FA is a 31 years old male from Brazil. He is currently in the process of becoming a permanent resident of the United States and will eventually become a U.S. citizen. He identifies himself as a Latin American. FA has an MBA and is the Practice Manager for Application Development at his company, which in other words means that he manages software development projects. FA currently would classify himself as middle class or upper middle class. Growing up in Brazil, his family was lower middle class.
How would you define capitalism?
An open market to all different organizations or individuals with an aspiration to prosper. It’s an open window to anyone who wants to maximize their gains. I think that there are a lot of things related to capitalism, like political policies and governments that will try to control aspects of the market. Governments will interfere with extreme capitalism and other governments will avoid capitalism to provide equal share to people.
How has capitalism been taught to you at different levels of your education?
I learned about capitalism in history classes in high school and middle school. Teachers would talk about different governmental systems. So capitalism was taught to us as a way that governments would dictate how companies and individuals would develop the market or economy in that region. Basically I was taught how the different forms of capitalism compared to each other. How capitalist in Brazil compared to the extreme capitalism in States and the socialist capitalist in Europe.
We also learned how capitalism evolved through supply and demand. How it comes with a sense of supply and demand.
What has your personal experience with capitalism been? What is your relationship with capitalism?
I was raised in a capitalist society; capitalism was dominate. In my household the principles my mom would lean on would be more like socialism. So she would teach us that we lived in certain circumstances but other people lived in different circumstances.
One of the early lessons that I had with capitalism was that the harder you work and the more you do, the more you deserve to be compensated for your work. Like a meritocracy. This is not directly related to capitalism but it is one of the beauties of capitalism. That fact that you can make better products or charge more for your expertise is a strength of capitalism. In a socialist system, let’s use the example of school, where everyone gets an A, but some people are working and others aren’t. There is no reason to do your best because at the end of the day everyone gets the same thing. While in a capitalist structure, those A’s are an incentive to do your best.
But going back to your first question, I don’t know, capitalism has always been there. Maybe the first time I really dealt with capitalism was when I joined a job. I had certain skills and I knew what my market value was. And because I knew my market value I was able to leverage and make a little more money because I knew they needed me and my skills. A few months later, someone else joined the team doing the same job as me, but he was making $5 less than me. But this was my first experience with capitalism and supply and demand. When my skills were in demand, I was able to profit from it and when the other guy joined the demand was down so he made less.
What do you think are some alternatives to capitalism? What do you think about them?
Alternatives would be things we see around us already. I can’t think of like a new way of running an economy. But I like the way that capitalism works. We can look to history, like Soviet Russia and see that systems like that don’t work with a few people living like kings and the rest starving. If we were to take all the wealth and redistribute it evenly among all the people of the world, I bet in a few years we would see that there are once again very wealthy people and very poor people. But capitalism sets people free to better themselves.
Do you think capitalism is the only financial system that works with democracy?
I don’t know, I would have to know more about financial systems and governments in the past to answer this question. I don’t see that they necessarily have to go together.
What do you think are capitalism’s origins? Both globally and in reference to the United States?
I think it began as an exchange of goods, like the barter system. When you isolate the need that one has and you prioritize what it took you to produce the good this is where you start having a capitalist effect. In a barter system like I raise apples, you raise strawberries and at the end of the day we exchange what we need. But when you start to prioritize your effort there is almost a sense of greed that develops. Not in a bad way, but like the idea that it took me more effort to produce this and I need to be compensated for it. Putting value on things immerged from this, when people started to use currencies. I think there became a sense of accumulating wealth and things, a sense of want instead of need.
How do you think social issues have been affected by capitalism, both now and in the past?
Well if you look at third world countries, this is probably something that capitalism isn’t helping. Really we are just letting them slide because why throw our money into something that isn’t going to make a return? Capitalism has helped by being a driving factor behind innovations and scientific discoveries. Well in looking at Brazil, Brazil began to prosper a few years after capitalism was implemented. So that is a social issue that was improved by capitalism. Not that everyone is prospering, but there have been improvement.
Another social issue related to capitalism that is also related to consumerism is the deep debt that some people encounter. And these people end of killing themselves. It’s this idea that you cannot live well without money, which might be the case. People will not make friends with and not fall in love with people because of their economic status. It effects how we see each other. I think people need to learn how to benefit from capitalism but they also need to know when they have enough.
Do you think capitalism is a natural fit for human nature? Why or why not?
I have to think yes, because I know the world as it is, right? But I’m also trying to think of how we got here. I think we evolved this way but it’s not necessarily a natural fit. I don’t know if it is a natural fit, but the way I have been living my life I would say yes, for me it’s a natural fit. I have benefitted from it. Logically yes it seems natural but if we restarted everything I don’t know where we would end up.
