Wonderful article . Private property and freedom to trade goods for goods, or services for goods, etc will always be best. There are great incentives in free markets for a person to work hard and intelligently. Our government takes advantage of this system of economic liberty, and takes taxes and revenue to proceed forward. Never forget the engine of progress; it is the free market, liberty and private property that gives rise to abundance.
Right you are, Magatte! Greed, avarice, brutality, cruelty and environmental destruction having nothing to do with capitalism and have been with us since the beginning of time. You provided some pretty good examples and if I could I’d like to add a couple. Before free-market capitalism was even a thought in anyone’s head, the Vikings were raiding cities and towns off the costs of England and Ireland as well as in Eastern Europe and taking the local people: men, women and children as slaves. They also took Frankish, Baltic, Latin, and Moorish slaves as well. Another example, before Adam Smith was even a fetus in his mom’s uterus, The Aztecs enslaved members of rival tribes and used them for cannibalism and human sacrifice. Last but not least, before anyone ever heard the names Frederich Hayek or Milton Friedman, Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire ruthlessly conquered Gaul. From the years 58-50 BCE, the Romans slaughtered one million Gauls while enslaving another million.
Capitalism is dynamic, innovative, civilizing, efficient, pushes people to be the best they can be, and has lifted millions of people around the world out of poverty. Free-market capitalism is a check on racism, is good for the environment, improves the quality of goods and services, creates opportunities for aspiring inventors and entrepreneurs, and is essential to a free society. How about socialism and communism? How does that work out? Not so good. Just look at the USSR, Red China, North Korea, North Vietnam, East Germany, Cambodia under the Khmer Rogue, Cuba, Venezuela, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and any number of African countries. It was a total disaster that led to starvation, political and religious repression, mass imprisonment, torture, poverty, corruption, mass executions, and genocide.
Meanwhile capitalist countries like the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Israel, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Australia, and New Zealand have thrived! African countries started to proposer as well once they abandoned socialism and accepted capitalism as Thomas Sowell as talked about in his books on the subject. By adopting capitalism, most low income countries in time became middle income countries. This is quite remarkable! It’s all thanks to the amazing capitalism system! Meanwhile, countries like Albania, Bulgaria, Nicaragua, Poland, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Yugoslavia languished an economic stagnation, low living standards, low wages, abysmal quality of life, no political freedoms or civil liberties, extensive censorship, and no incentive to work hard as you couldn’t get any higher, upward mobility was nonexistent.
Capitalism makes it possible for one to be a Marxist or a Socialist. Is it any wonder that many of the big Communist icons came from wealthy backgrounds. Karl Marx and Frederich Engels came from you guessed it, the very bourgeois they railed against. Heck! Marx himself even praised capitalism for increasing the means of production in Das Kapital though his conclusions about it were totally wrong. Indeed, voluntary socialism is only possible because of the freedom capitalism provides. But regular socialism and communism? Well, the less said about those the better.
The only thing I would add to this is that Kibbutzim are only socialist until their population exceeds Dunbar's Number, suggesting that the limitation of socialism is neurological...
...and we should not forget that Voltaire offered a fantastic one-paragraph testimonial to the benefits of capitalism, multicultural altruism arising from well-regulated self-interest...
Thank you for being one of the few libertarian voices against the current infatuation with socialism. 👊 Not only important for Africa, but for the youth in the Western world who are victims of public education.
All humans have good and bad in them. That's unavoidable and no system can eliminate the bad tendencies of people. However, a system can take the bad in people, and make it a force of good. That's what capitalism does with greed. Wanna earn a lot of money?—Then instead of looting, create a product that people will want to give you their money for, increasing their happiness and quality of life alongside your own wealth.
I refuse to use the Marxist neologism “capitalism” because it deliberately obscures and demonizes the process of free people freely exchanging goods and services. It’s in the same category of meaningless words as fascist (anything you do that I don’t like), Nazi (I just lost the argument), and racist (I am better and more enlightened than you, or I just lost the argument).
I’ve lived in several countries that adopted various strains of Marxist ideology and they were all disasters, yet certain people still believe it hasn’t been done properly yet. After 100-160 million deaths, depending on who’s doing the counting, from this vile ideology of envy, more Marxism can only add to the death toll and poverty.
