“Is the American Dream dead?”

That’s what the news anchor asked, followed by a long and dramatic pause before diving into an equally dramatic monologue about all the things he believed were wrong with the country.

As someone who comes from an immigrant family myself, many people are surprised to hear that I don’t agree with that mindset.

No, I don’t think America is evil or unfair or oppressive. I believe that America is the best country in the world, and that while we lost our edge as a nation over the last few decades, it still offers the most opportunity and freedom.

I genuinely believe that almost all of America’s problems can be solved by getting back to our capitalist roots.

When I tell people that, the response I often hear is, “Oh, so you think big corporations should just run the world!”

No, I believe the opposite of that, actually, because that’s not capitalism. That is cronyism, and cronyism is the first step in a country’s eventual collapse.

What’s the difference between the two?

In cronyism, certain companies get special treatment, enforced by the government, which creates a virtually unbreakable monopoly. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are perfect examples of this. Because of their monopolistic position, they often feel they can treat customers poorly with no consequences because they have no real competitors, and the bad news is that they’re right.

In capitalism, on the other hand, all companies are treated equally under the law and have to compete with other companies to earn and retain customers. Under this model, companies must satisfy their customers or they will lose them to competitors.it is a truly democratic system.

So why do I believe restoring true capitalism is the solution to America’s problems today?

The first reason is the tremendous amount of practical knowledge you gain by starting and running a business. This is the school of hard knocks and it’s going to be tough—there’s no getting around that.

When you start a business, you’ll learn about planning whether you want to or not because every decision comes with consequences, so you’ll be forced to think ahead. I experienced this in a pretty big way in my own business when I started investing in real estate. I got really good at it and scaled quickly, but I hadn’t planned for what would happen when I outpaced my capital. That left me in a bind, but I found a solution, adapted, and later, turned that into the business funding firm Fund&Grow that I run today. 

You’ll also learn about economics in the real world, as opposed to the hypothetical fairy land many people seem to think they’re living in. This is huge because most Americans today are not financially literate, so they don’t understand things like budgeting, credit, profit margins, or taxes.

Now you might be wondering—because I hear this all the time, “But Ari, why is that my problem? I’m good with money. That’s other people’s problem.”

Sure, but those other people vote and they are uninformed.

You may remember a few recent news stories that highlight the problems caused by financially illiterate people voting, including the $15 minimum wage, student debt cancellation, and round after round of stimulus payments. All of these policies have devastated small businesses and households alike, but the worst part is it all could have been avoided because entrepreneurs warned everyone what the outcome would be, and everything we said would happen has happened.

We understand the economy because our survival depends on it. If we didn’t, we would go out of business pretty quickly.

And on the topic of economic policy, running a business also teaches you how our government works, both because you have to learn how to engage with the various entities at the city, county, state, and federal levels that regulate how you must conduct business, and because you’ll start paying a lot more attention to how the government works, how it’s supposed to work, and what policies they’re proposing and implementing. This gives people the knowledge they need to demand the best policies for our fellow citizens and to hold government officials accountable when they fail.

But one of the most important things you’ll learn from running a business is the value of hard work. I came from nothing, but I grew up in a hard working family, so that was ingrained in me from a young age. Business is tough, and if you want to succeed, you have to be willing to outwork your competitors—especially in the beginning.

This is a characteristic that’s sadly missing these days. While the problem is far more common among younger people, the truth is that we have a serious entitlement mentality in America today. Spend 15 minutes on social media and you’ll see exactly what I mean, with people expecting a six figure job fresh out of college, demanding to work from home, and expecting to come and go as they please.

But as a business owner, that mindset gets dispelled almost immediately because you will get exactly what you work for. When you enter an environment where you only eat when you produce results, you get a much better sense of how the real world works, and that gives you a huge advantage.

More importantly, if more people adopted this mindset, we would have a far more productive, efficient, and supportive society, free of many of the problems we face as a nation today.

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Ari Page is the CEO of Fund&Grow, which helps entrepreneurs get the business credit they need to run and scale their companies. He is recognized as one of the leading experts in the industry, and is regularly asked to speak on the topic on stage and in the media.