Income inequality

[Skyweir]

1. Hahahahahahaha lol Wos .. always on point and funny af

2. Whether you describe capitalism as a tool or a system in the contexts raised here, up thread, is no more than semantics. Yes it is a system, an economic and political system, an agreed free market and trade dynamic.

Capitalism as an Ideology or a Tool. ... But this is a problem both for the proponents and detractors of capitalism. I used to make exactly the same arguments as you do, having read my fair share of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Milton Friedman. A free market economy on a theoretical basis is a fine thing

Nice posts TF spot on. Z totally see what you are saying .. if you were to break the market down, it would reveal a rather small number of ogolopolies. Corporate take overs and mergers result in ogolopolies and monopolisation of market interests, gains and control.

A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity. This contrasts with a monopsony which relates to a single entity's control of a market to purchase a good or service, and with oligopoly which consists of a few sellers dominating a market

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answer ... gopoly.asp

[TheFallen]

Yep I'm foursquare with Hashi here. "Pure" capitalism would by its very nature be free of government interference.

Which makes complete sense conceptually. Again I stress that one can hardly logically promote the ideals of competition and a free market... but then complain when the competition that one has so busily been promoting produces a sole and outright victor - who you then want government to take anti-monopolistic steps against. That simply does not hang together as a belief set.

Having said that, I agree that the flavour of pragmatic capitalism as practised in the real world is the most successful and thus the most beneficial of economic systems. It is good for humanity in pragmatic terms - but that's "good" in the sense of "practically beneficial". I wouldn't go ascribing a moral element to that. Let's leave that for religions, rather than economic systems.

[Zarathustra]

I think that "pure capitalism" has never existed for a reason. It's not really capitalism, it's a caricature that people use to criticize capitalism. Actually, it's quite revealing that people make excuses for socialism not working by saying that it has never been "pure," but when they want to criticize capitalism, they refer to something that has never existed, "pure" capitalism. Capitalism works spectacularly well in practice! We don't have to imagine a "pure" version to make excuses for it; that's only useful for irrelevant criticisms.

On the idea of monopolies . . . there is a HUGE difference between someone winning in a free market through out competing everyone else and someone manipulating a free market to eliminate competition. Government regulation should be there to protect us from the latter, not the former. If more people want to use Google than DuckDuckGo, who cares? The choices still exist. People can switch if they want. Market dominance isn't the same as a true monopoly. The former is compatible with capitalism, the latter is not. The former doesn't hurt anyone, the latter does. The former isn't an abuse of the system or putting capitalism to an immoral use; the latter is.

So you guys are imagining that "monopoly" is compatible with capitalism by conflating this with market dominance. Now, it is easy for market dominance to turn into a monopoly if we combine this newfound dominance with crony capitalism. If laws are made that benefit this market winner and make it more difficult for startups to enter the market, then we start to see a monopoly develop. But as long as competition can enter the market, and people can freely choose these competitors, it doesn't hurt anyone for one entity to keep winning, because that means they are consistently delivering satisfactory goods/services to their customers. And the laws of supply/demand are still in effect, since competition is still a factor. People are willing to pay for Windows, for instance, even though you can get free varieties of Linux operating systems, because of convenience, customer support, etc.

[Zarathustra]

1. Hahahahahahaha lol Wos .. always on point and funny af

2. Whether you describe capitalism as a tool or a system in the contexts raised here, up thread, is no more than semantics.

I've never really understood the value of this criticism. Of course it's semantics! Semantics deals with the meaning of words. One word is meaningful when applied to capitalism, the other is not. This semantic difference is the whole point! It's like saying that the difference between pro-life and pro-choice is merely a matter of semantics because one side refers to the unborn human as "fetus" and the other side refers to it as "baby." This might merely be "a matter of semantics," but that semantic difference means a hell of a lot! The whole argument turns on these meanings because each word implies entirely different moral consequences.

Let's go back to traffic laws. That's a system. Cars are tools. I have control over my car. I don't have direct control over the traffic laws; I agree to participate within them.

So is the difference between a car (tool) and traffic laws (system) "merely one of semantics?" Well, sure, but it's still a big damn difference! Traffic laws aren't cars. Systems aren't tools.

[Avatar]

I've never really understood the value of this criticism. Of course it's semantics! Semantics deals with the meaning of words...This semantic difference is the whole point!

Agreed. Semantics are everything.

