the repercussions for capitalist idealism can and will implicate your conscience on many levels. i write this, with the presupposition that you do believe in good and evil. recklessly, i leave to chance that your concept of good and evil are based on common sense, a rather evasively slippery constant. if you have had the good fortune of experiencing the fruits of my society in 20 and 21st century america, then you are surely spoiled rotten to the core as i am. some things i have learned to accept about myself as an "evil capitalist" is that i do not believe that we are all free from discrimination or suffering. in fact, i owe much of any small amount of good character that i have benefited from to human suffering. i struggled for a stint with church plants whose plan was to develop amongst the affluent. this made me very skeptical of their motives. very large were their video screens, but very small were their kitchens and no showers at all. it was very clear to me who these people meant to serve. they had an account with the local gourmet coffee makers for sunday mornings. what became apparent to me however was that, despite the efforts of the clergy who could only know jesus on a very comfortably heterosexual upper middle class level, even the well situated of the society came through those doors with their own wellspring of secrets. the beauty of the downtrodden is that we can quickly assess their transgressions and forgive them thier sins, appearance and all. if we are aware you are a hooker, we are shocked, appalled, and quickly reminded of the short opening of hosea where God makes lemonade out of lemons. God doesn't abhor the whore, God abhors the fake... the imitation. why romanticize what is already beautiful? but the truth is, no matter how decent we are made, we are all guilty of committing acts that we are ashamed of. no matter how easily goodness comes to our hearts and acts, we cannot disrobe enough layers of shame and malady to make ourselves clean. so the issue remains: is one good act worth doing if it can't erase all the wrongdoing? is it really even valid to measure the amount of good against the amount of awful? is not some sunlight in the dreary not better than no sunlight at all? truly good men have a need for vindication. they may work the entire rest of their lives attempting to make right what they did wrong, never believing their good deeds outweighed the bad. but who in their right mind would condemn a man who spent the second half of his life doing good when he could just as easily have continued to serve only himself? utopianists will never be satisfied. it will always rain on the wrong day in the wrong season. enemies will always rise up against even the most well-meaning people. so what have i been forced to admit to myself? i believe i live in a society that has more effectively than ANY other civilization in the history of mankind averted tyranny. the imperfection of my society is only due to the shortcomings of its own people. the amount of aid my society has provided to foreign peoples abroad is unprecedented by any other empire in human history. i have come to accept that there is a version of fairness which i can only describe as biased by my own experience. justice will always be subjective to my needs and desires. there is no perfect system that can protect everyone from suffering, nor should there be. suffering is the very vehicle for compassion. all will agree that those who have not suffered are only acting in a counterfeit part. capitalism does not mean to discriminate against the weak or disadvantaged. capitalism provides the opportunity for men to make good decisions with their strength and power, just like liberty. take away their ability and we'll never know what good men are capable of. we remove the beauty of what is done under the rule of free will. tyrants and evildoers don't need money or even an advantage to conquer. they just need a will stronger than that of those who oppose them. terrible men take what they want regardless of the rules or consequences. they fear no judgement, nor punishment. utopian discussion completely disengages the concept of good and evil. most of the discussion i've been exposed to so far, depends heavily on the intentions of men but not on the results of their implementation. so which is it then: the intentions that cause suffering or the results? at least capitalism demands results and heeds little bearing to intent. we live in a world whose nature is performance based. only the best rockets achieve orbit. your honda civic is not going to get that airstream up that 45 degree grade. and most of us are going to lose a fist fight with a grizzly bear. it is true that what distinguishes us from the animals is our ability to defer our survivalist instincts in order to serve this thing we call a conscience. there is an element of decency that we expect from other humans that we don't expect from animals. regardless of this fact, strong willed men will do whatever it takes to obtain power, even with a vision of a world without suffering, they will make heroes out of miscreants. unless God gives strength to great men, we are all doomed. so where does my conscience lie? capitalists vote with their dollar. i am proud to say that i have introduced some people to the miracle of walmart. as target is irreplaceable in many arenas of my consumer needs, walmart has made a paycheck to paycheck existence realistic. since i have a predilection to fried chicken, kfc gets a visit or two from my pocket book. my laptops are intels but my self built desktops are amds. if a company delivers a product that serves my needs, then why shouldn't i invest in their product. it's been observed that companies are concerned with serving their customer base adequately. how many times has mcdonalds changed their grease and packaging to please the squeakiest wheel? and the rest of the fast food industry followed suit. companies care about what you care about. these people make commercials they think you will like. they are constantly tiptoeing around their employees hoping to provide an atmosphere that is acceptable to EVERYONE. it gets even more demanding in the free market where any high dollar client/customer can walk for any reason. they can just not like your price or just not like you and just move on. in many ways, a client is doing you a favor by putting their dollar in your service when there's another guy around the corner who will just as willingly deliver half the quality for the same price. we see the immense amounts of cash that get tossed around by major corporations and we get envious and jaded. but we forget about how much responsibility it took to accrue that kind of revenue. it's that kind of responsibility that we need to empower in a free society. agreed, that there are people who sit in unearned positions. but in a communist state, EVERYONE sits in an unearned position. so why do i favor capitalism? because it produces the most good. i don't think it's anywhere close to perfect, but the most realistic. perfect utopian systematic ideologies are best served by religious communities... let God deal with heaven and in the mean time let's do the best we can with what we have.