They’re erroneously assuming that a free economy is a zero-sum game rather than a matter of mutual self-interest and mutual benefit. While I readily concede that liberty to does not absolutely gaurantee survival, a free market provides the very mechanism by which people can survive, and not just an exclusive elite of rich people.

This assumption of “dog eat dog” also suffers from the false premise that morality cannot exist in the absence of a central authority, as if social cooperation is something that must be planned rather than a spontaneous order resulting from the free interactions of individuals.

Good article! I heard an idiot on Kudlow last night blaming “cowboy capitalism” under Bush for the mortgage fiasco. Of course, like every good socialist, his answer was more government regulation of the market.

Those who see free markets as “law of the jungle” or “cowboy capitalism” are slaves of poker economics in which they believe that the world’s wealth is limited and the government must oversee its distribution. In other words, they’re flat-earth economists stuck in the middle ages. Maybe I shouldn’t insult people who lived in the middle ages, though.

As the author points out, the real law of the jungle is in politics where the politicians fight like animals (maybe worse than animals, I don’t want to insult the animal kingdom) over government money and power. As Mises pointed out, if you want harmony, reduce the size of the government; then people have less to fight over.

Piffle! What a mediocre argument! This article makes me think ‘what if’ had it been another article, say about ‘racism’. Next to no one nowadays admits to being ‘pro-racist’. Therefore Socialist articles would show how Capitalism is ‘racist’ whereas Socialism is the answer. The Libertarianist article would tell how their position is the true ‘non-racist’ position whereas the Statist is perfectly racist.

This article inevitably brings up Social Darwinism especially because the Eugenics movement have been involved with forced abortions and sterilisations. Gee, how evil are those Statists then? Yet the article extols Economic Darwinism (since Capitalism is about economics, right?). Still at what point does Economic Darwinism not cross over to peoples’ lives? No country has been truly Capitalist and has had some form of government and welfare. Which is to say there has been quite a deal of wealth transferred from the creators to those who had little to no help. Maybe in a growing society more and more people don’t directly compete in a fierce battle. Yet can the same be said for a declining society? In a declining society with no interference with the free market prices rise across the board. Only those who have lots of money can buy necessities of life and, as such, net worth provides a good measurement as to who will/should survive for the next upswing of society and those who won’t/shouldn’t. Or, ultimately, could not a case for Economic Darwinism be one where Socialism engenders a dysgenic population because creativity and individual was suppressed whereas incompetence and slackerism rewarded?

In “Down With Primitivism: A Thorough Critique of Polanyi,” Murray Rothbard writes,

The only intelligible way of defining society is as: the array of voluntary interpersonal relations. And preeminent amongst such voluntary interrelations is the free market! In short, the market, and the interrelations arising from the market, is society, or at least the bulk and the heart of it. In fact, contrary to Polanyi and other’s statements that sociability and fellowship comes before the market; the truth is virtually the reverse; for it is only because the market and its division of labor permits mutual gain among men, that they can afford to be sociable and friendly, and that amicable relations can ensue. For, in the jungle, in the tribal and caste societies, there is not mutual benefit but warfare for scarce resources!

When I clicked the first link, I noticed that the font changes size in various locations. This isn’t the first article I’ve noticed this in since the website changed. It’s probably something into which you’re going to want to look.

I think critics of capitalism misunderstand who is competing with who. Generally, business owners try to beat each other in the eye of the customer. But that’s a headache only to the rich guy (if he is losing, that is). It’s not a headache to the well-diversified small investor. And certainly not a headache to the employee. Employees don’t really compete very hard for jobs in my experience, usually it’s enough to do it well enough, you rarely need to do it better than the next guy.

Yes, but capitalism in America is what it is today. Words evolve over time to take on their current meaning. Most of you are speaking of some utopian capitalism based on a society where everyone respects each other and trades equal value for value. Kind of like if an employer didn’t take any profits and paid the full value for ones labor.

And again libertarians miss the point we live on a finite planet, in a finite space with a finite amount of intellect. It is a zero sum game, at least on the bottom of society. Did you get the job or did the guy next to you? If you didn’t get the job it was a zero sum game, finite positions available, sorry.

The reason the wealthy in America love social darwinism is because it justifies their actions, kind of like the word, “It’s just business, it’s not personal.” Except it is always personal, unless you are not a person? Also it allows them to claim they earned something when they didn’t and focus on making profit at the expense of society. Libertarians never deal with situations like strip mining and other ways to make a profit that destroys the world. Many people on this planet are willing to kill one another for profit, how do we deal with it?

Let’s look at it from the very base of the concept. Darwinism in it’s simplest form say’s that those most favored in the enviornment have the easiest survival. This doesn’t make them strong or better, it means the enviornment “FAVORS” them for some reason. And what makes life easier in our society, I wonder?

