Why does anyone still question capitalism as the basic engine for economic growth? From what used to be the Soviet Union to China, capitalism has gained recognition as the best way to achieve broad-based economic success. However, individuals like Alexi Goranov, who wrote an article for the November 20 issue of The Tech (“Capitalism and Functioning Democracy Are At Odds”), believe that capitalism is inherently flawed. This is ignorance.

Capitalism has flaws, but these are flaws in implementation and are not inherent to the concept. Everyone must recognize this. There is a tendency, in times of financial turmoil, to declare the end of capitalism. It is a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument: Because the crisis occurred in capitalist countries, capitalism must have caused the crisis. Of course, the financial crisis and subsequent recession demonstrate that something went wrong. Too much greed, a lack of transparency in financial markets and the housing bubble all played some role in the collapse. Exactly what went wrong is up for debate, but a recession certainly does not prove the failure of capitalism. It merely needs a tune-up.

The climate is ripe for opponents of capitalism to take aim. Preying on economic fears, opponents make seemingly reasonable arguments against capitalism. These arguments are only reasonable because of the economic climate. Suggestions for less capitalism rest upon an assumption that the solutions are better than the problem.

Goranov’s argument is based on logical fallacies and misrepresentations from the beginning. He defines the right to equality as “the right to equal access to labor and life.” He assumes that these principles do not exist in a capitalist society. Equality of opportunity defines a capitalist society. Likewise, there is no logical reason why the right to life cannot exist in a capitalist society. The United States Declaration of Independence cites “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” among inalienable rights. The biggest violators of the right to life have not been capitalist countries, but communist countries!

Capitalism works. Opponents of capitalism can bring up examples of when alternative economic structures have worked, but these are trivial cases. Goranov cites small-scale collectives in areas near Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War as examples of the success of collectivization while ignoring the biggest examples of collectivization. The large-scale examples, the examples that matter, are of colossal failure. Collectivization in the Soviet Union led to bread lines and economic collapse. Mao’s Great Leap Forward led to widespread famine.

Compare that to the United States. Although we have poverty, it has never neared the scale of any largely collectivized economy.

Goranov could make an effective case for changing capitalism. His evidence of corporate bullying, using the example of the pharmaceutical industry, provides a compelling reason to try and address that problem. However, it is not the case for communism, collectivization, or socialism. It is the case for fixing capitalism’s flaws.

Fixing capitalism might involve some level of greater government intervention in the economy. Ensuring transparency in financial markets, regulating the shadow banking system and reorganizing effectively nationalized financial institutions are all options to help repair capitalism in the United States. While some may label these measures socialist, they unquestionably leave the market-driven economy largely intact. The implications of Mr. Goranov’s article are too extreme. The United States can adjust its economy without overturning it.

There is a reason why the United States is the sole economic superpower in the world. Free markets have allowed America to become enormously prosperous. Some segments of society have benefitted more from this prosperity than others. To fix this, we can tailor economic policy to benefit society as a whole, but we must never take away economic freedom.

Charles B. Barr is a member of the Class of 2013.

On December 7, world leaders will descend on Copenhagen for the United Nations Climate Change Conference to determine the future of planet Earth. Or at least they should. So far only 65 national leaders have actually committed to attending the talks. Notable absentees include president Hu Jintao of China and Barack Obama. These politicians, by waiting until the last moment to commit to attending the conference, hope to be portrayed in the media as the saviors of the planet, as the deal clinchers for a sustainable future. Unfortunately, they will be disappointed. Not only will the world not be saved in Copenhagen, because there will not be a treaty to sign, but also there is only one man who can truly salvage the process and play the hero: Barack Obama.

The number of Americans who believe that anthropogenic global warming is occurring has fallen to almost a third. The majority simply do not think it’s that big a problem. This surge in skepticism is the result of public fatigue with the threat of climate change (it’s difficult to understand, the messages we receive are contradictory, and its effects seem far away) and also because of the recession. Climate change isn’t quite as scary as unemployment.

