Why I Write

Capitalism has lost its way, and I have made it the purpose of my life to restore it.

Since the 2008 Great Recession, capitalism has become something of a 4-letter word. It has developed many enemies of various ideological persuasions. Where it once had triumphant champions, it now has feeble apologists and compromisers.

This is best explained by chronic mis-labeling of what is and is not capitalist, and mis-attribution of economic woes to capitalist causes rather than other causes (like well-intentioned government intervention). We have a notion that “capitalism” is the state-corporate industrial complex of the modern American age, rather than a vibrantly competitive free market free of lobbying and special favors. What we call “capitalism” today favors the entrenched rich and entrenched businesses at the expense of the shrinking middle class, the poor, the unemployed, the entrepreneur, the small business—all through well-intentioned government interference in the free market. We knee-jerk blame capitalism for our current economic woes, because we chronically do not seek the root causes behind the problems that we see.

It is my belief that capitalism in the free-market sense has had incredible and unmitigated success in bringing prosperity to all of mankind that it has touched. It has exclusively been responsible for bringing billions out of poverty, where every other attempted economic system has failed miserably to do so. It is my belief that well-intentioned interference by our governments in an attempt to make the economy better have broken our economic systems and brought about an age of high unemployment, low growth, inequality, and spiraling private and public debt—an age that is stifling innovation, trapping the poor, and careening towards incredible disaster if we do not change our ways from even the most seemingly-obvious practices, like stimulus spending and lowering interest rates.

But there is more at stake than our mere prosperity—something much more important.

In the 20^th century, the world reacted to the Great Depression—and the mis-attribution of blame to “capitalist” causes—by bringing about the most horrifying decades of tyranny and mass insanity the world has ever known. In Western Europe, citizens desperate for their governments to cure their woes gave infinite power and total loyalty to the state, leading to the rise of Fascism. In Eastern Europe, Russia, and China, the masses were convinced by Marxist ideologues that their poverty was due to the hoarding of wealth by a few wealthy property owners, and that violent Communist revolution would bring about a new age of prosperity.

Both of these movements caused unimaginable human suffering, cruelty, murder. Europe had never been darker. Even among the non-Communist world in the cold war, socialism (in the state-planned economy sense, not the welfare state sense) nearly took hold, and communist sympathy was the style du jour of the intellectual elite.

As man turns its back on capitalism, he turns his back on freedom of choice in his economic life. Hayek writes brilliantly about this in Road to Serfdom, so I will not belabor the point here.

But I believe that as man has turned towards accepting communalist ideologies as increasingly obvious, his soul has suffered deeply.

When we cast our eyes on our fellow first-world citizens, we find something missing. A certain light in their eyes, an industriousness, a self-reliance, a sense of pride. We see a mass that cry, “someone should do something!” and precious few who do anything. We see a mass of people that expect to be taken care of by a paternal figure: if employed, their employer, and if not, their government. We see a mass that no longer believes that businesses have the right to exist for profit—they must exist as a public service, to create jobs. We see jobs as an entitlement; we do not see ourselves obligated to earn our keep by offering value to the world.

We see a mankind whose brightness of spirit has faded a bit, who no longer aspires to great things. We see a generation growing whose great motto is no longer “I will,” but “I want;” a generation whose swan song will be “YOLO!” as we fetter away our lives in petty hedonism.

Without the pressure to find a way to truly contribute to society in return for one’s livelihood, we do not learn self-reliance, nor the ability to struggle nobly, nor to overcome adversity, nor to be truly proud. No longer do we shout, “I will find a way!"

The American Dream is dead, and with it go our hope, our work ethic, our passion for bettering ourselves, our pride.

I believe, truly, that it can come back. It will require throwing off the supple yoke of a paternalist economy in which our governments and corporations are meant to take care of us, all the while stifling our ability to push ourselves beyond our current lot.

We must return to capitalism to end poverty and give the opportunity for prosperity to all of mankind. We must return to capitalism to bring back growth and innovation in industries that have been crippled. We must return to capitalism to ensure our individual liberties. We must return to capitalism to restore our self-reliance, our work ethic, our independence, our pride. We must return to capitalism to save the spirit of man.