Why Capitalists Lie

Warning! This is an essay written as a part of my English Listening & Speaking course in Columbia West College. It may contain mistakes I had made with no reason to fool anyone but by accident. The main reason for this essay to exist is the need to excercise in writing convincing and well shaped pieces of text. Please, don't use it as a source for your studies or cite as a proof of anything. All of the written below is my personal biased opinion not suitable to rely on.

Milton Friedman once said, “The poor stay poor not because they’re lazy, but because they have no access to capital”. Even though it seems to be obvious from a capitalistic standpoint, I claim that capital can only help after the system itself will have been transformed from within.

The power of capital made possible the creation of the wealthiest societies in history. Big houses for virtually everyone in the Western hemisphere, fast and beautiful cars, and, for sure, great progress in science, technology, and medical fields had become possible also because of the access to capital and someone’s will to make money. Admitted that, capitalism has been only inducing poverty over the time of its own bloom by provoking prices growth. Using the money to make more money, the very heart of the system, by means of simple loans or complicated derivatives, only forces essential products like drinking water, food, and medications to become unaffordable for a couple billion people in the world.

Sayings like the one quoted above, and hundreds of similar ones, are convincing enough to prove that the rich and powerful really care about the poor and helpless. They create non-profit and non-governmental institutions that are intended to help poor people by sending humanitarian assistance and providing millions of dollars in donations. It seems to make sense. Nonetheless, I argue that capitalists have no real incentive to eliminate poverty because they’re the ones who benefit from it. The existence of cheap labor in developing world, the countries that depend on the natural resources exportation, and global markets to sell cellphones and useless commodities to people who beg for pure water is one of the main sources of capitalistic wealth.

Many developing countries hugely depend on oil, gas, and other natural resources exportation. It can be a great starting point for the future growth and prosperity. Look at the United Arab Emirates, for example, and the incredible affluence it has achieved in about 35 years of its modern history. But unfortunately, it’s not the most common case. What is more usual about those resources, are military conflicts started from the inside or outside the country in pursuit of the power of possessing them. The abundance of natural resources is very likely to hinder the progress in education, technology, and medicine, the creation of profitable businesses, and overall human development in the country which is vividly described in Human Development Reports made by UNDP annually. The interesting fact is that the vast majority of prosperous and rich countries is enormously dependent on fossil fuels imported from those vulnerable and exhausted nations.

Given that capitalism has made possible the existence of the most prosperous societies in history, it was one of the main reasons for extreme poverty to emerge, and still is one of the main causes for it to remain. Although some odd people and institutions seem to be concerned about the world poverty matters, none of them has ever proved the real incentive to eradicate it. The richest and most powerful carry on withstanding the attempts to challenge the world’s economic system status quo and exploiting vital cheap labor and resources of the poor.

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