Jik

Antitrust laws can make criminals of men who have violated no one's rights, committed no fraud, and initiated no force, unless you pretend that becoming unacceptably successful through voluntary trade is itself a crime.

In my view, much of the socialist opposition to capitalism stems from the expectation that your needs should entitle you to the achievements of others, rather than requiring you to compete, improve yourself, and create value. Socialists may work hard, but trying means more than working hard at the same job for 40 years. It means having the ambition to improve your circumstances, develop skills, pursue opportunities, take risks, and offer others something worth paying more for. The minimum wage isn't the only wage. The overwhelming majority of American workers earn more than the federal minimum. Better opportunities exist, but pursuing them requires initiative, not merely demanding better compensation for what you're already doing. Socialism treats the inequalities resulting from different choices, ambitions, abilities, and achievements as injustices requiring political correction. And while success is never guaranteed, the existence of even one self-made millionaire proves that upward mobility is possible. The question is why someone else's success should create an obligation to reward your lack of ambition, rather than an incentive to develop your own.

Capitalism is perhaps the most misunderstood economic system in history, largely because it is routinely blamed for the consequences of violating its own principles. Capitalism means private property, individual rights, voluntary trade, and a government limited to protecting those rights. It is a system in which individuals are free to produce, compete, trade, and prosper without requiring political permission or favoritism. Cronyism, by contrast, means government granting economic privileges through subsidies, bailouts, tariffs, regulations designed to protect favored businesses, and other forms of political favoritism. Socialism, communism, fascism, theocracy, absolute monarchy, feudalism, mercantilism, corporatism, and cronyism differ in their doctrines, methods, and objectives. Yet all have permitted political authority or privileged groups to override individual economic freedom. The fundamental distinction is between voluntary exchange and political coercion. Under capitalism, economic success depends on creating value that others voluntarily choose to purchase. Under cronyism, political influence can substitute for earning that success through trade. This brings us to the mixed economy, where elements of capitalism coexist with government intervention, redistribution, regulation, and political favoritism. When intervention produces unintended consequences, critics routinely attribute those failures to capitalism simply because they occurred in an economy containing private businesses and markets. That is a fundamental error of causation. The existence of private businesses does not make every government policy capitalist. Nor does the existence of wealthy businessmen make political favoritism a product of free markets. A businessman who earns a fortune through voluntary trade and one who obtains privileges through political coercion are operating on fundamentally different principles. Pure laissez-faire capitalism has never been fully implemented. Yet to the extent economic freedom has existed, it has demonstrated its extraordinary capacity to create wealth, increase productivity, encourage innovation, and raise living standards. And here lies the great irony. The remaining economic freedom continues to generate much of the wealth that makes government intervention and redistribution possible, while helping cushion society against their destructive consequences. Critics then demand further intervention to remedy problems caused or aggravated by previous interventions, perpetuating a cycle in which political power expands while capitalism receives the blame. Before blaming capitalism for any economic problem, establish whether that problem arose from voluntary exchange or the coercive exercise of political power. You cannot reasonably condemn a system for the consequences of violating its principles while ignoring the benefits produced when those principles are respected.

Question for anarcho-capitalists: If anarchy naturally leads to freedom and capitalism, how does that happen when the overwhelming majority of people believe freedom includes an entitlement to something at someone else's expense? If people don't understand or respect individual rights, why would removing the government suddenly make them respect those rights? And what prevents them from simply establishing a new government to enforce their preferences?