Posted on 04/28/2013 10:12:07 AM PDT by Kaslin
In one of the most hopelessly incorrect collections of drivel that I have ever seen, Paul Farrell of MarketWatch writes Capitalism is killing our morals, our future.
Yes, capitalism is working ... for the Forbes 1,000 Global Billionaires whose ranks swelled from 322 in 2000 to 1,426 recently. Billionaires control the vast majority of the world’s wealth, while the income of American workers stagnated.
Over the years we’ve explored the reasons capitalism blindly continues on its self-destructive path. Recently we found someone who brilliantly explains why free-market capitalism is destined to destroy the world, absent a historic paradigm shift: That is Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, author of the new best-seller, “What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets,” and his earlier classic, “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?”
New free-market capitalism trapped in American brains. Yes, it’s everywhere: “Markets to allocate health, education, public safety, national security, criminal justice, environmental protection, recreation, procreation, and other social goods unheard-of 30 years ago. Today, we take them largely for granted.”
Examples ... for-profit schools, hospitals, prisons ... outsourcing war to private contractors ... police forces by private guards “almost twice the number of public police officers” ... drug “companies aggressive marketing of prescription drugs directly to consumers, a practice ... prohibited in most other countries.”
Something Trapped in Our Brains
Yes something is trapped in our brains, or rather the brains of Farrell, Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, and those who think like them.
The first problem is Farrell and Sandel do not know what free market capitalism is. We certainly do not have it.
The free market would not have fractional reserve lending. The free market would have gold and silver as money.
The primary reason for the major disparity in wealth is bank leverage of fiat money created at will via fractional reserve lending. The most redeeming feature of capitalism is failure, but the Fed has a moral hazard policy of "too big to fail" that promotes massive risk-taking.
There would be no Fed in a free market and there would be bank failures, not bailouts on the backs of taxpayers.
In a free market, money would not be inflated at will, nor would credit be handed out to anyone who could breathe as happened in the housing bubble.
Anyone who equates what is happening now with "free market economics" has something much smellier than mush for brains. So does anyone who thinks the socialist model would serve us better. If it the socialist model was better, and more regulation and rules was the solution for everything, France would be the booming leader of the world economy.In one of the most hopelessly incorrect collections of drivel that I have ever seen, Paul Farrell of MarketWatch writes Capitalism is killing our morals, our future.
Yes, capitalism is working ... for the Forbes 1,000 Global Billionaires whose ranks swelled from 322 in 2000 to 1,426 recently. Billionaires control the vast majority of the world’s wealth, while the income of American workers stagnated.
Over the years we’ve explored the reasons capitalism blindly continues on its self-destructive path. Recently we found someone who brilliantly explains why free-market capitalism is destined to destroy the world, absent a historic paradigm shift: That is Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, author of the new best-seller, “What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets,” and his earlier classic, “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?”
New free-market capitalism trapped in American brains. Yes, it’s everywhere: “Markets to allocate health, education, public safety, national security, criminal justice, environmental protection, recreation, procreation, and other social goods unheard-of 30 years ago. Today, we take them largely for granted.”
Examples ... for-profit schools, hospitals, prisons ... outsourcing war to private contractors ... police forces by private guards “almost twice the number of public police officers” ... drug “companies aggressive marketing of prescription drugs directly to consumers, a practice ... prohibited in most other countries.”
Something Trapped in Our Brains
Yes something is trapped in our brains, or rather the brains of Farrell, Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, and those who think like them.
The first problem is Farrell and Sandel do not know what free market capitalism is. We certainly do not have it.
The free market would not have fractional reserve lending. The free market would have gold and silver as money.
The primary reason for the major disparity in wealth is bank leverage of fiat money created at will via fractional reserve lending. The most redeeming feature of capitalism is failure, but the Fed has a moral hazard policy of "too big to fail" that promotes massive risk-taking.
There would be no Fed in a free market and there would be bank failures, not bailouts on the backs of taxpayers.
In a free market, money would not be inflated at will, nor would credit be handed out to anyone who could breathe as happened in the housing bubble.
Anyone who equates what is happening now with "free market economics" has something much smellier than mush for brains. So does anyone who thinks the socialist model would serve us better. If it the socialist model was better, and more regulation and rules was the solution for everything, France would be the booming leader of the world economy.
Editor's Note: Should someone who is against free markets actually be working for CBS MarketWatch?
Nope. Crony capitalism (corporatism, fascism) might be doing so.
But it is dead certain that entitlements are killing morals and personal responsibility.
There is an awful lot of debate and disagreement about that even among strong supporters or capitalism or free markets.
