Irreconcilable Differences: Competing Interests in Competitive Capitalism

Competitive capitalism, as a system, is often thought of as being enshrined in the Constitution of the United States; it is seen as the only system compatible with representative democracy, and any benefits accrued to the system are inevitably seen as having been a result of it, and otherwise unattainable. Yet this optimistic view of capitalism often fails to include its darker effects. Since an attempt to exhaustively catalogue the negatives of capitalism would result in unreasonable prolixity, this essay will focus on the creation and maintenance of diametrically opposed interests by the capitalistic system. Using two well known Supreme Court cases (at least among legal scholars), Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) and Lochner v. New York (1905), it will be demonstrated that capitalism will inevitably give rise to personal interests that are necessarily contrary to common interests. The doctrine of economist Milton Friedman is also examined; while these cases reinforce Friedman???s distrust of government, they also disprove a number of his assertions regarding the idealistic function of a free market. Thus the hope of the author is that this paper will engender a more nuanced discourse on not only the benefits but also the disadvantages of capitalism, and possibly encourage its readers to look beyond capitalism, rather than within it, for solutions to its problems