Capitalism & Morality

• Capitalism is the most productive and efficient economic system.
• Some critics contend that capitalism is not a moral system.
• Morality is impossible unless one is free to choose between alternatives without outside coercion. Since capitalism is based on freedom of choice, it provides the best environment for morality and character development. 
• Business success not only requires but also rewards virtuous behavior by participants in the market.
• All human beings have natural rights endowed by their Creator or inherent in their nature, and have a moral obligation to respect the rights of others. Natural rights impose the obligation not to interfere with others liberty. 
• It is morally illegitimate to use coercion against someone who does not first undertake the use of force. The role of government, is to protect man's natural rights.  
• This freedom involves far more than simple democracy and an individual can pursue his freely chosen norms, actions, and ends without the arbitrary intervention of others. This freedom is necessary for individual morality. 
• There can be no morality without responsibility and no responsibility without self- determination. Self-determination implies rationality, honesty, self-control, productiveness, and perseverance. 
• Maximum self-determination for each individual is possible only when the state is limited to maintaining justice and defending against coercion, thus protecting life, liberty, and property.  
• Capitalism is a system of relationships and cannot be moral or immoral and individuals can only be moral agents. 
• A social system can be moral if it promotes moral behavior by individuals. 
• It is imperative to create a political and economic system that permits self-determination and promotes morality. Capitalism is that system. 
• Capitalism is only a means and requires individual participants to decide on the ends to be pursued. 
• No economic system can make people good. The best that an economic system can do is to allow people to be good. 
• Morality and virtue require that individuals be free to be immoral and of bad character. 
• When an individual has choice and bears responsibility for his actions can he be moral. 
• Capitalism allows the exercise of individual free will but cannot guarantee a moral society. 
• Human development requires more than material wealth. 
• Prosperity enables individuals to cultivate their talents, abilities, and virtues. 
• Capitalism is the best system for wealth creation, permits individuals to spend less time on physical concerns, leaving them more time to engage in higher pursuits. 
• Achievement of prosperity tends to reward moral behavior. 
• Businesses and their owners, managers, and employees have moral obligations. They must respect the natural rights of other individuals, which includes honoring contracts, not engaging in fraud, not using coercion against others, and honoring representations made to the local community. 
• Businessmen should not support government economic interventions, such as price supports, tariffs, and subsidies, even though doing so might result in higher profits. Doing so in nothing but use of coercion.
• Living up to these virtues will aid businessmen in the pursuit of profit. 
• The free market rewards polite, cooperative, tolerant, open, honest, realistic, trustworthy, discerning, creative, fair businessmen. 
• Lying to and cheating other businesses, misleading consumers, and mistreating workers all have serious adverse consequences. 
• In the long run, profitable businesses tend to be operated in accordance with the basic ethical principles most people hold dear.
• Under capitalism business transactions takes place by mutual agreement for perceived mutual gains only by serving the interests of others. 
• Protecting individual choice, capitalism generates enormous wealth, and creates an environment in which virtue can flourish. 
• Capitalism is not only the most productive and efficient economic system. It is also the most moral economic system!  

• Capitalism is an economic system that promotes inequality.
• Uncontrolled, capitalism will corrupt and undermine democracy.
• The vice of capitalism is its unequal sharing of blessings; the virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. 

My View:

All the above merits of capitalistic system seems to be very nice but in reality people are selfish, greedy and does anything to maximize their profits. In a highly educated society, with abundance of awareness, consciousness of individual rights, free of corruption at least at working levels, stringent law enforcement systems with highly deterrent punishments where citizens will voluntarily comply with laws otherwise they will be compelled to fear laws, capitalism will work to great extent. In poor, less educated & developing societies, free market capitalism is a bane and a distant dream.

Capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with principles of democracy. Capitalism doesn't recognize equal rights of sharing natural resources. The rich consumes too much and poor too little. Capitalism only produces materialistic benefits and makes humans drift away from soil. A small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor. Capitalism creates materialistic wealth, makes people insensitive and impoverishes spiritually. In the pursuit of riches, economic systems often creates jolts which only hurts the poor. In poor and less educated societies poor gets exploited with scanty food & social security. In educated & affluent societies poor people are provided social and food security only to safeguard the interests of the rich. The only applaudable achievement of capitalism is that extreme poverty & starvation deaths are eliminated. The worst aberration in capitalism is that while risk is spread out on everybody, the fruits are cornered by the rich alone. Morality is incompatible with amassing wealth. Usually amassing wealth is associated with cheating & corruption, looting public or government and destruction of ecological assets. Since the system will not change the rules, we need to change the system.