But the scientific consensus hasn’t changed ­— only public opinion. Yes, we have been in a short period of global cooling, but I’d be more suspicious if the temperature changes were linear: Climate is sufficiently stochastic to make variation expected and so what matters is the trend, not the fluctuation. Which means climate change is just as serious a problem as it was in 2006, when 77 percent of Americans believed global warming was occurring. Despite the slump in public support, climate change requires international attention more than ever.

To limit the global temperature rise to 2°C (36°F), we need to cut emissions by 50 percent before 2050. Should the average global temperature rise exceed 2°C, the game may be up and we will truly be at the mercy of an increasingly inhospitable climate. To reduce exposing ourselves to this climate risk, we have to try both adaptation and mitigation. Adaptation involves developed countries paying $100 billion into the so-called “Mexico fund.” This money will be spent in developing countries to help cope with climate change (80 percent of the impacts of climate change will be felt in the developing world). Mitigation, on the other hand, requires both an 80 percent cut of emissions from developed nations and a 25 percent cut by the industrializing countries.

The need for international cooperation is revealed by the rise of China. Although 77 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gases have in the past been from the developed world countries, China is now the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, and under business-as-usual China would emit as much greenhouse gases in the next 40 years as the U.S. has done since the industrial revolution. So, to prevent climate change, Obama needs to get the Chinese on board. The question is: How?

Above all, any climate treaty will depend on international trust. The Chinese are concerned about environmental issues: spending on their “Green New Deal” reached $221 billion (compared to the paltry $23 billion spent by the E.U., and $112 billion spent by the U.S.), but they will not commit to further reductions in carbon dioxide emissions if they do not think that the U.S. and other developed countries will stick to their side of the bargain. And they have every reason to be suspicious.

Although the E.U. has instituted a carbon-trading scheme and reduced its carbon emissions in line with the Kyoto Treaty, the U.S. lags behind other developed nations in its environmental efforts. The United States signed, but never congressionally ratified Kytoto and instead of the 7 percent reduction of carbon emissions intended, the U.S. has since then increased its emissions by 16.8 percent. Similarly, healthcare reform currently dominates the political agenda, delaying the establishment of a carbon-trading market. The Chinese see this, and rightly ask whether it is believable that the US will actually be able to cut their emissions by the required amount.

For the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference to be a success, as part of a “one treaty, two steps” approach, requires the following: there must be agreement on domestic policies for reducing emissions in the developing world, the creation of the “Mexico fund” to pay for adaptation in the developing world, true emissions reduction targets for the developed nations, the creation of a body to assess whether countries are making sufficient efforts to meet their targets, and finally, a roadmap for the signing of a treaty in 2010. For any of these goals to materialize, President Obama must turn up in Copenhagen to reassure the Chinese that the U.S. is ready to take a lead on an issue they have long shirked responsibility over. Obama must also announce America’s short-term emission reduction targets, say 25 percent by 2020, to prove that the U.S. is ready to act now, and not at some point in the indefinite future. If Obama doesn’t take Copenhagen seriously, we will all be left to face the disastrous consequences of climate change.

Erasmus K. zu Ermgassen is an exchange student from the University of Cambridge in the Cambridge-MIT Exchange program.

Lobby 7 is already a beautiful architectural space, to which the apparently empty plinths (waiting for the viewer’s imagination, or the viewer’s person, to fill them in) contribute greatly. Putting in statues, even classical ones in keeping with the Roman feeling of the lobby, would detract from the effect; worse yet would be inserting artwork so trendily contemporary as to turn one of the main entrances to the Institute into a permanent display of one decade’s taste.

I admit that MIT has been fortunate in most of its sculptural choices for the last century, acquiring works of permanent value like the Calder stabile and navigating well the transition from Edwardian classicism to midcentury abstraction and beyond. Unfortunately, over the last twenty years an increasing ostentation has been manifesting itself, as much in the concealment of infrastructure and prettifying of rugged interior spaces as in more spectacular follies. One cannot help observing that this trend has coincided with a period of bad financial investments by the Institute and an erosion of its distinctiveness.