--A

[Skyweir]

Look to me its all moot .. anyway ... but I can see how someone could describe a political ideology as a tool .. it is a tool of trade, a tool economic import .. the rules and principles and agreements all enables the exchange of goods and services .. and as such can be described as a tool.

And honestly I dont know who first described capitalism as a tool .. but sure it can be described that way and not compromise or change its meaning as a system.

[TheFallen]

Okay.

Zee, first off, I also agree that semantics are everything (I would - I'm a linguist by training).

Secondly, I equally freely agree that capitalism as implemented in the real-world is the most efficient and generally beneficial economic system that humanity's come up with to date. I am therefore NOT looking to criticize capitalism in any way - or feel any need to make excuses for it.

Having got that over with, let's get down to it.

First off, can we agree that there is literally no concept of a "fair, reasonable or just" profit margin enshrined within capitalism. Quite the reverse - capitalism promotes all attempts for private individuals or companies to maximise profits (or "gain" if you'd rather). The only two core gating factors on this within core capitalist economic theory are:-

1. Competition (with competition in place, there's a risk of pricing yourself out of the market), and

2. An effective Laffer curve paradigm, where there's an optimum point on the sales price/sales volume curve for gain maximisation.

Everything should - conceptually at least - be left up to the very largely self-regulating drivers within a free capitalist market.

(As a potentially relevant side note, having worked on the commercial side of the IT business for my entire career, including speccing product ranges for vendors, I for one will never buy either a Mac or an iPhone. Why? Because there is no direct competition keeping Apple honest. Only Apple makes Macs and iPhones, but there's loads of direct competition within the PC and Android phone market. In my very firm view, this means that I get myself a better deal).

Back on track...

Now, Government legislation indeed exists to prevent market abuses, such as price fixing, cartels, collusion etc etc. The fact that such regulation exists is undoubtedly a good thing - even though strictly speaking, it goes against the principles of a "free market".

More to the point - and this is MUCH harder to conceptually defend - anti-trust legislation exists to prohibit both price discrimination and predatory pricing. Although again this almost certainly is "a good thing", this is very clear Government interference within and restriction on a "free market". Conceptually speaking, why shouldn't Company A be allowed to charge what it likes to different customers of similar nature, if it has a justifiable and self-serving commercial motive for so doing? Conceptually speaking, why shouldn't Company B - if it's built up a sufficient war chest of banked profits - be able to sell its products out at below cost for a period, in order to drive its competitors out of business? And yet both things contravene anti-trust legislation...

On the idea of monopolies . . . there is a HUGE difference between someone winning in a free market through out competing everyone else and someone manipulating a free market to eliminate competition. Government regulation should be there to protect us from the latter, not the former...

...Market dominance isn't the same as a true monopoly. The former is compatible with capitalism, the latter is not. The former doesn't hurt anyone, the latter does. The former isn't an abuse of the system or putting capitalism to an immoral use; the latter is.

So you guys are imagining that "monopoly" is compatible with capitalism by conflating this with market dominance.

I strongly disagree. I'd say instead that you're conflating "monopoly" - which is entirely compatible with conceptual capitalism - with "abusive monopoly" - which is entirely incompatible with any flavour of capitalism, conceptual or real-world.

My example of a major side benefit of patent/IP law actually helping drugs companies for example gain an at least temporary monopolistic position is significant here. And that's exactly how things should be. If a drugs company spends copious amounts of R&D dollars coming up with an amazingly efficient treatment for diabetes, say, which massively outperforms its competition, then it should be able to (and in the real-world, absolutely does) charge the maximum possible amount that it can for as long as it can, with a sole view to Laffer curve theory being the only restriction. So, for Big Pharma, it's first off and obviously a question of recouping R&D costs... but then milking the living daylights out of their product and their effective monopoly as heavily and as hard and as long as they can - to maximise gain (or RoI if you prefer). Governments do not - and should not - legislate against this or other cash cow paradigms

(Well, they do actually - but pretty much solely in the area of utilities and public services like transport, which can be considered as special cases).

Anyhow, I think it's absolutely key to distinguish between a monopoly and an abusive monopoly. The first is what every single private company would love to have and it is definitively not proscribed by capitalist economic theory - in fact, it's encouraged by the core goal of capitalism being to maximise gain.

