Posted on 01/01/2010 3:11:31 AM PST by The Raven
On the last day of 2009, that awful year, I was listening to a report on National Public Radio (yes, Im a listener). Reporter Tamara Keith presented a by-now-familiar recap of the worst financial and corporate scandals of the decade, from Enron and Martha Stewart to Tyco and Bernie Madoff. It was a depressing slog of greed, venality, and theft. When the report was over, Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep summarized the report with a tart: The decade in capitalism.
I dont want to single out Inskeep, since he was doing what pretty much the entire media establishment has done, particularly of late: reducing capitalism to its alleged sins.
And thats the point. There are few areas of life where a thing responsible for so much good gets so little credit for it.
Imagine if I were to collect the most infamous deeds of African Americans over the last decade say, Michael Vicks dog-fighting scandal and O. J. Simpsons most recent criminal exploit and then put a bow on it with the phrase the decade in black America. What if I did the same thing with Jews? Bernie Madoff, the face of Jewish America! Do the scandals of Rod Blagojevich, Charlie Rangel, and John Edwards define the Democratic party from 2000 to 2010? Do Abu Ghraib and the balloon boy sum up America?
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
>>Democrat scum like Fanny/Freddy and Barney Frank and Chris Dodd didnt do nearly as much damage as Wall Street
It is hard for me to imagine a different outcome when the Dems pushed the lenders to make these sub-prime loans in the first place.
Obviously Wall Street mis-read the risk. But the government pushed the first eraser.
Yes, nothing like wealth and liberty brought on by American capitalism and republicanism to make libs sick.
... Every good thing capitalism helps produce from singing careers to cures for diseases to staggering charity is credited to some other sphere of our lives. Every problem with capitalism, meanwhile, is laid at her feet. Except the problems with capitalism greed, theft, etc. arent capitalisms fault, theyre humanitys. Socialist countries have greedy thieves, too.
Free markets are in disrepute these days, particularly by the people running Washington. For them, government is the solution and capitalism is the problem. If they have their way over the next decade, they wont cure what allegedly ails capitalism people will still steal and lie but they will impede everything that makes capitalism great. And that will be bad for everyone, even NPR
Nailed It!
This ping list is not author-specific for articles I'd like to share. Some for the perfect moral clarity, some for provocative thoughts; or simply interesting articles I'd hate to miss myself. (I don't have to agree with the author all 100% to feel the need to share an article.)
I will try not to abuse the ping list and not to annoy you too much, but on some days there is more of the good stuff that is worthy of attention.
You are welcome to browse the list of truly exceptional articles I pinged to lately. Updated on November 15, 2009. on my page.
You are welcome in or out, just freepmail me (and note which PING list you are talking about).
Besides this one, I keep 2 separate PING lists for my favorite authors Victor Davis Hanson and Orson Scott Card.
Yay Capitalism [by Jonah Goldberg]
Lots of surprisingly kind words in my e-mail box over my column on capitalism. It seems there's a lot of hunger out there for defenses of free markets to counter the widespread resentment of capitalism.
Still, one criticism I think is entirely fair: I didn't acknowledge/stress enough how diluted and compromised American capitalism already is. Too true. But that's no reason to throw another wet blanket on economic growth or compromise our free markets even more. Growth creates jobs. Growth makes it possible to cure diseases, protect the environment, and give opportunities to more kids that their parents never had (like really awesome holodeck games). Growth isn't sufficient for all that, but it is necessary. I agree we've traveled too long in the wrong direction, but before you can turn around, the first order of business is to say "we're going in the wrong direction."
Bonus: I thought this piece on how to make countries rich, in Esquire, of all places, was pretty good.
I'd be remiss if I didn't use this moment to once again plug Kling & Schulz's From Poverty to Prosperity.
>>As for me, fascism is just a species of socialism.
On that note, please see the Hayek quote on my FR profile page. It’s the third one, a two-paragrapher.
He speaks to this quite well and quite succinctly.
>>As for me, fascism is just a species of socialism.
On that note, please see the Hayek quote on my FR profile page. It’s the third one, a two-paragrapher.
He speaks to this quite well and quite succinctly.
>>And the government solutions to date have only enlarged the too-big-too-fail and Freddie/Fannie risks in the system.
That is one area where government intervention in the free market makes sense. Monopolies should be prevented. Corporations that are “too-big-too-fail” are a sign this is not being done.
Of course, the reason it is not being done is corporate-government collusion, aka corporate socialism.
Regarding that, see my post just above on one allowable place the gov’t should intervene in the free market.
You are right as a general principle. In the case of the financial institutions, however, it’s worse: the government is what caused and enabled the too-bigness that made the bailouts supposedly necessary.
Of course, Marx, Engels and Lenin were paraded before me by my teachers freshman year as an undergrad.
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