“Markets to allocate health, education, public safety, national security, criminal justice, environmental protection, recreation, procreation, and other social goods unheard-of 30 years ago. Today, we take them largely for granted.”
That's not really coherent writing. But all of that was "heard-of" 30 years ago. Theories about, say, the right to pollute were out there. Even today, though, that's not a reality, so far as I know.
Surely "procreation" and "recreation" haven't been state-run in recent memory -- or ever. Private guards? Ads in buses? Private schools and hospitals? None of that is really new. I'm not sure that the line between private non-profit and private for-profit institutions is as clear as the article suggests.
Farrell -- or rather, Sandel -- is having a rant. They're globalizing. Whatever truths or valid points they have about specific developments get lost in all the ranting.
Wow! I did not know you posted here and to think you are a tycoon. How do you have time.
Wow! I did not know you posted here and to think you are a tycoon. How do you have time.
Well, no. Total assets of the world's billionaires is around $5.4T, while the total wealth of the world is around $1 quadrillion.
They control about 0.54% of the world's wealth, which wasn't a majority the last time I looked.
You can argue they control too much, but not that they control most of it.
Take it up with Adam Smith. He knew 200+ years ago that given the opportunity businessmen conspire with each other and the government to defraud the public.
Competing in a free market is HARD. It’s a lot easier to have the government break a trail for you.
I think it’s livng in debt and want for more that is killing our morality. At least when you have capital you own it and aren’t just leasing it from the bank or mortgage company for your whole life.
Prosperity requires economic progress, and economic progress requires all of the following factors:
1) private property rights
2) rational culture that accepts scientific progress
3) technological progress and the means of implementing it
4) capital accumulation and capital markets
5) low taxes
6) sound money and sound financial system
To achieve the above, there are two alternatives to choose from: either capitalism or government interventionism. Government interventionism is destructive to all of the above, which leaves capitalism as the best choice for achieving prosperity.
At the center of this blueprint are the solutions to two problems that absorb Smith's attention. First, he is interested in laying bare the mechanism by which society hangs together. How is it possible for a community in which everyone is busily following his self-interest not to fly apart from sheer centrifugal force? What is it that guides each individual's private business so that it conforms to the needs of the group? With no central planning authority and no steadying influence of age-old tradition, how does society manage to get those tasks done which are necessary for survival?
Paul Farrell of MarketWatch no doubt thinks democracy IS NOT MOB RULE..
one wonders WHAT ELSE he does not know..
Capitalism MURDERS poverty, Socialism INCREASES poverty..
Capitalism made America prosperous and secure foe 200 years. It’s capitalism’s demise that’s wrecking America.
They promote a carry trade into some craphole like Greece by loaning dollars or yen at some low rate to people who buy Greek debt yielding 11 percent because it might be paid back in Euros if it is paid back. Big banks and wealthy investors who can play this game can make big profits because the risks from the inevitable delieveraging falls mainly on the slower smaller investors and the economy (meaning jobs and upward mobility are undermined by the boom and busts).
The second problem is that the Fed prints money to give to politicians (in exchange for treasuries which are in a Fed-created bubble). The politicians give a lot of the money to the already wealthy in exchange for campaign contributions.
As opposed, I assume, to the protectionists who whine about government control -- except for trade where it's perfectly justified. The protectionists preach a 19th century abstraction where the division of labor is good for the individual, smart for a city, and correct for a state or province.
But, miraculously, and without explanation, the benefits of the division of labor stop at the nation's borders. Now, that's a theory. And one that's been disproved many, many times.
Yes, it stops at the borders. Borders have meaning. We didn't vote for "free trade" or in reality it isn't; only free in one direction.
Except fot the American system. Worked quite well.
Oh and by the way it has little to do with specialization but a great deal to do with coolee labor working at ten cents per day producung products that are cheap and nasty thus destroying the West. The true “Free Trade” fanatic can only think economically and refuses to see that politically China will soon be in a position to dominate the U.S. with the help of Western abstract economic theorists.
Most of these economic libertarians are also just plain old libertarians. I mean a child can see “free trade” with a communist Country (like China) cannot be free. The peoples of the two countries are no where near on a level playing field and one set lives in abject slavery.
Socialism teaches that it’s OK to steal, as long as it’s for a good cause. Socialism teaches that it’s OK to collect a paycheck for doing nothing. Socialism teaches that it’s OK to take away people’s rights, as long as it’s for the greater good (ie, for the advancement of socialism).
If anything is corrupting this country, it’s socialism.
The disease of liberalism festers in virtually every corner of the Country.
As Joan Robinson said, making the case for unilateral free trade, "Even if your trading partner dumps rocks into his harbor to obstruct arriving cargo ships, you do not make yourself better off by dumping rocks into your own harbor."
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