Moral flaws of capitalism

SOURCE: www.officelovin.com

Today, we are so use to the way our society functions that we do not often stop to look around. In 2013 according to a newspaper article in the Washington Times,  Joseph Diedrich argues moral flaws of capitalism. In an economic system that falls back on itself, producers do not have to use good incentives to sell their goods. In turn they assume what consumers want in order to benefit themselves.

Through capitalism the only way to profit is by selling goods to consumers. Companies spend a lot of time focusing on what the people want and try to assess how they will react to a certain product. Not only this, they also have to worry about their competition. It seems this would produce beneficial results but in turn it exploits consumers. Under capitalism,  "individuals don’t even need to have good intentions for their actions to engender good results. The industrialist can have the cruelest intentions in the world, but unless he produces goods that are beneficial to society, he won’t make any money."

With one glance this system seems as though it would be very successful but it has undesired results. These producers have to provide something to society in order to make a profit. That means that they will go to whatever extent they want to make money. They can lower prices, pay their workers less, and even price-gauge during natural disasters. Since they must play a role in society they inadvertently run our lives. They provide all of material wants and many of American jobs today. As I said it sounds like a very sensible system but these producers are not working for the common good and that is the problem. We are not using good intentions to better our country, so in turn we are making it worse.

Next research question: How does capitalism exploit consumers?