Instead of filling the empty plinths, perhaps an effort should be made to conserve one of the finest and least-known artworks on display in Greater Boston: the mural diptych in the hallway leading to Building 14. This (so far as I know) anonymous work draws a remarkable and unexpected parallel between two well-known myths of great relevance to science, and has far more to do with the ethos and mission of MIT than most of the better-known pieces around campus.

The fundamental debate is whether the right to increases in capital and property supersedes the right to equality, i.e. the right to equal access to labor and life. If the two rights are considered absolute they cannot coexist; one destroys the other (per “What is Property” by French anarchist Joseph-Pierre Proudhon).

If the right to collect capital at the expense of the wellbeing of others is deemed fundamental, then some form of capitalism is the answer. However, if the right to equality, meaning the right to labor and life, is fundamental, then we have to come up with alternatives, and these alternatives need to strengthen the ability of people to govern their own affairs collectively and individually.

The ability to govern one’s affairs also implies that control over resources and the means of productions needs to be shared among people. The attack on property rights that is implicit in this argument is not an attack on the people’s rights to own a house, or a car, or enough land to provide for themselves. It is an attack on the rights of a private entity to exclusively own natural resources (mines, water, land) and means of production (factories and shops) at the expense of all other people who depend on those resources for existence.

For the democratic process to be meaningful, those who are affected by a decision should participate in the decision-making. Democracy and inequality are mutually exclusive. This has been argued by Aristotle, who surmised that in a functioning democracy the dispossessed masses will use the democratic process to redistribute wealth and resources more equally, something that recently happened in Bolivia.

So in a situation with rampant inequality the choices are to decrease inequality, or to restrict democracy (see Noam Chomsky’s Understanding Power). That was well understood by our “Founding Fathers,” who chose the latter. They instituted different tools into the system to keep the “less desirable element” (landless peasants, workers, women, slaves, Native Americans, etc.) out of most of the decision making, while keeping moneyed individuals fairly equal and protected from the mob and from each other (see The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It by Richard Hofstadter or An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States by Charles Beard).

These principles have been taken and perverted to an extent that even the “Founding Fathers” would find repulsive. The Fourteenth Amendment should protect the equal rights of freed slaves, but of the cases citing this amendment that were brought to the Supreme Court in the years 1890–1910, 19 had to do with the rights of African-Americans and 288 had to do with corporate rights (People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn). That hints at what group is more capable of protecting its rights, the “haves” or the “have not’s.”

Due to present and profound inequality, the ability of most people to influence the country’s politics is virtually nonexistent, pressing a button every four years notwithstanding. On the other hand, corporations, with their limitless cash and influence, can buy and bully the government into passing legislation that is opposed by the majority of people.

To illustrate the point, the current health care fiasco makes a nice case study. According to a 2005 study by BusinessWeek, 67 percent of the population favors a “single-payer,” aka Medicare-for-All, not-for-profit healthcare system that covers everyone (BusinessWeek, May 15, 2005). That is two-thirds of the population. Yet, in our “democratic” system, “single-payer” is not even discussed in Congress. The reason is obvious: It cuts deeply into the profits of insurance and drug companies, and since profits, in the true spirit of capitalism, are more important than people, the “single-payer” legislation (HR.676) is ignored and dismissed. Instead, after a lot of fighting to beat back any chance of a reasonable and meaningful reform, we get a bill with a very weak “public option,” which is likely to be stripped down further in the Senate, a shameful anti-choice amendment. This will likely be coupled with many gifts to the drug industry, such as ensuring certain drugs will never be generic.

