Understanding the Benefits of Capitalism
With American capitalism under attack from the moronic Socialists (Liberals), it is more important than ever for Conservatives to fortify their understanding of the greatest economic system ever devised. The advantages of capitalism and the benefits of capitalism being ignored, ridiculed, and lied about by Liberals and their media messiahs, it is worth it to look more deeply into what has made America great, and has allowed her to be a bastion of liberty, abundance, and technological progress as well as the most powerful military force the world has ever seen.
Ronald Reagan on Capitalism and Socialism
Ronald Reagan speaks on Capitalism and Socialism through story telling
Adam Smith is considered to be the father of capitalism, and the world's first true economist. But many people today do not recognize that Adam Smith was first and foremost, before he invented the role of economist, a humanitarian philosopher. He was seeking the way to enable Great Britain (Smith was Scots) to become wealthier--and not wealthier in the coffers of the government, and not just wealthier among the already wealthy classes. After many, many years of painstaking research and first-hand interviews and observations, he concluded that the more individuals are encouraged to work--by being better rewarded for the work they do--the more wealth that flows throughout the whole society, to the benefit of everyone.
Smith was very sensitive to the plight of the common worker, and he had some issues with the "landed gentry". He would write, "Labor was the first price, the original purchase -- money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labor, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased." Smith also made it quite clear that money is merely a tool, and so any "balance of trade" is a fallacy promoted by government and by those merchants or rich people who have chosen to grovel before the government by aligning themselves with its interests--all to the detriment of most merchants and common workers. Smith was far more interested in unleashing the power of production and enabling people to keep most of the fruits of their labor for their reward (which would naturally tend to be translated into money) than he was in "making money". This was capitalism--individual productivity facilitated by a "hands-off" (laissez-faire) government which would not enforce the inferior trade-strangling of mercantilist protectionism, and which would not pass laws that favored either business owners or laborers.
American capitalism would realize this dream of Smith's by instituting the right of assembly--so that workers were permitted to band together and address any unfair practices by their employers.
It needs to be recognized that Socialism and Marxism are perversions of capitalism, and perversions of Smith's care for the common worker. Smith never advocated labor unions--but today we have Big Labor that uses government to strong-arm employers into paying them for doing inferior work--or even no work. Smith never called for an uprising of common laborers to unite under the banner "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."
Smith reserved nearly all of his economic criticism for the government--both what it did directly, and what today economists call the "perverse incentives" that government gave to some business owners and rich landlords to act in ways that were not in the best interests of society.
Smith wrote: "I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good." "It is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country." "Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things."
This "natural course of things" relates back to Smith's "Invisible Hand", the great natural law of economics that capitalism aligns people with. What are the benefits of capitalism and the advantages of capitalism that no other politico-economic system can hope to match?
- Enabling creative people to fulfill their desires to produce, create, and achieve, while justly penalizing the lazy, the cowardly, and those who refuse to rise above incompetence or mediocrity.
- Enabling the only way that, according to the French write Voltaire, a person can achieve a joyful life--metaphorically tending one's own garden. One should not worry about tending others' gardens nor having any government, or even any god, tend one's or others' gardens.
- Establishing a liberating, civilizing system that Smith himself might describe like this: "From each according to his talents, to each according to the value of his production.
Capitalists of the world, unite! Join the American Conservative Values revolution and help save American capitalism!
benefits of capitalism