Why capitalism is a pyramid Scheme?
- Magical Mindful Living
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
This article is a simple argument I had in mind for sometime about capitalism. You may have a different idea or a view. Comment on these and we can have a discussion.
Capitalism
Imagine there is a country called x. In this country the government prints out y amount of money each year to the total pool of money and it creates an inflation. If the population remained same and there is less demand for money reducing buying power of people. Let's say this inflation rate is 4%. Let's say some investor gets a return of 10% per year from entrepreneurship. Not just one but several years in a row for 20 years. What do you think is happening?

We can start examining the opposite case. Imagine your total wealth is 100k dollars and you invest it in a firm which returns 4% each year for 20 years. At the end of this period your buying power would be exactly the same (as your return was equal to inflation). You would be neither rich nor poor. At the end of this period you would be exactly same rich. Or financially same value.
But if you consider the other smart guy who got 10% return for 20 years, he has beaten the inflation with a 6% margin. At the end of twenty years his initial 100k investment have significantly increased its value. But how did that happen?
Why capitalism is a pyramid scheme?
If the all the capital in the country is considered one pool, and anyone who beats the inflation over time must be accumulating more wealth than others. Infact this money he has at the end, comes out of pockets of everyone who wasn't able to beat the inflation rate of the country. Sounds familier right? Capitalism sounds like a pyramid scheme. Somehow over generations, the owners of assets grows bigger in wealth while commoners tend to get more and more poor. As they are unable to buy any assets with their depreciating wealth. And in simple few paragraphs I have explained how capitalism works. But unfortunately this is the best system humans have developed over the course of our history.

Why capitalism is best system for growth?
If we work in a society where we are not rewarded for our hard and smart work by excess return over inflation, nobody would put an effort to work hard. Create new things, create businesses ships cars and push and fund scientific experiments. Its the capitalism which combined with human greed drives the society to these unimaginable growth in every field in modern world. It works better than communism. Where we might get lazy. I'm not sure integrating both will benefit more or not. Only we can see from future China.
End of capitalism.
As you can see a pyramid scheme is not sustainable in long term. Soon, over a few decades or centuries the countries will run out of money for the welfare of majority. Poor will be so poor and few wealthy people will engulf everyone else. Like Amazon, Apple and Tesla nowdays compared to kings of the ancient world. When the majority of a country becomes so poor, the power will shift naturally because poor will be more in numbers and they will topple the marriage between government and the rich entrepreneurs. Ultimately with a rebel and blood bath. Ew.. Unless we are able to find out a better system to harvest human greediness and redistribute wealth before each collapse.

If you looked back at human history. It's inevitable. Wars, will serve this purpose in general. At this moment in time I see no solution. I just play the game like you, trying to beat the inflation, once you understand the principle you will do the same. But let's get together to make a better system than this. Surely we are more intelligent species than this. Don't you think so?
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