A study by IMS Health estimated that the new healthcare bill will bring the drug industry an increase in sales by $137 billion over the next four years (“Democracy Now!” November 12, 2009). Guess who will have to pay that extra $137 billion? A pretty good deal for Big Pharma, but this bill was not cheap for the insurance and drug companies. They paid Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the guy in charge of drafting the legislation, at least $3.5 million. In the first quarter of 2009, Pfizer alone spent $6 million on “lobbying,” although bribing is a better word for it (Z Magazine, October 2008). The Washington Post reports that the drug industry was spending $1.4 million per day on lobbying for the current legislation (Z Magazine, October 2008). Insurance companies also hit the mother lode: individuals and families will be forced to buy private insurance, or pay penalties.

There is nothing efficient in this process. It is wasteful and inefficient in terms of providing healthcare, but it does what it is there to do: secure profits for corporations. What capital wants, capital gets; forget about what millions of Americans actually want or need. “Privatize profit, socialize cost and risk” has always been the corporate motto. The examples are limitless. Just to point to one more, as of November 2009, 58 percent of people are against the war in Afghanistan, yet the government is considering an escalation.

Under the current system, particularly when talking about corporations, people are not in control of what they produce; the corporate board of directors is. Let us take another recent example that illustrates who runs the show. In 2005, residents of a neighborhood of New London, CT were forcefully evicted from their homes after years of legal battles over the concept of “Eminent Domain” (“Democracy Now!” Nov. 13, 2009). The homes were condemned to make space for a private development project, with part of the idea being to make the area more likable to the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. The development was supposed to bring thousands of jobs. Recently Pfizer announced that it will shut down its research facility in New London and move to another town. Now the lots where people lived and children played are vacant and overgrown.

The first point is that the lives and well-being of people were sacrificed to cater to a big corporation; nothing new there. The second and more important point is that people who may be affected by a corporation have no say in what the corporation does. If a corporation wants to shut down a plant because it is not profitable to operate, or wants to shift production abroad because it is cheaper, the people in the community and the workers have no control over these decisions although their livelihoods may depend on it. Very democratic, isn’t it?

That efficient production is only possible under the conditions of profit-making, competition, and market discipline is a myth. Let us look at a historic example. During the Spanish Civil War, areas of the country (mostly near Barcelona) became under workers’ control and industry and agriculture were socialized/collectivized. Production was shifted towards what was needed, not what was profitable. What were the results? Workers put in extra effort and production in certain areas of industry increased by 10-fold (Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship by Noam Chomsky), new industries, such as optical and chemical, were developed (The Anarchist Collectives: Workers’ Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1939 by Sam Dolgoff), and agricultural production increased by 50 percent to 75 percent (Anarchism by Daniel Guerin).

No one has the right to dictate to people how to live their lives. That is as true for totalitarian regimes as it is true for private, corporate tyrannies! Only people can collectively decide on how to organize their existence and economy. This is the meaning of democracy, and if we are to have democracy not just in form but in substance, people across all classes need to become much more involved in how the country is run. The abolition of child labor, the institution of an 8-hour working day, Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, etc. were not gifts from the government. These achievements were won by disadvantaged people refusing to be passive bystanders, and by working and bleeding together to win the rights that they deemed fair. So there are examples before us. The question is: Will we follow them?

Alexi Goranov is a postdoc at the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.

Do you think that social networking tools like Facebook and MySpace are eliminating the need for real social interaction? I was doing an Internet survey the other day that was about interactions with close friends — something along the lines of, “list your top five friends, and then list the last way you communicated with them.” For me, few of my closest friends live in the same city as me, so my answers largely involved some form of electronic communication — e-mail, instant messaging, text messaging and others.

To be sure, there’s a difference between posting your status on Facebook as a way of communicating with your friends and family and actually sending personalized messages back and forth via some other form of electronic communication. But is this kind of communication anything like speaking to them in person? It is certainly convenient, and even leads to more live interaction in some cases, though some of the key differences are obvious. You can’t hug your old friend through the Internet, and you can’t use social cues like gaze to interpret what the person means when he or she says it. Communication is generally stripped of all other nonverbal cues as well, including things like prosody and speech disfluencies in the case of text conversations.

