Dominant Frameworks of AWOL (With intro and new sources)

Americans live in a particular way just as any other living being would. As Americans we normally do not notice the way we live or why we live the way we do because we have grown to understand that's just the way it is. When studying about the American way of life, we can conclude that the dominant frameworks are capitalism and demorcracy. The main reasons us as Americans live the way we do is because of the economic system and the political system we follow and use to our advantage in our every day lives.
Most people abide by the basics of capitalism and look at it as a positive way to run our economic system, people favor it for the "freedom" it allows us to have. Capitalism provides the free market, opportunity for private property and profit motive. The free market, having the freedom to get into the business and sell what you want for the price you want (profit motive) and the freedom to buy from any businesses you want. To sell what you want, you have to opportunity to own factories and property to produce what you want to sell (private property). The three main components of business are, capital, labor, and land. Land being, the natural resources used to help the produce products and sell products, labor being the people working for the business and the work that is put into the production and selling of products, and the capital being the things used during the process that are not sold for example, the machinery used to produce a pencil.
Those who own businesses are free to sell their product for the price they want. But their main goal is to gain profit of at least one penny. One penny more than the amount of money spent on the process to make and sell the product. They can sell it for as high as they want but the consumer might not be willing to buy it for that price. The balance between the highest the seller wants to sell the product for and the lowest the consumer is willing to pay is called the market price. The seller wants to make as much money as possible while the consumer wants to spend as little money as possible, leading to supply and demand. Supply being the total amount of resources for sale that will be bought at all prices and demand is the amount of people willing to buy a product for a certain price. The graph above (argmax.com) shows the curves of both supply and demand in relationship with quantity and price, the point where supply and demand intersect is the market price or the equilibrium price. Variabilities causing either or both of the curves to alter causing a shift in the market price. If the market price is restricted from changing it could cause a shortage which is when consumers have the money for products but there are no products for sale.
Generally, in America businesses keep their prices fairly low and this is because of competition. Two companies who sell the same product (commodity--an interchangeable product that can be bought or sold) compete for the customers and most customers would buy for the cheaper price, making companies sell for the lowest they are willing to sell to attract more customers. This competition occurs because according to Milton Friedman, a famous economist, everyone wants a special advantage or more freedom than others, so business owners compete for the advantage of more customers and more profit.
The main players of capitalism are, households, the factor market, businesses, and the product market. Househlds are people selling their land, labor, and capital to the factor market to make money which then gets back to the household when they purchase stock and gain profit other companies make. The factor market gives its products to businesses which costs money for the businesses who sell the prodcts to the product market. The product market then buys from the households costing them money. This is the main cycle that capitalism goes though. This cycle can go out of whack when the distribution of money is not even, causing a depression or a resession. This can be fixed by the government balancing the cycle.
Conflicts in the economic system such as a resession or depression require help from the government. But other conflicts such as, competition in the free market are taken care of by "the invisible hand" which is, essentially, a situation taking care of itself without help from anywhere else, competition in the free market will just happen if two companies are selling the same product. They are naturally going to compete for more money and it is in the company's self interest to do better than the other company to get more profit.
Generally, most Americans agree with the idea of capitalism. A main reason could be the whole idea of being able to go from "rags to riches", having the chance to improve one's social status, or at least having the insentive to want to rise one's social status and having the freedom to move up the social laddar. Whereas in the government, already starting at the top of the social ladder, in cases where society believes they waste money which leads citizens to believe the leaders of the country are incompetent of leading the country and they are allowed to speak out and say their disagreements living in a democratic society. (Friedman)