When I was growing up in the late 80’s, this was a question I would never think to ask but in the last 4-5 years, I’ve been skeptical.
I’m from the school that says the Human Race is designed to help one another and look out for all of it’s members. My country’s most beloved economic cornerstone, capitalism, could be the mad man driving the bus. If capitalism was a necessary strategy for a mass of people seeking liberty than what is it’s purpose after that mass of people won the war (cold war)? After we won our sole superpower status through a capitalist strategy, isn’t our blinding arrogance for capitalism hurting us? It seems capitalism has become poisonous to our national security. Relentless competition forces companies to move manufacturing out of the country. In the game of survival, banks saw no choice but to outdo other institution’s ethical crimes. Profitability trumps national stability? The problem has more than enough details to fill a wall of encyclopedias and I’m obviously not Dr. Economics but some questions should be considered. Is the capitalist way of thinking no longer necessary at some point and is our thoughtless pride for it playing a giant role in the decline?
Sincerely and respectfully,
An American patriot in the 21st century
I am not Dr. Economics either, but I thought capitalism was the basis for our economic system long before there was any Cold War and that foreign policy and military action that led to the end of the Cold War was a lot more complex than relying on Walgreen’s and Sears Roebuck.
Like it did for the Soviet Union?
I’m open to suggestions for whatever might run better than a properly regulated capitalist system in the 21st century. Other models don’t seem to have worked out spectacularly well.
We might end up doing that someday, but it ain’t in the design. We’re designed to be squabbling tribes of savages fighting over waterholes – full duty-of-aid to in-group members, but the rest of humanity is owed nothing. We haven’t evolved much, biologically, since our ancestors were like that.
Capitalism is an economic system that works for some things, but fails miserably for others. However, in America it’s treated as a moral principle. People are less concerned about it “working” than they are about it being followed, no matter who gets hurt. “It’s against the Free Market” is treated as a moral argument; you don’t need to show why going against the Free Market is bad in that circumstance, it’s treated as innately evil in itself. The debate over national health care is a classic example; the “anti” side does not care that the “socialized” health care of other countries is cheaper and does a better job (and often flatly refuses to believe it, regardless of the evidence presented); capitalism is sacred. It must be followed.
I think **DerTrihs ** hit it right in the head. I also don’t see how blind faith in capitalism helped us win the Cold War. If anything it was the opposite. We had massive government spending on defense and restrictions on selling strategic materials to our “enemies”. Some folks like the Koch brothers’ dad got around the latter to makes themselves richer of course.
I think the biggest mistake of the Cold War was the idea that we were at “war” with communism. Communism wasn’t the enemy - the Soviet Union was the enemy.
What if our Cold War enemy had been an equally-expansionist Russian Empire (which had avoided any revolutions)? It wouldn’t have been anything like the same war, would it? Everything about the Cold War was shaped by competing political ideologies – and old-school monarchical-dynastic despotism is no adequate substitute for Communism. And if the Russians had not been Commies, how could they hope to find any supporters or sympathizers in Third World countries?
I call shenanigans on the the op’s premise. There is no such thing as thoughtless pride in capitalism.
Capitalism is not a political system. It’s simply the ability to own property and conduct business absent government decree. It is not conducted in a vacuum away from public interest so it is regulated based on public safety and under fair business practices. There is no philosophical aspects to it beyond that. People will conduct business as honestly or dishonestly as is their nature.
No, but in America at least it’s an ideology not just an economic system; and there most certainly is a lot of “thoughtless pride” in it here. And it’s silly to claim that the fact that it is an economic system means that people can’t have pride in it; people can have pride in pretty much anything.
The “it’s just an economic system” argument is just something people throw out when criticism comes up of how capitalism is venerated here. As soon as the criticism stops, the insistence that capitalism is an innate moral good and that it must be practiced in a particular way suddenly starts up again. It’s rather like religious discussions, where when pressed the believers suddenly start claiming that God is this vague unknowable thing, but as soon as the skeptics go away it’s back to the believers knowing exactly what God is and what he wants.
Wrong. First, there’s nothing about capitalism that says it has to involve fair business practices, and many adherents say that it shouldn’t. Second, there’s plenty of “philosophical aspects” that have gotten attached to it. Such as the idea that it is innately good, that it leads to Freedom and Democracy, that anything else is evil, that anything that violates copyright or restricts the Free Market is a moral evil. There’s also the common belief that God favors capitalism; tied with the idea that the Antichrist will be a socialist.
The problem was that fighting an ideology rather than a country created opposition where we could have avoided it. Vietnam was a prime example of this - we got drawn into an unnecessary war because we thought we had to fight communists wherever we found them. We’d have been better off recognizing that it made no strategic difference to the United States if Vietnam had a right-wing dictatorship or a left-wing dictatorship. We should have gotten the message to Hanoi that we would not oppose a communist regime as long as it remained unaligned. We should have had the same doctrine with Mao and Castro and Ortega. It worked with Tito.
The “an economic model that works” though does not enjoy such certainty. The proof to the contrary is all to obvious.
The terms “pride” and “national” and “patriotism” can safely be ignored, since they have no effect how societies operate. They’re just fluff terms for ego gratification.
Thing is, it was just as much an ideological war for us as it was for the USSR. We weren’t primarily fighting to hold back USSR aggression; we were fighting to push the One True Way on the heathen whether they wanted it or not.
Capitalism is neither good or bad. This is in contrast to communism which is inherently inefficient and generally hazardous to anyone who objects to it politically.
No, it’s not like religious discussions, capitalism is simply the ability to own property and conduct business.
Nobody said it did. It’s regulated by the government.
Name one person who thinks we should operate capitalism on a “lord of the flies” standard. We operate as a democratic republic with a well codified constitution that guides how business is conducted in this country. It has grown from a very basic mercantile trade into a sophisticated level of commerce that takes in all manner of safety regulations that includes environmental concerns.
It’s only philosophical to someone who objects to private ownership of businesses and the freedom to operate unencumbered within safe guidelines.
What if our Cold War enemy had been an equally-expansionist Russian Empire (which had avoided any revolutions)? It wouldn’t have been anything like the same war, would it? Everything about the Cold War was shaped by competing political ideologies – and old-school monarchical-dynastic despotism is no adequate substitute for Communism. And if the Russians had not been Commies, how could they hope to find any supporters or sympathizers in Third World countries?