Marxist deconstruction at work here. What Marxists fail to understand (or purposely ignore) is Iron Law of Oligarchy applies to no matter which “ism” is currently in vogue. Simple fact is capitalism , with all its evils, has lifted more people out of poverty than any other “ism.”
Haha but that's not a "simple fact." It's a myth. The vast majority of people who have been lifted out of poverty over the past half-century live in China, which has a distinctly non-capitalist economy. If you remove China from global prosperity data, the plight of most people is economic stagnation and decline, living lower-quality lives in overcrowded slums compared to their agricultural ancestors. Capitalism has made the west very wealthy, and the rest very dependent.
@blox - How can you say China is distinctly non-capitalist economy? Do you think if it was communist it could be as productive as it is? Socialist? I await your explanation...
It’s politically communist and economically mercantilist, nationalist and industrial/crony capitalist . Socialism with Chinese characteristics. It’s not at all clear that our form of crony financial capitalism/late stage empire is any better. In fact we don’t even do manufacturing or infrastructure anymore, much less provide for the health and welfare of the people.
Our government can't even set the ground rules for a fair private-sector arena in which everyone who works FT can earn a living and talent rises to the top.
China is communist because its economy is centrally planned and its enterprises are owned by the state. Is your argument that China must be capitalist because it is successful? Because that's a glaring logical fallacy: "my opinion is the good one, so if they're doing well they must be doing things my way."
For whatever it's worth, China isn't doing particularly well right now, and most of its ills are the direct result of central planning. But it did lift a lot of people out of poverty ~1990-2021.
China may be communist in name but they have a hybrid mixture of capitalism and central planning. I do not purport to understand it but the point I am making is pure communism or socialism is not going to lift folks out of poverty. Just look at the old USSR, North Korea, or Cuba for comparison purposes. None of those economies could build iPhones but China figured out a hybrid way to make it happen. That is my point. FYI, the US is NOT capitalist, not by a long shot. The US is a corporatist oligarchy - aka fascist as they come.
NK and Cuba were steamrolled by US empire, less than they were victims of communism. NK was much more prosperous than ROK for a couple decades. US could not allow the narrative of the communist north exceeding the capitalist south, so they poured money into ROK and sabotaged the north to create the outcome they wanted.
Cuba was much the same. They had one of the best healthcare systems anywhere, great schools, etc. Once again, it was the Cold War and the US could not permit a communist success story, so they erected illegal blockades, made 600+ attempts on Castro's life, and much more.
For the record, I'm not a communist and I think markets are great. But commies and capitalists alike have the same fault: they both think that the true version of their system has never been tried, and if only we "did it right" prosperity would follow. It's all dogma. I don't do dogma.
The truth is that every large political economy naturally tends to fascist oligarchy. It doesn't matter what system you choose.
@blox - I have been to Cuba. Beautiful country and wonderful people. I never understood the blockade as it hurts the people more than the government. The government folks already have access to whatever they need (a.k.a. Iron Law of Oligarchy) so the blockade did not really impact them.
“In a free market, both employers and employees are free to negotiate their own terms of employment.”
But where is there a “free market”? Certainly not in anywhere in the United States, where the government mandates that employers must pay employees a certain minimum amount per hour. Even worse, some states mandate that employers negotiate with labor unions — not employees — over the “terms of employment.” Like parasites, labor unions suck the life blood of the employer, until it is too weak (unprofitable) to survive, at which point both the employer and employees die (go out of business). Just ask the truckers of Yellow, the unionized trucking company that went bankrupt last year, how those huge union-negotiated wages are working out for them.
It's been one of the slick little tricks of the Left - to claim we currently live in a Capitalist society - framing the Overton window to the far left - and then arguing for even more leftism. Somehow the "thought leaders" on the Right never seem to argue this point. In fact, we are much closer to Socialism than Capitalism. The government is involved in and manipulates pretty much everything. Roughly half to two-thirds of our income is directly taken from us in one form or another by the various levels of government via taxes, fees, fines, etc.
