A Defense of Capitalism

I'd like to take some time today to talk about a subject close and dear to my heart. It's an oft-maligned subject that often finds itself under attack by political demagogues of all stripes. Those with power often hate it because it enables others to gain power through their own efforts without help from those same elites. I am, of course, talking about Capitalism.

Capitalism. The word evokes different thoughts to different people. Some view Capitalism as akin to fascism, where corporations own and run the government through a concentration of wealth in the hands of stockholders. Others, such as myself, take a far more benign view, seeing it as a system of opportunity that rewards the diligent and punishes the incompetent.

Capitalism itself is a very simple concept. The core concept involved in a capitalist system is the freedom of property. Property should be owned by those whom have the means to acquire it. When one owns property, it's theirs - governments have no right to tell individuals how they should or should not use the property that belongs to them.

Capitalism assumes certain fundamental rights of individuals. One cannot truly own property without having other rights. Individuals have a right to their property. They have a right to their own lives, as one cannot truly own property if one can be deprived of one’s life at a whim. In the right to dispose of one’s property as one sees fit, one has a fundamental right to free speech to protect it. One also has a right to protect one’s property through physical means, if such be necessary. And so forth.

Laws exist to protect these rights, which is where the concept of government comes into play. A government in a truly capitalistic nation exists solely to protect the rights of its citizens, from both domestic and foreign threats. In order for a government to protect the rights of the people it must first represent them, which is why representative governments always arise where capitalism is found. Capitalism, then, is a matter of letting individuals do as they will within a definite framework of laws.

Capitalism is total market freedom within a context of laws. Without those laws, total market freedom would be impossible, as rights would be impossible. The alternative to market freedom is market control. Market control can be seen in many economic systems, including feudalism, mercantilism, imperialism, socialism, fascism, and communism. All of these systems, when tried in the past, have hampered economic progress.

There are many reasons for this. First off, economic controls imply a sort of omniscience in those that control the economy. Greater amounts of control imply greater levels of knowledge pertaining to a variety of particulars. For example, when the government runs a nation's industries, its ability to regulate those industries effectively depends largely on its knowledge of those industries' finer points. The government has to calculate the amount of raw resources the industry will need to create the output of goods required. It has to understand the costs present in a particular location and correlate them to output. It has to understand workers’ issues. It has to understand levels of consumer demand. It has to understand these and a multitude of other variables if it can even hope to operate in an efficient manner.

When this type of system is extended to an entire economy, the level of knowledge required by the government to properly plan everything to perfection approaches infinity. This was the case in the former Soviet Union and played a large role in its collapse back in the early ‘90s. The system was inefficient by nature. These inefficiencies were combined with waste which resulted from the needs of the massive bureaucracy required to administer the government - bureaucrats don’t produce anything but forms, and those tend to be useless.
The same is largely true for countries with less regulation than the Soviet Union. Insofar as those nations are less regulated, their economies operate much more smoothly, to be certain. Unfortunately, ultimate growth potential is hampered by the control which their governments exercise over their economies. Workers might have more vacations and shorter work days than what is found in the US, but economic growth in those countries simply cannot compete. China, with one of the fastest growing economies in the world, is growing economic strength in light of its relaxation of regulations and in spite of communism.

Where capitalism is implemented, economies prosper, while where socialism is implemented, economies falter and fail. This is not due to some “capitalist conspiracy; rather, it's the nature of economics itself.

Capitalism rewards the capable while punishing the incompetent, much like nature. It's a natural system of economics in the most pure sense. Capitalism allows for ANYONE to succeed, if only they have the intelligence, ability, and drive to do so. A capitalist society has no laws saying you cannot find investors, start your own business, and make your own fortune. On the contrary, capitalism encourages you to do so.

I’m going to let you in on a secret. Those of us whom are “wealthy capitalists” don’t want to keep you down. We don’t want to see you impoverished and enslaved. We know that systems with control are far less efficient that systems based on freedom. We WANT you to succeed and do something with yourself. Today’s factory worker could be tomorrow’s great inventor who makes factory workers totally obsolete and increases production ten fold. We want that individual to be successful. It has nothing to do with wanting to put millions of factory workers out of the job. Rather, it's because we know far more can be manufactured so that our goods are available to a greater number of people. We’d be more than thrilled if the individuals whom constitute “society” would pick themselves up and make something of their lives. Great intelligent individuals benefit everyone.

We don’t want 95% of the world’s wealth concentrated in our hands. We’d be more than satisfied with half a percent if it kept us living the lives we were born to lead. Unfortunately, the masses don’t seem to agree - they insist on living lives where they ignore their financial health and expect us to pick up the pieces.

Has it ever occurred to you that the reason less than 1% of the world’s population possesses 95% of the world’s wealth isn’t because the system is rigged against the masses, but is rather because the masses refuse to do anything worthwhile with themselves?