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Why are folks so anti-capitalist?
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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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I'm an immigrant that has worked extensively in the legal community with immigrants. I'm more than aware of what other regimes are like.
That being said, what I'd like to see is more nuance. There's this bizarre belief, and I'm not sure if it's age or lack of education, that says that only pure capitalism or pure socialism is BEST. When, in actuality, I don't think a healthy society can exist without the other. Pure capitalism will eat itself without the checks socialism brings; whereas pure socialism will reify itself into inertia without the incentives capitalism brings. The trick, of course, is finding a balance.
Unless you're an insane person like Maggot Trash-Garbage, I don't think anyone thinks the FDIC is bad, or government funding for new antibiotics, or NASA, or necessary municipal utilities like sewage systems or fire fighters. All of that stuff is socialism, and they work great along side capitalism. I also don't think the average person thinks breaking up monopolies is bad. Anti-trust laws and legislation are also socialism, remember.
Anyone who wants a free-market completely devoid of government intervention has clearly never studied economics.
The most important book regarding capitalism is “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith. It’s the first book any education on economics will ask you to read. It in, Smith states that the role of government should be 3 main points: defence, law and order, and public services. So the person regarded as the father of capitalism would consider NASA, firefighters and sewerage to all be government responsibilities.
The Wealth of Nations was written at a time when government intervention was the cause of monopolies, not a solution to it.
As the free market was embraced in different countries, economists saw it operating and built on Smiths work. Pigou wrote about “externalities” (such as pollution) where the person benefiting is not paying all the costs of production, and that this required government intervention to correct the imbalance this causes in the free market.