Assigned Blog #3- Social Darwinism.
Social Darwinism is the belief of survival of the fittest. Social Darwinists based their beliefs on theories of Charles Darwin, a British naturalist. Some believed that the government shouldn’t become involved in the economy by trying to regulate it. They also didn’t think that the government should try to cure poverty. They are in favor of a laissez-faire political and economic system. A Laissez-faire system means that the government shouldn’t interfere with people’s lives, and they should just leave people alone. They also believed that if you weren’t rich, you were poor. There was no in between. Also, if you were poor, they thought that it’d be okay for you to just fail and die, because you weren’t rich.
There weren’t many positive aspects to Social Darwinism. Bigger businesses were definitely the ones to benefit from this way of thinking. Because they tended to have more rich people, they were thought of as more superior. Smaller businesses had more poor people working for them and they were considered weak, lazy, and unfit. Eventually this caused the bigger businesses to take over the smaller businesses.
In my opinion, Social Darwinism is wrong. I think that they are judging people based on money. Not everyone can be rich, but that doesn't mean that they don't have a good life. Small businesses are a part of what made America and they shouldn't all be taken over by the bigger, richer businesses. For some issues, I believe that laissez-faire is appropriate, but I think that the government should be able to get involved in social issues like poverty.
SOURCES
http://autocww.colorado.edu/~toldy2/E64ContentFiles/SociologyAndReform/SocialDarwinism.html
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