It’s been said that one reason humans tend to find mates for life (or at least try our darnedest to achieve this) is because we want another person to attest to our life history — to witness the unfolding of our years. Honestly, my life is pretty well documented through electronic media. Facebook has years worth of pictures and comments and messages, my e-mails go way back, I have accounts on Tumblr and Flickr and Livejournal and Twitter and even OKCupid. I have poetry online that I wrote in high school and my middle school website is still around somewhere on Angelfire.

Do we really need people anymore?

When I posed this question to my friends, one of them responded that he completely understood — we have an innate desire to be recorded, so it’s quite consistent with human nature that we would endeavor to record our own lives in a public forum.

When I mentioned this article to my boyfriend and suggested that online social communities may be able to document our lives and eliminate the need for documentation by another human being, his response was, “You think Facebook eliminates our desire to get married?” No, the issue is a little more complex. First of all, I would like to hope that getting married is about a bit more than documentation! But second of all, when another human being can attest to one’s thoughts, actions, and feelings, there are surely different consequences from those that come from posting what you ate for lunch on Twitter, or posting a Facebook update asking friends which party to go to on Saturday night.

For one thing, when someone else is your witness, the persistence of your thoughts and feelings comes from a second perspective; from someone who has had to adapt their theory of mind to understand what you were experiencing. And that second perspective can last through time. Although you can certainly look up something that was posted on a blog a few weeks ago, being able to access a lifetime of status updates is probably something that will not be as possible. And then, there is also the issue as to how honest people are in social forums compared with their willingness to open up to friends or romantic partners.

What is interesting is that the tendency to be open in online forums can, at times, cross a fine line between fostering communication and over-sharing. Take Julia Allison’s Nonsociety blog, where nearly every minute of her life is recorded via some medium, whether it be text, photograph, or video. Such pseudo-celebrities have received negative criticism for being outlandish and egocentric. But why is she a celebrity? Because she has a big mouth and a nice wardrobe, and she pushed her way to the top.

One of my colleagues recently told me his opinions on such blogs — “Why do people feel the need to record everything they put into their mouths? Half of those damn things are obsessed with mundane day-to-day details, like what you ate for dinner last night.” Apparently someone cares, because those blogs still have plenty of followers. And likely, they are the people that are there to help document that blogger’s life.

Why are we so interested in the minutiae of others’ lives? Westerners certainly get a big kick out of following celebrities’ antics and also from the voyeurism inherent in watching films and reading literature. It might be because we want to relate to the human condition (why else do we get so excited when Woody Allen breaks through the fourth wall and relates his dilemmas to us directly?). Social networking sites definitely make it easier to understand more about the current thoughts and feelings — the synchronic “human condition” — of our friends and acquaintances. And the possible consequences of such free-flowing personal information? Probably both positive and negative, as with many technological innovations. As information flows faster and freer, time will tell whether or not this online social networking fad is as transient as the ’zines of the early ’90s.

Melissa Troyer is a graduate student in Course IX.

I was excited to read a letter written to The Tech on November 3rd by Rachel Sealfon, “Where are the College Democrats.” It is a question I and many other members of the College Democrats of Massachusetts have asked. MIT is world-renowned for being on the forefront of political action and social thought in our nation, so why is it that there is no organized group of College Democrats on campus? I worked last year as the Student Coordinator for the Obama campaign in Massachusetts, and saw firsthand the amazing work that “MIT for Obama” accomplished. Leaders of that group, like Catherine Havasi ’03 and Shankar Mukherji G, were able to register hundreds of MIT students from “Obama swing states” to vote in that state, where their vote could make a difference. Imagine the work an organized and established group could do on behalf of the re-election campaigns of Governor Patrick, President Obama, and many other progressives. So here is my challenge: the Executive Board of the College Democrats of Massachusetts will sit down with anyone interested in starting a MIT College Democrats chapter, anytime, anyplace. Feel free to contact me, (508) 241-6200 or johnsonp@macollegedems.org.

