This video clip from the documentary video Overview of America explains differences between the major economic systems of free market Capitalism, Fascism, Naziism, Socialism, and Communism. It is explained that all types of economic systems include elements of capital and property, with differences between the systems being varying combinations of types of ownership and control of those two elements.
The alternative to Americanism is what has condemned most of the human race to live as slaves throughout the past millennium— with the ideas that rights are privileges dispensed by an Oligarchy, the nation’s capital and all economic activity being directed from a central power, morality being inconsequential, and security needing to be preferred over freedom and opportunity.
It is explained that the United States continues to be steered off-course through the principals that led to it’s greatness being cast aside, and what is needed is a sufficient number of Americans getting involved to return the nation to having less government and more personal responsibility of citizens.
As President Obama explains his economic policy (or explains away the consequences of that policy), City Journal's Andrew Klavan cuts through all the spin with this very, very important primer on both Obamanomics and the truth about capitalism.
Our former U.S. Vice President Al Gore just sold one of his business holdings and earned a bit profit – and he contradicted himself while doing it.
Gosh, I am shocked! Aren’t you?
The headlines tell us that Gore is being pummeled with criticism from his fellow liberal-progressives because he sold Current TV, a television network that he co-founded, to Al Jazeera, a television network based in Qatar. In the liberal-progressive worldview, this transaction is problematic on two accounts.
For one, Gore did business in an oil-producing country (Qatar), and for liberal-progressives, this is an un-forgivable sin. In their view, it simply doesn’t matter that the civilized world (the United States included) runs on oil, and needs a lot of it every day. It also doesn’t matter that everyone who is reading this right now (liberal-progressives included) is likely using a computer that is made, in part, with oil-based plastics, and may even be consuming electricity that was generated by – gasp! – oil.
These realities generally don’t matter for liberal-progressives. On the contrary, it is simply accepted as an un-examined “truism” that oil companies are evil, and the production and consumption of petroleum-based products violates the orthodoxy of environmentalism. This is the first reason Mr. Gore’s transaction is being criticized.
But Gore’s business dealings in Qatar are regarded as bad for yet another reason: they appear to have been extremely profitable for him. Worse still, Gore appears to have intentionally violated his own dogmatic hostility towards the oil industry in pursuit of his profit-making.
For liberal-progressives, businesses exist to serve the “collective interests” of “everybody” – however one might define those things. And if an individual business owner or company makes “too much profit” (again, the definition of “too much” is ambiguous), yet another un-forgivable sin has been committed.
Common Western thought on economics, shaped largely by about five thousand years of pre-American civilization and Adam Smith’s ground-breaking philosophical work “The Wealth of Nations,” teaches that every human being naturally pursues their own self interest. This becomes obvious when we take an honest look at how most of us live today.
For example, most of us who work, quite rationally seek to earn as much as we can in exchange for our labor. Likewise, when we acquire products and services provided to us by others, we generally try to get the best product or service at the best (read “lowest”) possible price. This is not a matter of being greedy – it’s a matter of being a good steward with one’s money, time and talents.
Similarly, when we take money that we have earned and invest it in a business venture – such choices generally entail the risk that the venture might fail and we might lose all our investment money – we quite rationally hope to produce a “return,” or a profit, from that investment. When viewed this way, there is seemingly nothing immoral, certainly nothing illegal so far as we can see, with Mr. Gore’s business deal.
The most problematic point in all of this is that so many American liberal-progressives seem to not understand these most basic, natural realities of self-interest and economics. Perhaps equally as disturbing is the fact that, apparently, many liberal-progressives have never before noticed the serious inconsistencies between Al Gore’s words and behavior.
For well over a decade Mr. Gore has preached the gospel of hostility towards oil companies and predicted cataclysmic disasters because of its consumption, while flying around the world on energy-inefficient private jets and being shuttled across town in fuel-guzzling limousines. He commands that the world practice energy conservation, while for many years he sold so-called “carbon credits” from his own for-profit corporation. And in 2007 an investigation conducted by the Nashville Tennessean newspaper revealed that the home that Gore and his then-wife Tipper shared at that time consumed approximately twenty times the amount of energy consumed by most comparably-sized households.