As someone once said, “great idea; wrong species.”
"Capitalism" can and does exist in Marxist economies. Strictly speaking, capitalism is the concentration of monetary, natural, and human resources to facilitate highly efficient production of goods and services. A classic example is any factory that produces our everyday goods. Factories are why we have the high standard of living that we have.
Are there factories in communist countries? Of course, there are. The problem is, in communist countries, factories are run by socialists who have little to nothing to gain by being innovative and efficient. In a free market economy, factories are run by people who are innovative and resourceful, and who are competing against other innovative, resourceful people.
Not surprisingly, Marxists use the terms 'socialist' and 'capitalist' as if we must choose one or the other. The term they leave out is 'free market'. They have no answer to that.
The core of all versions of capitalism is the profit motive. The profit motive is inherently unfair and unsustainable. It IS special interests and maximizing externalities and is a direct affront to reciprocity, which is a prerequisite for civilization. Capitalism is inherently uncivilised. It is a social cancer and OUGHT to be removed by any means necessary. Capitalism is culpable for all related harms.
So maybe get together with likeminded people, set up your true socialism society and leave the rest of us alone, because people are tired of these cruel and bloodthirsty ideologies.
Perhaps you are the ones you’ve been waiting for to really make it work. This time. Unlike the last one hundred times.
Yah, I’ve lived in a few of those civilized socialist countries and yes, there was equality. Equality of misery, unless one was part of the We Are All Equal But Some of Us Are More Equal than Others.
People entering into voluntary, mutually beneficial transactions are neither miserable or oppressed. If they decide they are not satisfied with some aspect of their involvement in markets, they are free to change.
During my years in the former USSR, workers had labor passports that controlled what kind of work they were allowed to and where they could do it. How is that not oppressive or miserable? In all the socialist countries where I lived, stores were mostly empty and when a basic commodity became available, people queued up for hours hoping for a chance to get a share.
How is scarcity or the unsustainable oversupplies under socialism entirely artificial when it’s cooked into the system? Socialism provides no market signals to determine what the market requires, hence scarcity or too much to meet the market demand. Whereas free markets provide vast numbers of price and demand signals, centrally planned economies are inefficient and unresponsive. For example, China now has as many as 90 million empty apartments. In what universe is that an efficient use of capital? (https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-housing-glut-population-economy)
Your assumption that markets are ever fair and that unfair markets can ever be sustainable are quaint and false.
Tyranny and socialism are not compatible. If a system does not actually care for the good of every citizen, nay every creature in it's jurisdiction it is not actually socialism. I remind you that the common good is the common excuse for tyranny.
Given your assertion that tyranny and socialism are incompatible, how does one explain the 100-160 million deaths under Scientific Socialism, not to mention the untold millions who rotted away in prisons and work camps?
1) In regards to the word "capitalism", instead the operative words in good faith Economic Theory is free markets. And in professional macroeconomics, government interventions, as suggested by the New Keynesians, for instance, are to address market failure, that is a structural lack of all the necessary features for a free market, which under other circumstances yield a socially welfare maximizing output.
2) A little known fact about the Russian Revolution: in the first free full suffrage election of Russia, the Bolsheviks only got 23% of the vote. The main victory at half the electorate went to Social Revolutionaries, who were a Libertarian Socialist movement. But the Bolsheviks had the Soviet at the munitions factory...and the rest is history.
But some SRs stayed underground and a third force, the Green Army of Makhno, established itself to govern millions of land in Ukraine, wherein peasants had neither landowners nor government apparatchiks to listen to. They owned their plots of land and did whatever TF they wanted on it, with some of them forming socialist communes, and traded and sold things freely in town. Makhno's army fought off both the Whites and the Reds for a while, until the Red Army got him with the "Help us defeat the whites, we promise we won't turn on you after" trick.
The socialist cry of "greed" is the ultimate example of projection. Greed runs the the heart of every human such that the Uber rich and the ultra poor are both equally capable of being greedy. I've lived in poor neighborhoods where you had to practically bolt down your lawn to keep people from stealing it.
