Capitalism Vs. Socialism

There is constant tension between government regulations and humanity, including hundreds of viewpoints that are believed to be the “best” way to regulate or not regulate society. Without any government intervention capitalism and greed would control. But is government intervention, also known as socialism, really what civilization needs? In the world today, the rich get richer while the poor are getting poorer, but who would be to say this is fault of government and not the people. Recently “Occupy Wall Street” has become a protestant movement best describing reasons as to why there should be government regulation, according to the activists. The clash between socialism and capitalism will continue to grow until everyone is happy, which is inevitable to be almost impossible.

Considering there are numerous reasons as to why socialism or capitalism would be superlative to the other, one must infer all angles of each concept to figure the effects each would have on society. To start, the idea of capitalism concludes there would be no government regulation on the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth or money. It would be an economic system controlled and maintained by private individuals or corporations. Many believe this is where greed commences. The movie “Greed” by John Strossel best describes what happens when the regulation of money is left in the hands of ordinary people. This exercise called the money bowl included a bowl of one-dollar bills and the people sitting around this bowl had the opportunity to take as much money possible to grab before anyone else had the chance. Although, any amount left after a minute would be doubled. At first every single person’s hand flew to the bowl trying to grab as much money as possible. Not until after many tries did the people of this experiment work together to increase the amount in the bowl. Concluding that when everyone works together and looks out for more than them selves, wealth is created and distributed more evenly. John Strossel states greed isn’t the problem, its excessive greed states (Greed).

This type of structure, like any, has its benefits and downfalls. Positive actions could include economic growth and a consumer regulated market. This not only provides open competition in the market but far better opportunities with a wider range of products and services, encouraging people towards economic freedom. On the other hand capitalism creates fierce competition and sometimes can be considered “unfair”. It also can make the economy more money-oriented because businesses and corporations look at things with a materialistic point of view and profitability is the primary goal.

On the other side of the spectrum, socialism exists, where the government tries to regulate the market and creating more opportunities