But running counter to that, we have pragmatic (and reasonable) Government interference. Governments take action under anti-trust legislation to stamp down on market abuses - and that's well and good. BUT Governments also take action to prevent naturally or organically occurring monopolies apparently solely on the basis that they risk becoming abusive. It is absolutely NOT a given that monopolies only occur as a result of "crony capitalism", unfair favourable legislation or other abuses of the system - they can look to occur quite reasonably and organically.

But Governments fairly frequently take action to prevent such organic monopolies from forming too. They prohibit mergers and acquisitions between large market players - because it ***might*** lead to monopolistic market abuse. They're probably right - but this smacks very much of potential "future crime" prevention. Governments clearly take preventative action to mitigate risk in advance of any abuse being committed - and it's nigh on impossible to square that away with the tenets of a "free market". Again conceptually speaking, in a truly free market, why shouldn't two competitors decide to merge, not be prevented from doing so and thus achieve greater gain-delivering economies of scale? That is NOT "manipulation of the free market" - it is NOT an abuse of the system. And yet it's regulated against and often not permissible. Ergo, pragmatic capitalism as applied in the real-world really isn't especially Libertarian - although a whole deal more Libertarian than other economic systems, I grant you.

M&As wouldn't even be necessarily bad for consumers... okay they might have reduced choice, but on the other hand they might benefit from reduced price, courtesy of the same cost-saving economies of scale. Maybe the merged companies' cost base would cause the optimum point on the Laffer curve to fall somewhere that delivered cheaper sales pricing. What's anti-capitalist about that? What's necessarily "bad"?

Finally, I'm still not seeing any basis for your claim that "capitalism is morally good"? Unless you're using "morally good" as solely meaning "of the largest benefit to humanity" and then I'd agree with your opinion, but not your terminology. Economic systems are amoral.

[Zarathustra]

First off, can we agree that there is literally no concept of a "fair, reasonable or just" profit margin enshrined within capitalism.

No, we can't agree on that. The concept within capitalism that "enshrines" fair, reasonable, or just profits is the law of supply/demand. That's literally how it's defined, and I'd argue that you can't come up with a more appropriate way to determine, "fair, reasonable, or just."

This law is aided by the facts:

1. People freely buy products at that price. We all get to decide individually what is a fair and reasonable. This is a democracy of dollars.
2. Competition for customers ensures that people have choice, driving prices down and margins smaller.
3. The absence of monopolies, collusion, cronyism (ideally) means that supply/demand are the only factors involved in determining the price.

How else would you decide what's fair? Where would you set the percentage? What's the magic number? Can you define it? No. You can't. So pretending that capitalism doesn't enshrine "fairness" (despite the fact that it actually does) when in reality there is no set, absolute profit margin that is inherently "fair" is intellectually dishonest, in my opinion. Capitalism allows us to decide what is fair and reasonable on a case-by-case basis, with a floating standard that is not only adaptable to changing circumstances, but to each individual. What you think is fair might be different from what I think is fair--but capitalism empowers both of our perspectives.

Quite the reverse - capitalism promotes all attempts for private individuals or companies to maximise profits (or "gain" if you'd rather).

How does capitalism promote this? Isn't this just our baseline human nature? How can you blame capitalism for that? If anything, capitalism takes this baseline human drive to maximize gain and mitigates it, as you note in the following:

The only two core gating factors on this within core capitalist economic theory are:-

1. Competition (with competition in place, there's a risk of pricing yourself out of the market), and

2. An effective Laffer curve paradigm, where there's an optimum point on the sales price/sales volume curve for gain maximisation.

Wouldn't that cause companies to try to minimize profits? You can't say that capitalism promotes maximizing something when in the absence of the mechanisms of capitalism, those maximums would be higher.

That's the beauty of capitalism: it doesn't deny human nature, it works with it. It "herds" it. That's why it works. It's not Utopian. It doesn't pretend that something as large as a global economy can be managed top-down by a few people with good intentions and personal ideas of "fair" imposed upon the rest of us.

Now, Government legislation indeed exists to prevent market abuses, such as price fixing, cartels, collusion etc etc. The fact that such regulation exists is undoubtedly a good thing - even though strictly speaking, it goes against the principles of a "free market".

But it's intended to keep the market free. I don't think it's a contradiction. As long as the government isn't setting the prices or choosing winners/losers in the market, it's just there are a referee. Referees don't keep competitors from being free. They just make sure everyone is playing by the rules.