Think of just one single transaction. Let's say, buying a sandwich. The government has taxed all the businesses involved in making the ingredients in that sandwich. It's taxed the co's that provided the supplies to the co's that made the ingredients. It's taxed the co. that puts those ingredients together. It's taxed the owner of the property where the sandwich is put together. And it taxes the consumer buying the sandwich...buying it with money left over from income that was already taxed. And if the consumer wanted to resell half the sandwich, government would demand a tax for that as well. Multiply that by trillions of transactions every day.
It's astounding, actually. What a scam! And the Left sells this as "free market" "Capitalism." At what point can we say we already live under a Socialist regime? (Personally, I think the language of these "-isms" is outdated, but it's what we're still using, so I'm rolling with it for the purposes of making the point here.)
There's certainly a demeaning of the productive by leftists, slandering them as exploitative (The Myth of the Robber Barons is a decent book on this subject).
But another, maybe more apparent, issue today is the threat to free markets from the rent-seeker class (Rand called them 'moochers' and 'looters'). This is a group averse to true production in a free market context, but not averse to making money. So they lobby heavily for government involvement in various activities and position themselves accordingly. Since wealth is how we keep score, this has the pernicious effect of confusing cronyism with capitalism.
Unfortunately, the size and growth of government will only encourage this type of behavior. As redistributive policies proliferate, in the mind of the rent-seekers the way to achieve wealth will be not through production, but through proximity to the coercive and redistributive forces of government.
I’m not a Randian but I read a biography of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. Rockefeller was a hard nosed businessman to be sure. But he was hardly the devil incarnate that his detractors made him out to be. The Pennsylvania wildcatters that he put out of business were given good prices for their businesses, and Rockefeller improved wages and working conditions in what was literally a very dirty business.
I can’t disagree with you there but it was not because of John D. Just for example, his foundation was instrumental in founding the university of Chicago and many hospitals. Although John D had many weird ideas about medicine (he was basically a homeopath) he deferred to the medical science of the day. He also funded the eradication of hookworm, a real problem in the south. And many other worthwhile things. If the foundation has become evil it’s a problem that happens to all foundations and unearned money, not specifically with the foundation itself or the founder.
Yes John D was not a saint. He was a consummate business man and did whatever he could to make a buck. It is amusing that you say he was a homeopath because HE was the one that created the AMA monopoly via the Flexner Report. Look it up. Because of John D, we have Big Pharma cartel and a toxic stew of drugs to ingest where homeopathic remedies may actually be better. However, there is no profit in homepathy.
He was definitely a homeopath and kept company with the founder of homeopathy, much to the irritation of the foundation’s own executives. What toxic stew are you referring to Matt? Would you forego ivermectin and sentence millions of people to river blindness from parasites? What about antibiotics? Would you get rid of them? Or the treatments for hookworms and other parasites? What about cancer surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy; or, failing that the humane palliative treatment we are able to offer cancer sufferers at the end of their lives, from effective painkillers? Would you do away with all these? How about something as simple in modern medicine as repairing a hernia? Is that also a no go? Doctors are human and they make mistakes, and all drugs have side effects. I’m not saying that the AMA monopoly is good. But modern medicine beats the hell out of 19th century medicine. If you ever have cancer - God forbid - I hope you don’t try to treat it with homeopathic remedies, because they don’t do anything. It’s just water with a few atoms of whatever the quack says will cure your problem.
@Owen - Oh how the COVID experience is already being memory-holed. Do you not remember that? When our fascist government held the nation hostage and forced us to take a "vaccine" that was not tested. To make things worse, the big Pharma companies were granted immunity from liability as well. Talk about pure profits. And let's not forget the government and AMA were trying to PREVENT folks from taking ivermectin as it did alleviate many of the COVID symptoms. Or what about Remdesivir? Hospitals forced people (especially elderly) to take this toxic stew (lots of bad side effects) along with ventilators. Chemo? That is actually the last thing you want to take depending on what kind of cancer you have as studies show it causes death in more than 25% of patients. Yes, they die from chemo and not the cancer but doctors are loathe to admit that. Speaking of doctors, many of them are on the take from big Pharma to push the latest drug (not disclosing side effects). Many were paid to push the COVID vaccine...so much for the Hippocratic oath. So yes, you are right...modern medicine has been a blessing. But it is also a curse. So I stand by my statements.
