Posted on 01/11/2021 8:17:53 PM PST by SeekAndFind
In a December 23 article published on mises.org, Lipton Matthews made the compelling case for advocates of free market capitalism to prioritize the moral superiority of capitalism rather than making the case for capitalism’s superior productivity.
“Demonstrating the impracticality of socialism is necessary, but is also an ineffective strategy to galvanize goodwill for capitalism, because objections to capitalism are usually predicated on moral grounds,” he wrote.
Indeed, in the battle of emotions vs. rational justification in the human brain, emotions are king. You cannot penetrate emotional objections with more charts and spreadsheets.
The most compelling case for economic freedom is not its economic efficiency but its consistency with fundamental moral principles, like voluntary exchange, property, and enhanced individual choice.
To libertarians and other free market supporters, the case is clear. But why do so many still insist that socialism is a morally superior system? The term “socialism” was trending on Twitter on December 28 and 29, with the following tweet exemplifying the arguments made by many in support:
Selflessness. Meeting people’s needs. These are the characteristics that socialists use to describe their desired system. Nothing about productivity or wealth creation. Theirs is a purely emotional appeal to moral sensibilities.
It’s unwise to merely dismiss such adherents of socialism as being naïve or ignorant. Rather, an understanding of mankind’s historical development tells us that believing socialism to be the moral means of organizing society may be hardwired into our consciousnesses.
In its most basic sense, morality is described as the principles defining “good” or “bad” behavior. But how does a society come to understand which is “good” or “bad” behavior?
In his 2012 article “The Origins of Envy,” published by the American Enterprise Institute, Max Borders cites Max Krasnow, a postdoctoral researcher specializing in evolutionary psychology at Harvard University, who informs us that emotions are “the coordinated response of diverse psychological and physiological systems to a class of stimuli.”
In other words, your brain reacts to things in the world around you, and these reactions have forged emotions in our brains over millions of years. This hardwiring of our emotions was developed based upon survival. And because each new generation can’t learn the right survival instincts from scratch, we have a certain level of emotional responses and learned behavior built into our cognitive systems. Think about reflexes such as jumping in fear when you think you see a snake—that response kicks in before your mind has a chance to reflect. This is a built-in instinct.
Throughout most of human history, mankind developed as small tribes of hunters and gatherers. Innate instincts were developed for survival purposes—creating the foundation for a moral code.
A certain set of moral rules emerged, largely because they enhanced the survival chances of the group. These rules were shaped by the primary characteristics of man’s environment. The small tribes people lived in were largely self-sufficient and were small enough to share the same goal (survival).
This moral code based on tribal instincts included these key characteristics:
In this setting of small tribes, it was quite reasonable to believe that anyone accumulating wealth was doing so only at the expense of others. Hunters and gatherers were only able to accumulate a finite amount of food to sustain the group. So if John managed to take and accumulate more than his “share” of the day’s food supply, he could do so only at the expense of lessening Jane’s allotment. Jane’s very survival would be threatened because she may not get enough calories to survive.
Tribal instincts established that for the good of the survival of the group (a common goal), John shares his fowl with Jane (intentionally helping an identifiable beneficiary) and gets nothing in return (zero-sum exchange).
Thus, a moral code was established in early, tribal man.
In their 2011 essay “Markets and Morality” in Cato Journal, economists J.R. Clark and Dwight R. Lee referred to this type of moral code as “magnanimous morality.”
They chose this terminology because it is very easy to praise this type of moral behavior, and it is easy to observe and trace the benefits of such self-sacrifice.
The instincts that developed from such scenarios formed emotions such as guilt and provided a foundation for the code of magnanimous morality. Tribes that developed these emotional and moral adaptations were more likely to survive than those that didn’t.
Notice how closely this primitive moral code tracks with the Twitter socialist’s emphasis on “selflessness” and “meeting people’s needs.”
As mankind evolved into larger societies that developed a growing diversity of individual goals, division of labor, trade, and new moral codes of conduct emerged.
These new moral codes emerged because those practicing them were able to grow and prosper relative to other societies—given the changing social environment. These codes of just conduct were not consciously adopted or decreed by individuals—they evolved over countless generations.
The new moral code that emerged included:
Recorded history over the last hundreds of years is crystal clear: those societies that adopted the above as priorities flourished far more than those that didn’t, and continue to do so.
In short, in order to successfully transition from small tribes to large-scale civilization, society must adapt to new rules of interaction; i.e., a new moral code.
Those still insisting that socialism is a morally superior system are appealing to innate moral instincts developed in primitive times, which many now recognize would spell disaster in today’s “extended order” of society. Inspired by Marx and Engels (among others), today’s socialists cling to a romanticized version of early tribal units that had to consciously share goods of value in order to survive.
As humankind evolves into large societies, the characteristics of magnanimous morality—as a means to organize society as a whole—break down, for several reasons:
Instead, a competitive market based on private property better enables entrepreneurs to meet the needs of other individuals in a large, diverse society:
In order to win in the arena of ideas, it is critical to understand what motivates our opponents. Socialists are motivated by a moral code that was hardwired into our brains in primitive times, and are mistakenly translating it into a means of organizing a much more extended society than the one in which that moral code emerged.
