Capitalism seemingly has found its way into the short list of words which provoke uncomfortable reactions from those who hear it out loud, joining “moist”, “phlegm”, and “paedophile”, among a few others. However, when you ask people to describe capitalism, they hurriedly and angrily mutter something about Jeff Bezos, landlords, and wealthy bankers. They struggle to define it accurately.
Capitalism tends to be the fall guy whenever things go south, often taking the blame when the circumstances weren’t remotely related to it.
My aim with this article is to change the minds of people who associate capitalism with that icky feeling induced by the words above and perhaps redirect their blame towards the appropriate parties.
What Capitalism is
Capitalism is simply the respect for private property and self-ownership. That means that if I have something, you cannot take it without my consent. So if we define the human body as private property owned by the individual, the second part of the definition is redundant.
Self-ownership of your body means that others cannot use your body or mandate the use of your body without your consent. Self-ownership of your body makes things like rape, anti-abortion laws, slavery, and the introduction of vaccine mandates violate your private property rights.
Capitalism in real life
When you went to the local market to buy coffee, no one was directed to obey your demand for coffee, and you weren’t compelled or coerced into picking one particular stall. Instead, you and your chosen coffee shop came together without coercion and voluntarily exchanged resources.
You handed over your money for coffee because you valued the coffee more than your money; the coffee stall owner appreciated your money more than their coffee. The absence of violence or compulsion implies pre-existing property rights. This spontaneous and voluntary exchange is capitalism in its purest form. This is a free market.
The same example can be used for choosing where you cut your hair, educate your children, buy food, and so on.
What capitalism is not
Keeping in mind the keywords of capitalism, voluntary and choice, we can begin to understand what capitalism isn’t. Any form of violence, coercion, or destruction of property is, by definition, not capitalism. So why do we see the pollution of the environment, international wars, violent policing of victimless crimes, and the proliferation of toxic financial assets in capitalist countries?
“Because there is no such thing as a purely capitalist country, every state employs a mixture of fascist, socialist, mercantilist and capitalist policy measures. The act of taxation violates private property when instituted, not as a fee for an opt-in contractual service but as a tax on your very existence, such as income or sales taxes.” — Justin Goro
Common misconceptions
Cronyism
Many people mistake cronyism for capitalism. Cronyism is when private entities use the public apparatus to change the rules and give themselves special rights or privileges, allowing monopolies to form.
Politicians and governments are perversely incentivised to give particular businesses unfair advantages because, as “representatives of the people”, they have the monopoly right to do so.
Instead of succeeding through competence and innovation in an environment where businesses are incentivised to provide better value to consumers and must be competitive to survive, government lobbying allows corporations and central banks to form monopolies. In a monopoly, there is little risk of failure as there would be in a free market because the taxpayer, you and I, can bail out monopolies at the government’s behest- see the 2008 financial crash. Quite handy for the central banks and entities closest to the government, eh? But slightly problematic for the rest of us.
“In cronyism, the poor decisions made by one group are paid for by another group who were neither privy to the decisions being made nor asked permission to have their resources used for this purpose.” — Mark Moss
Capitalism is right-wing/conservative
Organic capitalism needs representatives as much as Hurricane Katrina needed you to blow out of your window frantically. Capitalism is an entirely natural process, and it is not political. Taken to the extreme, it is even anti-political, which given the provable corruption and incompetence of the nation-state, may well be a beneficial stance to take.
Both liberals and conservatives always engage in capitalism, and humans have engaged in capitalism since the dawn of civilisation. Barter, trade, voluntary exchange, and the accumulation of private capital have evolved and will continue to grow, despite their political chains, not because of them.
What about Socialism & Communism?
The world is and always will be an unequal place. Hierarchies exist and have existed for times untold. There will always be people with varying degrees of power and wealth no matter the political system imposed on us. Hierarchies are natural, for better or worse. Forced equality is unnatural. Attempts at forcing equality result in those in power living exceptionally well, while the rest of the population lives in fear and misery, de-incentivised to build businesses, add value, or innovate; resulting in modern-day slavery.
In Socialism and Communism, you can switch out the replaceable and rotary financial elite of capitalism (in free markets) with the far more sticky political elite of Socialism and Communism. The political elite will not only own all of the resources, but they will also have absolute power to regulate, control, and police their population by decree, including the power to make speaking out against the government illegal. Having this much power in the hands of a centralised immovable few is extremely dangerous, and we don’t need to look far around the world today or examples in history of this danger being apparent.
Instead, I wish we could enter a world where you, the individual, are free to form a collectivist hub of your own: a commune, a co-op, a shared resource community, etc… And I would be free to create the life that I see fit, in the ways which best suit me. Neither of us imposes our views on the other, and neither of us violates the private property rights of the other. In a truly capitalist society, this is possible; in a collectivist society, you must obey the direction of the state.
There is a big difference between having an option and forcefully making individuals with varying dreams, goals, and ideals comply with a certain doctrine.
The main problem with any form of collectivism is that your version of utopia is utterly different to mine, anonymous reader.
Conclusion
Capitalism is not the common enemy we are consistently told it is. It is not where you should aim your crosshairs.
It would help if you instead looked towards the ever-growing in power nation-states and globalist organisations filled with unelected officials who warp markets with sanctions, regulations, inflation, and “economic planning”. Resources, power, freedom, and liberty are gradually being sifted away from you, and towards the incompetent and corrupt state, while you pay them for the privilege.
This is the opposite of capitalism, and something we should actively reject if we wish to preserve the freedom we have grown accustomed to.
