Why has capitalism lost the argument with the young?
Because they have never been allowed in. Capitalism did not fail them. They were never offered it.
A system where a young couple on decent wages cannot buy a house, cannot save against inflation, and watches asset holders grow rich on planning scarcity is not capitalism. It is a rigged market defended in capitalism’s name.
So a generation has looked at what it was told was capitalism and drew the obvious conclusion. If this is the market, the market is not for me. And of course they are right.
You do not win them back with pamphlets. You win them back with the title deed to a flat. People who own things rarely vote to abolish ownership.
Nice to see someone also making the moral argument for markets, not just the utilitarian argument.
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Why has capitalism lost the argument? If you sat in a fancy restaurant and looked at the menu and you saw the chef’s special was “Patagonian toothfish covered in bee puke” or “Slime head cooked in congealed milk”, it might turn your stomach and have you reaching for the salad. However, if instead the alternative names of “Chilean Sea Bass with a honey glaze” or “Orange Roughy in a butter sauce” were used, you might be anticipating a delicious treat.
The name Capitalism is a huge problem. I have banged on about this before but I’ll say it again to maybe try to convince some of you. For most people “Capitalism” makes them think of Scrooge McDuck swimming in his basement full of gold coins or Mr. Monopoly laughing on top of his pile of moneybags. Of course neither is true, but “capitalism” means “capitalists” and “capitalists” are, in the public mind, rich, selfish assholes who want the workers in their sweatshops to pee in bottles so that they don’t need bathroom breaks.
And it is not even an accurate name. “Capitalism”, as we who understand the word know, is not all about “capital” it is a combination of capital, entrepreneurs taking risks and labor doing the work. All three are needed to create the new products and services that make us all richer. It is like it is some system people invented in the same way the communism, socialism and fascism were invented by people. By focusing on the one thing rich people bring, namely capital, it dismisses the very important part that others play in the process. And so it reeks of elitism and exclusion.
But it isn’t that at all. It is simply the process of leaving people the hell alone to make whatever arrangements between them that are most profitable to both. It is this “free market” that makes us all rich, that generates so much profit, that advances civilization. It is the natural state of men to trade between themselves for their mutual profit, but when we call it capitalism it sounds like a government policy.
So the OP is right, people care about what the economic system allows them to achieve in their life. To call this “capitalism” makes it sound like a choice the government makes when in fact exactly the opposite it true. Capitalism is when the government STOPS making choices and leaves people alone. And by giving it a government policy like name people conclude that the reason they can’t buy a house or rent an apartment or get a job is because the government policy needs tweaked, rather than recognizing that the whole problem is that there is a government policy of any kind whatsoever. It sounds like macro-economics, and as I have said before, macro-economics is mostly bullshit, mostly an excuse to justify the government interfering in the economy.
Free markets are a micro-economic policy of supply and demand, elasticity, having more than one choice and all the simple obvious things that are self evidently true from the reality of humans interacting with humans for their own personal, mutual profit. Capitalism sounds like some baffling term from economic theory but everyone knows what it means to be able to trade freely as you wish.
So I really dislike the word capitalism, let’s call it what it is: “freedom to live, work and trade as you’d like without being prevented from choosing what you judge is best by some government bureaucrat”. Or, more concisely: free markets. And when you say it, say the word “free” most loudly.
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