In favour of capitalism
The basic problem of
economics - How can we make our country prosperous?
- was solved long ago, in the 18th century, by
Adam Smith
and other thinkers of the Enlightenment.
Yet some people, all these years later,
still don't believe it.
Economic freedom (capitalism, property rights),
intellectual freedom (science and technology)
and
self-interest
makes societies prosperous.
Strong, utopian government leads to
unemployment, poverty, emigration and
famine.
This has been repeatedly demonstrated in practice
in countries all over the world.
Yet ignorant thinkers
continue to resist these
ideas even today.
- Capitalism
-
I, Pencil
by Leonard E. Read, 1958,
explains how capitalism is just the way the world works.
It is what humans do when they are free.
It is as old as civilization.
It is a great, even heroic human endeavour
- "not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me".
And it is how humanity makes all of the wonderful things
that make life so comfortable
for the bourgeois anti-capitalist protester.
-
The mind of the left
- Why do many supposedly educated people in the West reject capitalism?
It is one of the fundamental mysteries of intellectual life since 1850.
- Capitalism doesn't just make countries rich,
while socialism makes them poor.
We all know that.
It's old news.
But there is more:
-
Capitalism is morally
superior:
- The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism
- Capitalism is moral
because it allows people to be free to pursue their own lives
and dreams.
Socialism is immoral
because it makes people subjects, chattel,
owned by the state,
which will plan their lives
and tell them what to do.
- Economists
Money does buy happiness
-
Some wealthy, comfortable western romantics claim that "money can't buy happiness".
That affluent societies are not happier.
That the third world often has a stronger and better family and social life than we do.
-
Pew Survey, July 2007
shows this is not true.
There is a strong correlation between
GDP and the level of satisfaction people express with their lives.
- Richard D. North
-
Rich is Beautiful: A Very Personal Defence of Mass Affluence,
Richard D. North, 2005.
- He has an optimistic, life-affirming philosophy, like me.
He wants everybody to be rich, and to be happy and grateful for it,
not guilty and negative.
- Extract
- "I like an argument that suggests that the West is just plain fortunate,
and perhaps we in the Anglosphere are especially so, and that we will enjoy ourselves much more
when we recognize it and are grateful for it.
Lucky people ought to be gracious, and grateful,
and if modern society has a failing, it is that we are not yet enjoined to be either.
Our intellectuals, artists, and "role models" tend to line up with the complaint,
not the celebration."
-
Polish man wakes up in 2007 after being in a coma since 1988
(and search)
- He is a powerful reminder of how little we appreciate the
wealth and variety that global capitalism has brought us.
And how little we appreciate the strong
anti-communist forces
that defeated communism and liberated Europe.
"When I went into a coma, there was only tea and vinegar in the shops.
Meat was rationed and there were huge petrol queues everywhere.
Now I see people on the streets with cellphones
and there are so many goods in the shops it makes my head spin."
And yet people still complain:
"What amazes me is all these people who walk around with their mobile phones and yet they never stop moaning."
"The world is prettier now"
than it was under communism, he says.
The correlation between money and happiness.
From the Pew survey above.
If it is true that wealth is good, and poverty is bad,
then who is actually ending poverty and creating wealth?
The fact is that the right is the friend of the poor.
The left is the enemy of the poor:
- There is a central paradox of capitalism that seems extremely hard
for most people to understand.
It is
the difference between
intentions and outcomes.
-
The New Left?
- nice short post by Frank McGahon
on the difference between
intentions and outcomes.
The left might want to end poverty and unemployment,
but their policies (high tax, redistribution of wealth)
actually increase poverty and unemployment and emigration.
Whatever the right's intentions
(and, as McGahon points out, who cares?)
their policies
actually reduce poverty and unemployment and emigration.
So anyone who cares about the poor and about reducing unemployment and emigration
should support capitalism, and should support the right.
- In Ireland,
for example, poor people should vote for FF and the PDs,
since FF and the PDs have helped the poor
(by massively reducing unemployment and emigration, for example).
Sinn Fein,
on the other hand, is an enemy of the poor,
its policies will hurt the poor,
and poor people logically should not vote for it.
-
Greed Makes the World Go Round
by Radley Balko,
suggests some provocative paradoxes:
- "Most of the harm in the world is done by good people"
- Certainly true when one thinks of Christianity, Islam, socialism, communism
and nationalism.
- "Most of the good in the world has been done by 'greedy' people
- people out to better themselves"
- Certainly true when one thinks of science, medicine, technology, capitalism,
consumer goods, media like the Internet,
and the vast improvements in living standards, wealth, health and life expectancy
in the last few hundred years.
