Disadvantages of a Market Economy

Here are the main disadvantages of a market economy as explained by Bertell Ollman:

1) Distorted investment priorities, as wealth gets directed into what will earn the largest profit and not into what most people really need (so public health, public education, and even dikes for periodically swollen rivers receive little attention);

2) Worsening exploitation of workers, since the harder, faster, and longer people work--just as the less they get paid--the more profit is earned by their employer (with this incentive and driven by the competition, employers are forever finding new ways to intensify exploitation);

3) Overproduction of goods, since workers as a class are never paid enough to buy back, in their role as consumers, the ever growing amount of goods that they produce (in the era of automation, computerization and robotization, the gap between what workers produce--and can produce--and what their low wage allows them to consume has increased enormously);

4) Unused industrial capacity (the mountain of unsold goods has resulted in a large percentage of machinery of all kinds lying idle, while many pressing needs--but needs that the people who have them can't pay for--go unmet);

5) Growing unemployment (machines and raw materials are available, but using them to satisfy the needs of the people who don't have the money to pay for what could be made would not make profits for those who own the machines and raw materials--and in a market economy profits are what matters);

6) Growing social and economic inequality (the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer, many absolutely and the rest in relation to the rapidly growing wealth of the rich);

7) With such a gap between the rich and the poor, egalitarian social relations become impossible (people with a lot of money begin to think of themselves as a better kind of human being and to view the poor with contempt, while the poor feel a mixture of hatred, envy and queasy respect for the rich);

8) Those with the most money also begin to exercise a disproportional political influence, which they use to help themselves make still more money;

9) Increase in corruption in all sectors of society, which further increases the power of those with a lot of money and puts those without the money to bribe officials at a severe disadvantage;

10) Increase in all kinds of economic crimes, with people trying to acquire money illegally when legal means are not available (and sometimes even when they are);

11)Reduced social benefits and welfare (since such benefits are financed at least in part by taxes, extended benefits generally means reduced profits for the rich; furthermore, any social safety net makes workers less fearful of losing their jobs and consequently less willing to do anything to keep them);

12) Worsening ecological degradation (since any effort to improve the quality of the air and of the water costs the owners of industry money and reduces profits, our natural home becomes increasingly unlivable);

13) With all this, people of all classes begin to misunderstand