Posted on 08/01/2008 7:47:41 AM PDT by Toddsterpatriot
It’s an old story. Loving parents provide a generous environment for their offspring. Kids are given not only ample food, clothing and shelter, but the emotional necessities as well: encouragement, discipline, self-reliance, the ability to work with others and on their own. And yet, in due course, the kids rebel. Some even say their parents never loved them, that they were unfair, indifferent, cruel. Often, such protests are sparked by parents’ refusal to be even more generous. I want a car, demands the child. Work for it, insist the parents. Why do you hate me? asks the ingrate.
Of course, being an old story doesn’t make it a universal one. But the dynamic is universally understood.
We’ve all witnessed the tendency to take a boon for granted. Being accustomed to a provision naturally leads the human heart to consider that provision an entitlement. Hence the not-infrequent lawsuits from prison inmates cruelly denied their rights to cable TV or apple brown betty for desert.
And so it goes, I think, with capitalism generally.
Capitalism is the greatest system ever created for alleviating general human misery, and yet it breeds ingratitude.
People ask, “Why is there poverty in the world?” It’s a silly question. Poverty is the default human condition. It is the factory preset of this mortal coil. As individuals and as a species, we are born naked and penniless, bereft of skills or possessions. Likewise, in his civilizational infancy man was poor, in every sense. He lived in ignorance, filth, hunger, and pain, and he died very young, either by violence or disease.
The interesting question isn’t “Why is there poverty?” It’s “Why is there wealth?” Or: “Why is there prosperity here but not there?”
At the end of the day, the first answer is capitalism, rightly understood. That is to say: free markets, private property, the spirit of entrepreneurialism and the conviction that the fruits of your labors are your own.
For generations, many thought prosperity was material stuff: factories and forests, gold mines and gross tons of concrete poured. But we now know that these things are merely the fringe benefits of wealth. Stalin built his factories, Mao paved over the peasants. But all that truly prospered was misery and alienation.
A recent World Bank study found that a nation’s wealth resides in its “intangible capital” — its laws, institutions, skills, smarts and cultural assumptions. “Natural capital” (minerals, croplands, etc.) and “produced capital” (factories, roads, and so on) account for less than a quarter of the planet’s wealth. In America, intangible capital — the stuff in our heads, our hearts, and our books — accounts for 82 percent of our wealth.
Any number of countries in Africa are vastly richer in baubles and soil than Switzerland. But they are poor because they are impoverished in what they value.
In large measure our wealth isn’t the product of capitalism, it is capitalism.
And yet we hate it. Leaving religion out of it, no idea has given more to humanity. The average working-class person today is richer, in real terms, than the average prince or potentate of 300 years ago. His food is better, his life longer, his health better, his menu of entertainments vastly more diverse, his toilette infinitely more civilized. And yet we constantly hear how cruel capitalism is while this collectivism or that is more loving because, unlike capitalism, collectivism is about the group, not the individual.
These complaints grow loudest at times like this: when the loom of capitalism momentarily stutters in spinning its gold. Suddenly, the people ask: What have you done for me lately? Politicians croon about how we need to give in to Causes Larger than Ourselves and peck about like hungry chickens for a New Way to replace dying capitalism.
This is the patient leaping to embrace the disease and reject the cure. Recessions are fewer and weaker thanks in part to trade, yet whenever recessions appear on the horizon, politicians dive into their protectionist bunkers. Not surprising that this week we saw the demise of the Doha round of trade negotiations, and this campaign season we’ve heard the thunder of anti-trade rhetoric move ever closer.
This is the irony of capitalism. It is not zero-sum, but it feels like it is. Capitalism coordinates humanity toward peaceful, productive cooperation, but it feels alienating. Collectivism does the opposite, at least when dreamed up on paper. The communes and collectives imploded in inefficiency, drowned in blood. The kibbutz lives on only as a tourist attraction, a baseball fantasy camp for nostalgic socialists. Meanwhile, billions have ridden capitalism out of poverty.
And yet the children of capitalism still whine.
— Jonah Goldberg is the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.
Ping!
He lived in ignorance, filth, hunger, and pain, and he died very young, either by violence or disease. “
Like Afrida today....
Wow, great column.
Many of these foolish ingrates he describes stalk the threads of FR, even though they should know better.
And they're bleating "O-BA-AA-ma!"
When I first saw the title, I thought it was about all the corporate interests getting government bailouts nowadays. Talk about being spoiled because they are insulated from the consequences of their actions.
Brilliant.
“We have sort of become a nation of whiners.”
“We’ve all witnessed the tendency to take a boon for granted. Being accustomed to a provision...”
Oh, but have we not? Like the time mummy let me spend the weekend over at gran’s and it was ever so fun! But next weekend I asked for a repeat visit, and mummy said no! I was ever so cross!
/wannabe fruity english schoolboy off.
Excellent article
I got an e-mail the other day from my brother that, in view of this article, was timely:
As Americans are bereft of good Republican leadership right now, we will pay a heavy price as the Democrats revive Roosevelt’s socialism that has lain dormant. The Republicans reversed that agenda, and because of their progressive tax policies, have made it possible for more people to keep more money in their families. Despite the current economy, under Republican legislatures, so many more Americans have become phenomenally wealthy in the last 20 years. It seems that they appear ready to express their ingratitude at this election.
So the entitlement mentality that has destroyed most European economies will rise again to work its ugly magic here. Those who contribute to the treasury are so fast becoming so vastly outnumbered by those who do not, that I fear the contributors will never again be able to muster the votes needed to arrest the advance of the cancer of socialism in the US as it is now constructed.
I have seen it in the star struck eyes of the 30 somethings Obama worshippers.
Hey, hey
Ho, ho
Hey wait a minute where did my job go.
The cure is to say, what you going to do when your job goes poof and mommy don’t want you back in her house? That will put a crimp in the 24/7 nightclubbing, don’t you think?
I am proud to say, I think I may have a few saves from the other night.
Years ago, a Swedish government official told economist Milton Friedman that, unlike the U.S, there was no poverty in Sweden.
Friedman replied “Interesting-in America we have no poverty among Swedes either”.
Jonah Goldberg is consistently excellent.
What happened to the system inspired by freedom and liberty?
He has an odd view of the American people. He considers them ‘children’ that the ‘system’ cares for? This is the antithesis of America.
Capitalism is, by its very nature, compassionate. It requires each person to look around to determine what needs exist and then find ways to satisfy those needs. It is therefore necessary to “feel with” your fellow citizens. Socialism, on the other hand, is necessarily hard-hearted. It requires its citizens to ignore their fellow citizens’ needs and allow the government to not only define needs but to dictate the means, if any, by which such needs shall be met.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.