The book I mentioned, The Myth of the Robber Barons, has a chapter on Rockefeller. Amazing what he was able to do in terms of delivering a product (oil and derivatives like kerosene) to the general population at ever decreasing prices while still making handsome profits. Ruthlessly efficient and loved his work. Apparently a dedicated family man as well.
The true businessman is indeed a dying breed, replaced now with rent-seekers whose primary talent is gaining proximity to a coercive and redistributive government.
I may check out that book too. The Chernow biography is great but really long and exhaustive. Rockefeller did truly love to work, and it wasn’t just about success. He loved even working as a clerk and gopher when he was 15. Maybe it was his hardscrabble upbringing in rural upstate New York. What I found amazing was that he had pretty much made his fortune and retired BEFORE the automobile age. Gasoline was an unwanted byproduct of kerosene manufacturing and they tried to find uses for it like gasoline stoves and ovens, which were pretty unsafe (but it was still the 19th century after all). The automobile age, of course, presented even more ways for Standard Oil to make money in spite of the trust busting.
Labor unions probably saved capitalism from itself after the 1930s and made American suburbia the phenomenon it was. Sharing the wealth was a virtuous cycle that created broad middle class prosperity that helped capitalists earn fortunes.
Dude Let’s get real.
Take a look at the budget deficit. All that govermint money is revenue for capitalists.
That’s why they spell Govermint with an M-I-N-T.
How about the FED? Can you spell “Bailouts”?
You can go off the polemical deep end in both directions. Capital or Labor.
The American population consist of roughly 80% workers and 20% entrepreneurs or business owners. Also business owners tend to pay the MAJOIRTY of taxes and are use to collect over 80% of all government taxes, fines, & fees. The segment of the population also tends to be more affluent have better family structures, more educated. It's safe to say that without entrepreneurs or business owners, America would fall a lot more on global indexes without it's entrepreneurial/business owner class. And as a result since 60% of Americans do not pay for the government and services we have, calls made for great services is akin to confiscation and thief. Depriving the country of effective capital allocators that make their dwelling better in every metric.
This entire argument is a myth. State-backed financial capitalism is not a fair game where resources naturally accrue to the smartest, most dedicated, most capable people. There is little to no data to support this argument. Pure fantasy.
While I don't disagree, I think these rational/logical arguments are ineffective, at best. The argument needs to be a moral one. That's what moves people. It's why so many cling to an outdated, blatantly crap idea like Socialism; they think it's the more moral option.
In reality, Capitalism is a more moral and more just system than any form of Marxism (including Fascism, which is just a development of Marxism). Capitalism allows for freedom, autonomy, and flourishing according to one's interests and skills. It's also killed basically no one, while Marxism has killed millions. We also need to stop apologizing by saying things like "while no system is perfect." ...Well, no shite, you don't say... It's far more "perfect" (whatever that term would mean in this context) than the alternatives, which are literally destructive, enslaving, and murderous.
No one has ever won an argument - outside of a debate club appearance - using facts, reason, and logic. I'm sure someone smarter than me can make the moral argument better than I can. But, all I ever see on this topic is unhelpful, eggheaded debate club rhetoric.
And unions are about freedom of association. corporations that benefit from labour are free to move elsewhere, like China. Where freedom of association doesn’t exist
Thanks for featuring the work of George Reisman, who I consider to be the greatest living economist. I interviewed him in 2021 and posted a transcript on my substack - the link is below. George told me he thought it was his best interview.
Marxist deconstruction at work here. What Marxists fail to understand (or purposely ignore) is Iron Law of Oligarchy applies to no matter which “ism” is currently in vogue. Simple fact is capitalism , with all its evils, has lifted more people out of poverty than any other “ism.”
