Posted on 03/07/2010 11:35:10 AM PST by ezfindit
We hear people speak of “business” and “capitalism” as being somehow evil, including comments about capitalists victimizing employees and customers in pursuit of the goal of “maximizing profits”.
In conversations with supposedly educated people who lean to the left, the concept is an accepted axiom, that maximizing profits – at the expense of everything good in the world – is the one and only purpose of business. It is the socialist rallying cry these days.
(Excerpt) Read more at conservativedatingsite.com ...
Great article...we’ve allowed corporate pimps and their political whores to corrupt capitalism which is really moral invidualism free from state/corporate controls.
Great questions!
Well of COURSE Capitalism is evil. It created wealth and a far above average lifestyle for millions of “little people” when everybody knows only the left-wing elitist class deserves the finer things of life!
Thanks for the link. It nicely differentiates between capitalism and corporatism/statism/fascism.
Capitalism does not work very well “bare.” It needs to be enlightened by a godly ethic in order to prosper through thick and thin.
People tend to forget the importance of morals.
As Bastiat noted in The Law: the ‘common tendency’ of ‘mankind’ ‘when they can’ is to ‘live and prosper at the expense of others’.
Our morals used to put the breaks on that tendency.
Mostly good. It can be used for evil, e.g., slave trade. It works well with some moderation, though, such as by using it in the context of a culture that also emphasizes charity, respect for others and public service/civic responsibility. More importantly, sharing within the family unit can both moderate the selfishness that can be a part of capitalism, while at the same time providing the motivation to go out and create more wealth for the family unit.
I’d say capitalism goes hand in hand with strong families and strong civic virtues. If one or more of those are at risk, and they are, we need to shore them up again before life gets really unpleasant.
Capitalism isn’t evil, people are evil.
Capitalism - Oingo Boingo
There’s nothing wrong with capitalism
There’s nothing wrong with free enterprise
Don’t try to make me feel guilty
I’m so tired of hearing you cry
There’s nothing wrong with making some profit
If you ask, I’ll say it’s just fine
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to live nice
So tired of hearing you whine
About the revolution, bringing down the rich
When was the last time you dug a ditch, baby
If it ain’t one thing, then it’s the other
Any cause that crosses your path
Your heart bleeds for anyone’s brother
I’ve got to tell you, you’re a pain in the ass
You criticize with plenty of vigor
You rationalize everything that you do
With catchy phrases and heavy quotations
And everybody is crazy but you
You’re just a middle class, socialist brat
From a suburban family and you never really had to work
And now you tell me that we’ve got to get back
To the struggling masses, whoever they are
You talk, talk, talk about suffering and pain
Your mouth is bigger than your entire brain
What the hell do you know about suffering and pain?
There’s nothing wrong with capitalism
There’s nothing wrong with free enterprise
Don’t try to make me feel guilty
I’m so tired of hearing you cry
There’s nothing wrong with making some profit
If you ask I’ll say it’s just fine
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to live nice
So tired of hearing you whine
You’re just a middle class, socialist brat
From a suburban family and you never really had to work
And now you tell me that we’ve got to get back
To the struggling masses, whoever they are
You talk, talk, talk about suffering and pain
Your mouth is bigger than your entire brain
There’s nothing wrong with capitalism
There’s nothing wrong with capitalism
There’s nothing wrong with capitalism
There’s nothing wrong with capitalism
The following essay, is reprinted with permission from "Our Ageless Constitution." See
"Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise." - Thomas Jefferson
"The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate .... But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." - James Madison
America's Constitution did not mention freedom of enterprise per se, but it did set up a system of laws to secure individual liberty and freedom of choice in keeping with Creator-endowed natural rights. Out of these, free enterprise flourished naturally. Even though the words "free enterprise' are not in the Constitution, the concept was uppermost in the minds of the Founders, typified by the remarks of Jefferson and Madison as quoted above. Already, in 1787, Americans were enjoying the rewards of individual enterprise and free markets. Their dedication was to securing that freedom for posterity.
The learned men drafting America's Constitution understood history - mankind's struggle against poverty and government oppression. And they had studied the ideas of the great thinkers and philosophers. They were familiar with the near starvation of the early Jamestown settlers under a communal production and distribution system and Governor Bradford's diary account of how all benefited after agreement that each family could do as it wished with the fruits of its own labors. Later, in 1776, Adam Smith's INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS and Say's POLITICAL ECONOMY had come at just the right time and were perfectly compatible with the Founders' own passion for individual liberty. Jefferson said these were the best books to be had for forming governments based on principles of freedom. They saw a free market economy as the natural result of their ideal of liberty. They feared concentrations of power and the coercion that planners can use in planning other peoples lives; and they valued freedom of choice and acceptance of responsibility of the consequences of such choice as being the very essence of liberty. They envisioned a large and prosperous republic of free people, unhampered by government interference.
The Founders believed the American people, possessors of deeply rooted character and values, could prosper if left free to:
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Such a free market economy was, to them, the natural result of liberty, carried out in the economic dimension of life. Their philosophy tended to enlarge individual freedom - not to restrict or diminish the individual's right to make choices and to succeed or fail based on those choices. The economic role of their Constitutional government was simply to secure rights and encourage commerce. Through the Constitution, they granted their government some very limited powers to:
Adam Smith called it "the system of natural liberty." James Madison referred to it as "the benign influence of a responsible government." Others have called it the free enterprise system. By whatever name it is called, the economic system envisioned by the Founders and encouraged by the Constitution allowed individual enterprise to flourish and triggered the greatest explosion of economic progress in all of history. Americans became the first people truly to realize the economic dimension of liberty.
Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5
And one nice thing about capitalism is potential customers can take their business elsewhere and tell the evil people to pound sand.
Thanks for posting. I’m going to try out that song.
This country was conceived in liberty, religious freedom, individualism and pursuit of self interests... free from government intrusion, tyranny, and control.
Capitalism is the economic engine of a free people when government is banned from interfering in free market principles of supply & demand, choice & value, success & failure. Government’s job is to protect the self-interests of our private-market economy. Not interfere by socializing the losses and at the same time privatizing the gains!
Capitalism, like our constitution... and like all the blessings of liberty, are made for a moral and religious people and is wholly unfit for any other.
Quote from another freeper which says it well:
The “goal” of capitalism is FREEDOM. Actually, Capitalism is a byproduct of Freedom. It’s not a “system”, it’s just what happens when free individuals trade among themselves freely. It really has no goal, it simply IS. You can’t implement it; all you can do is screw it up (Socialism, totalitarianism, other-isms).
Socialism has never eliminated poverty. But it has ended human rights and personal liberties.
Capitaism is Karl Marx’ name for Free Enterprise, the generator of a country’s wealth. You can’t get by without it,
You CAN get along without Socialism, however.
But that wasn't a problem until Rand posited it as a religion.
It was one of the first attempts of his and Marx's socialism to insert government into natural human transaction and communication.
As I understand it, marx was prescient about what perversities would abound when the stewards of the free mareket were disabused of their moral consciences. Hence the necessity to secularize the society of their moral and religious foes in the West.
And guess what? He was right.
Capitalism (i.e. free and easy trade of goods and services between humans) is only one of the outer edges of the free interaction of people.
The goal of socialism is to invade all free movement of humans and to replace freedom with an authoritarian government.
Socialism leverages itself on the belief that nature is not fair and that it (nature and the natural behavior of humans) must be oppressed. Nature must be destroyed/murdered and replaced with a human contrivance.
The conundrum of socialism and socialists is that if humans are so evil...why is it that some of them are so blameless/sinless as to be able to design, implement, and manage a system which transcends human evil!
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