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Capitalism, in one form or another, has been around for a very long time. Historians generally assign the start of modern capitalism to the 16th century, replacing the feudal system of the Middle Ages where bartering was the mainstay of trade. I won’t bore you with the effect the Crusades had on creating demand for spices or how satisfying consumer demand led to exploration, colonization, and exploitation. It did, and I will just leave it at that.

The driving force in capitalism is profit, the “bottom line” as we call it now. To that end, people started businesses, invested their money into their businesses, and if they were smart and a little bit lucky, their business grew and was successful. I have never begrudged anyone who started a business, ran it ethically, and made a profit. I myself had a lemonade stand when I was a small boy, and thanks to the neighborhood kids and my parents, I made a small profit. Never once did I engage in unethical or questionable business practices. I didn’t water the lemonade down and I used plenty of sugar. My cups were clean. I will admit I didn’t pay my taxes on that income, but since I didn’t know anything about taxes in 1962 and since the IRS only goes back three years, I think I am safe now.

The quest for profit isn’t always this wholesome and innocent. Sometimes this quest produces unusual or weird methods to secure a profit. At other times it produces methods that are at best unethical and at worst, just plain criminal. Gordon Gekko, the antagonist in the 1986 movie “Wall Street,” proclaimed at a shareholders' meeting that “greed is good.” Years later, I still hear people repeat this stale lie, and a lie it is. Greed is not good. A healthy desire is. A balanced yearning is. Greed, however, is not.

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Capitalism’s Children

What follows is what I consider to be the deformed offspring of an economic system that began with good intentions and has devolved into a nightmare.

If you have ever been in a restroom featuring pay toilets, you can see just how far the drive for profit can go. Seriously, I would love to meet the individual who thought of actually charging people to execute a bodily function. It has been a while since I have been in a restroom featuring these, but I can still remember clearly what it looked like.

In this bathroom, there were four stalls, and in order to enter the stall, a dime had to be inserted into a small mechanism much like those candy machines. Once the coin is inserted, a small handle is turned so the coin is deposited in the collection box and the door opens to unveil a private stall to unleash, well, whatever needs to be unleashed.

What about the people who don’t have a dime? What are they to do? No fear. The budding young capitalist that invented the pay toilet has the answer. Next to the stalls, hanging off the wall and in plain sight for all to see, was the free toilet. The choice facing everyone who entered was either to pay or perform for an audience. I never saw anyone using the free toilet.

Thank goodness.

Another strange product of capitalism is the way gasoline is priced. No other liquid product on the market is priced the way gasoline is. If I buy a gallon of organic, grass-fed, whole milk, it will cost me $6.99. If I buy a 12-ounce can of Pepsi, it will cost me $2.30. Gasoline, on the other hand, has an extra “9” in the price. A gallon of gas isn’t $5.19. Instead, it is $5.199, with an extra 9/10 of a cent added at the end. We don’t even have coins that small. How would someone pay for exactly one gallon of gas? It’s not even possible.

What is the point of this, and why hasn’t anyone stopped it? It is just plain stupid.

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Another strange phenomenon in our capitalist economy is charging people “application fees” when they want to rent an apartment. The logic behind it, I am told, is for the management to conduct a background check to determine if the person is financially stable and morally sound enough to rent to. On the surface, it seems to make sense. After all, no one wants to rent to someone who has a history of being unable to pay their rent or has a history of criminal activity.

If this is such a smart and justifiable action, why aren’t there application fees for jobs? Most employers do background checks and drug tests, and yet there is no cost to the applicant; nor are there application fees for credit cards, and banks always run an applicant’s credit history prior to approving a credit card application.

There is something incredibly odd about paying to apply for something that you will be paying for once you are approved. What’s next? An exit fee?

Speaking of paying for nothing, if you have ever been to a club that requires you to pay a “cover charge,” you are literally paying for the privilege of walking into the place. Clubs that have live music can be excused because their cover charge is more of a fee to hear the band. In that case, you are getting something for your money, not unlike buying a concert ticket. But that isn’t always the case. Many times you are simply paying in order to enter the place.

The funny thing is people pay for it and never question it.

