What Are The Fatal Flaws Of Capitalism And Socialism

In Chapter 4 of A Novel Approach to Politics Van Bell discusses two of the major economic systems in use throughout the world, Capitalism and Socialism, and their fatal flaws. Capitalism’s fatal flaw, described as the Tragedy of the Commons, is an overexploitation of a resource. Socialism on the other hand solves Capitalism’s fatal flaw by regulation, but creates its own fatal flaw, Socialism is not good at producing goods only distributing them. An example of the Tragedy of the Commons is the tale of Bluefin Tuna. For years the fish had been farmed to near extinction, over 97% of the total Bluefin Tuna population had been fished out of the sea. Since the supply went down, the Tuna became far more expensive, leading to more people trying …show more content…
In order to fill the positions Danish owners have to bump up salaries and employ immigrants, but there are still not enough people working. It has gotten so bad that some companies have to turn down potential customers because they cannot muster enough staff to meet the need, some companies have lost millions in revenue because of the labor shortage.None of that is good for the economy, if a country cannot produce it cannot sell goods, which means it cannot generate income. This is especially bad for a Socialist country like Denmark, which relies on a strong economy to provide for its citizens through welfare programs. Thus, Capitalism’s fatal flaw is unregulated it will lead to its own self destruction through the overexploitation of resources to the point of exhaustion. To remedy this, the government must intervene and protect the resource from overexploitation, which is the complete opposite of Socialism’s fatal flaw. Socialism in its purest form struggles to produce goods and motivate workers to keep working, when workers decide not to work the entire state economy takes stiff penalties. It inhibits growth in general because there is a shortage of labor and with it a shortage of production of