When Mark’s Store Went Out of Business
This is not so much the story of a single, ground-shaking epiphany so much as that of a nurtured understanding. The calamities I’ll mention are not so much my own as those that have affected those closest to me.
When I attended high school, I thought of myself as a capitalist. Capitalism just made sense to me. By offering people a financial reward, those people would become motivated to build a better machine or provide a better service. I believed in a world where anyone determined enough could work hard, start a business, and become successful. A terrible astonishment awaited me.
I saw too often evidence that the American method of capitalism creates the opposite of its desired effect. Rather than creating opportunities in which a person can start her or his own business, we live in a world where the mom-and-pops evaporate with lightning speed, swallowed by the mega-franchises against which they cannot hope to compete. One friend of mine, Mark, went through the crisis of bankruptcy when he opened a store that specialized in school supplies. He couldn’t hope to hold a candle against Wal-Mart, even though Mark’s store offered supplies that Wal-Mart didn’t. It’s a shame because not only did Mark lose his business, but so did those companies which created the unique, school supplies only small store’s such as Mark’s would have offered. When only a few stores control entire genres of goods, a fresh product must find its way onto the shelves of giants or face immediate extinction. This closes opportunities for manufacturers, consumers, and would-be entrepreneurs.
We all recall the infuriation caused my Microsoft’s Windows Vista. It proved an inferior product that nobody wanted. Yet, if you bought a new PC, you were stuck with it, regardless of the fact that not a single consumer wanted it. How, in a supposedly capitalistic society, can the consumers find themselves stuck with a product they don’t want? How does an inferior product rise to the top in the first place? I remember my aggravation years ago while searching for a new laptop. Everywhere that my quest carried me, I discovered only laptops preinstalled with Vista. How can this be? I wondered. How can my only option be a product no one wants?
In our society, I’ve witnessed businesses improving their cash flow not by creating a better product or providing a superior service, but rather through contradictory means. Businesses make cheaper, less efficient products. Businesses pay their employees less or send their jobs overseas. By the “laws” of capitalism, this should prove impossible. If our money is our vote, these events couldn’t happen. But they do, and here’s why:
Our current version of capitalism isn’t run by consumers. Our version is run by corporations. When politicians can accept bribes, in all their euphuistic terms, the consumer has little power, little voice, and little chance of competition among the larger franchises. Under such a stacked deck, our money has no voice, not even a whisper.
Capitalism is a great idea. I wish we practiced it. It is impossible to guess at how many grand ideas have gone unheard because the little guy cannot get his feet off the ground. We may have missed out on the cure to cancer or a more fuel-efficient engine. Just look at the many innovations arriving from other countries—their technological dominance over us is no freak occurrence.
