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Capitalism is an economic system in which all the means of making money are private, owned not by country, but by people. It’s a system that allows accumulation of wealth and encourages competition for private profit. Most of the countries today have capitalist economies and in some of them, mainly in the USA, exist laws that favor companies rather than people. Compared with Europe, companies in the USA have it much easier, they can grow bigger and faster, because of the larger market, but the people have it worse. They have less vacation days, no maternity leave and the biggest thing, nothing is free. No free healthcare, daycare, schools, because everything is private.
Feudalism in the middle ages
Capitalism is believed to have started in the 18th century, maybe even the late 17th century after the demolition of feudalism. Capitalism and feudalism may be similar, but there are some key differences, in capitalism everyone is free to become rich and powerful, while in feudalism you have to be born in wealth and power, meaning aristocratic to be able to live like that. Also in capitalism people own the companies and land, while in feudalism, while the noble makes money off of it, the land belongs to the king.
The first capitalist country and the first global economic superpower was Great Britain. They rose to that position in the 19th century because of the technology they had at the time was more advanced than the other countries. Advanced manufacturing technologies allowed faster production and railway systems and steamships allowed faster connection to other countries, meaning more buyers. With that more companies came to be and the ones that already existed became so big they started monopolizing the economy.
British East India Company logos
The Boston tea party
One of those monopolizing companies actually grew so big they became probably the most powerful company to ever exist. British East India Company. That company is a good example of capitalist evil. They monopolized their tea so much, that they didn’t let the settlers in the US sell their own tea, but made them buy theirs while also making them pay taxes for the US and for Great Britain. In some way they could be credited with creating the US, because it was their tea that was thrown in the ocean during the Boston tea party. The real evil of this company can be seen in the east Asia though. They not only monopolized the economy so much that no other companies could even start to exist, but they started selling opium and other addictive drugs, so that people would get addicted and start buying more and more from them.
To summarize, in one hand capitalism can be good, because it gives everyone freedom to become rich while doing whatever they wish, no matter who they are, it produces wealth and innovation and gives power to the people. And on the other hand capitalism can be bad, because once the first person comes to the top, they want to stay there and will do whatever they can do to so, including monopolizing the market (Disney is a great example) and stopping innovations.
