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PROFITS

So the concept of the profit is the problem? How much money would you say businesses often earn on the dollar in profits after paying the employee, electric bill, water bill, etc? Furthermore, profits provide the essential cog to the economy, the incentive to innovate and excel with respect to efficiency. Soviet and other socialist countries in which profits were either illegalized or greatly diminished experienced a recurring trend with their own directors of finances. Another issue in economies in which profits are not a priority is that determining the amount of instruments required in certain locations is often difficult. A common sight would be factories with warehouses filled with unused machinery because of an overestimation at the head of the government bureaucracy. Command economies are inefficient.

One principle to understand is IF within the capitalist system, if a business were to achieve high efficiency in creating commodities without being able to effectively distribute them to areas with highest demand, then they would suffer losses. Losses, like profits, drive business to increase the efficiency of production and allocation.

I would argue that the capitalist pricing system of distributing scarce resources to the areas of need is the best system available today. Centralized systems such as within Soviet Russia or China struggled to effectively distribute scarce resources even while the former country had an abundance of natural wealth. Prices, on the contrast, drive competition by creating an incentive for owners to create the most efficient means of allocating resources to areas in which the demand is the highest. Centralizing command economies and programs where there exists no advantage in increased efficiency, ie. government programs, lead to lethargic reallocation of resources. People prefer UPS rather than the should-be-dead USPS for a reason.

"That's why, for example, such a large portion of the world population is starving despite the fact that we already produce enough to feed 12 billion people." - Not the entire world is involved within capitalist economies. The areas with the greatest amounts of famines throughout the 20th century were often at the result of command economies such as the Soviet Union and China. Other countries in which profits were not permitted also had a distinctly lower quality of life for its people, ie. formerly socialist India.

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HOUSING.

For a long time, liberal cities such as San Francisco and New York tried to correct the problem of what they perceived to "high housing prices". This is an understandable altruistic desire. No one wants to NOT help the homeless. So these cities and many others called for an edict on maximum prices for basic housing. Theoretically, this would seem like a good way to protect renters from the greedy landlords who were just gouging people out of their hard earned money. Housing is a basic human right after all. So the government artificially lowered the cost of rent contrary to the price determined by the market. Basically, they made a SCARCE resource artificially cheaper and more accessible for more people. How on earth could that be bad?

Well, what would develop from the circumvention of the free market was now people were no longer seeking to share apartments with roommates as they could now afford to live comfortably by themselves. One study showed that up to 49% of San Francisco's housing under rent control were occupied by single individuals. People were no longer RATIONING the SCARCE resource of housing, instead they were "hoarding" the resource for themselves as they could afford to. Housing not susceptible to the city's rent control laws created a market for expensive yet humble conditions. Small San Francisco flats within the city rent can now go for over $1,000 a month. 1 room apartments for an excess of $1,000 a month. Need I repeat that? This is the result of supply and demand. Since the availability of housing decreased dramatically after the implementation of rent control, the subsequent market it produced outside of the law resulted in high costs of living for many residents.

But why still were the costs of housing outside of rent control so high? Large scale housing apartments need to create a profit or suffer the loss of control over the business, but these entities must also compete in the free market to keep their prices low and their living conditions maintained. In order to alleviate the losses incurred by rent control laws, housing outside of these laws would have to rise dramatically to ensure the business remains afloat. Furthermore, by removing the crucial INCENTIVE to create profits via rent control, the INCENTIVE to continue to create MORE housing decreased within these areas. If there exists a market and demand for a product, businesses and entrepreneurs will, in their own self interest, seek to create a better and more efficient product for those people.

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MOBILITY

One of the unfortunate realities of this world is that life is often unfair. But to tell people that they should give up on life because of the unfortunate circumstances in which they arise is inhumane and is justifying reckless albeit logical discourse they might take in the future so long as the benefits outweigh the risk/cost.

You pointed out a number of obvious conditions that lead to lives lost to poor upbringings, but what is important is the course of action that needs to be taken to correct this. How do we solve these issues? People act out of their own volition and self interest. If they choose not to make the proper choices to assure a greater chance of leaving such areas, then they place fault upon anyone else but their own. That is why there ARE success stories emerging from these horrible neighborhoods and an example from Compton would be Seattle Seahawk All-Pro Cornerback Richard Sherman. Richard, from my knowledge, actually did not receive athletic scholarships, but rather understood (along with his mother) the implications of a quality education. He managed to receive academic scholarships to this nobody school in California known as Stanford University. He and his mother made the appropriate choices that paid off.

But, I ask, how do we help the others that don't perhaps have the ability of Richard?