Lipton Matthews: Slavery Was Not the Difference.....

....How Legal Innovations Made America a Superpower While Brazil Stagnated

On the American Left, a familiar idea has taken root: that slavery was not just one feature of the young republic’s economy but its actual engine, the true source of the wealth that later carried the United States into industrial preeminence. This argument, once confined to specialist debate, has since moved into the mainstream, most visibly through the New York Times’ 1619 Project, and it draws further support from a cluster of historians writing under the banner of the New History of Capitalism. These scholars argue that the productivity of enslaved labor and the credit markets built on slave-backed collateral were foundational to American growth rather than incidental to it.

Vincent Cook: What Do “Capitalism” and “Socialism” Really Mean?

The old debate between socialism and capitalism is back. It wasn’t that long ago when socialist economics had been repudiated even by former Soviet insiders, businesses like Wendy’s and Miller ran clever television advertisements poking fun at the once-mighty but by then grossly dysfunctional Soviet Union, and the remaining leftist political parties in Western countries pivoted to focusing on promoting welfare statism while admitting that government controls over the means of production is a losing proposition. Back in the day, even people lacking the keen theoretical insights of a Ludwig von Mises could plainly see that actual attempts to realize socialism, however well-intentioned they were originally, only delivered totalitarian tyranny and mass impoverishment.

Colinxy: Capitalism Isn’t Utopian — And That’s Why It Works

A commenter on Breaking Views left this remark under a repost of one of my articles:

"NZ’s largest malt mill closed today and 230 jobs lost. That’s the right for you, economic destruction.

It’s an emotionally powerful line, and I understand why people reach for it. Business closures are painful. Redundancy is miserable. I’ve been through it myself, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

Colinxy: The Industrial Revolution and the Myth of Capitalist Child Labour

How Prosperity, Not Poverty, Ended the Drudgery of Childhood

One of the more curious accusations routinely hurled at the Industrial Revolution, and by extension at capitalism itself, is the charge of child labour. The argument is delivered with theatrical indignation, as though the moment steam engines appeared, Victorian factory owners spontaneously invented the idea of putting children to work.

This is historically illiterate. Child labour did not begin with capitalism. It predates the Industrial Revolution by millennia.

Kerre Woodham: What alternatives do we have to capitalism and MMP?

The fact that life is a bit of a grind for many people, and has been for some time, means we start to question the natural order of things. When you can pay your bills, have time to spend doing what you enjoy with the people you love, when there aren't glaring inequities, when the failure of the present system and the people who run it aren't up in your face, when you don't see homeless people and beggars and violence, then everything's good. You accept the status quo; things are chugging along nicely. Democracy, capitalism, everybody's getting their fair share, everything's fine.

Colinxy: The Lie of “Endless Growth”

Why Marxists Keep Repeating It — and Why It’s Nonsense

One of the most persistent talking points in Marxist circles — and among their fellow‑travellers in academia, activism, and the bureaucratic class — is the claim that capitalism supposedly promises “endless growth.” According to this myth, economists and capitalists are engaged in a kind of metaphysical delusion, imagining that markets will expand forever until the planet melts, the seas boil, and Jeff Bezos personally blocks out the sun.

It’s a neat story. It’s also completely false.

Andrew Moran: Poland — The Very Model of a Modern Major Economy

From communist hellscape to free market symbol.

Borscht. Knife in the Water. Frédéric Chopin. Among the world’s 20 largest economies? Poland is famous for many contributions to humanity, but being a major economy may not be on everyone’s Bingo card. However, the Polish economic environment has evolved substantially since the post-communist ruins of decades ago, transitioning from Marx to markets. What happened?

John Stossel: The Complete Guide to Socialism vs Capitalism (Myths Explained)

People find fault with capitalism. Many think they’d prefer socialism.

Why? Because they believe absurd myths about it.

Click to View

David Brady Jr: Yes, We Should Defend the Term “Capitalism”

Perhaps nothing is so vilified as “capitalism” in the modern world. According to a study by North Dakota State University, only a quarter of college students have a positive view of capitalism. Bernie Sanders was wildly popular in 2016, nearly dethroning the neoliberal Hillary Clinton, in part because of his disdain for “millionaires and billionaires” and “capitalism” in favor of socialism (though his views of “millionaires” changed once he became one!). As a sad response, proponents of free markets have fled from the term “capitalism” in favor of lukewarm terms like “market processes.”

Jeffrey A. Tucker: This Is Not Capitalism

The word capitalism has no stable definition and should probably be permanently retired. That won’t happen, however, because too many people are invested in its use and abuse.

