Benefiting The Public Good: Capitalism

Benefiting the Public Good Student’s Name Institution Benefiting the Public Good One of the key functions of the government is to enact and enforce policies that benefit its citizens. There exist different ideologies that guide the way governments formulate and implement policies for the benefit of the people within their jurisdictions. One of such ideologies is capitalism. As informed by Magstadt (2017), capitalism is the dominant ideology in the U.S., Asia, and Europe. This paper evaluates how power, order, and justice according to capitalism promote the public good. Capitalism is an ideology where the political authority empowers private actors to own and control property for private gain within the limits of set laws and regulations (Scott, 2006). In a capitalist system, capital can earn returns, and workers can sell their labor for wages. As pointed out by Magstadt (2017), there is an emphasis on the role of market forces in capitalism, that the forces of demand and supply should determine prices, values, and costs as well as allocate scare resources. The author, however, points out that the notion of a free market is a myth as no economy in the modern world can function without rules and regulations. Therefore, capitalism today works within the framework of laws and regulations. In a capitalist society, the political authority provides the infrastructure as well as a system of laws and regulations that allow economic actors to compete for their benefit as well as that of the public. The political authority (the government) thus establishes the order that allows economic actors to carry out their activities. The government indirectly creates and legitimizes the market frameworks that guide the acquisition and usage of capital and labor to produce products and services. In this...