Socialist: Capitalism is an unfair system that incentivizes fraud, lying, exploitation of cheap labor and environmental harm and leads to an unjust distribution of wealth.
Capitalist : This is very simple thing to claim, but the capitalist system allows anyone no matter what background, race, gender or socioeconomic positon to have the ability to make a better life for themselves. Capitalism also gives the consumers the control meaning if society wants to minimize environmental harm then consumers can simply not by the company’s products, thus putting it out of business. The great thing about Capitalism is that it is driven by what the people of the world want, meaning we have the ability to support or bankrupt companies that don’t align with what we believe to be moral. Capitalism also results in a less impoverished and better world. So, what’s unfair about that?
Socialist: That is just blatantly false. Look at how unfair the world is now. The top 1% control 50% of the worlds wealth whilst millions go impoverished and live in awful conditions.
Capitalist: Well whilst that might be the case, however the introduction of capitalism has reduced poverty and drastically increased living standards in many countries around the world. Take China for example, since the introduction of capitalism poverty has decreased by 60% and living standards have grown exponentially. And this is just one example of many.
Socialist: Capitalism has also exploited workers right around the world, look at the sweat shops in Bangladesh, China and Malaysia where billion dollar multinational companies are making workers work in hot, small and dangerous conditions for $0.80 an hour, subsequently leading to rich billionaires adding to their already massive net worth’s.
Capitalist: Matters are not that simple, and the moral lines are not that clear. Sure, fat-cat capitalists may benefit from the cheap labor but the biggest beneficiaries are actually the Third World Workers. In a substantial number of industries, lower wages allowed developing countries who previously were exporters of purely raw materials and importers of manufactured products to now break into the world markets. And so countries who used to make their money from selling coffee and rice, now turned to producing shoes and clothes instead. And yes, workers in these factories are paid very little and expected to endure awful working conditions because after all their employers are not in business for their worker’s health. However, bad jobs and bad wages are better than no jobs at all. So now peasants who previously had to scavenge to feed their families now had access to a job that paid high enough for them to feed their families and move out of garbage tips. Hence since 1970 the number of calories consumed a day per capita in these third world countries has increased substantially.
Socialist: But these companies have the ability to pay their workers far more than 80c an hour and more than have enough money to improve working conditions. Thus, capitalism has allowed for workers to be exploited for slave wages for our benefit even when companies can pay them far more. It sounds only fair that we would pay them the same wage as we would in America
Capitalist: That sounds right in theory but it is in fact absent minded and lacking proper thought. Lets think through the sequences. Even if we could assure workers in these countries higher wages and better working conditions this would do nothing for the peasants, scavengers, day laborers and so on who make up the majority of the population in these countries. At best it would create a privileged labor aristocracy leaving the majority no better off. This shows that the indirect and unintended result of the actions of soulless multinationals, rapacious local enterprises and the global capitalist system are more jobs, higher living standards and a decrease in poverty for the people being so called exploited. Get rid of capitalism and these people would be far worse off.