I understand Sheldon Richman’s arguments about the term capitalism, but I think we need to watch out for the tendency to be whiners. So yes, it’s true that a lot of people think the present U.S. is the epitome of “capitalism,” and as a libertarian I don’t endorse everything.
But on the other hand, the U.S. still does have a legacy of its more free-market past, and even now it’s hardly the worldwide bastion of central planning. So rather than just dismiss the term capitalism because people associate it with the U.S., I think it makes more sense (both intellectually and strategically) to say that the U.S. has been very successful economically because historically it was more “capitalistic” (in the Misesian sense of the term) than other countries, and that the parts of modern American society we abhor are often because of deviations from that tradition.
This was all driven home for me when Grayson Lilburne sent me an email on Friday. We are working out the bugs before we formally launch the promotion for the Mises Academy and the online business cycle course I will be leading. (Official details soon!) But here was Grayson’s quick note to me:
Great! I tried the web meeting software a bit. But I definitely want to test it out with you, and then figure out a way to somehow test its ability to handle a large number of participants…I’m going to drop my wife and her friend off at Disneyland and then set up shop in a Starbucks with my laptop (should only take a couple hours or so), and then be available for doing…Video stuff the rest of the day. But I’ll have my iphone before that, so feel free to e-mail me questions.
Grayson
Just reflect on what he is saying in the above. That would have been science fiction not very long ago. Incidentally, once Grayson got set up–in a coffee shop–to work, he and I were talking over a video connection. He was some 2,000 miles away from me at that point.
Note that this didn’t happen in a libertarian novel where “the freed market” is allowed to operate. This happened in our current, real-world United States. I say chalk one (or more like 1 million) up to capitalism.
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Everything you love you owe to Capitalism – Lew Rockwell http://mises.org/daily/2982
Though we sometimes take things for granted, everyone knows that it is the private sector that has produced the marvels that you referred to.
The problem today is that a great many people think that the seemingly insurmountable issues we face in the financial and health care sectors (2 major recent areas of focus) are inherent in “capitalism” and not a consequence of the undermining of that system. How can we ever get through to such people unless we use terminology that clarifies what we do and do not support? Should we start calling ourselves liberals once again because the masses just have the wrong idea about what that word means?
Everybody knows that, with the presence of the interferences of the government in the functionning of the market, private sector produce things and provide services. The question then comes to this: Is it because of the interventions of the government that private sector can produced marvels, or can the private sector do it without interferences of the government, or even with no government at all ?
You forgot to give credit to Al Gore for inventing the internet.
Alright Alright, we all thanks Al Gore for inventing the Internet, because without the government there is no way two businessmen could have thought of connecting their computers together to transfer file from this one to the other one. Even if they could have thought of that there is no way they could have found out a business model in creating a large network to transfer data from this computer on east coast to the other one on west coast.
Even if somehow the entrepreneurs could have figured out to transfer data through phone lines and have a network of interconnected computers in US, there is no way they are that smart to figure out to connect US network to European network across the sea(like the phone lines).
In fact the truth is, if Soviet Union hadn’t disintegrated in 1989, and had they come up with ARPAnet, by now every household in USSR would have had a computer connected to the Internet with ultra-high speed data transfer speed and firewalls which cannot be broken by any individual not already working for the Soviet government. There would not be any terrorist communication or child porn on the internet. We can never find out the opportunity cost of disintegration of Soviet Union. What wonders a command and control economy could have pulled by now, it just shivers my spine with sheer excitement.
I can confirm that Lilburne has the powers of a science fiction super hero.
The great Henry Hazlitt, in the preface to his wonderful novel, Time Will Run Back: “as ‘capitalism’ is merely a name for freedom in the economic sphere, the theme of my novel might be stated more broadly: the will to freedom can never be permanently stamped out.”
Here in Moscow I work wherever I feel like it using 10Mbit wimax. I enjoy the freedom from having to use really bad coffee shops. Does this illustrate anything?
You should thank Mr. Lilburne for spending his day with you rather than taking a tour of The Haunted Mansion, I cannot say I would have done the same. =]
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