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Why Capitalism?
Before we exchange the proven benefits of free markets for the Democrats’ promises of socialist utopia, it might be worth considering the things we’ll be giving up. My list follows. With what do you disagree? What would you add?
- Free markets have pulled billions of people out of extreme poverty. In just the last few decades, the lives of hundreds of millions of Asians – mostly in China and India – were significantly improved when their countries free up their economies.
- The environment in the capitalist west has improved significantly. Air and water quality are higher, and millions of acres of land have been reforested. The profit motive provides a strong incentive to use scarce resources to their best effect. Inefficiency is waste and waste is pollution.
- Water and sewage treatment technology, largely invented in the west, has significantly extended people’s lives – not just in the west but globally.
- Western medical breakthroughs, such as antibiotics, have also extended human lifespans globally.
- The Green Revolution – heavily backed by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations and led by American agronomist Norman Borlaug – eliminated food shortages throughout the world. Today, famines are no longer caused by natural disasters but are almost exclusively man-made (see, for example, North Korea and Venezuela).
- Foreign trade has eliminated any excuse for imperialism. As Adam Smith observed in The Wealth of Nations, conquering and maintaining control over foreign territory cost far more than can ever be extracted from that territory. During Japan’s conquest of Southeast Asia, for example, the Japanese found that they received fewer goods from the conquered areas than they had previously gotten through trade. People don’t produce as much at the point of a bayonet as they do when they benefit by their production.
- Capitalism has raised women’s status to that of equality with men. In capitalist societies, brains are far more important than brawn, and women are more than capable of competing with men in that realm.
- Capitalism has largely eliminated the need for child labor. Child labor was a fact of life throughout most of human history. One man using a stick for a plow simply couldn’t produce enough food to feed a family. Children worked or they, and perhaps their families, starved. In the west, laws against child labor were passed only after the practice had all but ended.
- Children were exploited terribly in countries that tried to outlaw child labor before their people were productive enough to support so many idle hands (and mouths). Children still had to work to eat, but they had to do so surreptitiously without any protection from the law.
- Free markets have so increased human productivity that, in western countries, mere day-to-day survival is no longer the central focus of life.
- Innovation sparked by the profit motive has placed the world’s knowledge at our fingertips.
Exodus 16
Manna and Quail
16 The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. 2 In the desert the whole community grumbledagainst Moses and Aaron. 3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”
Numbers 11:4
Quail From the Lord
4 The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, “If only we had meat to eat! 5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. 6 But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!”
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Mankind never changes and wants to be slaves. That’s why they hate capitalism and want socialism, er , to be enslaved.
It seems to be a default system that can operate even under communist control. When the government is slow or unable to respond, people figure it out. Under the Soviet system, the black market (free one) was essential. It seems that capitalism is difficult to eradicate, because it does not rely on getting permission in order to trade. The black market works here too, we have people on disability, etc. ask if they can work for cash. We don’t do that, but some businesses do.
Market-behavior is the most natural thing in the world. What is not natural is this notion that humans have the ability to control it.
Unfortunately, logical thinking is not popular with the mob mentality. It’s all about emotion, and the most emotional person or the person who can generate the most emotion in others becomes the leader.