A Taste of Capitalism

     In class last week, we did an activity using starbursts to represent capitalism, communism, and socialism. When we first walked into the classroom, Ms. Bailey handed everyone either three or ten starbursts. This was to represent the rich and the poor in society. It was picked at random which students were “wealthy” and which were not. At first, when everyone sat down in their seats and started to notice that some people had more candy than others, people started to react. Some students got angry that they had less; they thought it was unfair that others had more. After everyone was settled, it was explained to us that the unequal distribution of candy represented capitalism and how private ownership of industries got some people more money than others. Then, to compete for the candy, we played rock, paper, scissors, shoot to demonstrate the results in unequal economic classes. When you chose someone to play against, and you lost, you had to give them one of your candies. If you won, you gained one of your opponent’s candies. After we had ten minutes of competition against our classmates, we all sat back down in our seats with the candy we had collected. Some had more candy than what they started with, others had less, and some students ended up with no candy at all. Many of us were satisfied with the amounts of candy we had collected, and expressed that the unequal division was now fairer because we each worked hard for what we ended up with. But just as we thought our shares had been finalized, our candy was all collected and pooled together then redistributed in equal amounts to show socialism and how the industries owned by the government had their money  collected and redistributed equally amongst a group of people. Socialism demonstrates the idea that people are not always making what they work for because the government has control over what money you keep, even though you were the one who truly earned it. After the redistribution, communism had finally been reached. We had met a classless society where everyone had the same amount of candy. This activity was a fun hands on experience that easily and straight forwardly taught us about capitalism, socialism, and communism.

     It appears that both Marx and Smith wanted to somehow help the poor people of society, but they had very different approaches as to how to do so. Marx’s theory was based around communism, capitalism, and socialism. He believed that in order to make things fairer, there needed to be a more structured system of government such as socialism that gave the government the right to equally distribute money to achieve a classless society. This would help the poor because it gave them some money that they had no way of making. Smith’s theory was called the Invisible Hand. The Invisible Hand stated that there was to be no government control over any business and that businesses would regulate themselves through supply and demand. It was believed that businesses would offer lower prices or better goods to attract more customers, and the competition between businesses would regulate the market. This theory was believed to help the poor because the government had no control over businesses and how they made their money and what they sold. So anyone could make their own money and nit have to worry about it being collected and evened out.

     In my opinion, Smith’s theory is the better one. I feel as though if you work hard to earn your money, then you should be able to keep all of it for your own business and not have to worry about it being collected and redistributed. There were people who couldn’t earn money on their own, but even in that scenario; I still believe that you should not be giving up what belongs to you to someone else. Your hard work should not be taken away from you. The Invisible Hand was a well developed system of how businesses would maintain themselves. It helped show that the supply and demand of products was able to keep the government out of the picture and prove that the people who were earning money on their own deserved it because they were helping to regulate the market to keep their businesses up and running.