Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Cringing Negativism Network
Rather than addressing your question directly by trying to refute the negatives, I would prefer to focus on the contrasts between capitalism and socialism as they address the issues to which you allude. On page 128 of CAPITALISM: A Treatise On Economics, George Reisman says the following:

"It should be equally obvious that the existence of a division-of-labor society is to the material self-interest of every individual. Whoever, in the words of Mises, prefers wealth to poverty, and life and health to sickness and death, is logically obliged to value the existence of a division-of-labor society and all that depends on. For it is the essential foundation of all significant wealth and the vital contribution made by wealth to man's life health. Take away a division-of-labor society, and production shrivels to the the level of medevil feudalism, with its consequently recurring plagues and famines and resulting average life expectancy of twenty-five years-

"Thus the widely held notion that life in society requires the sacrifice of the individual's self-interest is totally mistaken in regard to a division-of-labor society. That notion applies only in societies characterized by force and plunder..."

Ludwig von Mises touches on the division of labor in Human Action beginning on page 157.

"Experience teaches man that cooperative action is more efficient and productive than isolated action of self-sufficient individuals. The natural conditions determining man's life and effort are such that the [p. 158] division of labor increases output per unit of labor expended. These natural facts are:

First: the innate inequality of men with regard to their ability to perform various kinds of labor. Second: the unequal distribution of the nature-given, nonhuman opportunities of production on the surface of the earth. One may as well consider these two facts as one and the same fact, namely, the manifoldness of nature which makes the universe a complex of infinite varieties. If the earth's surface were such that the physical conditions of production were the same at every point and if one man were as equal to all other men as is a circle to another with the same diameter in Euclidian geometry, men would not have embarked upon the division of labor.

There is still a third fact, viz., that there are undertakings whose accomplishment exceeds the forces of a single man and requires the joint effort of several. Some of them require an expenditure of labor which no single man can perform because his capacity to work is not great enough. Others again could be accomplished by individuals; but the time which they would have to devote to the work would be so long that the result would only be attained late and would not compensate for the labor expended. In both cases only joint effort makes it possible to attain the end sought."

Mises addresses free trade in Human Action beginning on page 473 and summarizing on 477-478.

Ross Perot was repeating propaganda when he implied that giant sucking sound shipping American jobs elsewhere was related to capitalism and free trade. Capitalism and free trade create jobs and increase standards of living for all those who participate. The giant sucking sound that shipped American jobs to Mexico and China was not capitalism or free trade; it was socialism. One of our future articles will point out why Social Security should not be a sacred cow when it's actually the Trojan Horse that has shipped American jobs elsewhere.

9 posted on 10/08/2011 10:06:18 AM PDT by Vintage Freeper
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies ]


To: Vintage Freeper

Perot was right.


10 posted on 10/08/2011 10:07:52 AM PDT by Cringing Negativism Network (America First)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson