Capital-isn't
For some time, I've been thinking about the unfairness of attacking "capitalism" as a system that must defend itself. Capitalism really isn't an ideology or a system at all; it's just letting people do what they want with their money and their property. No one has to "enforce" capitalism; it just happens, at least if property and contract rights are relatively secure. But how to explain this to my lefty friends who don't like some of the "results" of capitalism and therefore argue for what they view as competing ideologies (and what I view as artificial constraints on freedom by the powerful)?
Once again, Thomas Sowell comes to the rescue with this passage on "Capitalism" from "Vision of the Anointed":
"Since capitalism was named by its enemies, it is perhaps not surprising that the name is completely misleading. Despite the name, capitalism is not an 'ism,' It is not a philosophy but an economy. Ultimately it is nothing more and nothing less than an economy not run by political authorities. There are no capitalist institutions; any number of institutional ways of carrying out economic activities may flourish under 'capitalism' -- that is, in the absence of control from above. You may get food from a restaurant, or by buying it from the supermarket and cooking it yourself, or by growing the food on your own land and processing it all the way through to the dinner table. Each of these is just as much 'capitalism' as the others. At any given time, caravans, supermarkets, or computerized shopping methods may be used, but none of these is anything more than a modality of the moment. They do not define capitalism but are simply one of the innumerable ways of doing things when choices are unconstrained by authorities.
"Many have argued that capitalism does not offer a satisfactory moral message. But that is like saying that calculus does not contain carbohydrates, amino acids, or other essential nutrients. Everything fails by irrelevant standards. Yet no one regards this as making calculus invalid or illegitimate. Once again, the selective application of arbitrary standards is invoked only when it promotes the vision of the anointed."
That's an interesting point about capitalism being named by its enemies. Kind of like puritanism, Methodism, the nicknames for each of the Spice Girls, and I'm sure plenty of other labels that were coined by enemies but were eventually embraced by friends. Go capitalism!
For some time, I've been thinking about the unfairness of attacking "capitalism" as a system that must defend itself. Capitalism really isn't an ideology or a system at all; it's just letting people do what they want with their money and their property. No one has to "enforce" capitalism; it just happens, at least if property and contract rights are relatively secure. But how to explain this to my lefty friends who don't like some of the "results" of capitalism and therefore argue for what they view as competing ideologies (and what I view as artificial constraints on freedom by the powerful)?
Once again, Thomas Sowell comes to the rescue with this passage on "Capitalism" from "Vision of the Anointed":
"Since capitalism was named by its enemies, it is perhaps not surprising that the name is completely misleading. Despite the name, capitalism is not an 'ism,' It is not a philosophy but an economy. Ultimately it is nothing more and nothing less than an economy not run by political authorities. There are no capitalist institutions; any number of institutional ways of carrying out economic activities may flourish under 'capitalism' -- that is, in the absence of control from above. You may get food from a restaurant, or by buying it from the supermarket and cooking it yourself, or by growing the food on your own land and processing it all the way through to the dinner table. Each of these is just as much 'capitalism' as the others. At any given time, caravans, supermarkets, or computerized shopping methods may be used, but none of these is anything more than a modality of the moment. They do not define capitalism but are simply one of the innumerable ways of doing things when choices are unconstrained by authorities.
"Many have argued that capitalism does not offer a satisfactory moral message. But that is like saying that calculus does not contain carbohydrates, amino acids, or other essential nutrients. Everything fails by irrelevant standards. Yet no one regards this as making calculus invalid or illegitimate. Once again, the selective application of arbitrary standards is invoked only when it promotes the vision of the anointed."
That's an interesting point about capitalism being named by its enemies. Kind of like puritanism, Methodism, the nicknames for each of the Spice Girls, and I'm sure plenty of other labels that were coined by enemies but were eventually embraced by friends. Go capitalism!
posted by Under The Mountain | 8:10 PM
4 Comments:
I admit that I hate Capitalism, while I love Capitalism. My hatred is based on the negative consequences resulting from fallen, sinful people acting in an arena with few to no constraints. However, I love it because a state-run economy, spearheaded by a few select fallen, sinful people will have even more negative effects. So, damned if you do, damned if you don't - it's the best thing going.
