Lies Concerning Capitalism

[deacon blues]

Lie #1: Business constantly rips us off---capitalism is mostly cruel and unfair.

Nonesense.The Golden Rule of Capitalism is that you can only make a profit in this country by giving people a product or a service that they want.

Lie #2: The businessman is a villain.

Many people think it's plausible that CEOs have lots of time to sip cocktails and chase women. There are people who believe in a "leisure class", people who are out there exploiting other people and really have nothing to do except sit on their yachts and go to their swimming pools and their vacations.

In real life, that's nonsense. The higher up on the income scale you go, the less leisure time you have. You make money in this country by working hard.

Lie #3: When the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

This is the old zero-sum fallacy, which ignores that when two people engage in free exchange, both gain, or they wouldn't have traded.

Politicians and lawyers believe this lie because it's true in their world. But it's not true in business. If you believe that when the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, then you believe that creating wealth causes poverty, and you're an idiot.

One of the things that I hate is the term "obscene profits." There are no obscene profits. The current economic downturn shows that when the rich get poorer ... everybody gets poorer.

Lie #4: Government is more fair and reliable than business.

Remember the last time you went into Starbucks, and then remember the last time you went into the DMV to get your license? Where did you get better treatment? And it's not because the barista is some kind of idealist or humanitarian. She wants a tip. She wants you to come back to her Starbucks.

But the left doesn't get it. This is the suspicion of the profit motive---the idea that if somebody is selflessly serving me, they're going to treat me better than somebody who wants to make a buck. But if you think about it in your own life, if somebody is benefiting from his interaction with you, it's a far more reliable kind of interaction than someone who comes and says "I'm in this only for you."

Lie #5: The current downturn means the death of capitalism.
Capitalism is alive and well. It irritates me when people argue that today's problems prove that capitalism "failed." What failed? We had a correction. A bubble popped.
The truth is from 1982 to now, the Dow has risen from 800 to 11,000. Had it happened without the bubble, we'd say this is one of the great boom periods. This is one of the biggest lies---the idea that because of capitalism, we're all suffering.

Poor people in America today, people who are officially in poverty, have a higher standard of living in terms of medical standards, in terms of the chances of going to college, in terms of the way people live, than middle-class people did 30 years ago. It's an extraordinary achievement of technology and of the profit sector.

If our country continues to believe the lies of liberal academics, economists, journalists, celebrities and politicians, we will see a reoccuring effort to undermine the underpinnings of our economy. Ultimately, we must remember that there is a father of lies, and we all know who he is.