When I was in High school back in the 1970s I got the idea that capitalism was malevolent and communism was a more perfect utopia. I wonder how an American teenager could get such an idea? I bugged my parents about it and then they did something really cool. The got me a book on communes in America over the last 200 years. I was so happy. I set about reading about my perfect utopia… The more I read the more disturbed I became. Commune after commune failed and usually rather quickly. I began to rifle through the book. Just as I thought, not a single commune lasted more than a few years and all failed miserably. I was quite upset and confronted my parents as to why they got me the book only about communes that failed. They assured me they got the book about all communes.
This was the really great thing about my parents and why I think America can still be okay. My parents taught me how to think, then they trusted me to evaluate and make decisions. What a beautiful concept. Tell me you do this with your kids because if you do everything will be alright. I was forced to come to the obvious conclusion that communes, and by extention communism, was a losing proposal. It was years later that I finally understood the reasons why and the brilliance of capitalism being in fact the only humane economic system in the history of the world. Adam Smith from Scotland posited these ideas in the Wealth of Nations.
When I was young I lived through the cold war with the Soviet Union and USSR contained the word socialist, not communist as we inaccurately called them. I learned the difference between a socialist and a communist was that communism was full equality without a leader and socialism was communism with a ruling class. Of course this failed in socialist governments because people had no incentive, but more over central government was the order of the day. They said the day farmers plowed their field and farmers went out in the mud and broke the axles on their tractors to comply. Excuse me, the government’s tractor. There are two things I learned about socialism. First of all it is about equal outcome as opposed to US capitalism being about equal opportunity. Like working with fractions equal outcomes inevitably lead to sharing the lowest common denominator, financial misery. The other thing I learned is the world is full of people who believe that everyone has failed before them because, well… those other people weren’t as wonderful and wise. It’s a fools errand.
Perhaps Margret Thatcher said it best when she said “The problem with socialism is you run out of other people’s money”. That sums it up nicely. When I was 16 one of the books I was required to read was called “The Population Bomb” by Dr Paul Ehrlich. I learned the word scenario there. It offered three horrible scenarios. Much of humankind was due to die off in the 1980s due to either disease, starvation of going insane like rats in a maze and killing each other. Why is it from nursery rhymes on we are so intent on scaring the hell out of children. I lived in dread… until it didn’t happen. I later heard about Dr Ehrlich losing a bet on precious metals prices over 10 years disproving further his apocalyptic ideas. I assumed his star had faded, but now I find years later he is a tenured professor and darling of the green movement.
Years later I find that in fact this idiot was just recycling the works of the English scholar Malthus from the early 1800s. Malthus had no understanding of agriculture but was convinced that from the 1800s on agricultural output would grow at a linear rate while population would grow exponentially. Therefore it was only a matter of a few decades before huge segments of the population starved to death. I don’t recall world population numbers but it was nowhere near a billion. Still this idiotic hand wringing took off in intellectual circles faster than a Friday the 13th movie with silly teenagers. For nearly 200 years Malthusians (I realize that doesn’t sound like an ism but humor me) have been moving the bar on how many people the planet can support. Now if you are an average plain spoken person who looks at things like two and two I don’t have to tell you how this adds up, but not for Malthusians. Now many of these ideas have morphed and merged with Marxist ideals, which is very comfortable with mass segments of the population dying off, essentially lesser races. However now it’s more like those of us not elitist enough to understand. Many groups now want to reduce the world population by 90%.
I know what you’re thinking, but hold on. Population growth is already in the decline, especially in Europe, but the US too. Is that a good thing? Well actually it may save some land but it causes economic contraction. Imagine we were employing people like crazy, then think about our current unemployment. Now think about unemployment getting a lot worse, but in fact it’s just less people in the economic system. The system contracts. At 90% it implodes like a trigger on an H bomb. I don’t actually know what you call this ism but it’s what I call hard core watermelon.
A watermelon is someone professing to be green on the outside, but on the inside pushing a Marxist agenda. The mix is really toxic. Some people, famous people, seem to think poor people are happier than us wealthy industrialized people. You know, people who can’t get clean water, have high infant mortality rates and have to use animals to haul things in carts so the streets stink and they have open sewers and disease… But they’re happy, or at least they are too busy trying to stay alive to tweet how unhappy they are that their latte was not foamy enough today.
The bottom line is that elitists are ready to do horrible things to society for our own good, but keep in mind that just like Al Gore with his private jet, outrageous electric bill and SUVs the prescription for our misery in the name of simple happiness need not affect their air conditioned comfort. As always the big problem with free enterprise is that we might get uppity and show up at their country club. It doesn’t matter how irrational the idea is, that it’s clearly disproved or that popular opinion no longer supports it. Witness our president pushing the same old health care take over and cap and tax while congress and the IPCC implode. It’s not about what they say it is. It’s about power, control and massive wealth transfers until we are all happy… happy to be relieved of our troubling economic guilt. Hey, if the medicine kills some of us just remember, you can’t make an omelette…
Before I sign off I know what the remaining skeptics are saying. Isn’t capitalism and ism? Okay, maybe so, but what is it? Capitalism is being able to produce something of value and trade freely with others keeping the fruit of your labor. Before we were civilized I think that’s what we did. Then governments came along and assumed ownership of our asses and told us what we could keep. Marxism came along and said none of it was ours because we all owned it but never mind because your wealth is siphoned off by the party. So my distinction is capitalism is not so much an ism as it is a respect for human rights. The isms are attempts to create utopia without regard for human suffering caused by flawed thinking.
Eric -
I love your brain. Bravo!
And this is so true:
“But they’re happy, or at least they are too busy trying to stay alive to tweet how unhappy they are that their latte was not foamy enough today.”
Great writing skills, you must do this for a living. Any chance you can share some pointers to a newbie like me?
I’m not sure I can but I can try. First of all read. The greatness of our society has exploded since the printing press and now everybody can have one. 20 years ago I read with disdain a statement of the Japanese warrior philosopher Myamoto Musashi that with wisdom a man could navigate any challenge and that it generally came around age 50. Now that I have passed that mark I have to admit that while there are many people I admire who are younger there is a benefit to insight with age. Perhaps the greatest advice in writing I can give is the following. Write your ideas imagining you are talking to someone who is hearing them for the first time. Make your case, look for contrast and recognize we are creatures of irony. When addressing self deception one must position themselves along side the reader on common ground as opposed to opposite them as an adversary. Once you have written and made your case read through three times at least and look for where you used more words than were needed. One of my favorite proverbs, and an irony for my loquacious style, is “with many words transgression is certain”. Finally always write from your passion. I hope this helps.
Eric, What a great collection of TRUISMS!