Bad-mouthing capitalism has a large, ready audience of naive uncritical fans. Even Pope Francis speaks of capitalism as “a new tyranny.” Yet the enormous productivity of free enterprise capitalism has done more to eliminate poverty and has put more bread and milk into the mouths of hungry children than have all the well-intentioned do-gooders who ever lived.
Capitalism is the only truly moral economic system because all exchanges are free and voluntary, whereas all other economic systems (socialism, communism, Nazism, or fascism) are tyrannies using brute force and coercion, including the threat of imprisonment, torture and death, if you don’t meekly comply. Almost all of the 262 million people who were murdered by their own governments during the 20th century were massacred by anti-capitalist tyrannies (the estimate is defined as “democide” in research by R.J. Rummel).
Ironically, many wealthy capitalists support anti-capitalist movements. They’d rather be super-wealthy tyrants than merely wealthy capitalists.
Robert Wassman
Vancouver