Recently, I was jogging near my dorm when I passed a group of people holding bunches of red helium balloons that read, “Boycott Hyatt.” Curious, I approached a protester and asked him why he wanted to boycott the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, a hotel next to Tang Hall patronized by MIT visitors, parents, and scientific meetings.

He told me that at the end of August, ninety-eight housekeepers had been fired from this Hyatt and from two other Hyatts in the Boston area (the Hyatt Regency Boston and the Hyatt Harborside at Logan International Airport).

I jogged on, and when I got back to my dorm room, I looked up “boycott Hyatt” on Google News. By all accounts, the Hyatt treated its staff abysmally. Some of the housekeepers had worked for Hyatt for over twenty years, yet they were given no advance notice that they were to be fired. The housekeepers claim that they were asked to train the workers who replaced them under the pretense that these workers would fill in for them when they were sick or on vacation. The housekeepers were originally paid $14–16 dollars per hour, with health benefits, while the staff who replaced them earn about $8 per hour, with no benefits.

“They kick us out without notice on our last day of work,” housekeeper Serandou Kamara told the New York Times. “The way they treat us was like animals.”

So far, Hyatt has done little to remedy the situation. The hotel chain has offered to employ the housekeepers at a staffing agency at their current rate of pay through the end of 2010 and continue their health care benefits through March 2010. Understandably, the housekeepers have not been enthusiastic about this offer ­— after all, at the end of a year they would likely only be able to find jobs for the kind of temporary agency that displaced them. “We will not accept temp positions that are designed to put others out of work,” fired housekeeper Lucine Williams, who worked for Hyatt for almost 22 years, told the Boston Globe. A number of organizations, businesses, and politicians, including Governor Deval Patrick, have called for a boycott of the Hyatt as a result of these layoffs.

If the MIT community joins the governor in boycotting the Hyatt, we may be able to have a real impact on this issue — MIT does a lot of business at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge. Plus, MIT has a hotel services partnership agreement with the Hyatt. Many conferences that are affiliated with MIT take place at or direct attendees to stay at the Hyatt, including the Alumni Leadership conference in September and the System Design and Management and iGEM conferences in October. The MIT Research and Development Conference, scheduled for November 17–18 and described on its website as a “flagship MIT conference,” has reserved a block of rooms for attendees at the Hyatt. A number of MIT conferences scheduled in 2010 have reserved rooms in or are taking place at the Hyatt as well. The location of the Hyatt is indicated on printed campus maps. During freshman parents’ weekend, many parents of freshmen stayed at the Hyatt. Parents of members of the senior class may soon consider making room reservations at the Hyatt in preparation for graduation.

However, it’s not enough to just avoid the Hyatt without letting them know why you will not do business with them. In order for a boycott to be effective, the Hyatt must know that you choose to avoid it because of how they have treated their workers. So, tell your parents not to stay there, schedule your conference elsewhere, direct your visitor to another hotel and write to the Hyatt to let them know why. You can let Hyatt know that you are disappointed by how they’ve treated their workers by signing the pledge at http://www.hotelworkersrising.org/hyatt100/pledge.php, and by writing to Michael Hickey, the General Manager of the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, at michael.hickey@hyatt.com.

Rachel Sealfon is a graduate student in Course VI.

The recently filed will of Jeffry Picower, who granted 50 million dollars to MIT (2001 to 2005) to fund the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, specifies that much of his remaining assets be placed in a new charitable foundation devoted largely to funding medical research. What will be receiving attention at the MIT Treasurer’s office no doubt is that the will directs that the new foundation in its first year grant MIT an additional 25 million dollars for the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. It is now known from court filings in the Madoff case that Jeffry Picower received over 7 billion “net” in phony profits from the Madoff Ponzi, and that this constitutes the bulk of his wealth. So I ask:

Is Madoff Ponzi money passed through a tax free foundation sufficiently laundered to accept, or should it be considered dirty, stolen money that should be rejected? Should MIT accept the 25 million additional dollars for the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory that a new Picower foundation may soon grant, or in fact any additional money from Barbara Picower and the Picower estate, given that the source of most of this money is the Madoff Ponzi?

