Capitalism

Capitalism gets a lot of bad press. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that since capitalism has no press agent, it’s a convenient whipping boy for governmental failures.

But when you examine the actual historical record, what capitalism gets blamed for is damned near always the product of government meddling with the market. Especially if you study real economics to go with it. The Great Depression? Government, and Government ruined a nascent recovery as well. The Stock Market Bubble? Government. The Housing Bubble? Government. Government, government, government. In fact, even looking at the so-called ‘market failures’ of the last half of the nineteenth century, pretty much all of them were in market niches where the government interfered with the natural function of the market. It’s hard to find a stronger endorsement of the market than contrasting the Great Northern Railway with the government backed transcontinental railways, or Cornelius Vanderbilt’s private enterprise steamship company with Robert Fulton’s government backed company.

There is no economic system that compares with capitalism in terms of increasing the standard of living of everyone, rich and poor alike. The nineteenth century era in the United States, the so-called era of the Robber Barons, saw a larger increase in the standard of living of the poorest Americans than anywhere else at any time in the world. Voluntary charity operated in the country at a scale we can hardly imagine now in a much wealthier country – and the recipients of that charity were far more likely than they are today to learn to stand on their own feet and break free of the need for charity. At a fraction of the cost, too. I’m not going to pretend everything was perfect, but if you contrast what happened to the losers in the conflicts of settling the United States, they came out better than almost any other losers of such battles in the history of the world. Nor are said losers completely the victims they are generally portrayed as.

Capitalism doesn’t care about color, it doesn’t care about sex or sexual orientation or ethnicity. It only cares that you can produce something other people want to buy. If you want to know why China and India were dirt poor while Japan and Taiwan got rich, look to capitalism – who had it and who didn’t. If you want to know why China and India stopped being so poor and started to get rich, look to when they started to adopt capitalism. If you want to know why Africa was such a basket case for so many decades, you discover that they had marxist or tribal cronyist systems. Look to why their economies are improving now, and you see capitalism growing their economies and improving the lot of the common people. The evidence is there, it is clear, and it is incontrovertible. Capitalism is by far the best system for the betterment of the common people we have thus far discovered. If you love your fellow human beings, you must love capitalism.