Capitalism: We can have our pie and eat it too!

Capitalistic economic systems persevere in the modern world because they do the best job of allocating resources, raising the standard-of-living, and achieving economic growth. While a capitalist system generates the greatest possible economic “pie”, its drawback is that it has not adequately allocated each individual’s share of the pie fairly. Socialist, communist, and Marxist systems were conceptualized to promote greater equality, yet none of these systems, for numerous reasons, ever realized the economic productivity of capitalism. Our focus should then be on utilizing the capitalist system to generate the greatest economic pie, and then implementing mechanisms that let individuals be satisfied with their share of the pie. The need to deal with an individual’s personal incentive is an unfortunate side effect of capitalism. Because the system is rooted in individual gain, the world has seen increased materialism and a more pronounced individual bias. As Martin Buber (1922) suggests, individualism is justified as long as it can be turned into an effort to promote what is best for society: “Man’s will to profit and will to power are natural and legitimate as long as they are tied to the will of human relations and carried by it ” (p. 97). This essay reflect