Is that even true? In Vietnam: The Necessary War, Michael Lind says the whole thing was necessitated by the “bandwagon effect” of that stage of the Cold War, when both the U.S. and the USSR were jockeying for influence in the Third World – there was a real and reasonable fear that countries wavering would align with whichever seemed to be “winning” at the moment, therefore America could not afford to lose one.
You are completely missing the point. As another poster said, capitalism is like the laws of physics. It is neither good nor bad, it just is. Just as we wear seat belts to mitigate some of the unpleasant effects of applied physics, we put restrictions on the free market to prevent some of the problems that occur in a pure market based system.
Where we get into trouble is when people see capitalism as morally right rather than just a pragmatic tool. Regulations such as you cite are an anathema to these people who are more concerned with the abstractions of the “market” and the “economy” than they are with the health, welfare, and happiness of individuals.
Contrary to your statement, the Constitution does not in any way “guide how business is conducted in this country”, and conservatives are very much opposed to a broad reading of the commerce clause. Perry even remembered that the Dept of Commerce is one of the three departments that he would abolish if he were elected president.
No, you are describing economics, not capitalism.
“Capitalism” can mean:
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Industrial economic organization, as distinct from the mercantilism that preceded it. The word applies because industry requires “capital,” i.e., heavy investment in plant and equipment.
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The system of labor for wages (what Marx meant by the word).
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Any economic activity not state-controlled. Capitalism in this sense is as old as trade.
You seem to mean 3), but 3) is pretty much a useless employment of the term in political or economic discourse. “Free Enterprise” might serve better.
But I agree with what Der Trihs said. There are some things which are better run by the government. But some people believe that free market capitalism is an inherently better system virtually as a matter of faith.
I said above that capitalism is an economic model that works. I didn’t say it was the only economic model that works.
And I should add:
- Any state or society favorable to any or all of the above.
Capitalism is in that sense a political system. Some countries can be described as politically capitalist; others cannot, regardless of what economic activity actually happens within their borders.
But we let ideology dictate which side we supported. There’s no reason Ho Chi Minh couldn’t have been an American ally. But too often, the United States would refuse to see any Communist as a potential ally. Which meant the Soviet Union picked up every Communist regime by default.
Look up the Lochner era to see what happens when the Supreme Court starts ruling based on ideologies rather than the law. The justices of a hundred years ago struck down laws which they felt violated the principles of free market capitalism. But they were acting wrongly - there is nothing in the United States Constitution that requires this country to have a free market capitalist economy. We could legally, if we wished, becomes a socialist or communist country.
Well, we might have to find away around, or repeal, the Fifth Amendment’s compensation clause before doing any expropriating.
The philosophy part comes in when we try to figure out where those safe guidelines are, and how we determine them. An example of thoughtless pride in capitalism is the belief that the free market optimizes the delivery of healthcare, or eliminates bubbles.
Someone with a thoughtless pride in capitalism might say we need to eliminate the FDA since no capitalist would poison his customers, so regulation is wasteful. A more nuanced view is that the cost of someone doing so is so much greater than any penalty that we could levy that we need to stop it in advance, as much as possible. Poisoning happens in China (an efficient Communist state?) even though poisoners get shot.
Taking either side of that is philosophical, like it or not.
People should have less thoughtless pride in capitalism and more thoughtful pride in capitalism. People should be more amazed that there are thousands of people they will never know hard at work, seeking to make their lives better. Someone is getting up early to raise the crops so you can eat delicious food, to write code so computers will make your life easier, to do research so your life can be healthier, and make TV programs so you can be entertained. All of this is done without direction or coordination, and has led to better lives for all of us. Even the poorest have access to amazing things even the richest and most powerful people in the world never had until just recently. In the 1920’s the President’s son died from an infection from a blister on his foot, which could be cured with less than 5 dollars worth of antibiotic today.
Global per capita GDP is estimated to have doubled between the time the Pyramids were built and the year 1800. Between 1800 and 1900 it was estimated to more than tripled. Since 1900 it has grown by a factor of 12. We are by far the wealthiest, safest, healthiest, and happiest society that has ever existed on the face of the Earth, and Capitalism is the system that has brought that about.
Capitalism is great, but capitalism by itself is inevitably going to lead us off a cliff and cause great suffering. Capitalism by itself means that some people are going to stuff their costs (like for pollution control) on the population at large and have a competitive advantage over capitalists who don’t want to do this.
Reining in capitalism is absolutely essential to keeping it and society strong. The issue isn’t private ownership, it is that for some people any limits on the aspects of private ownership that can hurt society is called socialism.
name the people who are saying what you suggest is being said.
That’s not capitalism, that’s civilization.
Al Capone and Pablo Escobar were capitalists. Like I said, capitalism can be used for immoral purposes.
In Back in the USSA, AH by Eugene Byrne and Kim Newman (Eugene Debs leads a Socialist revolution in 1917), Al Capone plays the role of Stalin. And Frank Nitti is Beria – Nitti is described as “By rumor, the one man in the country who had both the authority and the power to arrest J. Edgar Hoover.” (Who is head of the Federal Bureau of Ideology and stomps on Revisionism whenever it rears its head.)
My take is the genuine damage that was done by the American attitude to capitalism was during the cold war…
Not because Soviet Communism WASN’T inherently more odious and evil than Capitalist Democracy, but because US definitely gave the impression that Communism was evil because it was opposed to capitalism which is inherently awesome and perfect in every way.
But Communism was evil because it is an inherently autocratic, brutal system that led to millions of deaths, not because Capitalism is so awesome. True, Socialism is generally a less efficient way to organize society, but its not some how antithetical to Democracy and doomed to Communist dictatorship. It was perfectly apparent during the Cold War that plenty of Socialist democracies got by perfectly well during the cold war without ending up as Stalinist dictatorships.
If you live in a very unequal society Socialism have very real attractions, and by showing an almost (or actually) religious fervor for Capitalism it detracted from the main message that the US was opposing a brutal autocratic regime, with the blood of millions on their hands, not someone who might raise taxes and start a welfare state.
Not in this thread, but you’ve surely seen the extreme libertarians say the private market can do the job of the FDA, right in this very forum.
Sorry to break your nice illusion, but you’ve misunderstood something about cause and effect here.
Someone is getting up early to raise the crops not so you can eat delicious food but to sell to you for money, to write code not so computers will make your life easier but for a salary, to do research not so your life can be healthier but because they’re paid for it, and make TV programs not so you can be entertained but to sell lots of advertisements.
Neither of those people are doing what they do to be nice to you, they’re doing it to make money off of you. That you can eat sometimes-but-not-always delicious food, have an easier or more healthy life, or be entertained is not at all a motivation for those people in our capitalist society. Heck, a privately owned pharmacy company doesn’t exist to make people better. It exists to sell drugs which, incidentally, make some people better.
Like democracy, capitalism is the worst of all the systems that actually work. It’s just that the alternatives (dictatorship, or communism) don’t work at all.