The Case for Capitalism

        I’ve failed!

        I make the case for free markets … young people elect socialists!

        What are they thinking? Do they even think? Do they pay any attention to history? Or economics? Socialism always fails. Only markets create environments that let people prosper.

        “Getting the right environment — this country’s done it better than anyone else,” says Steve Forbes in our full interview. “Give people a chance to be creative, experience liberty, and humanity moves forward.”

        His magazine has made that point for years.

        “You and I are failures,” I tell him. “We’ve tried to convince people about the benefits of free enterprise … (Yet) they embrace socialism,” believing “posts from people like actor Mark Ruffalo: ‘Capitalism today is failing us, killing us, and robbing from our children’s future …'”

        “Capitalism has done just the opposite!” replies Forbes. “Deaths from famines are down 99% in the last 60 years. Standard of living, 10 times better than it was 50 years ago around the world.”

        Progressives call capitalism “immoral.”

        “Capitalism, free enterprise, free markets, whatever you call it,” replies Forbes, “is a moral system because success comes from meeting the needs and wants of others… Go to the old Soviet Union, to Cuba, North Korea and compare opportunities. It’s a reason people want to come here. They can flourish here whereas they get crushed by regulation elsewhere.”

        Free markets are also moral, he says, because capitalists don’t get rich by forcing people to hand over money. Only governments, employing police, tax collectors, etc. can do that. 

        Capitalists get rich only if customers voluntarily choose them.

        Unless, of course, government gets involved. If politicians grant favors or give handouts to politically connected companies (known as crony capitalism), the market system breaks down.

        Real free markets rely on mutual benefit.

        “Capitalism is also humane,” adds Forbes. “You may not love your neighbor, but you sure want to sell to your neighbor. It gets people working on a common objective, even if they don’t realize it.”

        We have food on our table because farmers, engineers, truck drivers, computer programmers, retailers and countless others voluntarily cooperate to grow it, ship it, refrigerate it and bring it to us.

        Most will never meet, but markets encourage cooperation between strangers. Together they create the abundance of goods we take for granted.

        “(Is it) a perfect system?” asks Forbes. “No. (But) it’s a way of enabling humanity to move forward. It enhances life standards of everyone.”

        Governments only rarely do that. Entrepreneurs do it all the time.

        Forbes gives examples like John Deere.

        “He was a blacksmith in Vermont, had a hard time making it.”

        So he moved to Illinois, where he noticed farmers struggling with thick soil that stuck to their iron plows. Every few feet they had to stop and scrape dirt off.

        Remembering polished steel needles his seamstress mother used, Deere experimented with steel blades until he invented the steel plow.

        “Turned what seemed like worthless soil into a breadbasket for the world,” says Forbes. “When markets are allowed to operate, they turn scarcity into abundance.”

        Photography in the 1880s was expensive, complicated and available mainly to professionals.

        Then George Eastman developed the Kodak camera, making photography simpler and cheaper.

        “He created this global company and everyone became a photographer.” 

        Loading cargo onto ships was slow, expensive and prone to theft. A North Carolina trucker, Malcolm McLean, grew so bored waiting for cargo to be loaded that he invented the shipping container.

        “Sounds easy,” says Forbes, “but the design took a lot of effort. The cost of shipping items fell as much as 95%. That made it possible to develop elaborate supply chains. That makes it possible for people to have supercomputers in the palm of their hand.”

        Capitalism, despite its occasional greed and excess, is the only system that lets people prosper.

        Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom. He is the author of “Government Gone Wild: Exposing the Truth Behind the Headlines.”

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