The Pros And Cons Of Capitalism

Capitalism, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is “an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.” A part of America’s society for decades, it has been a poison of corruption in our government. Our capitalist government is failing us and we see it in our education system, environment, and wars.

Before understanding the relationship between capitalism and consumers, it is important to know each one individually. Capitalism basically means that a countries market is controlled by private owners instead of the government. A consumer is someone who purchases products and services provided by these private owners. It is very easy to see the relationship of giving and taking between consumers and corporations, without one the other cannot function properly. In the very distant past, there was no need for this type of relationship, if something was needed they made it or gathered it. Life was short and hard, so no one thought to make a surplus of an item and sell it to others for profit. It wasn’t really until the 1700’s during the industrial revolution where products could be mass produced that the free market came to be. The problem with capitalism’s relationship with consumers is that corporation’s control consumption, corporations breed consumers, and can target consumers around the world.

According to the biological perspective, drug use may start off as casual, but through continued use, it produces changes in the brain that influences the onset and maintenance of drug addiction. (Horvath et al., 2013). Drugs have their most prominent effects on the function of neurotransmitters. Almost all major drugs of abuse activate the reward system and cause a flood in the levels of dopamine which is a neurotransmitter that is involved in pleasure. As a result, not only do people learn to associate drug use with pleasure, but the brain also starts to reduce its own natural dopamine production in adjustment to the levels of dopamine produced by the drugs. This is called tolerance, and the consequences of tolerance are highly influential

Across all addictions, there is a central theory as to how such an addiction can occur. The common mechanism of all addictive substances is the activation of the brain’s “reward system”, made up of dopaminergic neurons of the midbrain and their extensions to the limbic system (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3272277/). This system is normally used in advancing evolutionary fitness promoting activity, such as sex, food, or social interactions (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3272277/). In such normal natural behaviors, the reward system activity is relatively brief and weak. However, addictive substances abuse the system’s circuitry, causing

McLellan. David Nutt is a professor at Edmond J. Safra Fundation. Besides, David Nutt is the Director of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit in the Division of Brain Science. Thomas M. McLellan is the Chief Executive Officer and cofounder of the Treatment Research Institute. In addition, Thomas M. McLellan is a substance abuse researcher. Moreover, McLellan served as Deputy Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. “Can Neuroscience Improve Addiction Treatment and Policies?” is a research that explains that the brain is the primary objective of psychoactive drugs. In the paper “Can Neuroscience Improve Addiction Treatment and Policies?” the authors state, “drugs are self-administered because they make people feel different – usually better”. They explain that the majority of the modifications related with drug consume are fast changes. The alterations produced by drugs are faster than most changes created by natural stimulus. Numerous activities that produce amusement feelings release neurotransmitters such as dopamine. The consume of drugs manufacture quickly and higher levels of neurotransmitters like dopamine. An important fact about the ingest of drugs according to the authors is that “this rapid release of reward-inducing experience is a significant part of the transition from exploratory, to regular, to compulsive use (addiction).”

It is dopamine that is involved in the pleasure centers of the brain where motivation, reward, the experience of pleasure, and motor function take place. Methamphetamine’s ability to release dopamine rapidly in reward regions of the brain produces the euphoric “rush” or “flash” that many users experience. Repeated methamphetamine use can easily lead to addiction—a chronic, relapsing disease characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use.

the brain, flooding it with the neurotransmitter dopamine. This produces euphoria, and the heightened pleasure can be so compelling that the brain wants that feeling back again and again. Unfortunately, with repeated use of a drug, the brain becomes accustomed to the dopamine surges by producing less of it. So the user has to take more of the drug to feel the same pleasure — the phenomenon known as tolerance.