The chess game is controlled by corporations which influence government, not the other way around. The government is just the enforcer hijacked typically by Wall Street capitalists. Many of you want to say the government is at fault, no the people in the corporations who hijacked the system for their agenda are the problem. Instead of changing the enviornment to stop favoring this garbage libertarians simply want to do away with government, except of course when it comes to defending their wealth which leads right back to plutocracy. Again when people speak of capitalism they are talking about the here and now that is promoted by big business republicans for the last 20 years. The word capitalism today means corporatism or fascist capitalism and they are the most favored for the enviornment because they control it! If you control the rules of the enviornment how can you not be fit for it?

I digressed. I’ll say it in a simpler way. A person born into a wealthy family even if sickly and pathetic is more fit in our society and likely to survive than a person born into a poor family. Based on darwins idea this is true because they have the best chance of survival and that is simply because of wealth or purchasing power. Our suvival and how fit we are in the world is based on our purchasing power. If you are poor, you are naturally unfit to exist in human society based on darwinism.

It isn’t that the wealthy are the most fit, but that their wealth favors them in our society. The sad part is that the wealthy in America, the capitalists of what America is, are hell bent on making freedom mean the ability to do whatever they want with their wealth whenever they want with anyone they want as they see fit. If they can’t afford to defend themselves then they obviously don’t deserve to exist, which is fascism. A great example is Walmart and other corporations that pushed for emminent domain to bully people out of their property for their profits. THe government didn’t do this, big businesses like Walmart went and actively undermined liberty in the USA for their profits.

To many libertarians focus on economics instead of liberty. You can’t have a free market without a society that respects one another as equals. Until then there will never be a free market but a utopian idea of one. Ironic actually that you can’t have a free market without egalitarian respect for one another, but that seems to be some elegant lesson for future humanity to learn.

And the last greatest flaw of libertarians and the capitalists, especially the facist ones of our society is that they love preaching the dogma that capitalism is what made a great society and why we are where we are America. This is a dogmatic parasitic lie attached to the concept of liberty constantly. It’s purpose to hijack the very thing capitalists fear the most. That they would lose their favor in the enviornment if liberty was respected.

What made America great was the philosophy of liberty and the push towards egalitarian respect, brotherhood and justice for all. THIS is what made America powerful and a great country. Capitalism is a hollow husk that isn’t needed when liberty is respected because free markets would come naturally from it. If we live by that original philosophy of liberty we don’t need to concern ourselves with the capitalist dogma. It isn’t needed and can be thrown away and the only reason it is attached is for personal agenda to gain advantage over others. There is no gaining the advantage of my liberty over yours, we either have it or we don’t. As soon as one seeks to gain advantage and favoritism, liberty dies.

Capitalism didn’t make America great or the people wealthy. LIBERTY DID!

I’ll say it again.

The philosoophy of LIBERTY was the shot fired around the world that made the world what it is today! Capitalism would still be 4000 years in the past trading slaves, killing people and raping women for their personal greed. LIBERTY made us great.

That article was garbage. It said nothing different but simply reworded it yet meant the same exact thing. He who earns less is obviously less skilled and deserves less pay. No law of the jungle there? But by earning less they are also less fit to survive in our society and defend themselves from those who have wealthy.

There is a simple yet profound problem with the kind of approach taken by those who define themselves as libertarian or free market oriented. I say this as someone who has been studying the foundations of American political economy for some time now, and as a former “free market radical” myself. See my and other articles on the site linked above for more. The flaw lies in the tendency to make all or nothing claims, and to talk about “the individual” and “the government” as if these terms refer to concrete entities. There is not “the individual” and there is not “the government”. Nor are there any of the following realities in the way these terms are thrown around in libertarian screeds: “the fittest” or “the weak”, “freedom”, “regulation”, “taxes”, “profits”, “greed”, as unitary realities. There is not “the wealth”. Rather, there are degrees of all of these, and different types of individuals, having different kinds of abilities and motives, have different relations to the free market . Our free market/libertarian exponents, in using all or nothing language – talk as if there is one kind of human being, one degree and kind of regulation, one degree and kind of freedom, one degree and kind of profit. In addition to the reality of LESS able individuals and MORE able individuals, there are less ethical ways of earning a profit (see China); there are high degrees of profit that are unwarranted, given that no one can make a profit if they live on an island.

The free market – democratic capitalism – is not and never will replace true religion. Those who talk passionately about political-economic structures – whether passionate Communists from the mid 20th century or today, passionate American libertarian types, make the mistake of investing much too much moral weight in freedom of economic pursuits.

Here’s the issue free market/libertarian and all Americans on the right must confront: When we have free markets BETWEEN cultures that have widely different ethical standards, those cultures with the LOWER ethical standards MUST “crowd out” those economies and businesses with HIGHER ethical standards. Freedom by itself is not sufficient, and never will be. The error of libertarianism is fundamental to the core, and is somewhat the flip side of communism: its proponents assume that the sole role of the formal political economy is to create maximum freedom. I would suggest that in this day of radical capitalism we need to add a new caveat: Man does not live by economic freedom alone. This is the moral and practical meaning of free market creeds, whether or not they qualify their claims by saying that private individuals must also be ethical.

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