Rules

We follow rules at home, we learn to follow social rules, then work rules. And above rules are laws. But above laws we ought to learn about principles and morality. The lack of morals allows many people to follow their greed.

The principles on which capitalism was founded — the ideals of competition, supply and demand, and the idea that prices will equilibrate and the system will benefit everybody — are a lie from the moment the stated goal became not creating the best product or service, but obtaining the maximum economic benefit. When the focus shifted, the whole system became corrupted by greed. People no longer compete to sell the best milk to the consumer — that was the original idea, and many academics still teach it as though it holds. Many people use it as an argument to defend capitalism without realising that when the focus is maximising profit, people opt to water down the milk to get more benefit from less. And as they sell more cheaply, the others lose money — so all of them start to cheat. It can remain within the boundaries of the law, and that is the origin of many crises: it was legal, but it was immoral. Capitalism did not fail because of bad laws. It failed because we stopped above the law and forgot to ask the moral question: is this right, not just legal?