Most people with checking accounts, at one time or another, have been hit with an “overdraft fee” for swiping their card when they didn’t have enough money in their account to cover it. The overworked and worn-out single mom, swinging by McDonald's to buy her screaming child a Happy Meal, later finds out that $5 Happy Meal cost her $40 because they tack on the “overdraft fee” because she is broke.

To the rational mind, what is really going on in this scenario is the bank is giving her a short-term loan until she puts more money in her account, which could be the next day or even the same day. For this “convenience,” they will charge upwards of $35 or more, depending on the bank.

Imagine for a moment that you asked me to loan you $5 until tomorrow. I agree to do it, but I tell you tomorrow you will have to pay me $40 for doing it. When you ask why $40, I tell you $5 is the repayment of the loan, and the remaining $35 is my “fee.” If you laughed at the outrageousness of my proposal, you would be well within your rights.

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Banks do this every single day to the poor. While there are no maximum interest rates set by the federal government (of course), individual states have their own usury laws that set the maximum interest rate allowed. None of the states have usury laws that would allow a bank to charge $35 interest on a $5 loan for one day. How do banks get away with this?

They call it a fee instead.

Banks are so arrogant about this that years ago William Cooper, the now-deceased CEO of TCF Bank, named his personal yacht “The Overdraft.”

Closely related to the overdraft fee is the default interest rate. The default interest rate is the rate credit card companies charge people when they are unable to make their monthly payments. Default interest rates can be as high as 35% or more, which makes an impossible situation even more impossible. The logic goes something like this. If you are unable to make your payment because you have no money, we are going to charge you even more money that you don’t have. As Robert Reich put it, “poverty charges interest.”

This kind of thinking is so far down the rabbit hole it will never find its way out.

In 1989, the method for determining a person’s eligibility for obtaining loans was started. This was the year the “credit score” was introduced. It was supposed to be an unbiased way of determining credit worthiness. Prior to this, lenders used different methods to determine whether or not a person was a good risk for a loan, including such discriminatory methods as zip codes.

On the surface, this credit score seems like a fair way to assess creditworthiness. It is based on five criteria: (1) payment history, (2) amount of debt owed, (3)credit history length, (4) credit mix, and (5) number of times a person has applied for new credit. From this information, a person is given a number from 300 to 850 as their credit score. The higher the number, the more creditworthy they are. Anything over 700 is generally considered a good credit score.

Problems arise when credit scores are used to determine things other than creditworthiness. For example, some employers want to know an applicant’s credit score as a way to judge a person’s moral makeup. The idea is if a person’s credit history is not good, it is a moral failing and this person might not be a good hire. If they have had credit problems, there are probably other things in their background that make them undesirable as well. Judgments are made about people based on their credit scores.

A job loss or an ugly divorce can decimate a person’s credit score. An otherwise good person who has maintained a high credit score their entire life can find themselves on the receiving end of the derision aimed at people who have low credit scores if they experience such an event. No one cares what your credit score used to be or how long you had it. They only look at now. If you have a credit score in the 600s, you will be deemed a loser regardless of your past history. You are a moral failure, a bad person.

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Perhaps the most morally repugnant aspect of capitalism stems from supply and demand. Under this capitalistic rule, when an item is in short supply, the price of that item goes up. To that end, we literally see food being destroyed in order to prop up the price. Most people can remember farmers dumping their milk to lower the supply so the price goes up, but less well-known is how much food is destroyed every day by supermarkets for the same reason.

Each day throughout the country, supermarkets are destroying perfectly good food because the arbitrarily made “expiration date” is drawing near. Very little of the food is donated or sold for less. In my article from 2021 “Confessions of a Grocery Store Worker,” I described in detail the food I threw out, and the reasons I was told I had to do it. In a nation where people struggle to find enough food, this act is criminal.

Many equate capitalism with freedom or even religion. Despite the fact capitalism is never mentioned in the Constitution, many would claim capitalism is the required type of economy in the United States. Despite the fact capitalism is never mentioned in the Bible, many would say capitalism is God’s law.

The truth is capitalism has evolved into another tool of enslavement, a way for the rich and powerful to retain control over everyone else. We have come a long way from my little lemonade stand, and capitalism continues to evolve. I shudder to think what is coming next.