I thank The Tech for its recent article about MIThenge, particularly for the aspects about etiquette during the event.

Potential observers may wish to know that the current best source of predictions (and why making such predictions is harder than it might seem) can be found at http://futureboy.us/mithenge/, which is updated at regular intervals. If you would like to help make predictions more accurate (and earn the thanks of many), please read that page for how to observe in a way that will be the most helpful.

As one who is particularly fascinated by the synergistic relation between people and architecture (how architecture affects people and how people interpret and affect architecture), I find the plinths in Lobby Seven to be one of the most endearing and defining aspects of MIT. What many may not know is that William Welles Bosworth, the architect of MIT’s main academic buildings, also intended to erect a three-story statue of Minerva in front of Building 10. However, such an enormous idol was vetoed by Richard Maclaurin, President of MIT, during its transition from Boston to Cambridge, and it soon became a running joke between the two (Bosworth was adamant about the Minerva, but President Maclaurin would have none of it). As such, when one enters Killian Court nowadays, he or she is greeted by the overwhelming mass of the buildings themselves, topped by the imposing dome of Barker Library —much more representative symbols of the Institute than a literal and figural (not to mention gargantuan) representation of wisdom.

I should like to think that the reason the Lobby 7 plinths have remained empty to this day stems from President Maclaurin’s vehemence towards Bosworth’s Minerva; namely, that the Institute was conceived, as many affectionately call it, as an “idea factory.” The Infinite Corridor, the tunnel systems, the exposed pipes, and the generally austere and functional nature of MIT’s architecture all stem from this idea that higher education should be productive and not a “collegiate retreat.” MIT has always been about the larger issues and moving forward. In this sense, the buildings should be tools for its inhabitants and stimuli for the production of new ideas, not temples of wisdom.

Thus I find it strange that the current proposal to “fill” Lobby Seven’s plinths has been “enthusiastically received by the administration.” I should like to think that the empty plinths are the most apt symbols of what MIT stands for: its students. On any given day, you will notice students reading, sleeping, waiting for friends, or coding on laptops atop these pedestals. It fills me with great happiness to walk through and see not a dead philosopher or work of abstract art but a real, living student (many times someone I know) atop one of Lobby Seven’s plinths. It makes me feel that MIT is proud enough of its students to let them sit atop the pedestal and greet newcomers and tourists instead of a cold statue of a person who has already been enshrined in the annals of history. It’s these kind of idiosyncrasies that give the Institute its character and distinguishes it from other schools.

This is not to say that I am unappreciative of the Class of 1954’s efforts to contribute to the Institute. Their generosity and willingness to solicit ideas from the current student population are admirable and representative of the kind of consideration, communication, and transparency that ought to be encouraged. I merely recommend that their resources and efforts be directed at other portions of campus in more desperate need of “improvement,” such as the Stratton Student Center.

Ken M. Haggerty is a member of the Class of 2011.

In his November 6 column in The Tech, entitled “Who Does Capitalism Really Work For?,” Alexi Goranov argues that, given the current economic and social state of America, it is clear that there must be an overhaul of the system. Greedy corporations and those in the upper echelon of the economic ladder have stopped at nothing to profit at the expense of America’s working class. The system has rewarded the few while failing to provide for the majority of Americans. Therefore, it is our responsibility to initiate a new, democratic way of doing things, one that puts people before money.

This seems like a plausible argument. Yet what is its moral basis? Although not explicitly stated, the premise is that people have a right to certain things and it is society’s job to provide them. If I need something, it is the job of someone else to produce it for me. As Obama aptly put it in a recent speech on race, “Let us be our brother’s keeper.” The products of society are resources, to which all, at least to some extent, are entitled to. However, society is not an entity. It is made up of individuals, who themselves have inalienable rights. If it is society’s responsibility to provide for our needs, then the reality is that it is the job of some person to produce for the benefit of someone else. A socialist system is based upon this moral code.

