ABSTRACT
The principal characteristics of modern capitalism, as it has emerged today, are materialistic values, consumer society and giant corporations and its huge production apparatus. The economic ideology of capitalism and free markets reached its zenith in the US, the UK and other developed countries from the 1980s onwards, when Ronald Regan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the UK came to head their respective governments. The ideology gives great emphasis on deregulation, liberalization, privatization and globalization, with the state exercising minimal interference in economic activities. The current economic model based on free market system, creates serious socio-economic problems. The most critical ones are as follows: ecological disaster, inequality in society, consumerist culture and unemployment, particularly of educated youth. Most of the problems rich countries are facing are due to the fact that market-oriented thinking has entered every aspect of life, and they have slid into hyper-commercialism, untethered by ethical, religious or philosophical constraints.