The travesty of Al Gore is not that he’s done business in an oil producing country, or that his business dealings have produced profits. It is that his public life has largely been a charade for the past many years, and he has perpetuated a culture of false assumptions which has now become a culture that is turning against him.
Will liberal-progressives learn from this, before they crown their next iconic “leader?”
America is in fiscal trouble, and seems determined to making matters worse for itself.
That’s why it’s long past time for an honest discussion about the “C-word.”
Capitalism – an economic system that is based on the private ownership of property, as opposed to government ownership of property, and the creation of goods and services that are sold for a profit - can restore our country to fiscal sanity, and save the rest of the world. It has lifted roughly half of the world’s estimated 6 billion people out of poverty (much of this has happened over the course of my lifetime), and has produced unprecedented levels of wealth for common, ordinary citizens.
Yet today, an economic idea that was birthed in the year of our nation’s founding (Philosopher Adam Smith’s groundbreaking work “The Wealth of Nations” was published in London in 1776) is scarcely taught in the United States. The very word “capitalism” is vulgar in the minds of many, and America’s current governmental leadership, starting primarily with President Obama and his party in Congress, has done a great job demonizing capitalistic ideals.
So to begin resuscitating the American economy with more capitalism-friendly economic policies, we need to first address some of the key falsehoods surrounding the idea of capitalism. Once Americans begin to better understand economics, generally, and capitalism specifically, the road will be paved for making better choices for our leaders and policies.
So let’s start with falsehood #1: Capitalism is an economic system “based on greed” - Nobody doubts that greed is real, but today many American governmental leaders speak as though profits and economic success are evidence of greed. Others argue that “greed is good” and that it should animate our capitalist economic system. Neither one of these assumptions is accurate, or true.
Adam Smith made a distinction between greed and “rational self interest,” and argued that while being greedy is destructive and bad, human individuals are naturally “self-interested” creatures, and as such, we all seek to ensure our self-interests with our economic choices. As an example of this, think about the computer used to view or print this article. When you purchased it, did you shop around and find the best possible computer available for the lowest possible price? It was within your rational self interest to do so. It was also rational for the retailer to sell you the computer at the price you paid, and it was rational for the manufacturer to sell it to the retailer. Maximizing the benefits of one’s economic resources is not in and of itself evidence of greed – it is evidence of human rationality.
And then there’s falsehood #2: Capitalism is an economic system that is un-regulated – In truth there is no economy anywhere in the world that is completely “un-regulated.” The notion of an un-regulated economy exists only in people’s minds, on paper, and on hard drives, but nobody is trying to implement such an idea as official governmental policy.
Consider, again, your computer. It was designed and built under close scrutiny from governmental regulators. The electricity that powers it is generated under heavy governmental regulation. And if you’re reading this indoors, the structure that you’re in was built under heavy governmental regulation.
President Obama likes to say that Republicans “drove the economy in the ditch” and caused the economic crash of 2008, because they de-regulated banking, lending, and Wall Street. And while it is true that several of the complex if not clever financial instruments that sparked the financial meltdown were not adequately regulated (things like derivatives and mortgage-backed securities), it is false to say that a lack of government regulation caused the crash. Indeed, the crash was caused in no small part because of government regulation itself. Laws that either required or incentivized lending institutions to issue mortgages to unqualified borrowers were a huge part of the problem. And government guarantees that offered to “bailout” lenders if they got in trouble with their sub-prime borrowers incentivized even more reckless lending.
Notice the “fixes” that are implied, as we seek the truth about capitalism. If, for example, our governmental leaders quit demonizing financial success as being “greedy” and began implementing policies (and rhetoric) that encouraged it, then the wealthy among us may be incentivized again to invest in businesses and to grow the labor market. And what if politicians got out of the way and actually allowed the health insurance markets to be competitive nationwide, and allowed consumers to purchase health insurance from across the country (current law forbids this currently)? If your health insurance provider knew that you might quit and go to a competing company, they’d likely want to treat you better.
Capitalism can restore our nation to greatness. But will Americans embrace the facts, and abandon the falsehoods?
