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This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Oxford Emory chapter.

The free market economy relies on competition, supply, and demand being regulated. But what happens when those companies involved band together against the public? The average citizen pays more so that a small group of millionaires can become billionaires. There’s no merit in such an exploitive system whether for the rich or the poor. In the short-term the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but eventually the gap will become so large that the poor will choose to either overthrow the government or leave it, both of which are detrimental to the current system in place and therefore the current upper-class.

Right now America is clenching onto the idea of the “American Dream” and the “self made man”, so much so that they have blinded themselves to the reality. It is genius really, oppressing people in a way that has them believing they are free by allotting them so many options that they are unable to make a choice. This indecisiveness has allowed corporations, businesses and powerful people in general to take advantage of humanity’s need to belong as a means of control over the economy in the minds of the people, such that the rebels trying to fix the problem are taken down by the very people they are trying to save.

When we look at any economic system it’s purpose is to organize individuals and their skills to provide for the group. With the small communities direct democracy is applicable but in larger groups it becomes almost impossible. In these cases it is imperative that someone or a group of someone’s take control to prevent total chaos and/or a government standstill. While these people do not wield their power absolutely, they still wield an unbelievable amount of power. If the public isn’t aware or savvy enough to figure things out what’s to keep the people in power from abusing their power? The morals that their society has imposed on them as children, and their personal experience with those morals.

The same people cannot rule forever because of human mortality, so it is imperative to continue to convey desirable morals and display their effectiveness to the next-generation. That’s not to say that some people don’t need to be convinced, but for the more questioning or morally lax i.e. most individuals, there needs to be some evidence to convince them. When we get down to the nitty-gritty, democracy wants to give the people the power, capitalism is one way it does that, communism wants the people to be taken care of, with only one group and power. Both of these are heavily reliant on people choosing, of their own free will, to do the right thing even when nobody’s watching.

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