"Want and greed are why humanity today is freer, healthier and more comfortable than it's ever been. Nearly every significant innovation, invention or improvement that man has so far come up with resulted from the innovator, the inventor or the improver's desire to better his own condition,
or, put differently, to get more stuff."
Map of world economic freedom 2005,
from
The Heritage Foundation.
See full size.
Blue - Free.
Green - Mostly Free.
Yellow - Mostly Unfree.
Red - Repressed.
White - No data.
- The Heritage Foundation
- Economic freedom has made Ireland prosperous
- Economic Freedom Network
- Foreign Policy
- Globalization Index 2004
(or via here)
ranks Ireland the no.1 most globalised nation in the world.
US is no.7.
UK is no.12.
- ranking
(and top 20)
- FAQ - Is globalization good?
- "Results in previous years challenged the conventional wisdom on such issues as income inequality,
wages, environmental protection, corruption, and political freedom by showing that, on par,
the most global nations are also those with the strongest records of equality,
the most robust protection for natural resources, the most inclusive political systems,
and the lowest corruption. Moreover, there appears to be little proof that global nations
have trimmed social benefits or slashed workers' wages in an effort to get ahead. Adding to the picture,
this year's results also demonstrate that the most global countries are those
where residents live the longest, healthiest lives and where women enjoy the strongest social,
educational, and economic progress."
-
Transparency International
Perhaps the clearest finding in all of economics is the
correlation
between economic freedom and prosperity.
Compare the table of
economic freedom
with the table of
the richest countries.
Socialists claim to want to make people better off.
They claim to want to reduce poverty, not increase it.
And yet they refuse to approach the issue scientifically,
namely by seeing what actually does reduce poverty,
and adopting it.
If you want your country to be prosperous,
the most logical thing to do is the following.
Forget ideology.
Forget your pre-conceptions.
Simply look at the countries high on
this list,
and do what they do.
Social mobility (helping the poor become rich)
Social mobility is easier in America than
anywhere else on the planet.
Europe is dominated by class, accent and address.
Most of the world is dominated by tribe, religion, caste, family,
and political corruption.
It's hard to escape your destiny in most of the world.
But in America if you go to school, and work hard, you'll make money.
It's not perfect, but it's better than anywhere else.
If you care about people's material circumstances,
as leftists since Marx claim to,
then you ought to want every country in the world
to be like America.
Leftists claim to care about the poor,
and yet their
policies don't seem to help the poor become not poor
(which surely is the whole point).
The main problem is that leftists
have no real understanding of what it's like
in the poor uneducated underclass.
Leftists understand middle-class liberal coffee-house culture,
but little else.
Leftists understand middle-class liberal coffee-house culture,
but little else.
-
Theodore Dalrymple
(pen name of Anthony Daniels)
- articles
(and here)
- What is Poverty?
- There is no real poverty in the west, by historical or world standards.
Yet the life of its underclass
is perhaps even worse than life for many actually poor people in the third world.
Their problems are those of ideas, of
"sheer ignorance of how to live".
-
Life at the Bottom
by Theodore Dalrymple
- What life is really like
among the modern poor
(and why the left
will keep them that way).
- William Dalrymple
- Walter Williams
also writes well about the modern western "poor".
-
Where are the poor?
- "Real material poverty, to any significant degree, simply does not exist
in the United States.
...
Poverty of the spirit and dependency are today's problems."
-
The poverty hype
- "Despite claims that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,
poverty is nowhere near the problem it was yesteryear".
He has some annoying (annoying because true) advice for those who want more money:
"Households in the top income bracket have 2.1 workers; those in the bottom have 0.6 workers.
In the lowest income bracket, 84 percent worked part time;
in the highest income bracket, 80 percent worked full time.
That translates into: Get a full-time job.
Only 7 percent of top income earners live in a "nonfamily" household
compared to 37 percent of the bottom income category.
Translation: Get married. At the time of the study,
the unemployment rate in McAllen, Texas, was 17.5 percent,
while in Austin, Texas, it was 3.5 percent. Translation:
If you can't find a job in one locality, move to where there are jobs."
- These writers express something I've thought for a long time:
There is no real poverty
(by any historical or world standards)
in the west any more.
The underclass's problems are something else.
- The underclass has a rotten life. But it is not caused by poverty.
-
What is Poor?
by Bruce Bartlett
- On the changing definition of poverty.
