Missing the Point About Capitalism

It's about the freedom, not the wealth

I saw the following Facebook post today on a libertarian page. It points out something important by completely missing the point:

“What do you think would happen to an anti-capitalists [sic] activism if they suddenly became wealthy?”

While it’s undeniably true that capitalism creates greater opportunities for wealth, “becoming wealthy” is not the reason to support it.

The reason is that every human being has the moral right to direct their own lives. Human beings survive and flourish by exercising reason and making voluntary choices. A moral social system must therefore leave individuals free to think, produce, and exchange by mutual consent rather than by force. Capitalism fully recognizes and protects that right.

The creation of wealth is one of its consequences—not its justification.

An example of the wealth side of the equation is simply that even under difficult circumstances capitalism can keep bread on the shelves. While under the best circumstances, socialism cannot—consider Ukraine, one of the most fertile regions on the planet, yet the Soviet Union couldn’t keep bread on the shelves—it struggled for decades with chronic shortages, even while controlling some of the most fertile farmland on earth.

At the same time, Hong Kong, a locale with limited natural resources, limited space, and limited population went from being a collection of refugee shanty towns in 1950 to one of the world’s great financial centers only forty years later. This occurred during the decades in which Hong Kong enjoyed a relatively laissez-faire economic system under British administration.

Most importantly, the question posed in the Fascebook post misses the point: Capitalism isn’t about being wealthy, it’s about freedom and self-determination.

It certainly increases the chances for material prosperity, in fact it creates the only conditions under which maximum material prosperity for all is possible, but freedom, not wealth, is the point.

Refugees do not board a shaky raft and risk everything merely for a larger paycheck. They risk everything for the freedom to direct their own lives.

The post about a socialist becoming wealthy misses the point. Their view won’t change, as they do not believe in or understand human freedom as an end in and of itself.

Freedom is the opposite of coercive political control and is the essence of capitalism.

Capitalism is freedom.

As Milton Friedman pointed out:

“Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”

Capitalism is freedom. Freedom is capitalism. It works because human beings have to be free to take self-interested, goal-directed action to improve their lives. Capitalism makes that possible.

Socialism subdues and oppresses the individual. It fails because it destroys the very freedom, institutions, and mechanisms required for human success and replaces them with command and control, with dependency, with helplessness. It destroys one’s very sense of life about what is possible.

The answer to the question posed in the Facebook post is that the anti-capitalist will likely become even more arrogant in his beliefs as he amasses wealth and influence. Success does not necessarily change one’s philosophy. If one believes society should substitute authoritarian political judgment for individual choice, wealth alone is unlikely to change that belief. If anything, success will likely reinforce the conviction that one’s own judgment should prevail over the choices of others.

Heroes are free. They have a strong sense of life, a sense of what is possible for them to achieve. Not at someone else’s expense, but based on their own independent, thinking mind and effort. They come to value work, not sloth. Independence, not dependence. Reason, not baseless emotion. Reality, not evasion.

This is the difference between the hero and the parasite. Capitalism creates the hero.

Capitalism is not about being wealthy; it does not exist to make people rich.

It exists to let them be free.

The wealth comes afterward.