The Embarrassed Capitalist
Perusing the online newspapers while waiting for two teenaged boys to climb out of bed this morning, I came across Charles Murray’s column in today’s Wall Street Journal,“Why Capitalism Has an Image Problem.” The column is jammed with insights—just jammed with them. One excerpt—followed by a question for the good people of Ricochet:
[L]arge numbers of today's successful capitalists are people of the political left who may think their own work is legitimate but feel no allegiance to capitalism as a system or kinship with capitalists on the other side of the political fence. Furthermore, these capitalists of the left are concentrated where it counts most. The most visible entrepreneurs of the high-tech industry are predominantly liberal. So are most of the people who run the entertainment and news industries. Even leaders of the financial industry increasingly share the politics of George Soros. Whether measured by fundraising data or by the members of Congress elected from the ZIP Codes where they live, the elite centers with the most clout in the culture are filled with people who are embarrassed to identify themselves as capitalists, and it shows in the cultural effect of their work.
The rich capitalists who occupy, so to speak, our cultural chokepoints tend to be overwhelmingly liberal. This is true and baleful, just as Charles says. But why should it be so? The moguls who ran Hollywood during the Thirties and Forties were conservative Republicans, and all you need to do to grasp the political temper of Wall Street in the old days is to read The Wise Men, the book about the fundamentally pro-American, pro-free market financiers who played such a central role in American foreign policy during the Fifties.
Why is everything so different now? What happened?
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Dec '10
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
Boomers happened, Peter. We should have all been strangled in our cribs.
Aug '10
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
Watergate and feminism scared alot of people at the same time it's power seduced so many others . Religion, tradition , and community ,already weakened , was a weak backstop to the questions arising . We have read all the books, tracing this from everyone from Rousseau to Dewey.
Mar '11
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
It should be noted that in the Information Technology sector it is very easy to be liberal as one never sees the costs. While other industries have Federal and State agencies working overtime in order to "crucify them" in IT the regulatory hand is almost entirely absent.
In addition there is a the biggest fire hose of money in the World being diligently splurged on very young entrepreneurs, individuals who become wealthy early and never have to move past adolescent preconceptions.
Aug '10
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
Most IT entrepenuers are products of the liberal university system. Bill Gates, the Google guys, Mark Zuckerberg - they all marinated in our glorious higher education system to one extent or another. Ditto for most Wall Street types, who largely hail from Ivy league schools.
Apr '11
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
The neo-Marxists marched through the institutions.
They, along with the progressives (different pedigrees but more than few shared values in a united front), taught generations of our children, created our art, our entertainment and Olympic opening ceremonies, worked in our fourth estate, corrupted our science, ruined our educational system, populated our government, grew the state, and came to despise America and Americans who stubbornly cling to their guns, bibles and self reliance.
We've been Chomskyized, Zinnified and Alinskied.
The line from Gramsci to Horkheimer to Marcuse to Columbia to the SDS to Ayers to Obama is clearly delineated with a little Frank Marshall Davis thrown in for leavening.
Feb '12
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
Roberto:
...In addition there is a the biggest fire hose of money in the World being diligently splurged on very young entrepreneurs, individuals who become wealthy early and never have to move past adolescent preconceptions. · 8 minutes ago
I think you hit on something here. There is the same odd guilt that infects hollywood and music stars for a similar reason. They understand, at some level, that they didn't work harder than others, paying their dues in the same way that maybe their forebears did. They feel "lucky" in some way and undeserving. So they assuage their guilt by believing the "correct" things.
That's my popcorn psychology analysis.
Jun '12
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
To me, having observed the continuing takeover of the University by extreme liberal thought provides the largest part of the answer. When I graduated from high school, Berkely still had some conservative professors. No longer. This moved into the high schools, and even middle and elementary schools. When my daughters were in school, US History was only taught from the perspective of leftists and ecological radicals. They never read the actual US Constutition, but only articles about the constitution uniformly written from the left's perspective, and never studied world history, except from the perspective of Marx. Castro was a hero, and Thatcher someone who should be arrested, and all of this over the last 50 years has had a serious effect. Dumb down education enough, and teach only radical doctrines and eventually our cultural heritage and freedoms themselves will be taken. We really need to wake up. I hope we can.
Apr '12
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
There is such a resentment that others have wealth. On the Members feed there was a very good discussion on Rousseau and his belief that wealth has been refused to the poor by the rich, the economy is a pie with limits. There seems to be a lack of connection to how the global value chain works and basic economics around why an American can think $8 for kids shoes is too low without understanding that $8 is worth a great deal in another country, and it is reflected in property prices and cost of living in other countries too. I just read an article on Daiky Kos where the people were commenting in Romney's ad about you did not build that. If so many people do not understand the animal spirits required to make a business function, that is dire. The movies made business look bad and rich and now every business owner seems greedy. I watched Robocop set in Detroit. I do not see corporate headquarters that look so amazing. Neither do I know business owners who plot and snarl. Most are too close to the abyss. That stress is not shown or understood.
Jul '12
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
All the leftist movements consider success for their particular cause as something without which life would cease to have meaning so they fight to the death. And what has it been for them the past 40 years? One hard fought victory after another and that's how wars are won. Look at the defiant way in which they passed Obamacare and then openly spat in the face of the Catholic church. They think they smell blood.
So if you're a businessman who is not overly concerned about his country, you look at the lay of the land and you make peace with these people and to them I quote Mathew 16:26: 'What does it profit a man to gain the world but lose his soul?'
Edited on July 31, 2012 at 3:07amSep '11
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
"Dot-com bubble" technology companies have some similarities with the entertainment business. You work on a startup (indy "project"), migrate to another (indy "festival film"), migrate to another (indy "feature film" which might actually pay money), always hoping one of these will get noticed.