People stole potted plants, broke into our cars, stole an air conditioner from our window while we were home. That, to me is greed. They wanted what we had. They stole to get it. It my opinion whether a rich corporation or a poor person steals, they are both acting out of selfish greed.
We live in the US. They did not steal out of need. They stole because they coveted.
It is insulting to poor people to assume they are incapable of greed. They are human beings, they are morally weak in all the same ways rich people are. We all need to be on guard against greed.
I think it is overly simplistic to suggest that rich people act out of greed and that poor people do not. All human beings, at all times and in all places, have struggled to act morally. No one is incapable of being greedy. Rich. Poor. We are all human. We are all capable of doing good and evil.
People who fought in the American Revolution were people. People are a mixture of good and bad. Their motives can be virtuous and selfish. If I understand you, you believe poor people are incapable of being greedy and rich incapable of being generous.
Thus, you likely believe that the British were being greedy and the colonists were not.
I believe EVERYONE is capable of being greedy. For example, some of the soldiers displayed great bravery, some probably stole items from their fellow soldiers. Some might have done both. We are complicated and we are all capable of doing good and bad. No one is immune from greed.
Wonderful article . Private property and freedom to trade goods for goods, or services for goods, etc will always be best. There are great incentives in free markets for a person to work hard and intelligently. Our government takes advantage of this system of economic liberty, and takes taxes and revenue to proceed forward. Never forget the engine of progress; it is the free market, liberty and private property that gives rise to abundance.
Right you are, Magatte! Greed, avarice, brutality, cruelty and environmental destruction having nothing to do with capitalism and have been with us since the beginning of time. You provided some pretty good examples and if I could I’d like to add a couple. Before free-market capitalism was even a thought in anyone’s head, the Vikings were raiding cities and towns off the costs of England and Ireland as well as in Eastern Europe and taking the local people: men, women and children as slaves. They also took Frankish, Baltic, Latin, and Moorish slaves as well. Another example, before Adam Smith was even a fetus in his mom’s uterus, The Aztecs enslaved members of rival tribes and used them for cannibalism and human sacrifice. Last but not least, before anyone ever heard the names Frederich Hayek or Milton Friedman, Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire ruthlessly conquered Gaul. From the years 58-50 BCE, the Romans slaughtered one million Gauls while enslaving another million.
Capitalism is dynamic, innovative, civilizing, efficient, pushes people to be the best they can be, and has lifted millions of people around the world out of poverty. Free-market capitalism is a check on racism, is good for the environment, improves the quality of goods and services, creates opportunities for aspiring inventors and entrepreneurs, and is essential to a free society. How about socialism and communism? How does that work out? Not so good. Just look at the USSR, Red China, North Korea, North Vietnam, East Germany, Cambodia under the Khmer Rogue, Cuba, Venezuela, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and any number of African countries. It was a total disaster that led to starvation, political and religious repression, mass imprisonment, torture, poverty, corruption, mass executions, and genocide.
Meanwhile capitalist countries like the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Israel, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Australia, and New Zealand have thrived! African countries started to proposer as well once they abandoned socialism and accepted capitalism as Thomas Sowell as talked about in his books on the subject. By adopting capitalism, most low income countries in time became middle income countries. This is quite remarkable! It’s all thanks to the amazing capitalism system! Meanwhile, countries like Albania, Bulgaria, Nicaragua, Poland, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Yugoslavia languished an economic stagnation, low living standards, low wages, abysmal quality of life, no political freedoms or civil liberties, extensive censorship, and no incentive to work hard as you couldn’t get any higher, upward mobility was nonexistent.
