Thursday, March 24, 2022

Is This The End Of Capitalism? | Answers With Joe - YouTube

In response to...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wny-d15ZETw

I wrote...

The word capitalism is used as a pejorative. The correct term should be a free market, which is the freedom to own a business and run it with minimal interference from the government. The opposite of this is different degrees of tyranny. Do you want the government running your business, or taking it away from you?

Corporations are used as a whipping boys, but corporations are a way of democratizing business ownership. My retirement fund invests in the S&P500, meaning that I have some tiny ownership in 500 companies. People resent corporations because they are a concentration of power, and this could possibly be a threat to freedom, but without corporations, very few people could afford to invest in business ownership.

The socialist left keeps looking for excuses to give us a command and control economy. The most recent is a fear of automation, but history shows that automation leads to more prosperity, more jobs not less.

Milton Freidman said that the robber barons were mostly a myth.  People flocked to difficult factory jobs because that was better than the alternative.  Nobody forces you to give a corporation a dime.  Nobody forces you to work for an employer.  In a command and control economy, everything is done by coercion.  They will tell you what to buy, who to work for, what type of energy you can use, what kind of health care you are eligible for, and what you can say.

Tuesday, March 8, 2022