I’m long over trying to push my definition over someone else’s understanding, generally viewing disputes about vocabulary and dictionary definitions as a distraction against the real debate over concepts and ideals.

Capitalist: She Is Leading Sheep to Slaughter

I’ve always been a bit dubious about working-class people. You know whom I mean; those who are always getting drunk and having children; always deceitful and engaging in criminal activities; scamming the welfare system; selling their souls to junk. Even worse is the widespread, bizarre viewpoint that not only should such people never take responsibility for their actions but I should have to pay them money.

Bob Jones: On language

The word “capitalism” is arguably the most mis-used in the English language.

Hugely handicapped by being called Damien, a massive embarrassment for anyone to bear, Herald reporter Damien Venuto, in an otherwise very good report on the demise of Media Works’ closed FM radio show after it failed to attract an economic audience, concluded, “this is just the cold, brutal reality of capitalism…”

No Damien, it’s nothing to do with capitalism. It’s the cold reality of the market economy, a quite different phenomenon.

Justin Haskins: Al Gore Has Strong Connections to the Global Socialist ‘Great Reset’ Movement

Earlier this month, the World Economic Forum (WEF), a highly influential nonprofit organization based in Europe, announced its plan to push for a “Great Reset” of global capitalism.

Among the many world leaders who have already publicly backed the plan are Prince Charles of the United Kingdom; Antonio Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general; Bernard Looney, CEO of BP, formerly known as British Petroleum; Ajay Banga, CEO of Mastercard; Bradford Smith, president of Microsoft; and Gina Gopinath, chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

The stated purpose of the “Great Reset” is to use the coronavirus pandemic as a justification to overhaul the entire global economy, including the U.S. economy, to make the world more “equitable” in economic terms and to fight climate change, which has on numerous occasions been identified as the world’s next great “crisis” by advocates of the plan.

Karl du Fresne: A masterpiece of the propagandist's art

The New Zealand-made documentary Capital in the 21st Century is a mightily impressive piece of film making.

Inspired by the best-selling 2014 book of the same name by the left-wing French economist Thomas Piketty, it’s taut, fast-moving and masterfully edited. The pace never lets up.

NZCPR Weekly: Setting New Zealand Up to Fail

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

This week we outline how the Labour-Green-New Zealand First Government has set New Zealand on a path to failure, our NZCPR Guest Commentator Frank Newman explains why the Reserve Bank’s larger than expected cut in interest rates to boost confidence is likely to do the opposite, and our poll asks whether you too feel the country is being set up to fail.

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Richard M. Ebeling: How Capitalism Could Save the World

In following the daily news events both in the United States and the rest of the world, it is easy to get lost in the detail and not step back and remind ourselves what the really important issues are. 

Under the anxiety of a possible nuclear war in Korea, actual terrorist attacks in the Middle East and by seemingly “lone wolves” in other countries, threats of trade wars, and polarizing trends in politics, the real underlying issue is, and remains, how should people live together?

Marian Tupy: Income Equality Is No Measure of Human Progress

Following the Great Recession of 2008, income inequality became a focal concern of those who feel that market economy has let them down. In 2011, “We are the 99 percent” became a unifying slogan of the Occupy Wall Street movement. In 2013, the U.S. President Barack Obama described income inequality as the “defining challenge of our time.”

Concern over income inequality did not disappear.

A year later, Pope Francis called for a “legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the state,” while leftwing economist Thomas Piketty tried to supply the movement for greater income equality with intellectual ammunition in his book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. 

NZCPR Weekly: Capitalism Under Scrutiny

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

In this week’s newsletter we look into the claims by the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister that free market capitalism is failing New Zealand, our NZCPR Guest Commentator Professor James Allan shares his analysis of the election result and the failings of MMP, and in this week’s poll we ask whether you believe intergenerational welfare dependency is a market failure – as alleged by the Prime Minister – or a failure of government policy.

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Karl du Fresne: Why celebrity activists piss me off

I tuned into the BBC World Service in the middle of the night recently, as one does, and found myself listening to an interview with an American woman whose identity, since I came in part-way through, was not evident to me.

She was lamenting the appalling state of the world and the heartlessness of the people who allow it to be that way.

Kevin Donnelly: Don’t undermine the West, celebrate it

US academic Samuel P. Huntington, after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR, argued that the new global conflict would be between cultures when he said: “The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural.”

Based on the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic State’s reign of terror in Africa and the Middle East and in London, Paris, New York, Boston, Melbourne and Sydney, it’s clear how prescient Huntington was.