Does capitalism and the free market make you selfish? Dennis Prager, best selling author and nationally syndicated talk show host, answers this question and challenges what for many has become conventional wisdom.
The words "happiness" and "free enterprise" don't usually appear in the same sentence. Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute, explains why they should.
President Obama's campaign accuses Mitt Romney of having a job at Bain Capital. Obama's campaign also accuses Romney of being a job destroying capitalist. Could the real story be that Obama's union pals killed steel industry jobs while Romney was busy creating such jobs? Find out.
There are more Marxists teaching in Sociology Departments in America than living in the former Soviet Union. These sociologists hold themselves out as scientists despite the fact that they fail consistently in their efforts to predict the future. In fact, most of them lack the competence to accurately predict the past. Among the least competent and most intellectually dishonest is Gary L. Faulkner, Professor Emeritus from the University of North Carolina.
Faulkner recently claimed that Marx predicted the events we are seeing in the Occupy Wall Street movement. He also claimed that events from the 20th Century bolster the credibility of Marx as both an economist and political prophet. He further castigates Republicans for their refusal to embrace Marxism. Faulkner states, “There is something really ironic about Republican’s hatred of Marxism. Years ago Marx predicted capitalism would collapse. The reason - workers would rebel.”
And they did. They rebelled in China, Russia, North Korea, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. Their rebellion produced Marxist governments. And the governments killed millions. The numbers of murders are striking:
Marxist China 65 million
Marxist USSR 20 million
Marxist North Korea 2 million
Marxist Cambodia 2 million
Marxist Afghanistan 1.5 million
Marxist Vietnam 1 million
Marx predicated all of this, right? Wrong. But we could have seen it coming. Marx was a violent man who unleashed racist and anti-Semitic assaults on anyone who dared to oppose the use of violence as a means of creating change.
Ferdinand Lassalle was one labor leader Marx hated for his desire to come up with practical solutions rather than violent confrontation. Lassalle’s opposition to violence caused Marx to dub him a “Jewish n****r” and a “greasy Jew.” Marx also said of Lassalle “the shape of his head and the growth of his hair indicate(s) he is a descendent of the Negroes who joined in Moses flight from Egypt unless his mother or grandmother on the father’s side was crossed with a n****r.”
There is little question that Marx would have carried out violence on a large scale. But his poor physical condition prevented him from doing so – instead leaving the work to followers such as Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. His heavy smoking and drinking zapped his energy. His refusal to bathe – a trait also shared by Mao - resulted in boils all over his body. They brought on nervous collapse and fits of rage – both of which would have prevented him from working and earning his own living had he decided to do so.
Marx had a passionate hatred of capitalism because he was simply unable to handle money and to organize his own financial affairs. His inability to stay out of debt explains why his theory of capital is so deeply rooted in anti-Semitism. It also explains why he stole many of his most deeply anti-Semitic passages from Martin Luther.
Because he refused to work, even his own family remained unsympathetic to his requests for handouts, which he began making in college and kept making throughout the duration of his life. His own mother was credited with saying that she wished Karl would start accumulating capital instead of just writing about it.
Although he wrote about the need for revolution, Marx had a strange hatred for those who came from the revolutionary class. His son-in-law Paul Lafargue was from Cuba and had some black blood. He tried to keep his daughter from marrying him and later resented him for refusing to honor his wishes. Consequently, Marx referred to him as “Negrillo” and “the Gorilla.”
In short, Marx considered both work and the worker to be beneath him. He lived nearly his entire adult life off of handouts from Engels, the co-author of The Communist Manifesto. While he was living off of Engels’ capital, Marx kept a peasant woman around the house and refused to pay her for her services. Later, he fathered an illegitimate child by her and refused to provide financial support or even to acknowledge that he was the father. In other words, he exploited her labor and then abandoned her after she went into labor. Marx was not a great man worthy of admiration.
Nor was Marx a great prophet. He understood that there would always be men incapable of taking care of themselves. He understood that they would resort to violence whenever they did not get what they wanted. He also understood that there would always be academics who admired gross incompetence and the propensity towards violence.
Marx did not need a crystal ball to arrive at these truths. All he needed was a mirror.
Source: Paul Johnson, Intellectuals (New York, 1988).