If you want to criticize government regulation, fine. But what does this have to do with your points about capitalism? You want to say it's not entirely free? Ok. Is that it?

I strongly disagree. I'd say instead that you're conflating "monopoly" - which is entirely compatible with conceptual capitalism - with "abusive monopoly" - which is entirely incompatible with any flavour of capitalism, conceptual or real-world.

Can you give me an example of the former? Do we actually have any monopolies in our economy? Google and Microsoft don't count. There are alternatives, even if most people don't use them.

Finally, I'm still not seeing any basis for your claim that "capitalism is morally good"? Unless you're using "morally good" as solely meaning "of the largest benefit to humanity" and then I'd agree with your opinion, but not your terminology. Economic systems are amoral.

Moral systems are devised to temper and redirect mankind's baseline tendency to be selfish and destructive. This is exactly what capitalism does. It promotes everyone working together for mutual benefit and the creation of greater order in service to each other. It promotes accountability, honesty, and yes fairness (see above). It "keeps people honest" through mutual self interest, which is really just a more honest way to describe what religion and morality in general aim to do. I think that all moral systems are motivated by self interest, they just pretend otherwise. Morality itself is just an inauthentic pragmatism--one that pretends not to be pragmatic, but rather idealistic. So by being blatantly pragmatic, capitalism is perhaps the most honest moral system we've ever devised!

[Rawedge Rim]

Moral systems are devised to temper and redirect mankind's baseline tendency to be selfish and destructive. This is exactly what capitalism does. It promotes everyone working together for mutual benefit and the creation of greater order in service to each other. It promotes accountability, honesty, and yes fairness (see above). It "keeps people honest" through mutual self interest, which is really just a more honest way to describe what religion and morality in general aim to do. I think that all moral systems are motivated by self interest, they just pretend otherwise. Morality itself is just an inauthentic pragmatism--one that pretends not to be pragmatic, but rather idealistic. So by being blatantly pragmatic, capitalism is perhaps the most honest moral system we've ever devised!

That is so blatantly wrong that I barely know how to respond.

Capitalism does nothing to promote honesty, accountability, or fairness. Quite the contrary, without outside regulation, it generally encourages the "by hook or by crook" method. Such things as "bait and switch" and "let the buyer beware" would not have come about from a system that promoted "fairness and honesty".

Walmart is famous for using it's economy of scale to drive down the price of goods, sometimes even below marketplace value, in order to drive out competition, and occasionally to force vendors to sell to them at a certain price or be forced out of business. (see Rubbermaid vrs. Walmart)

Go back to the 19th century, and slave wages were common, and even in America, in many mining towns, you worked for the mine, and got paid in company script, only good in the company store, and were not allowed to quit your job until you paid off your bill to the company for the food, clothing and tools you needed to do the job you hired on to do. (Often the goods were marked up huges to in practice make it nearly impossible to actually "make" money working for the company.

I'm a fan of capitalism, but I don't want to live under a Dickensonian form of capitalism.

[Cail]

Google is absolutely a monopoly (as the article I just posted upthread details). In addition to the fact that your website doesn't exist if it's not indexed by Google, their servers host thousands of other websites

[Skyweir]

Moral systems are devised to temper and redirect mankind's baseline tendency to be selfish and destructive. This is exactly what capitalism does. It promotes everyone working together for mutual benefit and the creation of greater order in service to each other. It promotes accountability, honesty, and yes fairness (see above). It "keeps people honest" through mutual self interest, which is really just a more honest way to describe what religion and morality in general aim to do. I think that all moral systems are motivated by self interest, they just pretend otherwise. Morality itself is just an inauthentic pragmatism--one that pretends not to be pragmatic, but rather idealistic. So by being blatantly pragmatic, capitalism is perhaps the most honest moral system we've ever devised!

That is so blatantly wrong that I barely know how to respond.

Capitalism does nothing to promote honesty, accountability, or fairness. Quite the contrary, without outside regulation, it generally encourages the "by hook or by crook" method. Such things as "bait and switch" and "let the buyer beware" would not have come about from a system that promoted "fairness and honesty".

Walmart is famous for using it's economy of scale to drive down the price of goods, sometimes even below marketplace value, in order to drive out competition, and occasionally to force vendors to sell to them at a certain price or be forced out of business. (see Rubbermaid vrs. Walmart)

Go back to the 19th century, and slave wages were common, and even in America, in many mining towns, you worked for the mine, and got paid in company script, only good in the company store, and were not allowed to quit your job until you paid off your bill to the company for the food, clothing and tools you needed to do the job you hired on to do. (Often the goods were marked up huges to in practice make it nearly impossible to actually "make" money working for the company.

