What is capitalism?
Capitalism in it's purest form, refers to what ecomists call a free market society. In a free market society, the interaction between supply and demand determine what is to be produced, how to produce it, and for whom production is for. In a capitalist society, currency is status. The range of incomes of people living in a capitalist society is amazing. If you go to any city in a capitalist society, you can walk by a person without a home, asking for your money to buy food, while somebody drives by in a nice car that could feed the homeless man for a year, its all about status. Capitalism's main goal is profit. Profit means the reward for risk, such as an entrepreneur opens a sucsess buisness. A capitalist believes the owner of that buisness is entitled to the rewards to the risk of opening that buisness. In terms of a household, profit can be described as disposable income, money that is leftover after all the bills are paid.
Private property is a key concept for capitalists aswell. The right to own property and profit from it is key, and is part of the 'freedom' capitalists need. In a capitalist society, land can be bought and sold, and the price varys depending on the quality (close to water? cities? is it arable?).
Capitalists believe government and the economy should be as seperate as possible, and true capitalists believe taxes should be abolished completly. Although even the socialist in all of us know paying takes can be a pain in the back, they are nessasary for the demands of a society, such as helth care. Capitalists believe you should have to pay to go to the hospital, and the people who cannot pay are burdens to society, and why should we help them anyway? Although not a pure parket econumy, the United States is the closest. If you get shot in the United States (a likely possibility with the 'freedom' to own guns) the doctors will want to see your credit card so the CEO of the hospital can get paid.
What is a mixed market economy>
Capitalism and Socialism, have never been put to practice in thier purest form. Right now, what you would call a capitalist society, is actualy a mixed market ecomomy, with a shift to the right of the political/economic spectrum. In short, the spectrum divides people with simalar economic and political ideologys into groups. For example, the left-wing consists of socialists, communists, liberals, athiests, anarchists, 'freethinkers', democrats and generaly people open to change. The right-wing consists of capitalists, conservatives, authoritarians, republicans, nazis. what you would call a socialist society would be mixed market with a shift to the left. The United states and the former soviet untion are really the closest examples of capitalism versus socialism we have, so they will be refrenced to many times (altough the soviet union was really more of a communist state). Here in Canada, I feel we have a pretty balanced economy as far as elements of left and right. We are very proud of our free health care, good education sysyem, and public insurance in the lucky provinces. Canada has many socialist elements, although we arent exactly the world leaders in social justice.
