Why I hate Capitalism!
Just Until the time I
moved to Cairo, earlier last year, I saw communism as a mere economic ideology
that does nothing but limit the deserving rich and deprive them of their
financial freedom while providing lazy losers with privileges they did not earn
and, consequently, saw capitalism as justice. As someone who lived in nowhere
but Dubai all my life, I simply did not know what poverty was and saw it as a
foreign notion. The capitalism I saw was, ‘There are people who are extremely
rich and people who are financially middle class.’ You get what you deserve!
What’s wrong with that?
Upon moving to Egypt,
I found myself in a status quo completely different from that of my former
residence. Egypt was a capitalist country to further extremes. My place of
residence there was Maadi, a high end suburb that was Egypt’s equivalent of
California’s Pasadena, yet obviously not as glamorous. It was classic suburbia
where housewives worked as teachers in the morning right after having their $10
breakfast at Starbucks, going shopping in Nine West or playing a tennis match
in one of the several community clubs made for this niche. The men chose
medicine or engineering for a career, basically conforming to a stereotype. My
life felt like a game of house, except for one bit!
My dad enrolled me in
a $5000 school which was, physically, a mile away, yet socially, another world.
An invisible social barrier, taller than the Great Wall of China itself, separated
high end Maadi from Tura, a slum where sanitation is viewed a privilege. It was
a world foreign to me. As I started walking to school every day, it felt like a
challenge as I stepped into the world of oblivion, a world crowded by shadows
of people who experienced hunger, poverty and pain firsthand, a world where pot
stash is treated like water. Everyone who lived there either worked as a driver
or maid for someone in Maadi, or in other cases, drug dealers and pimps.
I won’t deny it, at
first I was repulsed, disgusted at the mere idea of such beings crowding my
vicinity where the biggest concern was whether I was going win Student Council
President elections or not affording the trip to London my school is offering.
I blamed them for their ever-ailing circumstances until I found out that the
average Egyptian family’s net earnings per month was $150s, about as much as I
spent on MUN registration. How do you expect them to aspire, or even want, more
when they starve every night with no supper to give their kids? Upon further
analytical reflection, I think I’m starting to despise capitalism.
To conclude, neither
is capitalism, nor communism perfect. Each has its own strengths and flaws. Capitalism,
if implemented with appropriate governmental welfare schemes, for the
financially unstable, without being a controlling tool in the hands of the
upper socioeconomic class, would be a blessing that would bring about social
equality. Yet, in the world we live in, which dictates ‘survival of the fittest’,
I’d rather put my money on Communism!
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