The big question in my mind is how Christianity fits under the umbrella of capitalism. If you believe in Adam Smith, then capitalism works best when everyone is out for #1. That don't jive with the Bible, though. So, how do you reconcile the two? I can reconcile it on a personal level, but is there a baseline from which all Christians should act?
Clear-cut example: A Christian probably shouldn't buy shoes made in a sweatshop in a foreign country where children are working and dying in a form of indentured servitude.
Less-clear example: Should a Christian shop at Wal-Mart knowing that they buy a lot of their products from foreign countries where people work in an environment slightly better than slavery? And knowing that Wal-Mart doesn't pay a living wage to their employees? And knowing that Wal-Mart doesn't offer its employees health care but rather sloughs them off on each state's health care program, to be supported by the tax payers? And knowing that Wal-Mart rarely pays any local taxes at any of their stores, yet posts a large net income number every quarter?
On a personal level, I say no, I refuse to support that. (Yeah, Capitalism! I have the right to make that choice.) But I feel that it may be a bit strong to say that all good Christians must shun Wal-Mart.
My mother-in-law told me that she has one friend who basically says that even though she is morally opposed to Wal-Mart, she still shops there because she likes the low prices. And her family is not in need of low prices - they have a huge house with a swimming pool, etc.
So, right or wrong? I don't think that we have the right as Christians to ignore all the other factors in the world and do only what makes us feel good. But where is the line? Is there a line? Thinking over this always makes my head nearly explode!!
This Wal-Mart thing is worthy of a post of its own. I will therefore defer comment on Wal-Mart at this time.
Ds is right, of course, about capitalism = freedom = both good and bad outcomes. Capitalism is like democracy as characterized by Churchill -- it really stinks, except compared to all the alternatives.
I will say a word about the shoes made in the sweatshop example. I'm not necessarily disageeing, but I don't think it is as easy as ds says. You have to ask what those kids will do when the factory closes because you won't buy the shoes they worked so hard to make. Presumably, the parents of these sweatshop kids love their children, and they have made the judgment (which can't have been easy) that their family as a whole is better off with the wages the kids earn in the factories than without. Maybe the kids would be put out to prostitution if the factory closed. Maybe they would just go hungry. Maybe they would be sold into slavery. DO WE REALLY BELIEVE THEY WOULD IMMEDIATELY BE ENROLLED IN SCHOOL? Now, why are circumstances so bad in these countries? Could it be, at least in part, because their country doesn't have a reliable regime of property and contract rights? If they did, maybe the shoe company could justify high-dollar investments in shoe-making machines and efficient factories, thereby increasing the productivity of the average shoe maker by giving him better tools, permitting higher wages -- and possibly the preference of adults as employees, who are healthier, stronger and learn better and faster with complex tasks. (Remember that the shoe making sweatshops face competition from other shoe making sweatshops, and poor people know to go where the money is as well as rich people do. Unless, of course, the shoe maker is in a controlled economy where they have monopoly power. But that isn't capitalism, is it?)
So, it's pretty complicated, and there are tradeoffs no matter what you do. That doesn't mean you're morally obligated to buy the shoes, but I have a hard time concluding you're morally obligated NOT to buy them.
Now, there is another issue just under the surface -- buying goods made by political prisoners in labor camps (which most of us have probably done without knowing it). None of the above tradeoffs seem to apply in this context. Unless you go down the road of calculating that the regime holding the prisoners will probably just shoot them all if they can't get any value out of them. Which does happen. But it seems to me that this is a wholly different case from the "child labor sweatshops", even if it's not as easy as it seems on the surface.
Nothing is easy.
Here's an artist facing a lot of criticism for her photographs.
Poor little guy.
Su
I love her defense: "I've never done anything awful in my life." Oh, well, OK then.
Just for the record, the fit that resulted in the picture on my blog was a NATURAL fit, not an induced one. No children were harmed in the creation of this blog.
As if you really need to induce a fit in a child to get a good picture. All she had to do was babysit for a couple of hours!
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