Everyone has one fundamental right: a right to life. This doesn’t mean a right to healthcare or Social Security. Instead, it means that everyone has a right to live their own lives as they see fit, to follow a set of values which they have chosen. In essence, everyone has a right to freedom. In this sense, the moral code described above violates this right. It holds that people owe something back to the community, that property can be taken in the name of the collective.

Society cannot produce anything. It has no rights. Therefore, society cannot claim anything for itself. Men and women, on the other hand, produce everything and have rights. Democracy is no justification of the alternative. A majority does not have a free pass to violate the rights of a minority.

This is the moral justification of capitalism. It is a system that respects property rights and allows people to function as free individuals, just as the Founding Fathers envisioned. People interact with each other voluntarily in such a system, valuing and trading goods and services only when they see a benefit for themselves. Capitalism is not evil. It is not a necessary flaw to be tolerated. It is the system that has made the United States the wealthiest nation in the world. It is the reason why for hundreds of years immigrants have left their homes to follow their dreams in the land of opportunity. It allows all people to live at their highest potential, enjoying the fruits of their own productive work with the guarantee that it is theirs.

You have every right to disagree with and criticize this argument. Yet the debate must be relevant to the subject at hand. Capitalism is a social and economic system, not a political one.  As Michael Moore shows in Capitalism: A Love Story, fraud in the government has been rampant. There are some corporations that wield sizable influence in government policy, which they use to cheat the system and gain even more profits. Fraud is wrong, but the solution is not to reevaluate our social and economic system. Rather, we should question the effectiveness and functioning of the government. Moore says that the $700 billion dollar financial bailout was in many ways a result of the greed of  bankers who happened to have connections in the Treasury Department. It was immoral, even from a capitalist point of view. Corporations, just like individuals, do not have a right to be saved at the expense of others.

Another argument that is often made against capitalism as seen in America is the growing gap between the rich and the poor. Depending on your value system, you may or may not be troubled by such statistics. From a capitalist point of view, this is not so bad. In a society that rewards productive achievement, some people are going to be richer, possibly by a lot, than others. In an ideal capitalist system, a person gets wealthy when other people value the products of his or her work. As a nation gets wealthier, it is generally true that the rich will get richer at a greater rate than the poor will get better off.

Yet this is because the richest members of society are, in an ideal system, producing the most. This is not to say that America is a perfect model of such a social and economic order, but it does employ many of its basic principles. Everyone benefits from the work of productive individuals, including the poor. America is so wealthy because Americans produce things that are of value to people all over the world.

By redistributing wealth, or increasing equity, it is a basic economic principle that efficiency will decrease as a result. The morality of such an exchange is implicit in the philosophy of capitalism. People will not and by no means should be expected to do their best work when they are not in control of what they produce.

Capitalism works because it respects property rights. Individuals interact with each other only on a voluntary basis, when they see a benefit. The extent to which our nation has practiced these principles has made us one of the wealthiest and most productive countries on the planet, whose citizens enjoy a standard of living well above that of the vast majority of the global population. Our country definitely has many problems that need to be addressed. Yet I think the answer is not to overhaul or even restrict capitalism. Rather, a more effective solution might be to make our political system more compatible with our economic one. To ensure that the government performs its most crucial responsibility, to protect the most fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, above else.

This discussion has not been intended to be an exhaustive argument in favor of capitalism. Rather, it has been intended to add another dimension to the debate and address some of the important points which I felt had been missing so far. America is at a turning point. In light of the financial collapse, issues with healthcare and the waning competitiveness of our education system, just to name a few, it is clear that things need to be done differently. What exactly needs to be done differently is the subject of a very important dialogue, one for which I have sought to initiate a framework. I encourage you to contact me at kafisher@mit.edu if you have found any of this compelling and would like to contribute to this debate.

Kevin Fisher is a member of the Class of 2012.