Capitalism, as I understand it, is an economic system (not a political system, though the Republican Party likes to claim it as their own) that relies on private ownership of capital and the sanctity of contracts to allow individuals produce wealth through taking advantage of their interests and abilities. It relies on the government to enforce ownership rights and contracts but otherwise resists government control.

Capitalism is the system that has allowed huge increases in productivity over the centuries that in turn have enabled some countries to support increases in population and classes of people who produce nothing but consume a lot, such as armies and investment bankers. Many countries, though, have increased populations that have overwhelmed their ability to support such growth.

When the Constitution was written, the new United States was a largely agrarian society, with artisans and craftsman providing support functions. This allowed communities to flourish with relatively little education, children learning what they needed to know to support themselves from their parents or through apprenticeships.

Since people knew the people they were dealing with, dishonesty was more easily visible, and honesty and hard work were rewarded with prosperity.

There was plenty of land available, as the Native population had no concept of private ownership and was overwhelmed by the weaponry of the invaders, and slave labor and exploitation of workers allowed many people to amass great wealth, which they in turn, needed to invest to support other enterprises.

During the pandemic, a phrase kept coming up — “essential workers.” They were food factory workers, sickness care workers, and teachers, forced to endure horrendous conditions for which they had not been trained, and they faced dying themselves.

Now the pandemic is officially over, and the teachers can’t get a contract, schools are cutting staff, and cost of “health” insurance is rising for those who can afford it.

Meanwhile, corporations are making record profits and lobbying to fight regulation. The majority Republican politicians insist we must reduce the federal deficit (which they bring up only when a Democrat is in the White House), but they refuse to consider increasing revenues (raising taxes, or even closing loopholes). And in the present-day economy, dishonesty pays.

In rural communities, most of the economy was exchange of goods and services within a small community. One’s reputation mattered, and a dishonest person would be noticed. In the modern economy, most of our goods and services are produced by people we don’t know, and how they are produced we don’t understand. Dishonesty flourishes, and honest people are thereby placed at a disadvantage.

Education is a necessity to reach the third rung of the economic ladder (the first two rungs have been knocked out), but teachers are among the lowest paid for the education required of them. Sickness care has become a luxury, except for the well-off or the very poor on Medicaid. Unions protecting the safety of workers are being undermined. Our children will pay the price.

The system that produced such growth in productivity is not providing for what have become requirements to continue the prosperity of the people doing the work.

A large part of the problem is in the tax code. It is the tax code that has produced the extreme inequality of wealth and control of capital in the hands of a small minority of the people, but that is a whole other subject and not enough space to get into in this column.

My conclusion is that what’s wrong with capitalism overlaps what’s wrong with the government systems and what’s wrong with the lack of integrity and wisdom in too many people. I have been considering what kind of government I would like to live under, but you can’t get there from here, and it would take a whole book to try to explain it.

Judith Truesdell lives in Shelburne.

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