Capitalism’s critics cling to a mythic past, but the record shows the factory age ignited rising living standards, broader opportunity, and the modern prosperity we now take for granted.
Anyone ever ask WHY (Why becoming one of my favorite words)? Why did all those people move from the bucolic countryside, to the Evil Cities? Granny Stein (1862-1958) used to talk about The "Joys" of country life.
The Enclosure Acts was used by wealthy landowners to enclose their land, raise sheep, and toss many peasants off the land. It was very poor behavior by the landowners to make more money. These peasants had no other skills and no where to go. Many ended up in miserable conditions in factory towns.
Well then it is certainly a good thing that entrepreneurship and innovation -- capitalism -- created better jobs for virtually everyone than being a peasant.
I want to start off by thanking Roger Kimball for an excellent piece and Dr. Martin for republishing it at the Rod Martin Report! The “evils” of capitalism are just made up out of thin air! Marxist and Socialist intellectuals like Frederich Engels and Bertrand Russell will tell you the Industrial Revolution was horrible and destroyed people’s lives. The working man toiled in horrific conditions, derived no benefit from the revolution at all and was brutally oppressed. Every new advance brought only unemployment, want and suffering. Oh mercy me! Engels wrote in 1844 about how life in the West was idyllic for workers before the Industrial Revolution came and ruined everything. But as the legendary Economist Frederich von Hayek and numerous credible historians point out, this narrative is total rubbish!
In his classic book Capitalism and the Historians, von Hayek provides us with an invaluable collection of essays debunking these myths. This narrative is nothing more than a collection of exaggerations, misrepresentations and outright lies. In 1830s England, life was transformed much for the better for your average person by the Industrial Revolution. The factory system brought generated much wealth. Goods were made cheaper and therefore more affordable for your average person. The conditions described by Engels were idyllic only if you were wealthy enough to be able to afford such a lifestyle and had the time to do things like make your own clothes and worked when you wanted. By turning out cheap goods, factories made raising wages and living standards possible. By permitting the transfer of capital, backwater areas were opened up for development and production.
To be sure, there was squalor, poverty and misery. But this was a consequence of bad government policy NOT capitalism! Some people hate capitalism but it entails something no one wants-failure. It is an inescapable part of capitalism but one that must be accepted. Much of the failures of capitalism are actually the remnants or revival of pre-capitalist features. Returning to my previous point, ambition and entrepreneurship can’t flourish that real progress can be made. Economic freedom was in part what allowed England to become the crucible of modern prosperity. Capitalism has its flaws, but it is by far the best economic system there has ever been. It has lifted millions around the world out of poverty, serves as a check on racism, is good for the environment, creates opportunity for aspiring inventors and entrepreneurs, improves the quality of goods and services, and is essential for a free society.
Well previously, we used to drain our sewage into the streets and into the same streams from which we took our drinking water. But with dramatically higher incomes, we can afford things like waste treatment plants, water purification systems, and the Environmental Protection Agency, things that not only did not but could not exist before capitalism lifted the vast majority of humanity out of extreme poverty.
Need I give additional examples? They are endless.
Go to a truly poor country sometime and report back on their environmental conditions. I assure you, you will be horrified by what you see.
That is true. Most all environmental laws though are in place to stop the rapacious capitalists from cutting down all the forests, belching toxins into the air, and poisoning the water. An example is the mercury now in the Everglades water due to the sugar farms, and Big Sugar fighting efforts to clean up their act. I am in general for capitalism but industry is really uncaring about harms they do as long as profits stay up.
No, environmental laws exist because people have enough disposable income to afford them, which was not the case before they lived above subsistence level.
True that it takes a more middle class country to have the taxes and such to push environmental laws. We are that country, and capitalists still have to be forced to not destroy the environment. Laws and regulations are the only thing stopping them. Can the laws, regulations be overdone? Yes, for sure. So what is a proper balance?
I dispute that they "have to be forced" any more than people generally have to be forced not to murder, rape, and steal from each other. You are attributing to "capitalism" the corruption that is inherent in human nature. Check out the environmental conditions in any Communist country -- all of which are vastly worse than the U.S. -- and you will quickly see what I mean.
Capitalism produces enough disposable income, and pushes enough people up Maslow's heirarchy, for them to think about the environment instead of letting their sewage run into their drinking water, and to be able to afford to pay for environmental laws and cleanup. Without capitalism, the primary polluters are far worse than a handful of companies that can be regulated: they're ALL the people, who since they can't afford to live cleanly, don't.
Again, a trip to various tribal areas where people live the same way they've lived for millennia can be quite instructive. Your life expectancy in such a place is about half at best, and raw sewage is the biggest single reason.
Are CEOs more corrupt than other humans? Most crimes are not committed by CEOs. We need whatever level of regulation is needed to keep people from harming each other, whether it's an environmental harm or a simple mugging. I'm a conservative, not a libertarian or anarchist.
I referred to CEOs as they are in charge of their company and would set the tone for rapaciousness or not. I really appreciate your engaging with me. I am following this line of thought because Trump and others want to, and have, gotten rid of regulations that protect clean air, water, etc. reversing decades of efforts to keep us safe. I appreciate that Liberals are likely to keep regulating more and more which strangles innovation and the economy. I think, though, that unfettered Capitalism is a danger in the direction of simply not caring about the environment as long as money is made.
I have yet to see any capitalism that was unfettered, but as I said, believing as I do in the fallenness of man, I believe we need a government to enforce legitimate laws against corruption and other sorts of harm.
