Economics have always been the engine of progress. Without the urge to possess more than their neighbors, civilizations would never have struggled to surpass each other, thus changeless without competition. Economical ways of thought have appeared, evolved and withered away, having socialism and capitalism as the two main ideologies. Economics are what have driven us to where we are now.

During the 19th century, the globe went through a series of industrial revolutions, with population growing exponentially and society vividly split into two diverse classes. A significant factor contributing to this sudden boost and inflation were the monopolies presented by the industrialists. During the days of American industrial evolution, industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt have all created strategic markets to control the nation’s economy by establishing big businesses around the world. These were family dynasties who literally cornered the market on essential and influential industries, including railroads, steel, and petroleum industries. But how did they, under a short amount of time, hugely impact the market?

In the time of the Gilded Age, powerful tycoons formed giant trusts to monopolize the production of goods that were high in demand. As mentioned, Andrew Carnegie being one of the Captains of Industry was a capitalist. Industries needed a great deal of capital, so Andrew Carnegie used this to build an enormous steel empire, leading it to a worldwide prominence. His business exceeded that of all producers in Great Britain combined, and his influence to the American society today is significantly notable. A capitalist like him started out small, and had gradually work his way up to the top of the three major monopolies in the United States during the Gilded Age. The idea behind him and many other industrialists was philanthropy. Their philanthropic idea had gained themselves numerous supporters, for it had helped the nation’s economy and those people in need, which also benefited them by allowing them to become the multimillionaire of the era.

The main gap between these controversies is that people who lived in the lower classes wanted socialism, which was one ideology that immensely opposed capitalism fiercely. Capitalism, a system based on free enterprise with rules of the supply and demand, was widely used in most parts of the world. Socialism, on the other hand, believed in the government’s role in controlling the economy. Its founder, Karl Marx, said that history moves because of social clashes, so he proposed a society with only one class, the workers. His theory established that the society was controlled by capitalism, which gained profit by exploiting workers of the nation based on class distinctions. Thus, he viewed this as a system that left a massive number of workers “property-less” while they are the ones who should be credited for their work. This kind of society created tremendous oppositions, therefore, Marx believed that socialism should be put into action, having all individuals get access to the same amount of resources and profit.

So the question remains, with either socialism or capitalism that suits best for the country itself. The Gilded Age has proven itself by powerful industrialists who were capitalists who contributed much to the nation, but Karl Marx has made his point when he stated that the workers has been credited for nothing. And here we are, with the society today. In the present day, the economy is progressively transforming into an economy of ideas, where wealth is no longer based on how much land you own, but by the intellectual properties. This type of economy, in my opinion, has diverged the two ideologies into one. On one hand, capitalism still exists in a way that consumers continuously depend on producers to generate goods for their fundamental needs. Furthermore, what socialism represents is that the workers have now begun to obtain credit for their work, such as Youtube celebrities and copyrighted filming productions on the internet. The economy held on internet like eBay and Amazon has clearly marked the transformation of the change in world’s budget. With a brand new economy born, it has now become remarkably unpredictable.

A burgeoning economy takes place in this world, what might it become a decade later? With the explosive economy riding into our current planet, some expect that economy will turn out to be a total collapse in the near future with mal-investments surrounded by uncountable debts; other estimated that demographic changes will happen as infertility rates continue to decrease. In a breathtaking pace, internet is weaving itself into the fabric of the economy, and the world will soon be altered and reshaped into a world of computing, a world based on regulations of bandwidth connections and robotics, having Internet as the core portion of every single business, including entertainment, communication, and information. Shortly, the entire human system will vanish and computing systems will take over as human brains start to shrink. A completely different system ruled by robots, human will soon be incapable of functioning better than any other organisms, or in this case, the robots. The new capitalism emerging: technology being the producer and humans as consumer. What might this become?

All in all, we have gone through great changes in the economic world, seen some of the greatest growth spurts, but also a great crisis. Economy is what propels history forward. For each individual country it is necessary to choose the economic system that is most efficient and effective for its people. That is the key— not focusing on a particular group but the nation as a whole. We should uphold a system that accommodates people while maintaining structure and economic prosperity, having both public and private ownership, government intervention programs, and freedom of choice, speech, and religion. At the same time, humans must not let technology take over. The world must persist on holding its value of existence, if not so, why are humans created otherwise?