Capitalism: A Critique

Day 882, 09:40 • Published in United Kingdom Ireland • by 1nterestingch4racter

At first glace, eRepublik seems like a game geared towards capitalism. If citizens work hard they can develop a business empire very early on in the game, be very successful and accumulate large sums of cash.

This is the system that seems most readily available when a new player joins the game, eagerly seeking out employment in the job market, often for a bare minimum wage as their productivity is negligible. As you progress through the game, you have the opportunity to improve your skills and get pay rises, mirroring a career path that one would take in real life.



However, from here we have two problems. The first is that the job market is limited at skill 7, meaning that the wages payable to skill 7 are the same paid to skill 12. You could of course bargain with your employer for a higher fairer wage, but they to will want to make as much money as possible and thus will only pay you in line with the market, excessively profiteering off your labour. This leads onto the second point which is that the average employee is a slave and totally at the mercy of the market. You are a worker not being paid fairly for your labour, but yet there are companies struggling to keep in profit and trying not to close altogether?



This is because of overproduction with a saturation of lower quality companies, caused by the easy availability of companies to the general populace, a problem caused by the supposed ‘fair and free society’ where everyone should have the right to compete and have freedom to do whatever they please. It doesn’t sound very fair to me, and it allows the rich with lots of higher quality companies to set their own prices and sell on their own terms, completely short changing customers.



This is a major problem for any prospective government wishing to wage war, as the vast quantities of weapons/tickets/gifts would cost an absolute fortune for the government, a fortune they could ill afford at a time when money needs to be spent on attacks and declarations. Another problem would be under a laissez faire administration, taxes would be considerably low already, with maximum profits for business. This would however backfire and would leave a government strapped of cash at its moment of glory.



However do not panic, it is not all despair and doom. There is a different way, a fairer way. An idea that both private enterprise and the state can flourish side by side, a society with a welfare state that helps and promotes new players. A state with a capable and effective military, where citizens are encouraged to play a more active and interesting part in society yet still have the individual freedoms promised by capitalism.

This utopian ideal is Socialism, and is the basis of my next article.

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