Evolution has rewarded those that can out compete. Capitalism rewards those that can out compete at the expense of others. I have the vague sense that capitalism has some fatal flaws that will eventually drag democracy down the rathole.
I have great admiration for Benjamin Franklin. The guy was always curious, always questioning, and always sharing his knowledge. He's responsible for many of the concepts of cooperative civil society in America. Public Libraries and Fire Stations are just 2 of many things he came up with. He was the most renowned scientist in America in the mid 18th century, due to his work on electricity. He freely published the plans for building protection with lightning rods in order to help the greatest number of people. There's no patent for the lightning rod, Franklin did not profit monetarily from the sale of them. He also came up with the Franklin stove, and was encouraged to patent it. He refused, saying that ideas freely shared can be freely improved upon. He saw patents as a detriment to innovation. After all, how can you own knowledge? It's not as if a Franklin Stove could not have happened without Franklin, someone would have come up with it. Franklin's coin was the ability to see a need, study the concepts involved and come up with a useful idea.
So, am I a communist? Well, to be fair, the world has never seen true communism. It never got a clear and fair chance in its pure form. It was always used as a justification for totalitarianism. So you can't say that communism was tried and failed, it was never tried. I don't think it would work in all the forms it was described. The problem is that people do perform out of the profit motive, and people like to think they are being compensated for their time, efforts, and brilliance. So, the whole "from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs" is also bogus. If you are willfully ignorant or lazy, you should suffer somewhat for it. That's how you pay for your mental and/or physical slothfulness (if that's a word). We do have an obligation to care for those that are in need, if for no other reason than to prevent an atmosphere or spread of misery.
I believe competition has reached a point where it is destructive to society. When investment bankers and lawyers are being produced in more numbers and making more money than engineers and doctors, we are in trouble. The siren song of competition tells us to take what the other person has and become strong at the expense of others. When civilization was primitive, we could see these principles at work as barbarian hordes rode into all the civilized cities and killed everyone and took what they wanted. We put up with this kind of behavior within civilized society when we can dress it up with laws and procedures and make it seem clean and justified. But how is a lawyer suing a doctor for malpractice for a multimillion dollar settlement justified? This is ruining people who stepped forward, sacrificed and worked hard to serve society, and doing it for sport and profit. This is the worst perversion of democracy the legal system has ever come up with. Engineers get it pretty bad, too. Some bonehead either doesn't maintain a piece of equipment or uses it in a manner it was never meant to be used, and of course the engineer should pay to the point of ruin for someone else's mistake. I'm not saying there should never be consequences for medical incompetence or that flawed products should not be recalled or banned. However, companies that are trying to bring you the next wonder drug will never be able to do it at an affordable price if the number one sport of tort attorneys in this country is the class action lawsuit against pharmaceutical firms.
And what about our current energy crisis? I was in high school the last time gas prices skyrocketed. Right when I reached the age of the Teenaged American Dream including the magical driver's license and first car, gas was too expensive to allow for much freedom. America just spent the last 30 years drifting, not preparing for the next crisis. How does this happen? It's in the interests of the huge (enormously profitable) companies that bring you energy and transportation to keep their lock on the consumer. They've fought emissions and fuel efficiency standards for 30 years. This has not served us well. It has not served the auto companies either. Look at how Japan is sprinting past GM with the vigor of a marathoner passing a geriatric with emphysema. What happened to American know-how and ingenuity? What happened to leading the world with technology? Things are the way they are because competition demands that those on top with the money keep things going like they are and prevent any innovation.
America got its first technological boost in the 1700's with the innovation of textile mills. The concepts were simple, use water power and put all of the processes to manufacture cloth under one roof. Raw material in one side of the plant, finished product out the other. England had all the elements of this simple, cost effective, efficient, and highly profitable system in their hands, but were powerless to implement them. They had guilds that were threatened by this new way of doing things and worked to prevent any improvements. Look at England today compared to America. The textile revolution is where we catapulted past in technology and industry. How is what the oil and auto companies are doing to us now any different? If Congress had forced the U.S. Auto Industry to make continuous improvements on fuel efficiency, they would be as competitive if not more by now. They may not have liked it, they may have had to raise prices, but they would have all been in the same boat and would have all been equally hampered in the beginning, and equally healthy and profitable by now.
I believe the world needs to find ways to provide an individual's energy and clean water needs at a grass roots level. We should transform the technology we use to provide these commodities and then sell that technology to the rest of the world. We need to start a revolution and overthrow our corporate overlords. Capitalism has the potential to kill the golden goose if knowledge can be bottled up and either kept away from us or used against us. Information should be a free exchange that generates prosperity for everyone. A healthy a prosperous world, where everyone's energy, food, and water needs are met without taking away from others is a worthy goal. Can you imagine any group of people in the world being disgruntled if all their basic needs are met? Of course, health care and education are pretty basic needs, too, so there are social needs to be met as well to make the picture complete. I believe that terrorism would whither on the vine if it weren't for massive disparities in health, wealth, and opportunity. This is where the real strength of cooperation and the free exchange of knowledge comes in.
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