Robert Villegas - Has Capitalism Failed?

I hope you agree with me that proposals to make monumental changes in our economic system should be made while armed with all of the facts. I ask my readers to clear the slate in their minds about the evils of capitalism and have an open mind. Like many of us who advocate capitalism, we decided to make sure we understood capitalism before we let the monsters with rifles come onto our streets and tell us how to live our lives. I suggest that you do the same before you decide to pick up a rifle and/or throw a Molotov Cocktail through a bank window.

The capitalist system was termed capitalism not by a friend of the system, but by an individual who considered it to be the worst of all historical systems, the greatest evil that ever had befallen mankind. That man was Karl Marx. Nevertheless, there is no reason to reject Marxs term, because it describes clearly the source of the great social improvements brought about by capitalism. Those improvements are the result of capital accumulation; they are based on the fact that people, as a rule, do not consume everything they have produced, that they saveand investa part of it.

The main business of American industry is production, not theft or forgery. Only the influence of an anti-capitalist philosophy that focuses moral worth primarily upon sacrifice could cloud men's minds to the exacting kind of virtue required of the men who choose to be productive. If you wonder why some CEOs make so much money, it is because their leadership enables their corporations to successfully sell to and benefit more people than other companies. Capitalism is about the efficient use of capital and that involves the efficient production of quality products, sold at a price customers are willing to pay and delivered cost-effectively and quickly. If you think that just anyone can do this, you have no idea how to do it.

And it is this same misunderstanding of capitalism that moves many people to damn man for being too concerned with materialistic things; that tells man he has produced too much and should give away the fruits of his production. It tells him that to produce is so easy, but to give so hard. It is blind to man's true greatness because it refuses to regard production as an essential, necessary and highly desirable virtue. And because it does not really protect the rights of people to be moral, this anti-capitalist philosophy lets loose the most radical of haters; the people who would just as soon crush the skull of an honest man rather than ask him for a job.
It is this same philosophy that advocates a welfare-state to forcibly divest men of their incomes for the sake of the nonproductive. And, finally, it is the same philosophy that refuses to consider that a capitalist society can do more good (even for the nonproductive) than any welfare society. To prove this last point, we will analyze some of the essential elements of capitalism, their causes, and their consequences. They are mass production, the division of labor, capital accumulation, corporate organization and monetary policy.
MASS PRODUCTION
A uniquely capitalist invention is the concept of mass production that lowers the cost of production and spreads the benefits to virtually all parties in society. Mass production enables the making of complex products on an assembly line which employs many workers, each performing a specific task in a pre-determined sequence that results in the creation of products such as automobiles, guns, farm machinery, turrets and lathes and even such small products as cell phones, furniture, television sets and other electronic equipment to name a few. The benefit of the production process is that highly valued products can be built efficiently and in a very timely manner at a very low price compared to products made by a single individual.