Capitalism

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorCollege, Undergraduate February 2002

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Austin Traina February 7, 02 Dear Editor, Don't people sometimes need the help of others? Well so does the American government .The definition for this sort of thing is called capitalism , this by definition means the government can not interfere with businesses . I believe that the government can not have a pure capitalism , because we need rules and regulations to govern our vast amount of industries, or there could be complete chaos.

"Caveot Emptor" , meant buyer beware , this was a saying often used around the time of pure capitalism . This meant that the consumer had to watch out for his own welfare and the industry would not be at fault for any mishaps that should occur. A prime example of this was the meat packing industry and how things were handle and preserved and sanitary conditions. The meat packing industry was one of the biggest money making markets in the US at this time, but it was one of the most poorly supervised and poorly kept industries in the market .

In an excerpt from Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" he says, people who worked in there often got very sick with tuberculoses because of the poor working conditions like the freezing cold temperature in the winter which caused many deaths.

Then there were people who cut their fingers off into the meat and whole bodies were even burned and added to the meat. In another excerpt he talks about The triangle shirtwaist factory where almost 300 woman died because there were chains on the door s and a fire broke out and they couldn't get out . These kind of mishaps can never happen , that's why pure capitalism would never work in the USA because we need regulations about these shorts of things...