All the other "isms" lead the populous into poverty and slavery.
Haha but that's not a "simple fact." It's a myth. The vast majority of people who have been lifted out of poverty over the past half-century live in China, which has a distinctly non-capitalist economy. If you remove China from global prosperity data, the plight of most people is economic stagnation and decline, living lower-quality lives in overcrowded slums compared to their agricultural ancestors. Capitalism has made the west very wealthy, and the rest very dependent.
@blox - How can you say China is distinctly non-capitalist economy? Do you think if it was communist it could be as productive as it is? Socialist? I await your explanation...
It’s politically communist and economically mercantilist, nationalist and industrial/crony capitalist . Socialism with Chinese characteristics. It’s not at all clear that our form of crony financial capitalism/late stage empire is any better. In fact we don’t even do manufacturing or infrastructure anymore, much less provide for the health and welfare of the people.
Our government can't even set the ground rules for a fair private-sector arena in which everyone who works FT can earn a living and talent rises to the top.
China is communist because its economy is centrally planned and its enterprises are owned by the state. Is your argument that China must be capitalist because it is successful? Because that's a glaring logical fallacy: "my opinion is the good one, so if they're doing well they must be doing things my way."
For whatever it's worth, China isn't doing particularly well right now, and most of its ills are the direct result of central planning. But it did lift a lot of people out of poverty ~1990-2021.
China may be communist in name but they have a hybrid mixture of capitalism and central planning. I do not purport to understand it but the point I am making is pure communism or socialism is not going to lift folks out of poverty. Just look at the old USSR, North Korea, or Cuba for comparison purposes. None of those economies could build iPhones but China figured out a hybrid way to make it happen. That is my point. FYI, the US is NOT capitalist, not by a long shot. The US is a corporatist oligarchy - aka fascist as they come.
NK and Cuba were steamrolled by US empire, less than they were victims of communism. NK was much more prosperous than ROK for a couple decades. US could not allow the narrative of the communist north exceeding the capitalist south, so they poured money into ROK and sabotaged the north to create the outcome they wanted.
Cuba was much the same. They had one of the best healthcare systems anywhere, great schools, etc. Once again, it was the Cold War and the US could not permit a communist success story, so they erected illegal blockades, made 600+ attempts on Castro's life, and much more.
For the record, I'm not a communist and I think markets are great. But commies and capitalists alike have the same fault: they both think that the true version of their system has never been tried, and if only we "did it right" prosperity would follow. It's all dogma. I don't do dogma.
The truth is that every large political economy naturally tends to fascist oligarchy. It doesn't matter what system you choose.
@blox - I have been to Cuba. Beautiful country and wonderful people. I never understood the blockade as it hurts the people more than the government. The government folks already have access to whatever they need (a.k.a. Iron Law of Oligarchy) so the blockade did not really impact them.
“In a free market, both employers and employees are free to negotiate their own terms of employment.”
But where is there a “free market”? Certainly not in anywhere in the United States, where the government mandates that employers must pay employees a certain minimum amount per hour. Even worse, some states mandate that employers negotiate with labor unions — not employees — over the “terms of employment.” Like parasites, labor unions suck the life blood of the employer, until it is too weak (unprofitable) to survive, at which point both the employer and employees die (go out of business). Just ask the truckers of Yellow, the unionized trucking company that went bankrupt last year, how those huge union-negotiated wages are working out for them.
It's been one of the slick little tricks of the Left - to claim we currently live in a Capitalist society - framing the Overton window to the far left - and then arguing for even more leftism. Somehow the "thought leaders" on the Right never seem to argue this point. In fact, we are much closer to Socialism than Capitalism. The government is involved in and manipulates pretty much everything. Roughly half to two-thirds of our income is directly taken from us in one form or another by the various levels of government via taxes, fees, fines, etc.
