educate the people to the fact that they don’t fund their government, but their government funds them instead, we will not achieve the level of society that we are capable of.
In fact, the math involved will assure us that our society will continue to decline overall while the elite few will capture more of the gains from our labor unless we get the order of processes and the reality of our money straight. The currency is a no-cost commodity that Congress is Constitutionally mandated to create “for the common welfare”, not a product of commerce or the benevolence of the wealthy. It is only the government’s spending in excess of taxation that allows a store of value to make commerce and its resulting wealth possible. The proper answer to the “pay for it” question is “By electing representatives who understand economics and will never ask that question out of their ignorance”.