Anyone ever ask WHY (Why becoming one of my favorite words)? Why did all those people move from the bucolic countryside, to the Evil Cities? Granny Stein (1862-1958) used to talk about The "Joys" of country life.
Exactly. No one made anyone leave the farm, and no one kept them from going back.
The Enclosure Acts was used by wealthy landowners to enclose their land, raise sheep, and toss many peasants off the land. It was very poor behavior by the landowners to make more money. These peasants had no other skills and no where to go. Many ended up in miserable conditions in factory towns.
Well then it is certainly a good thing that entrepreneurship and innovation -- capitalism -- created better jobs for virtually everyone than being a peasant.
Not for those peasants or their children .
I want to start off by thanking Roger Kimball for an excellent piece and Dr. Martin for republishing it at the Rod Martin Report! The “evils” of capitalism are just made up out of thin air! Marxist and Socialist intellectuals like Frederich Engels and Bertrand Russell will tell you the Industrial Revolution was horrible and destroyed people’s lives. The working man toiled in horrific conditions, derived no benefit from the revolution at all and was brutally oppressed. Every new advance brought only unemployment, want and suffering. Oh mercy me! Engels wrote in 1844 about how life in the West was idyllic for workers before the Industrial Revolution came and ruined everything. But as the legendary Economist Frederich von Hayek and numerous credible historians point out, this narrative is total rubbish!
In his classic book Capitalism and the Historians, von Hayek provides us with an invaluable collection of essays debunking these myths. This narrative is nothing more than a collection of exaggerations, misrepresentations and outright lies. In 1830s England, life was transformed much for the better for your average person by the Industrial Revolution. The factory system brought generated much wealth. Goods were made cheaper and therefore more affordable for your average person. The conditions described by Engels were idyllic only if you were wealthy enough to be able to afford such a lifestyle and had the time to do things like make your own clothes and worked when you wanted. By turning out cheap goods, factories made raising wages and living standards possible. By permitting the transfer of capital, backwater areas were opened up for development and production.
To be sure, there was squalor, poverty and misery. But this was a consequence of bad government policy NOT capitalism! Some people hate capitalism but it entails something no one wants-failure. It is an inescapable part of capitalism but one that must be accepted. Much of the failures of capitalism are actually the remnants or revival of pre-capitalist features. Returning to my previous point, ambition and entrepreneurship can’t flourish that real progress can be made. Economic freedom was in part what allowed England to become the crucible of modern prosperity. Capitalism has its flaws, but it is by far the best economic system there has ever been. It has lifted millions around the world out of poverty, serves as a check on racism, is good for the environment, creates opportunity for aspiring inventors and entrepreneurs, improves the quality of goods and services, and is essential for a free society.
How is it good for the environment?
Well previously, we used to drain our sewage into the streets and into the same streams from which we took our drinking water. But with dramatically higher incomes, we can afford things like waste treatment plants, water purification systems, and the Environmental Protection Agency, things that not only did not but could not exist before capitalism lifted the vast majority of humanity out of extreme poverty.
Need I give additional examples? They are endless.
Go to a truly poor country sometime and report back on their environmental conditions. I assure you, you will be horrified by what you see.
That is true. Most all environmental laws though are in place to stop the rapacious capitalists from cutting down all the forests, belching toxins into the air, and poisoning the water. An example is the mercury now in the Everglades water due to the sugar farms, and Big Sugar fighting efforts to clean up their act. I am in general for capitalism but industry is really uncaring about harms they do as long as profits stay up.
No, environmental laws exist because people have enough disposable income to afford them, which was not the case before they lived above subsistence level.
True that it takes a more middle class country to have the taxes and such to push environmental laws. We are that country, and capitalists still have to be forced to not destroy the environment. Laws and regulations are the only thing stopping them. Can the laws, regulations be overdone? Yes, for sure. So what is a proper balance?
I dispute that they "have to be forced" any more than people generally have to be forced not to murder, rape, and steal from each other. You are attributing to "capitalism" the corruption that is inherent in human nature. Check out the environmental conditions in any Communist country -- all of which are vastly worse than the U.S. -- and you will quickly see what I mean.
Capitalism produces enough disposable income, and pushes enough people up Maslow's heirarchy, for them to think about the environment instead of letting their sewage run into their drinking water, and to be able to afford to pay for environmental laws and cleanup. Without capitalism, the primary polluters are far worse than a handful of companies that can be regulated: they're ALL the people, who since they can't afford to live cleanly, don't.
Again, a trip to various tribal areas where people live the same way they've lived for millennia can be quite instructive. Your life expectancy in such a place is about half at best, and raw sewage is the biggest single reason.
Ok, understood. Leading to what level of regulation is appropriate to keep in check the corrupt nature of CEOs?
Are CEOs more corrupt than other humans? Most crimes are not committed by CEOs. We need whatever level of regulation is needed to keep people from harming each other, whether it's an environmental harm or a simple mugging. I'm a conservative, not a libertarian or anarchist.
I referred to CEOs as they are in charge of their company and would set the tone for rapaciousness or not. I really appreciate your engaging with me. I am following this line of thought because Trump and others want to, and have, gotten rid of regulations that protect clean air, water, etc. reversing decades of efforts to keep us safe. I appreciate that Liberals are likely to keep regulating more and more which strangles innovation and the economy. I think, though, that unfettered Capitalism is a danger in the direction of simply not caring about the environment as long as money is made.
I have yet to see any capitalism that was unfettered, but as I said, believing as I do in the fallenness of man, I believe we need a government to enforce legitimate laws against corruption and other sorts of harm.