Question

How did American economic principles and the ideas of social darwinists encourage the growth of big business

Answer 1

Social Darwinism is basically the same idea as Darwin's natural selection theory, except it pertains to humans. It states that we as humans in a social environment are subject to these same laws that animals are.

Darwin stated that in an competitive natural environment, animals must adapt to changing conditions in order to survive. Those who were more fit would survive, and those that were not, perished.

This same law affects us as humans in the same sense, only differing in the fact that we're competing in a social environment. Instead of thinking of animals, we have to think about businesses. Today, businesses and corporations constantly have to adapt to their environment in order to be the best. The better a business' competitive edge is, the more likely it is that they will stay in business for a very long time. Take Amazon for example, when it first started, no one thought it would go anywhere, but now, its ALL people use to shop online. You can't compete with them now since they're so big. They adapted to a changing environment, an environment that was shifting from physical shopping to online shopping. And now, we see the old stores who didn't adapt well (like Toys R Us) go out of business.

This happens all the time today, and not only with business, but with school. Students are probably the second most competitive group today, and must be the best in order to succeed.