House of Eratosthenes

This post-subscribing thing generates a lot of e-mail, but I’m picking up the impression that, nevertheless, I should make a point of doing it more often.

Capitalism is “normal”. It has been around forever and is more like a law of nature then a invention of man. The dramatic increase in capitalism coincides with and is a result of freedom. The freedom of individuals to practice capitalism openly and in many different ways. To the extent there is any moral negative to it is not the result of capitalism but simply the inevitable result of human nature. We are not perfect beings and we use many things including religion to attain personal gain often at the expense of others. babies do it right out of the womb and most humans do it until their last breath. Everything from taking the last cookie to using sex to get what you want to taking money by false means is human nature and not the result of capitalism or religion or any external factor.

I consider the Wikipedia definition to be a great example of how one distances oneself from reality by relying too much on textbooks, and laboring with too much effort to produce answers found to comport with their content:

Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of capital goods and the means of production, with the creation of goods and services for profit. Elements central to capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, and a price system. There are multiple variants of capitalism, including laissez-faire, welfare capitalism, and state capitalism…

All veritably true, as usual. And unhelpful in the endeavor of defining something.

When we discuss capitalism, we are discussing trade. Exchange of goods and services. And free of coercion, including regulatory or tax-related coercion. The traders act like owners of the commodities being exchanged, or representatives of those owners, saying yea or nay to the proposal based on their consideration of the value of the commodities. If such selfish evaluations enjoy primacy above all other considerations in the arrival at the yea-or-nay, then we have capitalism. If they don’t, then we don’t.

Some of the attacks upon capitalism we have seen, lately, have to do with perversions, not displacements, of it. A bank that is “too big to fail” and assents to faulty loans with the understanding that the government will shield the bank from the undesirable consequences, qualifies for my definition. In fact, that’s the whole problem with too-big-to-fail. The phrase packed barely enough punch to allow the negotiators to get away with it — in the urgency of the moment, third-quarter of 2008. The process went forward, with the grudging approval, or at least lack of will to protest it into stoppage, of the public. But that smattering of goodwill has not aged well, I think.

Getting back to the subject at hand: It’s a good point. Capitalism is normal. You have A, I have B, it is natural that our situations are different and you may value A more than B, while my material values are the opposite. We trade. One or the other of us suffers, if one or the other of us is in the wrong, which will happen from time to time. But overall, we will both be correct, because with repeated exchanges we will learn whatever it is we need to learn. The exchanges that endure over time, therefore, will be the ones that are mutually profitable.

It’s odd that the people who have the greatest positive exuberance for “evolution,” nurture the most bitter and churlish resentment against capitalism. The latter endures only as a proper and functional implementation of the former. It therefore possesses all of the noted characteristics: Big improvement over long time, as a result of everyday happenstance within much shorter time, involving success, failures, discomfort and demise. Throughout it all, the organisms learn, and the organisms improve. It is the same process, in all the ways that really matter.

Capitalism’s worst trait is that it buckles under the strain of being tasked with too much responsibility. We do not simply ask capitalism to improve owned property, hire workers, ensure abundance and supply of needed wares, improve technology and extend life spans, but we also ask it to support the shiftless, support employees after they’ve been let go, support the maintenance of common areas, support the workers if they’ve been hurt, support the economy with taxes (indirectly and clandestinely) paid for by the consumer, support the local governments, support the administrative openings at the various agencies, support the SEC, etc. etc.

It’s not that this truck won’t run, and run fast. It’s simply that the truck has a weight rating and it’s trying to putter along with 100,000 10 lb. cement bags piled high in it. Please don’t try to “fix” capitalism by removing one bag, and please don’t tell me each bag is small.
- wch | 03/23/2013 @ 10:17

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Wednesday, March 20th, 2013