Capitalism: Effects On Sociology

In class we have discussed a few good things and a whole bunch of negative effects capitalism has on our economy and the people that live in it. Capitalism was defined in class as an economical system based on profit. With this said we know everything that is done in our economy is done for profit or money. We learned of many different ways that this "goal in life" has almost ruined our economy. We see this idea ruin families and people of all sorts. People let capitalism take over there lives and become so greedy that they will kill for more money. One reason of many that capitalism, or the idea that profit is number one, is bad is that eventually the competition lowers the quality of products.

Since whoever sells more makes more profit, companies will make poorer quality products if it saves them on expenses. In our economy there is a saying, "You get what you pay for." This is the only thing that helps us decide to not get the cheapest one. This isn't in products alone. Most people think in their minds that if they pay a little more for a service that they are getting a better service and most people that charge less think that they don't have to do as good of job on the service. This confuses the economy and pretty much makes us think we are never able to pay enough to get a good job done. We have figured out a way to compensate for the poor quality unsafe products that are put out on the market everyday by offering warrenties. This doesn't seem like a bad thing but really its just compensation for horribly made products or services. This became an issue that couldn't just be sent back though in the early seventies when Ford put out the Pinto. This car was released unfinished with a gas tank defect that was known about by the company. In order to compete with other companie in that car size category Ford felt it had to release it anyways and put a price of a little over 200,000 on the human life. They felt it more costly to actually recall the cars and fix them than to just pay settlements to the victim's families. As long as we have capitalism we will have things like this in every industy. From food, to cars, and everything in between, this poor quality issue can and is very dangerous.

Another downfall of capitalism is our concept of time and how warped it is becoming. In this day and age time has become so important that is related directly to money in the frequently said belief "Time is money." Before the days of the railroads time wasn't