How Capitalism Suppresses Greed

Source: AP Photo/Elise Amendola

Mention capitalism and the average person will fire back with, “What about greed?” They assume that capitalism is founded on greed and couldn’t survive without it, or that it rewards greed so that people are much greedier under capitalism than under socialism. The mere accusation of greed is intended to shut the mouth of anyone who dares to defend capitalism. But these indictments rest on faulty foundations.

What is greed? Webster defines it as “a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (such as money) than is needed.” Synonyms for 'greedy' include: acquisitive, avaricious, avid, coveting, covetous, grabby, grasping, mercenary, money grubbing, rapacious. The Oxford dictionary says, “Intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food.”

The Merriam-Webster web site claims, “To decide which words to include in the dictionary and to determine what they mean, Merriam-Webster editors study the language as it's used. They carefully monitor which words people use most often and how they use them.”

Obviously, the next question becomes, how much do we need? If we took the dictionary definitions literally, anyone who aspires to more than what a native in the bush of Zambia has would be avaricious because even the poorest African living in a one-room hut with no electricity, toilet or water has enough food to keep him alive, shelter from the weather and one set of clothing.

The World Bank claims that 700 million people live on $2 per day or less. That they are alive indicates they have enough to get by. Do we really want to say that they are greedy to want more? I don’t think that is what most people in the West mean when they accuse others of greed. After all, those in the poorest quintile in the US are among the wealthiest people on the planet and in history. Is everyone in the West guilty of greed?

Finish the article at Townhall Finance. 

Why Are People Still Socialists?

Source: AP Photo/Charles Krupa

As Democrat politicians across the country from mayors to Congressmen and Senators openly demand socialism for the U.S., capitalists should wonder why free market economics hasn’t survived the onslaught of socialism for the past 150 years? Laissez-faire reigned in the Dutch Republic from 1600 until Napoleon crushed it, and it dominated the UK and U.S. throughout the 19th century.

Capitalism has enjoyed brilliant defenders: Frederick Bastiat in France and Francis Wayland in the U.S. as well as the great British and French economists of the 19th century. In the 20th we were blessed with Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard and many more. More recently we’ve enjoyed the luminous books of Drs. Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams. All presented overwhelming evidence that socialism impoverishes and brutalizes the people while free markets enrich and liberates. But they have failed to convince a majority.

Why is it that socialism can fail miserably everywhere it has been tried for 150 years and still hold such an attraction for most people? It’s not just the lies that socialists tell, claiming none of those failed attempts were true socialism, that real socialism has never been tried. Intelligent people can see through the lies.

The failure is tactical. Defenders of capitalism have relied on economic consequences to persuade: capitalism works; socialism doesn’t. Socialists have won because they appeal to morality. The great poet T.S. Eliot understood this. Russel Kirk wrote in Eliot and his Age that for Eliot, “Economics must recognize the higher authority of ethics.”

Continue reading the article at Townhall Finance.

Even Angels Couldn’t Make Socialism Work

 

Source: AP Photo/Charles Krupa

Before the collapse of the USSR, Russian workers would say, “We pretend to work and the government pretends to pay us.” Today, people who favor free markets often say that socialism would work if humans were angels, pointing to the incentive problem.

Hayek argued that socialism is necessary for small groups, such as families. In fact, applying capitalist principles to families would destroy them. Hayek believed socialism could work in small groups, like communes and churches, where everyone knows everyone else. Many theologians think the early church in Jerusalem practiced communism, although the context and Greek indicate they didn’t.

However, all communes from the Pilgrims to the kibbutzim have failed because of the incentive problem. Kibbutzim have continued to exist in Israel but have changed radically from the original design. It’s human nature to quit working when the diligent see the lazy getting the same rewards.

All socialist intellectuals understood the incentive problem but insisted that the widespread adoption of socialist principles would transform human nature, returning it to a state of innocence and eliminating the incentive problem. When that didn’t happen in the U.S.S.R. and China under Mao, socialist leaders turned to punishment, then execution for those who refused to emerge from their capitalist cocoons as redeemed socialist butterflies. North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela carry on that venerable tradition.

Continue reading at Townhall Finance. 

The Left Sells Socialism With Race

 

Source: AP Photo/Ted S. Warren


Read the history of the early days of socialism in Hayek’s masterpiece, The Counter-revolution in Science, and you’ll notice that socialism began life as a substitute for Christianity. They offered their own version of the doctrine of original sin: people are born innocent and turn evil only because of oppression and property is the greatest oppressor. Their “gospel” said that socialism could redeem mankind from evil by ending property and distributing wealth equally. At the same time, it would make everyone wealthy.

Marx added little to the original socialism of Saint-Simon. However, by the time he came along economists had begun to lob devastating critical Molotov cocktails at socialism and Marx couldn’t respond. So, he invented a silly idea that the bourgeois and proletariat had different systems of logic, what Mises called polylogism, then claimed that was the reason the bourgeois couldn’t understand socialism, let alone embrace it. In other words, the evidence and reasoning of economists were merely fabricated tools of the bourgeoisie to keep themselves in power.

He foolishly promised that capitalism would impoverish the working classes then cause them to revolt and drag onto the world stage international socialism. Later, he determined that the capitalist had beaten down workers so thoroughly that workers could not respond to their misery. So, it would take armies, guns and massive death to rescue them.

Socialists and capitalists debated the economic rationale for socialism throughout the 20th century until the collapse of the Soviet Union and its puppet states in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and 1990s. The quick collapse of socialism surprised and dismayed its sycophants. Without the promise of wealth, they had to find a new camel to sneak the burden of socialism into the capitalist tent. Right away, they kidnapped the environment as the excuse for a socialist takeover.

Hey, Disney, Hamilton Betrayed His Wife And His Country

Source: Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s wildly successful Broadway musical Hamilton would embark on its fourth tour this fall had the virus not canceled it. Instead, a video version will begin airing on Disney+. It helps to appreciate the magnitude of Miranda's accomplishment to know that T. S. Eliot, often called the greatest Christian poet of the 20th century, met moderate success at infusing theater with verse. Eliot considered Shakespeare to be the greatest poet in English because he integrated the two so well.

The hero, Alexander Hamilton was a signer of the Constitution and was a founding father with faults. He cheated on his wife who forgave him, as Miranda points out. And he betrayed his country with his founding of a national bank. Hamilton was well-read, so he had to know that the Bank of England was founded and given a monopoly on currency in exchange for financing war against France. Before governments could borrow unlimited amounts from banks, they had to tax the people to pay for soldiers and weapons, so wars were much shorter.

And Hamilton had to know about the South Sea Bubble in England and the Mississippi Bubble in Paris. In both cases, the banks established by the governments of England and France issued tsunamis of new currency that resulted in rocketing prices in stock markets, housing, carriages, and horses. Both bubbles burst in 1720, leaving the two countries much poorer. Richard Cantillon made his fortune in the Paris mania by short selling stocks and insisting on payment in gold rather than the worthless paper money. Cantillon explained the failings of the Paris bank in his Essai Sur La Nature Du Commerce En Général, published in French in 1755. Hamilton may not have read Cantillon, but he quoted from Postalthwayte's Universal Dictionary, which reprinted much of Cantillon's book.