Capitalism makes it possible for one to be a Marxist or a Socialist. Is it any wonder that many of the big Communist icons came from wealthy backgrounds. Karl Marx and Frederich Engels came from you guessed it, the very bourgeois they railed against. Heck! Marx himself even praised capitalism for increasing the means of production in Das Kapital though his conclusions about it were totally wrong. Indeed, voluntary socialism is only possible because of the freedom capitalism provides. But regular socialism and communism? Well, the less said about those the better.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-martyr-made-podcast/id978322714?i=1000389238634
Episodes 7-9 MM are good on Aztec human sacrifice 😊
The only thing I would add to this is that Kibbutzim are only socialist until their population exceeds Dunbar's Number, suggesting that the limitation of socialism is neurological...
https://www.econtalk.org/ran-abramitzky-on-the-mystery-of-the-kibbutz/
...but there are other ways in which the legend departs from the historic reality...
https://www.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/comments/17xuffu/socialists_we_have_empirical_evidence_from/
...and we should not forget that Voltaire offered a fantastic one-paragraph testimonial to the benefits of capitalism, multicultural altruism arising from well-regulated self-interest...
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7351337-go-into-the-london-stock-exchange-a-more-respectable
Excellent contribution, thank you so much!
Thank you for being one of the few libertarian voices against the current infatuation with socialism. 👊 Not only important for Africa, but for the youth in the Western world who are victims of public education.
Exactly, and I'll add this too:
All humans have good and bad in them. That's unavoidable and no system can eliminate the bad tendencies of people. However, a system can take the bad in people, and make it a force of good. That's what capitalism does with greed. Wanna earn a lot of money?—Then instead of looting, create a product that people will want to give you their money for, increasing their happiness and quality of life alongside your own wealth.
Really great point!
I refuse to use the Marxist neologism “capitalism” because it deliberately obscures and demonizes the process of free people freely exchanging goods and services. It’s in the same category of meaningless words as fascist (anything you do that I don’t like), Nazi (I just lost the argument), and racist (I am better and more enlightened than you, or I just lost the argument).
I’ve lived in several countries that adopted various strains of Marxist ideology and they were all disasters, yet certain people still believe it hasn’t been done properly yet. After 100-160 million deaths, depending on who’s doing the counting, from this vile ideology of envy, more Marxism can only add to the death toll and poverty.
As someone once said, “great idea; wrong species.”
A lot of truth in only a few words. Well done!
Socialism is a cult religion based on affirmation of the idle and inept. Anyone with real ability shuns it.
Excellent primer, with very useful links. Also, fair and balanced. Bravissimo!
"Capitalism" can and does exist in Marxist economies. Strictly speaking, capitalism is the concentration of monetary, natural, and human resources to facilitate highly efficient production of goods and services. A classic example is any factory that produces our everyday goods. Factories are why we have the high standard of living that we have.
Are there factories in communist countries? Of course, there are. The problem is, in communist countries, factories are run by socialists who have little to nothing to gain by being innovative and efficient. In a free market economy, factories are run by people who are innovative and resourceful, and who are competing against other innovative, resourceful people.
Not surprisingly, Marxists use the terms 'socialist' and 'capitalist' as if we must choose one or the other. The term they leave out is 'free market'. They have no answer to that.
The core of all versions of capitalism is the profit motive. The profit motive is inherently unfair and unsustainable. It IS special interests and maximizing externalities and is a direct affront to reciprocity, which is a prerequisite for civilization. Capitalism is inherently uncivilised. It is a social cancer and OUGHT to be removed by any means necessary. Capitalism is culpable for all related harms.
So maybe get together with likeminded people, set up your true socialism society and leave the rest of us alone, because people are tired of these cruel and bloodthirsty ideologies.
Perhaps you are the ones you’ve been waiting for to really make it work. This time. Unlike the last one hundred times.
Peace out.
Yah, I’ve lived in a few of those civilized socialist countries and yes, there was equality. Equality of misery, unless one was part of the We Are All Equal But Some of Us Are More Equal than Others.
Equality of misery is better than oppression, but the scarcity is entirely artificial.
People entering into voluntary, mutually beneficial transactions are neither miserable or oppressed. If they decide they are not satisfied with some aspect of their involvement in markets, they are free to change.
During my years in the former USSR, workers had labor passports that controlled what kind of work they were allowed to and where they could do it. How is that not oppressive or miserable? In all the socialist countries where I lived, stores were mostly empty and when a basic commodity became available, people queued up for hours hoping for a chance to get a share.