In the US, in the lowest 10
percent of households
(all of whom are officially classified as "poor"):
- 91 percent own color TVs
(which I myself didn't own before age 29)
- 74 percent own microwave ovens
(I never owned one before age 29)
- 55 percent own VCRs
(for me, age 29)
- 47 percent own clothes dryers
(for me, age 30)
- 42 percent own stereos
- 23 percent own dishwashers
(for me, age 30)
- 21 percent own computers
- 19 percent own garbage disposals
(I still don't own one!)
-
The Myth of Widespread American Poverty
by Robert E. Rector, 1998
- In 1995, 41 percent of all "poor" households owned their own homes.
- 70 percent of "poor" households own a car. 27 percent own two or more cars.
- 97 percent have a color television. 49 percent own two or more color televisions.
87 percent have a telephone.
- 74 percent have a VCR. 21 percent have two or more VCRs. 53 percent have a stereo system.
- 99 percent own a fridge.
64 percent own a microwave oven.
- 61 percent own a washing machine. 49 percent own a dryer.
28 percent have a dishwasher.
- 66 percent have air conditioning.
29 percent have garbage disposal.
- 60 percent of "poor" Americans have 2 or more rooms per occupant.
I and my family have 1.3.
- Poor Americans have an average of 440 square feet of living space per person.
I and my family have 240 square feet.
- Housing space for poor Americans is greater than that of the average
person living in Paris, London, or Vienna.
- "most "poor" Americans today are better housed, better fed, and own more personal property
than average Americans throughout most of this century."
-
"If poverty is defined as generally lacking adequate nutritious food for one's family,
suitable clothing, and a reasonably warm, dry apartment in which to live,
or lacking a car to get to work when one is needed,
then there are few poor persons remaining in the United States.
...
The bulk of the "poor" live in material conditions that would have been judged comfortable
or well-off just a few generations ago.
...
In fact, living conditions in the nation as a whole have improved so much that American society
can no longer clearly remember what it meant to be poor or even middle class
in earlier generations."
- Robert E. Rector
sums up perfectly the left's lack of understanding of poverty,
crime and other social problems:
- "The Census poverty report
... is rooted in
the belief that "poverty" causes social problems such as crime, drug use,
school failure, illegitimacy, and dependence. This belief, although common, is false.
Clearly, there were far more truly poor persons in earlier generations than there are today.
(In fact, nearly all adults alive today had parents or grandparents who grew up "poor" in the sense
of having incomes below the current Census thresholds, adjusted for inflation.) If it were true that "poverty"
causes social and behavioral problems, then earlier generations should have been awash in drugs, crime, and promiscuity.
But this was not the case. Most social problems have expanded as incomes have increased.
In reality, it is the norms and values within a family, rather than its income,
that are critical to a child's well-being and prospects for success
in future life."
-
Poverty is not Inequality
- Frank McGahon notes how many groups confuse the two
- deliberately I believe.
For instance, poverty is defined as
"earning less than 60% of the average wage".
Under such a definition, prosperous, wealthy people
- richer than all of their ancestors
and most of the planet
- become "poor".
McGahon has a nice image to explain how - if we use these dishonest
definitions of poverty - you can solve all poverty overnight:
"Simply take all the money off those earning over 60% of the average wage
- the "hedonistic rich" as she puts it
- put it in a big container and set it on fire.
Bingo: the "poor" become "rich" without receiving a single extra cent!"
-
Walter E. Williams has some more interesting facts:
- The top 20 percent of income earners pay 80 percent of total federal income taxes.
- The top 50 percent pay 96.5 percent of total federal income taxes.
There have been studies that suggest social mobility has declined
in the west recently (in the sense of the absolute numbers of people moving from poor
up to middle class).
-
How can this be? Has the west got more prejudiced against
those with the "wrong" race, class, religion or accent?
Everything I know tells me the west has never been less prejudiced.
Consider even the good-humoured, but ultimately patronising,
portrayal of blacks, asians, Irish, women and gays
on 1970s TV, compared with the sophisticated approach of today
which clearly accepts them as equals.
It seems to me that the barriers are down today as never before.
So what is going on?
- Here's one theory: There was a massive once-off adjustment
in the past that is unlikely to be repeated.
For hundreds of years, talented people of the "wrong" religion, class, race or gender
were held back.
When these barriers came down they moved forward, creating new middle classes
such as
the 19th cent Irish Catholic middle class,
or
the 20th cent black American middle class
(who are now
richer than Sweden).
This was a massive once-off wave.