According to a new Pew Research Center survey, 66 percent of respondents agree that there are “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between rich and poor in America. This is up from 47 percent that agreed with this two years ago.
In a Gallup poll last October, 52 percent said they trust the “ideas and opinions” of Barack Obama for creating jobs compared to 45 percent that said they trust executives of major corporations.
The point is, sadly, there is mistrust in America about the very thing that any conservative will tell you is the mother’s milk of our country – freedom and free enterprise.
Mistrust in our country about free enterprise has always been a problem.
But never more than now.
Why? Two important reasons.
First, we have never had a left wing ideologue occupying the White House like we have today. The man is serious and committed.
He told Americans he would change the country, and change it he has.
Now he is about to run for a second term with no pretensions about who he is. He is going to run on a platform of so-called fairness and against what he will label unbridled, merciless capitalism.
Republicans will have their work cut out to defend business and freedom against this onslaught, particularly in today’s environment of mistrust about these very things.
Second, our nation is at a genuine crossroads. Even if we could scale back the trillions in new spending that Barack Obama has larded into our federal budget, we would still be in trouble.
Government has taken over major parts of American life and to regain our vitality, significant reforms must be made.
Even if Obamacare is repealed, American health care is still in crisis. We’ll need creative market based reforms to alter the way Americans get their health care.
Our entitlements morass can only be fixed with market based reforms that involve phase out of government and phase in of ownership and choice.
Reforms of major areas of American life where Americans have grown accustomed to the heavy hand of government will be impossible if a large percentage of our population is mistrustful of free markets and business.
To get this kind of change, leadership that inspires trust in free enterprise is essential.
There’s good reason for skepticism when Mitt Romney showcases his business background as the reason he will inspire this kind of trust.
America’s biggest and most powerful businesses are notoriously unreliable defenders of free markets. They have a deserved reputation for being unprincipled.
Take Romney’s own former company Bain.
Of the 29 members of Congress for whom Bain executives were among the largest political contributors since 2000, 26 of the 29 were Democrats.
Bain executives generously supported champions of big government like Anthony Weiner, Al Franken, John Kerry, and Ted Kennedy.
Executive ranks of Bain, the bastion of capitalism that Romney led for 25 years, are populated by left wing Democrats.
Businessmen may roll their eyes when Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), former head of the Congressional Black Caucus, says, as he did the other day, that one of America’s most notorious crooks, Bernie Madoff, did what he did “in the name of capitalism.”
But, unfortunately, Clyburn expresses the sentiments of many blacks.
And corporate America enables this through the millions they pour into left wing organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, and the National Urban League.
American big businessmen are generally about expediency, not principles.
Expedient better describes Romney than moderate or conservative.
He may be saying what sounds good now. But it’s the expedient thing to do.
Unprincipled business leaders helped lead us into the mess we’re in today.
More expediency is not going to get us out of it. Only principled leadership that inspires trust in free enterprise and capitalism will.
Star Parker
Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It. NOTE: To share or email this 'Specific' article, you must click on the Title of the article.
Have you heard this comment lately? Does it express how you feel about America?
This one sentence, vague as it is, nonetheless captures a common sentiment about the current condition of the United States.
With the “occupy” protesters disrupting civic life around the country and President Obama publicly bonding with them, we’re seeing that magical phrase – “the system has failed” – being used in increasingly ambiguous ways. So it makes sense that the rest of us should ask a couple of important questions: What “system” are they talking about? And in what sense has that system “failed?”
At times it would appear that the occupiers are decrying our American system of constitutional, elective and representative government. “Our voices aren’t being heard,” many of them will say, implying that they are being trampled-upon by an abusive dictatorial regime.
But if you probe deeper and ask “what do you mean by that?,” it often becomes apparent that what the occupiers are really saying is “my policy ideas were rejected,” “the election didn’t turn out the way it should have,” or “I disagree with the outcome of the legislative vote (the congressional rejection of the Obama tax hikes is a perfect example of this).”
Thus, the claim that “the system has failed” implies a very self-centered, narcissistic view of the world – “the system is not producing the policies that I want, so therefore the entire system is wrong.”