I'm a fan of capitalism, but I don't want to live under a Dickensonian form of capitalism.

This Z

Hes right ya know. There exists monopolies and ogolopolies and they are protected under the very capitalist model youre alluding to. How do you explain their existence .. there is no capitalist morality. Only regulation of the system, establishing limitations and boundaries, and rather loose parameters does this.

If your moral compass is free market capitalism there is no guarantee of just, fair or even arguably reasonable outcomes. Capitalism is growth. prosperity, financial success for some, not all. But most benefit ultimately. And as a system it has survived all others. And nothing has evolved as its equal. But for the addition of rules and regulation, it would be a very different monster indeed.

[TheFallen]

To be fair to Zee, there is a deal of innate self-regulation that inevitably exists within a capitalist economic model - namely the drivers of competition and the laws of supply and demand. However it remains true that - whlle subject to those innate laws that come unavoidably with the turf - the primary goal under a capitalist system is to maximise on personal gain. That's not the system being immoral - it's amoral. But it certainly ain't "moral".

It's pretty much evolutionary - survival of the fittest. But as I ponted out, if one is going to sing the praises of such an evolution-esque and economic model, one can hardly complain when apex predators - shaped by the very innate forces within capitalism - appear. And yes, both Google and to a slight lesser extent Microsoft are good examples of this. As is every drugs company that's come up with a patented "step change" breakthrough treatment - at least temporarily.

But capitalism needs external regulation over and above its innate self-regulative tendencies - hence governments deciding to prevent mergers and acquisitions if they feel such would lead to an overly dominant position.

And on that point, Zee I ask again, why is it necessarily so bad for two large companies in the same market sector to decide to merge? On what grounds can a prevention of such be logically justified? And again, what's so wrong with predatory pricing, logically speaking? Why shouldn't a company that's built up a sufficient war chest of profits be allowed to spend those on making things next to impossible for its competition?

[Rawedge Rim]

[Zarathustra]

. . . the primary goal under a capitalist system is to maximise on personal gain.

Can you please spell out which part or feature of capitalism makes this the primary goal? Will you not acknowledge that people would have this goal even in the absence of capitalism? Just because it makes it possible to maximize personal gain doesn't mean that's its goal. It also make it possible to maximize innovation, cooperation, efficiency, etc. Why are these not the goals? Why are you singling out personal gain?

The goal of any economic system is to figure out the best way to allocate resources, produce and distribute goods/services, and to enable people to make a living. Capitalism works so well because it makes use of people's innate drive to maximize personal gain. In socialism, this innate drive is somewhat suppressed, and that is one of the main reasons that it fails.

So you are confusing the means with the ends. The drive to maximize gain is something capitalism utilizes, not something that it strives for. Thus, it has figured out the best way to allocate resources and produce/distribute goods/services. Those are its goals. The way it happens to achieve these goals is not its goal.

These goals, in my opinion, are morally good. (One way to tell: when you deprive people of these things, it is morally bad.) Providing a way for humans to survive and prosper are morally good goals. And because capitalism achieves those goals better than all other economic systems, it is the most moral system of providing for people's needs and wants.

[Rawedge Rim]

. . . the primary goal under a capitalist system is to maximise on personal gain.

Can you please spell out which part or feature of capitalism makes this the primary goal? Will you not acknowledge that people would have this goal even in the absence of capitalism? Just because it makes it possible to maximize personal gain doesn't mean that's its goal. It also make it possible to maximize innovation, cooperation, efficiency, etc. Why are these not the goals? Why are you singling out personal gain?

The goal of any economic system is to figure out the best way to allocate resources, produce and distribute goods/services, and to enable people to make a living. Capitalism works so well because it makes use of people's innate drive to maximize personal gain. In socialism, this innate drive is somewhat suppressed, and that is one of the main reasons that it fails.

So you are confusing the means with the ends. The drive to maximize gain is something capitalism utilizes, not something that it strives for. Thus, it has figured out the best way to allocate resources and produce/distribute goods/services. Those are its goals. The way it happens to achieve these goals is not its goal.