Then the planets align, the heavens open, and you are showered with cash. It is roughly akin to winning the lottery.
There is nothing about capitalism they can relate to. They did not build a factory, they did not build a company, they did not build a sales organization, they did not build a better mousetrap. They got lucky.
What about that equates to classic capitalism?
Sep '11
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
There are plenty of I.T. companies, however, that certainly understand the free market. The I.T. world is chock full of one-man-bands, small shops, virtual corporations, project teams--every time I scroll through my contacts list I am reminded of the song from "Guys and Dolls" about "the oldest, established, permanent floating crap game in New Yawk."
If you run a small company you may not know much--or care at all--about capitalism. But you sure understand the free market. You have to do work to bill for it; you have to bill more than you will have to spend next month; you have to allow far more for taxes than you can possibly imagine; and you shudder with dread every time your accountant calls.
Capitalism, today, is really the realm of publicly-traded corporations. Very, very few entrepreneurs ever make it from startup to being the CEO of a publicly-traded company. (Like maybe ten, in history.) That's a very, very different world than the free market--especially the rough-and-tumble free market that is small- to medium-sized business in America today.
Sep '11
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
A Capitalist (by which I mean a Wharton grad, or an MBA type) is concerned first, last, and always with shareholder value. Secondarily, reporting better financial results in each succeeding quarter so that security analysts keep increasing their "expectations" for the stock--thus increasing shareholder value.
A capitalist seeks to prevent what the economist calls "perfect competition." You do not want a commodity product--you ideally want a "natural monopoly" in a technology, protected by patents, trade secrets, or government regulation. The worst possible thing that can happen to a capitalist in the pharmaceutical business is losing patent protection for a major drug--and having a flood of low-price competition appear.
The astute capitalist will use the courts to protect intellectual property; and use the courts to block potential competitors. (Witness, for instance, the way in which defense contractors routinely litigate any federal contract award.) The capitalist will seek to create de facto trusts with competitors and a government regulator, to exclude outsiders and maintain a profitable, protected marketplace.
That is grossly different from the free market. In that world, government by enlightened bureaucrats who "understand what it takes to get things done" is a good thing.
Edited on July 31, 2012 at 2:42amSep '11
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
As you might imagine, I believe strongly in free markets. I do not believe in 21st century capitalism.
Aug '10
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
Today's business, technology, and media establishment is dominated by baby boomers who came of age just when the universities became dominated by the Frankfurt School.
Also, of the moguls from the 30s and 40s, how many were university graduates whose tuition was paid for by their parents, or by government grants/loans? Few-to-none.
Now, skip ahead to today. What percentage of the elite are university graduates? Close to 100%. Of those, how many had to pay for their own education? Close to 0%.
The elite in the first half of the 20th Century was a product of its own hard work. The elite today is the product of subsidized academia.
There's no mystery.
Mar '11
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
John Murdoch: Then the planets align, the heavens open, and you are showered with cash. It is roughly akin to winning the lottery.
There is nothing about capitalism they can relate to. They did not build a factory, they did not build a company, they did not build a sales organization, they did not build a better mousetrap. They got lucky.
What about that equates to classic capitalism? · 8 minutes ago
Too much truth too this. In the past 10-20 years VC's have been willing to shovel money at just about anything on the off chance that it might be the next Google or Ebay, for these funders losing a million or so on a dozen nonsense ideas is easily worth it for the one that might work.
This type of funding does not build a true entrepreneurial spirit in Silicon Valley the way most would understand such. You instead have legions of individuals who are not so much looking to create a businesses but instead looking to have the one idea that gets noticed and then hoping to be bought out. It's a lottery mentality.
Edited on July 31, 2012 at 3:11amJun '11
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
Here is some shameless salesmanship.
If you are reading this post and these comments on the main page of Ricochet and you are not a member, you must be persuaded to pony up and join.
Great thread.
Nov '11
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
For several generations, now, our schools have taught our children that capitalism is immoral. The Soviet Union's fall further taught them that, even though socialism and communism are morally superior to the free market, they are (unfortunately) impractical. Therefore people must earn their livelihoods in immoral ways, and must atone for this sin by having the "right" sentiments.
Note that sentiment, not action, is required to, on balance, live a moral life. Bill Clinton’s presidency taught them that one does not need to act morally; one merely need have moral (as defined by the Left) thoughts.
Because business is fundamentally immoral there is, of course, no way in which to morally conduct business. So all’s fair and devil take the hindmost.
Apr '12
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
My armchair theory about this is that the liberal capitalist is a product of a rotten corporate culture. The rich should feel constrained by such virtues as generosity and magnanimity, but we've taken to glorifying greed (which, incidentally, is a development for which the right bears its share of the blame).
What could be nicer than to be a rich liberal? You can enjoy your millions, and all you really have to do by way of "giving back" is vote Democratic and maybe make a few political donations. A conscientious and rich conservative would need to be all mindful about good stewardship and all that nonsense; for liberals, political allegiance is really the only kind you need.
The universities do plenty of mischief, but if Murray's research is accurate, then virtually all the elite (or even just the unusually successful) have done their time in the Academy. Nevertheless, according to Murray, the elite/successful are for the most part evenly split politically. It's only thesuper-elite that are predominantly liberal. So, it seems we need some further explanation beyond "they all went to college".
Nov '10
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
Pure protection. Who would you be scared of? Liberal lobby or Conservative lobby? The worm will turn, as it did for the Aristos in 1790s France.
Jun '12
Re: The Embarrassed Capitalist
We lost control of the academy. This is is the root.