AIMS

School of Merchant Marine

Midn. Dinlasan, Romar P. 119-0399

BS MarE 32-A2 Ins. Robert Frederick Hayden Jr.
NGEC 3:
Does Capitalism Does More Harm Than Good?
Through the years, we have seen the massive improvement and changes of
the world we are currently living in. These changes are brought by wide spectrum of
social and cultural norms that affects how the world resides today. The fact that, these
improvements gave the people easier life as it was used to before, however, we cannot
deny that there are also negative impacts that these changes brought to us. Capitalism
has become part of our lives even in the past, basically, it is the one that brought
various development through global trade. As we know, capitalism is the principle of
individual rights to the production and exchange of goods and services. In economic
perspective, it is the system that completely separates the economy and the state,
under this structure, every individual is free to produce, consume, and trade economic
goods according to their own free will. The government plays only as a providing
system of objective laws that protects the property and contract. But, why does modern
capitalism are quite a debate today?
According to Neil McCarthy (2020), a study of Edelman Company for its annual
Trust Barometer about capitalism, about 56% of its respondents were agreed that
capitalism is doing harm more than good in its current form. It seems that today, people
were more conscious about the possible effect of capitalism on the following years.
Since, there are quite some significant effects that the capitalism has brought to our
planet, people become wary or disrupted about its effect on the people and for the
planet. Wealth-inequality is one of capitalism’s drawback that causing only the richest
in the society are getting rich, the same society are not getting the same progress
therefore left behind. Moreover, due to wealth-inequality, greed is born out of this to
attain great amount of monetary gain. Additionally, capitalism also encourages mass
consumption, since raw materials are needed, the environment is much more affected
on this. This is a serious drawback of capitalism not only that it degrades the
environment but more importantly, it slowly killing the planet. These things opened the
eyes of many on how capitalism slowly deteriorates the world we live in today.
On the bright side, capitalism brought many wonders in our planet, it is a system
wherein free market inspires innovation because people have incentives to work
harder, this leads to higher productivity. In reality, innovation allows the societies to
develop rapidly and give people a better quality of life. Moreover, capitalism promotes
individual freedom by providing choices, the right to own private property, and allowing
people to set the price of goods. It just not only promotes political freedom by limiting
the power of the government, but also, promotes equal opportunity by rewarding hard
work and innovation.
In this new era, we cannot deny the fact that every economic system has its
own downside, maybe we can just flourish and address what might seem bad to the
people and to the environment. The fact people nowadays see capitalism as
ineffective and unstable. However, capitalism also has many positive sides. It ensures
efficiency because it is self-regulated through competition and it most importantly, it
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School of Merchant Marine

promotes innovation, freedom, and opportunity. Capitalism also meets the needs of
the people and is beneficial to societies as a whole. And even today, Capitalism has
led to a massive increase in new technologies over the past decades and centuries.
These technologies improve the lives of every people and also improves the
productivity which led to safer, more interesting, and better paid jobs. It helped many
countries to rise from poverty from equal competition between the global market.