These goals, in my opinion, are morally good. (One way to tell: when you deprive people of these things, it is morally bad.) Providing a way for humans to survive and prosper are morally good goals. And because capitalism achieves those goals better than all other economic systems, it is the most moral system of providing for people's needs and wants.

How many people get to start a business, and at the onset, decide to make only enough profit to continue to buy resources necessary, and just a bit more so that they can put beans on the table, and actually remain in business very long.

Maybe in a very small town that Walmart hasn't shown up in yet. In a capitalistic society, a business either grows, or it dies.

[peter]

Capitalism does not "allocate" anything. You either have the money to buy it, or you don't. It cares nothing about the equitable allocation of resources; it's the greasy pole with the snake pit at the bottom and the swill bucket at the top, up which you progress only by clambering over bodies of those above you, and stepping on the heads of those beneath. You can either live with that - or you can't. The rest is sophistry.

[Cail]

Capitalism does not "allocate" anything. You either have the money to buy it, or you don't. It cares nothing about the equitable allocation of resources; it's the greasy pole with the snake pit at the bottom and the swill bucket at the top, up which you progress only by clambering over bodies of those above you, and stepping on the heads of those beneath. You can either live with that - or you can't. The rest is sophistry.

Agreed. Granted, it's the best economic system out there, but let's not pretend that it's something it's not.

[TheFallen]

Zee, against a capitalist free market background, I'm still waiting to hear a rational justification of:-

1. Why it should be possible for two companies in the same market sector to be prevented from merging, and

2. why a company that has built up a reserve of profits should be disallowed from selling its products or services at below cost, if it believes that will gain it a midterm advantage (by damaging its competitors).

[Kizza]

TF,
For mine the reason for promoting competition to prevent collusion and ultimately cartels means fairer pricing and trade.
A cartel can and does charge whatever it likes. It may reduce price below cost to eliminate a competitor but will soon return to profiteering way above a modest margin where there is no competition.

[Zarathustra]

Capitalism does not "allocate" anything. You either have the money to buy it, or you don't. It cares nothing about the equitable allocation of resources; . . .

Agreed. Granted, it's the best economic system out there, but let's not pretend that it's something it's not.

It's an economic system. Of course it allocates resources. This is just part of the definition of an economic system. From Wikipedia:

An economic system (also economic order)[1] is a system of production, resource allocation and distribution of goods and services within a society or a given geographic area.

I can understand you guys saying that it's not moral, but you can't say that it's not an economic system! Resource allocation is one of the functions of *any* economic system. Also note that I said nothing of equitable allocation of resources. I was talking about the best way to allocate. Focusing on equitable outcomes is not the best way, and in fact is one of the reasons why socialism doesn't work. Just look at what happened in Venezuela. The government tried to set price controls on certain items, and stores responded by not stocking those items, because they couldn't make a profit on them. So they started running out of basic goods.

You don't typically see shortages of basic necessities in America. That's because our system allocates resources efficiently.

Zee, against a capitalist free market background, I'm still waiting to hear a rational justification of:-

1. Why it should be possible for two companies in the same market sector to be prevented from merging, and

2. why a company that has built up a reserve of profits should be disallowed from selling its products or services at below cost, if it believes that will gain it a midterm advantage (by damaging its competitors).

I'm not sure why you're changing the subject to this. I'm still waiting for an explanation of how capitalism promotes maximizing personal gain, when humans have this drive in the absence of capitalism.

For your questions:

1. Companies do merge. It happens all the time. I suppose when such a merger is denied is when doing so would create a monopoly. Seems pretty obvious to me. Did you have something else in mind here? What are you fishing for?

2. Because then price wouldn't be determined by supply/demand, which is crucial for capitalism to work properly. Undermining competition and supply/demand undermines capitalism itself. The rational justification is that this distorts the market and creates a monopoly. Again, why is this not obvious?

Rawedge Rim, I understand that companies often try strive for sustained growth. But why is this being described as the "primary goal of capitalism," instead of the goal of individual corporations?

I think there is a basic contradiction here with people saying on the one hand that capitalism is amoral (i.e. that it can be put to either good or evil use) and that capitalism has a primary goal of promoting maximum personal gain. If this is its primary goal, then why not just go ahead and say that it's immoral? If the things that put limits on this selfishness are all outside of capitalism (e.g. government regulation), then isn't this inherent selfishness bad on its own, in the absence of government regulation?