Another component to the “not being heard” claim is the fact that many of the occupiers seem disinterested in participating in the processes of making public policy. Pollster Doug Schoen recently noted in the Wall Street Journal that while an overwhelming majority of the occupiers voted for President Obama in 2008, less than half will vote to re-elect him and at least 25% won’t vote at all in 2012.
Similarly, in a recent interview I did with occupier “Christine,” the intelligent and articulate 25 year old gushed on my daily talk show about how the movement signals a “new awakening” where people are “letting their voices be heard.” Yet when I asked, she couldn’t name any elected official who represents her in the U.S. Congress, her state legislature, her city council or school board, and she openly admitted that she did not vote in the 2008 presidential election.
At other times, the occupiers seem to be saying that our free-market economic system has failed. Some of this rhetoric implies a very simple, socialistic, “it’s unfair if one person achieves more than the other” type of mindset. Other occupiers present more complex concerns, as does the unnamed Los Angeles occupier who appears in the now-famous “WTF is going on?” Youtube video.
“I’ve been an electrician for ten years,” the man in the video shouts into a bullhorn. “My wife is a nurse….we both have good jobs…and we can’t afford a house…That aint right!...What is going on?” he cries.
These types of frustrations are real and common. But the angry outbursts suggest a lack of interest in understanding important economic concepts like the relative worth of “things” – the value of labor, and durable goods, for example – and the variable value of the currency.
Perhaps most noteworthy about our alleged “system failure,” is President Obama implying that he wants to replace it. Most of the reaction to the President’s recent interview with ABC News focused on the fact that he said, in no uncertain terms, that he is “on their side” – on the side of the occupier protesters, that is, and apparently not on the side of the rest of us Americans.
However the more intriguing comments from the President were mostly un-noticed. “We want to set up a system in which hard work, responsibility, doing what you’re supposed to do, is rewarded,” Mr. Obama stated, “and that people who are irresponsible, who are reckless, who don’t feel a sense of obligation to their communities and their companies and their workers, that those folks aren’t rewarded.”
The President and the protesters may be shocked to learn this, but our free-market, capitalist economic system is already designed to accomplish this, and it does so pretty well – when it is truly “free” and competitive. When government refrains from punishing success with threats of ever-increasing taxation and regulation, people get rewarded for their hard work and responsibility and they’re incentivized to continue achieving. And when government allows businesses to compete with each other, excellence rises to the top and inferiority is allowed to fail.
President Obama has pursued policies that move us in the exact opposite direction. High-achievers are maligned in the President’s rhetoric and policy proposals. Mis-managed companies – failed banks and car companies in particular – are given “government bailouts.” And businesses that meet Barack Obama’s individual, political needs – G.E., General Motors, Solyndra, and Fisker Automotive of Finland, to name a few - are granted special privileges and waivers so as to become pre-determined successes.
The American “system” has not failed – not our economic system, nor our political system. But many of our currently elected government officials need to be replaced, along with many of their policies.
Austin Hill Austin Hill is an emerging American voice, addressing culture-defining questions through books, talk radio, web, speaking, and interviews. His recent books "White House Confidential" and his new title "The Virtues Of Capitalism" show his range from whit-infused writer to thought-provoking expert on the intersection of philosophy, religion, politics & culture. Hill helps to make the complex seem simple when exploring capitalism, socialism, and other "Isms".
He is an editorial contributor to national publications such as U.S. News & World Report, a columnist with TownHall.com, and is a popular expert-host on radio from leading stations in Washington DC, Chicago, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and nationally with networks such as Fox NewsTalk Radio. He hosts the "Austin Hill Show" weekday mornings at Fresno, California's Talk Radio 105-9 KMJ-FM, and weekday afternoons at Boise, Idaho's Newstalk 580 K I D O radio.
Hill holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and a Master's Degree in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics from Biola University in California. NOTE: To share or email this 'Specific' article, you must click on the Title of the article.
This video clip from the documentary video Overview of America explains differences between the major economic systems of free market Capitalism, Fascism, Naziism, Socialism, and Communism. It is explained that all types of economic systems include elements of capital and property, with differences between the systems being varying combinations of types of ownership and control of those two elements.