Think of just one single transaction. Let's say, buying a sandwich. The government has taxed all the businesses involved in making the ingredients in that sandwich. It's taxed the co's that provided the supplies to the co's that made the ingredients. It's taxed the co. that puts those ingredients together. It's taxed the owner of the property where the sandwich is put together. And it taxes the consumer buying the sandwich...buying it with money left over from income that was already taxed. And if the consumer wanted to resell half the sandwich, government would demand a tax for that as well. Multiply that by trillions of transactions every day.
It's astounding, actually. What a scam! And the Left sells this as "free market" "Capitalism." At what point can we say we already live under a Socialist regime? (Personally, I think the language of these "-isms" is outdated, but it's what we're still using, so I'm rolling with it for the purposes of making the point here.)
There's certainly a demeaning of the productive by leftists, slandering them as exploitative (The Myth of the Robber Barons is a decent book on this subject).
But another, maybe more apparent, issue today is the threat to free markets from the rent-seeker class (Rand called them 'moochers' and 'looters'). This is a group averse to true production in a free market context, but not averse to making money. So they lobby heavily for government involvement in various activities and position themselves accordingly. Since wealth is how we keep score, this has the pernicious effect of confusing cronyism with capitalism.
Unfortunately, the size and growth of government will only encourage this type of behavior. As redistributive policies proliferate, in the mind of the rent-seekers the way to achieve wealth will be not through production, but through proximity to the coercive and redistributive forces of government.
I’m not a Randian but I read a biography of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. Rockefeller was a hard nosed businessman to be sure. But he was hardly the devil incarnate that his detractors made him out to be. The Pennsylvania wildcatters that he put out of business were given good prices for their businesses, and Rockefeller improved wages and working conditions in what was literally a very dirty business.
Agreed. However Rockefeller's foundation is certainly evil. Ironically it is not his making money that's the problem. It's what he did with it...
I can’t disagree with you there but it was not because of John D. Just for example, his foundation was instrumental in founding the university of Chicago and many hospitals. Although John D had many weird ideas about medicine (he was basically a homeopath) he deferred to the medical science of the day. He also funded the eradication of hookworm, a real problem in the south. And many other worthwhile things. If the foundation has become evil it’s a problem that happens to all foundations and unearned money, not specifically with the foundation itself or the founder.
Yes John D was not a saint. He was a consummate business man and did whatever he could to make a buck. It is amusing that you say he was a homeopath because HE was the one that created the AMA monopoly via the Flexner Report. Look it up. Because of John D, we have Big Pharma cartel and a toxic stew of drugs to ingest where homeopathic remedies may actually be better. However, there is no profit in homepathy.
He was definitely a homeopath and kept company with the founder of homeopathy, much to the irritation of the foundation’s own executives. What toxic stew are you referring to Matt? Would you forego ivermectin and sentence millions of people to river blindness from parasites? What about antibiotics? Would you get rid of them? Or the treatments for hookworms and other parasites? What about cancer surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy; or, failing that the humane palliative treatment we are able to offer cancer sufferers at the end of their lives, from effective painkillers? Would you do away with all these? How about something as simple in modern medicine as repairing a hernia? Is that also a no go? Doctors are human and they make mistakes, and all drugs have side effects. I’m not saying that the AMA monopoly is good. But modern medicine beats the hell out of 19th century medicine. If you ever have cancer - God forbid - I hope you don’t try to treat it with homeopathic remedies, because they don’t do anything. It’s just water with a few atoms of whatever the quack says will cure your problem.
@Owen - Oh how the COVID experience is already being memory-holed. Do you not remember that? When our fascist government held the nation hostage and forced us to take a "vaccine" that was not tested. To make things worse, the big Pharma companies were granted immunity from liability as well. Talk about pure profits. And let's not forget the government and AMA were trying to PREVENT folks from taking ivermectin as it did alleviate many of the COVID symptoms. Or what about Remdesivir? Hospitals forced people (especially elderly) to take this toxic stew (lots of bad side effects) along with ventilators. Chemo? That is actually the last thing you want to take depending on what kind of cancer you have as studies show it causes death in more than 25% of patients. Yes, they die from chemo and not the cancer but doctors are loathe to admit that. Speaking of doctors, many of them are on the take from big Pharma to push the latest drug (not disclosing side effects). Many were paid to push the COVID vaccine...so much for the Hippocratic oath. So yes, you are right...modern medicine has been a blessing. But it is also a curse. So I stand by my statements.
