January 14, 2008

Capitalism For The Soul

Tim Blair -- and Instapundit -- link to a brilliant paper on Capitalism's PR problem. I was asked at lunch today why the ideals heralded on ThreeSources are so difficult to sell. This Australian provides a (sorry, I have to break my vow) stunning exegesis:

Capitalism provides the conditions for creating worthwhile lives,
argues Peter Saunders

The problem for those of us who believe that capitalism offers the best chance we have for leading meaningful and worthwhile lives is that in this debate, the devil has always had the best tunes to play. Capitalism lacks romantic appeal. It does not set the pulse racing in the way that opposing ideologies like socialism, fascism, or environmentalism can. It does not stir the blood, for it identifies no dragons to slay. It offers no grand vision for the future, for in an open market system the future is shaped not by the imposition of utopian blueprints, but by billions of individuals pursuing their own preferences. Capitalism can justifiably boast that it is excellent at delivering the goods, but this fails to impress in countries like Australia that have come to take affluence for granted.

It is quite the opposite with socialism. Where capitalism delivers but cannot inspire, socialism inspires despite never having delivered. Socialism’s history is littered with repeated failures and with human misery on a massive scale, yet it still attracts smiles rather than curses from people who never had to live under it.(2) Affluent young Australians who would never dream of patronising an Adolf Hitler bierkeller decked out in swastikas are nevertheless happy to hang out in the Lenin Bar at Sydney’s Circular Quay, sipping chilled vodka cocktails under hammer and sickle flags, indifferent to the twenty million victims of the Soviet regime. Chic westerners are still sporting Che Guevara t-shirts, forty years after the man’s death, and flocking to the cinema to see him on a motor bike, apparently oblivious to their handsome hero’s legacy of firing squads and labour camps.


The piece is long but superb.

Philosophy Posted by jk at January 14, 2008 12:13 AM

I'm on vacation right now and don't have time to read the paper, but selling capitalism has one fundamental problem:

There will always be people who don't want to work, and in a true capitalist system that's predicated on a free market, they can't live off the labor of others except by truly voluntary charity. As Bastiat wrote, "The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else." As long as there is a government actively redistributing wealth, people can afford to delude themselves with jealousy, that "no one should have more than anyone else."

Anyway, I have to run. My fiancee's family is preparing dinner.

Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at January 14, 2008 5:18 AM

Enjoy your dinner and vacation!

No doubt you are right to a point and that many enemies of a truly fair economic system want to freeload. But I think johngalt's bete noir of altruism is an even larger component.

To be fair, the statists I know tend not to be freeloaders. Some are, but most are productive people who simply cannot bear to see anybody caught in any consequences however much the suffering party may have contributed to his own problems.

Posted by: jk at January 14, 2008 11:10 AM | What do you think? [2]