Capitalism, being the current economic system we use in America, is often criticized for inspiring greed, corruption, and mistreatment of others. However there are several good things about it too. Some of these are:

This is a subject that has a limited amount of research compared to others although it can be argued that it may be the root to many other addictions. We will look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Charles Lyell’s Impediments to Actualization. Next we will look at dopamine and its effects. Although there is no obvious known cure, we will look at some forms of treatment. Lastly

Dopamine establishes different levels of the neurotransmitter in both the dorsa striatal and ventral striatal-prefrontal as dopamine is released. The dopamine released in the ventral striatal determines how strenuously individuals perform repeated tasks over time and the dopamine released in the dorsa striatal determines the speed in which the actions occur (p. 645). According to Luck, Wevrick & Vitaterna (2016) dopamine plays a crucial role in reward-associated behavior such as gambling, drug use, and over-eating, hence the word dopamine is often paired with the term “pleasure system.” Associations with dopamine have been correlated with feelings of enjoyment, pleasure and rewarding experiences and the reward canal is concentrated on dopaminergic neurons located mostly in areas of the midbrains (448-449).

Addictions are known to activate the culmination of sites in the brain that make up the ‘reward centre’ which is responsible for feeling happiness or pleasure through the release of dopamine. After repeated exposures, receptors in the brain build a tolerance towards the addiction meaning that there is a need for increased stimulation to provide a similar ‘high’. Eventually behaviour patterns develop so as to avoid withdrawal. At this point addiction is occurring and symptoms should be observable. Unlike other addictions,

Dopamine is a famous chemical. It holds a prized position in the annals of popular science as the “reward” drug. Countless articles refer to the latest studies of foods, sex and exercise as boosting dopamine, and, by implication, pleasure. But is this characterization correct? What does dopamine actually do?

The parts of the brain are what make us function in our day to day lives, if one thing were to go wrong it could throw our whole system off. Dopamine is a part of our neurons that control how we feel pleasure and basically what actually makes us feel good. This neuron controls our emotions as well as our movements. Dopamine causes the human being to stay close to the good feeling we have had and makes us move towards them. This part of our neuron can lead us to addictions of these pleasures. Drugs that are used today ignite these receptors of dopamine and continually leads us back to this feeling again and again, this is an addiction. Many people have addictions to drugs, one in particular cocaine. This drug sets off our neurons and reward us for something that actually hurts us and is not good for us. In the article we read of an experiment with mice and rats. The experiment entails targeting the dopamine receptors in these animals by incentives of the electrical sort. The rats feel rewarded for “VTA microinjections”, which they say “can also establish condition-placed preference”. The VTA is very high with the electric stimulations, when eating, drinking, and the use of cocaine. The need for cocaine is increased as the use becomes abuse. They study the effects of this on the system and see how they affect the cholinergic cells. The loss of these cells did not affect the use of cocaine, and was not a factor. They also did this study with heroine and yielded the same

In this essay arguments for capitalism as the dominant economic system, and the role that accountants can play in improving this system is discussed. Capitalism is defined as “An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. ‘an era of free-market capitalism’ “ (Anon., 2017).

“The overstimulation of this reward system, which normally responds to natural behaviors linked to survival (eating, spending time with loved ones, etc.), produces euphoric effects in response to psychoactive drugs. This reaction sets in motion a reinforcing pattern that “teaches” people to repeat the rewarding behavior of abusing drugs ”(“Understanding Drug Abuse). Using addictive drugs floods the limbic brain with dopamine, taking it up to as much as five or ten times the normal level. A person with elevated dopamine levels now has a brain that begins to associate the substance with an outside neurochemical reward (“Your Brain on Drugs”). As a person continues to abuse drugs, the brain adapts to the overwhelming surges in dopamine by producing less dopamine or by reducing the number of dopamine receptors in the reward circuit. The result is a lessening of dopamine’s impact on the reward circuit, which reduces the abuser’s ability to enjoy the drugs, as well as the events in life that previously brought pleasure. The decrease in normal dopamine levels encourages the addict to keep abusing drugs in an attempt to bring the dopamine function back to normal, except now larger amounts of the drug are required to achieve the same dopamine high, an effect known as tolerance (“Understanding Drug Abuse ). That is what leads to the state of addiction, which leaves the person in a cycle of craving, using, withdrawal, and relapse.