The book I mentioned, The Myth of the Robber Barons, has a chapter on Rockefeller. Amazing what he was able to do in terms of delivering a product (oil and derivatives like kerosene) to the general population at ever decreasing prices while still making handsome profits. Ruthlessly efficient and loved his work. Apparently a dedicated family man as well.
The true businessman is indeed a dying breed, replaced now with rent-seekers whose primary talent is gaining proximity to a coercive and redistributive government.
I may check out that book too. The Chernow biography is great but really long and exhaustive. Rockefeller did truly love to work, and it wasn’t just about success. He loved even working as a clerk and gopher when he was 15. Maybe it was his hardscrabble upbringing in rural upstate New York. What I found amazing was that he had pretty much made his fortune and retired BEFORE the automobile age. Gasoline was an unwanted byproduct of kerosene manufacturing and they tried to find uses for it like gasoline stoves and ovens, which were pretty unsafe (but it was still the 19th century after all). The automobile age, of course, presented even more ways for Standard Oil to make money in spite of the trust busting.
“In a free market…” (which doesn’t exist anywhere)… yada yah ya
When will libertarians realize that "productivity" is nothing but white supremacy?
Never, they claim not to see race
" Whether it be politicians, academics, or the mainstream media..."
No surprises there. They are all paid for out of the same foreign pocket.
Labor unions probably saved capitalism from itself after the 1930s and made American suburbia the phenomenon it was. Sharing the wealth was a virtuous cycle that created broad middle class prosperity that helped capitalists earn fortunes.
Dude Let’s get real.
Take a look at the budget deficit. All that govermint money is revenue for capitalists.
That’s why they spell Govermint with an M-I-N-T.
How about the FED? Can you spell “Bailouts”?
You can go off the polemical deep end in both directions. Capital or Labor.
The American population consist of roughly 80% workers and 20% entrepreneurs or business owners. Also business owners tend to pay the MAJOIRTY of taxes and are use to collect over 80% of all government taxes, fines, & fees. The segment of the population also tends to be more affluent have better family structures, more educated. It's safe to say that without entrepreneurs or business owners, America would fall a lot more on global indexes without it's entrepreneurial/business owner class. And as a result since 60% of Americans do not pay for the government and services we have, calls made for great services is akin to confiscation and thief. Depriving the country of effective capital allocators that make their dwelling better in every metric.
This entire argument is a myth. State-backed financial capitalism is not a fair game where resources naturally accrue to the smartest, most dedicated, most capable people. There is little to no data to support this argument. Pure fantasy.
While I don't disagree, I think these rational/logical arguments are ineffective, at best. The argument needs to be a moral one. That's what moves people. It's why so many cling to an outdated, blatantly crap idea like Socialism; they think it's the more moral option.
In reality, Capitalism is a more moral and more just system than any form of Marxism (including Fascism, which is just a development of Marxism). Capitalism allows for freedom, autonomy, and flourishing according to one's interests and skills. It's also killed basically no one, while Marxism has killed millions. We also need to stop apologizing by saying things like "while no system is perfect." ...Well, no shite, you don't say... It's far more "perfect" (whatever that term would mean in this context) than the alternatives, which are literally destructive, enslaving, and murderous.
No one has ever won an argument - outside of a debate club appearance - using facts, reason, and logic. I'm sure someone smarter than me can make the moral argument better than I can. But, all I ever see on this topic is unhelpful, eggheaded debate club rhetoric.
And unions are about freedom of association. corporations that benefit from labour are free to move elsewhere, like China. Where freedom of association doesn’t exist
Thanks for featuring the work of George Reisman, who I consider to be the greatest living economist. I interviewed him in 2021 and posted a transcript on my substack - the link is below. George told me he thought it was his best interview.
https://jim3c5.substack.com/p/an-interview-with-george-reisman
so true, great article