“But what price gouging does, as Don
Boudreaux points
out, is cause people far from the
crisis spot to pitch in by temporarily foregoing buying the water, plywood,
etc. that, due to price gouging, are priced higher even outside the directly
affected area.”
I hear and read many Americans expressing distaste for
capitalism. Democrats hate it. Republicans
claim to like it, but secretly don’t (also known as Republican In Name Only).
And libertarians claim capitalism to be imperfect, yet they acknowledge it’s
the best we have.
I fancy the Libertarian view more than the other two. But I’ll say this until the day I die:
“Capitalism is precisely a perfect system.”
Those who deny this truth simply do not understand the beauty of
entrepreneurship, the knowledge that prices convey, spontaneous order and
incentives. If you understand these four
things you will agree that capitalism is not ‘”cold” or “heartless’ or any
other verbal cheap shot. Instead, capitalism is an amazing and beautiful system,
which allocates resources where they provide the most benefit to society. It allows for the maximum number of people to
be “well off.” It requires that you must
provide value to someone else in order to be compensated. It does NOT include taking by force (which,
not coincidentally, is all that government is).
We must flip the script.
Capitalism is not only the best we have. Capitalism provides an amazing
system that will endure forever as the best system in a world of people with
unlimited desires and potentials. Social
suffering in our world stems always and everywhere from government
interference, be it fascism, socialism, crony monarchs or crony US presidents.
Given even a moderate acceptance of the principles and
benefits of capitalism, Federal government spending could be reduced by 99.9%,
allowing free markets to function to solve most, if not all, concerns. The remaining $4.5 million Federal budget
would be laser focused on efforts to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide
for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity.” (US Constitution)
Even so, I still claim the $4.5 million is too much.
Read this excellent blog post on hating the State. Do you hate it in an abstract manner or in
its specific oppressive functions? I
think I agree with the majority of this post.
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