Even granting the goals of “meeting people’s needs” and “selflessness” cherished by socialists, we can make the case that a competitive, property-based market economy is far superior at meeting those goals in modern civilization compared to a top-down, centrally controlled socialist system.
More from this original thinker.
http://www.remcmaster.com/guidelines/Guidelines_for_Living.pdf
Excerpt:
The Master Equation of All Societies
“Government is always religion applied to economics.” This is the E=mc2 of human action. ...Israel, Islamic nations, China, the former USSR, for examples, have/had official religions/philosophies that give/gave them laws that govern(ed) their societies and “human action”(economics). Every government is the concrete enactment/legislation of someone’s abstract religious/philosophical ideas about right and wrong, good and evil, morality, ethics, justice, these precepts then in turn framing the arena of“ human action” (economics).
Every day, all over the world, we witness just, fixed, equally applied traffic laws that frame the automobile traffic system which allows individual self-governing human action by drivers behind the wheel of a car to create a harmonious collective, where both the needs of the individual driver and that of the collective driving community are met and are in balance. ...If we know any one of these three – government, religion, economics – we can nearly always triangulate to the other two.
Throughout history, theologians and philosophers have struggled with how to balance out the rights of the individual with those of the community. This is the “One & the Many” question. The answer which clearly and consistently brings the highest level of human satisfaction in terms of freedom, peace, prosperity, justice, progress, human fulfillment, healthy happy balance between the individual and the community and environmental integrity, given the constant of human nature, is to allow individuals to be free and personally responsible for creating their own destiny in life by contracting and covenanting for what they need without trespassing on or violating the person or property of any other person, without resorting to force, coercion or fraud. If an individual is self-governing using these principles derived from a fixed set of supernatural (religious) laws, he can pursue his balanced self-interest in the marketplace of life by serving before receiving, each individual serving as a catalyst for “human action” (economics). Again, we witness this phenomenon every day globally in the automobile traffic system and also observe it in nature/creation in the formation of a single dandelion puff where the individual(masculine, linear, +) shafts produce the collective (feminine, non-linear holistic,-) puff.
Government is religion applied to economics. By contrast, we have primarily today the collective, top down, pyramid style, comprehensive, misery-creating elitists with their technocrats ruling bureaucratically over us economically “doing God’s work”, as the CEO of Goldman Sachs testified, with money/greed then truly being “the root of all evil”, capturing the (un)civil government where the religion/philosophy of Hegel is applied, “the state is god walking on earth”, giving us human gods (the ultimate source of law in society) in keeping with the evolutionary philosophical perspective of the “survival of the fittest”, mining, exploiting and harvesting from cradle to grave the serfs/sheeple/Borg/human resources (formerly known as human beings, people and citizens), eliminating them as expendable and easily replaceable pawns who are “useless eaters”, “dandruff on the scalp of Mother Earth”, “maggots in a flour sack” offending Gaia(Mother Earth, basic to the religion of witchcraft), according to their religion of environmentalism (the worship of the creation rather than the Creator). It is, in pure form, either one way or the other, either bottom up or top down. Both are “government as religion applied to economics.”
A parasite system can’t survive on it’s own, after sucking all the life out of it’s victim.
flr
Capitalism can be as morally bereft as collectivism, if it is not based on transcendent truth.
At this point,the only way to stop the socialists is 2A and then rebuild the systems infested and infected. I am afraid we are not there yet and rather passive. That idiocy of 1/6 was a clown show. The left needs to be truly afraid and that is a level that many won’t or cannot do.
People can pontificate all they want about this point and that point; it all boils down to this:
Where do people across the globe want to live? Are they beating down the doors of capitalist nations, or communist nations.
Debate over.
When it comes to socialists and communists - KTF. All of them.
On first sight! It’s the only way to be sure...
Socialism didn’t work for the Pilgrims, socialism didn’t work in England, the Northern European Nations that tried it abandoned socialism but it is going to work this time..oh sure t will!
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Have and Have Not’s still exist under Socialism, someone send James Fosteridiot a memo please. Socialism is nothing more than a economic scam that essentially makes everyone poor, and yet, leaves a very few at the top in control who have everything that was taken from those who are no poor in the name of ‘meeting people’s needs’ and ‘selflessness’........................
Not only are all those Socialist joys beyond anything the Capitalists can muster but Socialism also has the great benefit of population reduction, murdering over 150 million in the last century - some thing lousy Capitalists cannot boast as an accomplishment to their moral detriment.
The Socialists want absolute power - the rest does not matter so call it whatever you wish.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3753133/posts
Here is something the author should noodle. Capitalism is more democratic than socialism.
Capitalism exists in all forms of government; the difference is whether the individual controls his capital or the state controls it.
A “selfless” exchange is never “zero sum”. It puts you, the provider, into a negative balance specifically because you get nothing in return.
In capitalism, both sides benefit. Jane is better at knitting than Jeff. Jeff is better at raising chickens. Jeff gives Jane a chicken in exchange for a new knit hat. Both sides get something in an equitable and mutually satisfactory exchange. THAT is a true “zero sum”.
Communists killed my GreatGrandparents, on my Father’s side, in the holodomor...
I echo your sentiments.
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