Who are these people that profit off human misery? Who are these people that see war as an opportunity to gain wealth? Who are they that see inner city poverty as an opportunity to build prisons? What kind of a person would cut funding for nutrition for a child in the name of freedom? Capitalism begins as an economic system that places ultimate worth on liberty, but it slowly corrodes all human ties, and ends not an economic system so much as a species of cannibalism. Capitalism is a fit system for fish and reptiles, but is unworthy of any higher mammal.
“Capitalism begins as an economic system that places ultimate worth on liberty, ”
I think the liberty in the capitalist sense is restricted to business enterprises. So someone should have no restrictions on there right to make a profit.
Agreed. I also think that both Adam Smith and Karl Marx assumed humanist values that can get lost when their philosphies become political systems. Adam Smith saw property as a counterfoil to feudal systems of ownership, so property rights and human rights had much more in common. In today’s world we cannot assume that any political system assumes human rights as a foundation.