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- Capitalism is good
Under a capitalist society, businesses that manufacture products in high demand flourish. These businesses compete with each other to meet the demands of consumers, giving people more choices when buying a product, and ensuring that their needs are met.
The argument
Capitalism meets consumers' needs, including the needs of people whose requirements are unusual. The mechanism is the link between demand and profit: in capitalism there is a market for anything there is a demand for, because businesses cater to people's needs and desires in order that their product sells. Nobody has to identify a need as worthy, or win an argument for it, or persuade an authority to fund it. It is enough that people want the thing and will pay for it. This is why the system reaches minority requirements rather than only majority ones. If a specific group of people wants to purchase a product that doesn't exist yet, business owners are given an incentive to produce it, and the incentive does not diminish because the group is small — it only has to be large enough to be served at a profit. The majority of the population will always have their needs met, because capitalism encourages people to satisfy those needs in return for profit, and the same logic that serves the majority keeps working further down the distribution. The result is a wider range of goods and services than a system that supplies only what has been planned for in advance. Competition then does the second half of the work. When businesses identify demand for a certain product, they begin competing with one another to create the very best version of it, and each firm's position depends on being preferred to the others. That pressure keeps prices low and forces companies to be more efficient, because a producer that charges more or wastes more than its rivals loses the customers it needs. Consumers end up with the best products at the best prices, not because anyone intended that outcome for them, but because it is what the pursuit of profit produces under competition.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Consumers don’t end up with the best product at the best price without competition. Capitalism eliminates competition by allowing monopolies. This decreases competition and harms consumers’ rights by letting those few corporations to set price and quality standards. Additionally, even when capitalism does incentivize companies to make products that people want (their demand), capitalism doesn't meet people's needs (education, food, housing, etc...).
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] Monopolies decrease competition which means that consumers don’t get the best product at the best price.