Authored by Max Borders via The American Institute for Economic Research,
Wait For It..."It's Capitalism's Fault!"
Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.
– John Maynard Keynes
An economic crisis looms. When the brown matter hits the proverbial fan, the blue-check commentariat will blame “capitalism.” So we have to remain vigilant.
In fact, they’ve already started.
I use scare quotes because so few clearly define what “capitalism” is, and fewer still know how it works. Particularly when they use the F word.
As with neoliberalism, “capitalism” is more or less a smear used by those who hate that which they neither understand nor have a hand in creating. Ignorance as a rhetorical strategy works mainly because the masses have become more credulous and ignorant with each passing year. Critics simply have to indicate some socio-economic phenomenon they don’t like and blame the c-word.
Intervention, the C Word, and the F Word
When I use capitalism I have a specific set of features in my mind, as we’ll see. Because capitalism is Marx’s term, we could use other less loaded words, such as entrepreneurial markets. But these can come across as esoteric or imprecise. Detractors frequently have something else in their minds, and there is no incentive to determine any common reference frame. Sometimes their very identity is caught up in being anti-capitalist. It’s one thing to challenge their positions. It’s quite another to challenge their identity.
What’s worse, the politically powerful actively destroy the ideal features of an entrepreneurial market system, often to compromise with anti-capitalists. They then...