- Once that adjustment is made, we are in a more "normal" situation where
ambitious middle-class parents raise ambitious children, who stay middle class,
and unambitious poorer parents raise unambitious children, who stay poorer.
The barriers are down (as never before) for any talented people to rise
- there are simply fewer of them taking up the challenge
as there were in the highly artificial situation of the past.
- It could even be argued that many young people born in
high-unemployment, high-crime, inner-city ghettoes
are victims of the successful social mobility of the past.
Those who wanted to advance - all the ambitious, hard-working people - have left,
leaving behind no role models.
To leave the ghetto the young person must
adopt a completely different set of values
to the culture all around him
- for example, he must work hard in school and try to improve himself.
This is impossible for most young people in the face of
constant discouragement from his peers, who mock his hard work
and may even assault those who work hard in school.
-
Ghetto culture
contributes to keeping people in the ghetto,
while its authors get rich.
- Lost in the Ghetto
by Theodore Dalrymple
- The horror of being born intelligent or sensitive in a modern urban ghetto.
-
"Despite official genuflections in the direction of diversity and tolerance, the sad fact is that the culture of the slums is monolithic and deeply intolerant. Any child who tries to resist the blandishments of that culture can count on no support or defense from teachers or any other adult, who now equate both freedom and democracy with the tyranny of the majority. Many of my intelligent patients from the slums recount how, in school, they expressed a desire to learn, only to suffer mockery, excommunication, and in some instances outright violence from their peers."
-
"Life in the British slums demonstrates what happens when the population at large, and the authorities as well, lose all faith in a hierarchy of values. All kinds of pathology result: where knowledge is not preferable to ignorance and high culture to low, the intelligent and the sensitive suffer a complete loss of meaning. The intelligent self-destruct; the sensitive despair. And where decent sensitivity is not nurtured, encouraged, supported, or protected, brutality abounds."
The homeless
- Free to Choose
- Theodore Dalrymple on why there are so many homeless.
- One thing often overlooked is that it is easier
to be homeless now than at any time in history.
As support for the homeless rises, one should expect the number
of homeless to rise, and indeed that is what has happened.
- "It is difficult for most of us to accept that this way of life, so unattractive on the surface, is freely chosen.
...
To say, however, that a choice is a free one is not to endorse it as good or wise. There is no doubt that these men live entirely parasitically, contributing nothing to the general good and presuming upon society’s tolerance of them. When hungry, they have only to appear at a hostel kitchen; when ill, at a hospital. They are profoundly antisocial."
- "And to say that their choice is a free one is not to deny that it is without influences from outside. A significant part of the social context of these homeless men is a society prepared to demand nothing of them. It is, in fact, prepared to subsidize them to drink themselves into oblivion, even to death. And all of them, without exception, consider it part of the natural and immutable order of things that society should do so; they all, without exception, call collecting their social security
'getting paid'."
The left don't understand what it is like
among the western poor.
Similarly, the left have no realistic idea
of what it's like in undemocratic countries.
They understand comfortable middle-class life in a free country,
but little else.
- The unfree world
-
Builders and Defenders:
Why aren't liberals interested in the outside world?
by
Michael J. Totten - An intelligent liberal questions the idea
that the liberal-left
"understands" what it's like outside the west.
- The fantasy world of the
United Nations
and international law.
-
Unfree countries always lie
- Nicholas Provenzo
on the fantasy of treating unfree countries
as if they are civilized.
As if genocidal, blood-soaked tyrants believe in "peace"
and "human rights" like we do.
He refers to the North Korean
regime, which has killed 4 million people,
and runs a totalitarian gulag state
where free speech has not been allowed for decades.
And we are surprised when this regime
lies to us!
-
Followup article
- "No matter how bloodstained and brutal,
liberals believe that dictators can be reasoned with,
and are interested
in the welfare of their countries."
- Cox and Forkum cartoon
on western idiots like Jimmy Carter,
who is surprised when North Korea lies to us.
The left don't understand
criminals - for, essentially,
the same reasons why they don't understand dictators:
"The great revolution of the twentieth century will turn out to be the
liberal revolution
- by 1970 it was already patently obvious that the socialist revolution
had failed everywhere."
-
Jean-Francois Revel.
"In the past five hundred years, perhaps in all history, there has only been one genuinely successful revolution - one that delivered on its promises for a better world, based on the principles of freedom, equality, enterprise and endeavour; one that actually succeeded, despite the acknowledged imperfection of some of its outcomes.
...
It was the American Revolution of 1776. That's the only one that has ever really worked."
- Rob Foot,
The New Anti-Semitism?
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