How is scarcity or the unsustainable oversupplies under socialism entirely artificial when it’s cooked into the system? Socialism provides no market signals to determine what the market requires, hence scarcity or too much to meet the market demand. Whereas free markets provide vast numbers of price and demand signals, centrally planned economies are inefficient and unresponsive. For example, China now has as many as 90 million empty apartments. In what universe is that an efficient use of capital? (https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-housing-glut-population-economy)
What say you about this?
https://kaiserbasileus.substack.com/p/the-mandate-of-libertarian-fascist
Your assumption that markets are ever fair and that unfair markets can ever be sustainable are quaint and false.
Tyranny and socialism are not compatible. If a system does not actually care for the good of every citizen, nay every creature in it's jurisdiction it is not actually socialism. I remind you that the common good is the common excuse for tyranny.
I see.
Given your assertion that tyranny and socialism are incompatible, how does one explain the 100-160 million deaths under Scientific Socialism, not to mention the untold millions who rotted away in prisons and work camps?
I sayd. That was not-socialism being called socialism. Socialism has never been tried at scale and may not even be possible at scale.
Thank you for this succinct explanation! I knew there was a disconnect between the capitalism I love and the capitalism they were imagining.
Absolutely!
Two points I'd like to add:
1) In regards to the word "capitalism", instead the operative words in good faith Economic Theory is free markets. And in professional macroeconomics, government interventions, as suggested by the New Keynesians, for instance, are to address market failure, that is a structural lack of all the necessary features for a free market, which under other circumstances yield a socially welfare maximizing output.
2) A little known fact about the Russian Revolution: in the first free full suffrage election of Russia, the Bolsheviks only got 23% of the vote. The main victory at half the electorate went to Social Revolutionaries, who were a Libertarian Socialist movement. But the Bolsheviks had the Soviet at the munitions factory...and the rest is history.
But some SRs stayed underground and a third force, the Green Army of Makhno, established itself to govern millions of land in Ukraine, wherein peasants had neither landowners nor government apparatchiks to listen to. They owned their plots of land and did whatever TF they wanted on it, with some of them forming socialist communes, and traded and sold things freely in town. Makhno's army fought off both the Whites and the Reds for a while, until the Red Army got him with the "Help us defeat the whites, we promise we won't turn on you after" trick.
Excellent post
The socialist cry of "greed" is the ultimate example of projection. Greed runs the the heart of every human such that the Uber rich and the ultra poor are both equally capable of being greedy. I've lived in poor neighborhoods where you had to practically bolt down your lawn to keep people from stealing it.
What you describe in poor neighbour hoods id not greed😵💫🥴
People stole potted plants, broke into our cars, stole an air conditioner from our window while we were home. That, to me is greed. They wanted what we had. They stole to get it. It my opinion whether a rich corporation or a poor person steals, they are both acting out of selfish greed.
We live in the US. They did not steal out of need. They stole because they coveted.
It is insulting to poor people to assume they are incapable of greed. They are human beings, they are morally weak in all the same ways rich people are. We all need to be on guard against greed.
Your opinion needs to be modified as you equate rich and poor. Rich is acting out of greed.
Lolz. It should be insulting to your intelligence that you think poor people have greed based on the items stolen
I think it is overly simplistic to suggest that rich people act out of greed and that poor people do not. All human beings, at all times and in all places, have struggled to act morally. No one is incapable of being greedy. Rich. Poor. We are all human. We are all capable of doing good and evil.
Is that why American revolution happened
People who fought in the American Revolution were people. People are a mixture of good and bad. Their motives can be virtuous and selfish. If I understand you, you believe poor people are incapable of being greedy and rich incapable of being generous.
Thus, you likely believe that the British were being greedy and the colonists were not.
I believe EVERYONE is capable of being greedy. For example, some of the soldiers displayed great bravery, some probably stole items from their fellow soldiers. Some might have done both. We are complicated and we are all capable of doing good and bad. No one is immune from greed.
During 1770s British killed about 10 million people in one province of India.
In today’s terms, they have to pay trillions of pounds as compensation only for the crimes committed in one decade.
They flogged the weavers to till the clothes were supplied to British and British alone for a fraction of market price.
The blood of colonised people is the wealth in UK today.
I’m not seeking revenge, but it should be said equivocally, the capital in UK is monetised loot and murder of labour of colonies.