Why We Need More Capitalism

It’s important in political debate to separate differences in opinions and ideology from issues of a personal nature. One is the domain of intellectuals that seeks to advance society; the other is the province of the angry and disenchanted that seek not to elevate the dialogue but to bring the conversation down to their level of discourse. We don’t like the Obama government’s approach, but that is different from not liking the man. President Obama is a good, loyal patriot that loves his country and deeply wants what is best for it. He’s just going about it the wrong way. Here’s why.

The capitalist system is brutally efficient. Within that description are two root words: Brutal and efficient, and capitalism is all that. It encourages risk taking with the allure of potential reward. At the same time, it promotes prudence with the threat of loss. These two opposing forces work together in order to direct economic outcomes towards the most advantageous results, and over the last two hundred years it has advanced one of the newest countries into the greatest and most powerful nation. So it is not our opinion that capitalism works; it is our objective observation, especially in comparison with the many failed attempts at other forms of economics such as communism, socialism, fascism, etc. The Soviet Union. Cuba. The Axis nations. China and India – before their conversion to capitalism led to their sudden and great rise. The lessons are all there and plain for anyone to see. You don’t need our opinions – you just need a good history book.

What happened recently was that the “loss” component of capitalism was removed. Banks and lending institutions loaned money to entities that could not afford to pay it back, largely because there was no risk in doing so. Automotive manufacturers agreed to absurd contracts with organized labor for the same reason. This built a house of cards that, as they all do eventually, came crashing down. The efficiency component of capitalism functioned perfectly as designed, hence the crash, but the brutality constituent did not: These entities were just propped up by governmental (i.e. taxpayer, i.e. your) dollars. The system was not allowed to function as intended as an element of socialism was injected. And it was the worst form of socialism in that it protected the rich. While we as humanitarians often don’t mind a degree of charitable contributions to the most unfortunate amongst us, these bailouts were intended to make sure that wealthy people that drove companies into the ground were able to maintain the lifestyle to which they had become accustomed.

The fix to all this is not more socialism – we don’t need more government, more taxpayer funded programs, more layers of inefficient bureaucracy. We need more capitalism. The system works when it is allowed to. Let them fail. It’s been working brilliantly for over 230 years now.