While these are some textbook examples of claimed shortcomings of Capitalism, but in reality, it is not that straightforward.
- Soviet Russia and Communist China had massive men-made environmental disasters.
- Most monopolies are created by the state sanctioned environment. Not all monopolies are bad. If anything that remotely resemble monopoly arise in relatively free market, it is because it serves the needs of the customers so well that it has out-competed all the other companies.
- If you dump hundreds of billions of dollars in something, sure, you might get some good out of it, but no one can quite measure if it was done efficiently or not. There's no good reason to assume to that such things would be have been only funded by government.
The fact that other society models are worse isn't relevant to my analysis. Capitalism is so far the best societal model, but that does not imply perfection.
Monopolies arising naturally do not imply that, for the society, the monopolistic status is the most efficient. It is the most efficient for the monopolist. Think of it as a local maximum. This is microeconomics 101.
If an investment in investigation produces mostly positive externalities, then the investor will not recoup his investment, even if the end result is better for the society as a whole. As such, these investments will not occur in free form capitalism, even though they would be positive for the society as a whole. I'm purposely removing risk from the analysis, as it does not affect the conclusion.
- Soviet Russia and Communist China had massive men-made environmental disasters.
- Most monopolies are created by the state sanctioned environment. Not all monopolies are bad. If anything that remotely resemble monopoly arise in relatively free market, it is because it serves the needs of the customers so well that it has out-competed all the other companies.
- If you dump hundreds of billions of dollars in something, sure, you might get some good out of it, but no one can quite measure if it was done efficiently or not. There's no good reason to assume to that such things would be have been only funded by government.
[edit] formatting