No one can earn
a million dollars honestly.
William
Jennings
Bryan, 1860 – 1925,
an
American lawyer, statesman, and politician, three times the Democratic
Party nominee for President of the United States.
The decadent
international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found
ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not
beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the
goods.
-----
Capitalism is the
astounding belief that the most wickedest [sic] of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of
everyone.
John Maynard
Keynes, 1883 – 1946,
a British
economist whose ideas, called Keynesian economics, had a
major impact
on modern economic and political theory, as well as on
many
governments’ fiscal policies.
So far, we have noted many deficiencies in the
capitalism which we practice. The
purpose behind such a look is to encourage thought and
action about how to make capitalism work better.
So we look at more deficiencies.
The libertarian view is appealing.
Who would not like to follow his or her wishes unencumbered by
government regulation? But the
libertarian viewpoint is inherently contradictory.
It is natural under capitalism to accumulate more
wealth once a person has wealth. We
see this in the
United States
. You have heard something like,
“The rich get richer while the poor get poorer.”
At the same time, getting richer means that the wealth has to come
from somewhere, so, unless our society be generating a huge volume of wealth
to divide up among everyone—which is not
happening—the rich are becoming richer at the expense of others in
society. So, unencumbered by
government, a libertarian might accumulate much wealth at the expense of
others. But at some point those
others would want some of that wealth, and might take it aggressively,
violently. So, the libertarian
would have to spend time guarding his wealth;
he would have to use his wealth to pass laws or to hire private
security. This means that some,
if not many, people in a society would lose freedom or the society would
birth classes with different privileges.
One might interpret this as extreme freedom in one aspect of life
having to be balanced by limited freedom in another aspect of life.
Yet, events might go in a different direction.
A libertarian might so exploit others that the others rally to pass
laws limiting the libertarian’s activities;
hence, the source of government regulation.
Interestingly, for a libertarian to accumulate wealth
would necessitate a large number of consumers buying his products or
services. But the consumers
would need money to do so. From
where would that money come? From
laws which would distribute money to consumers from the taxation of the
libertarian’s profit or from the printing of money.
Even in the latter case, a libertarian might not be left unaffected;
his wealth might be devalued.
Is there a solution which would permit a libertarian to
live her life as she desires? We
could segregate people into those who are by nature competitive and happy to
be so, and those who are by nature cooperative and happy to be so.
The libertarians would be among the competitive.
But if they chose to pursue wealth, they eventually would look for
new markets, including the people who were cooperative by nature, which
means that libertarians would have to trespass. This
might now be happening under the label of “globalization.”
February 7, 2008