Professor Michael Munger has two excellent articles at AIER.org raising questions about Capitalism.
The first, Is Capitalism Worth Saving?
Here's an excerpt:
"Capitalism, in short, is about consumer sovereignty, not about creating jobs. Capitalism finds ways to create new products, better versions of existing products, and cheaper prices for products that are also much more widely available. Capitalism creates a complex, voluntary mutual dependence, and the only way one person can consume things is by creating things other people want to consume. It’s actually a kind of sharing, except that we don’t need to know much about the people we are depending on."
The second, Is Capitalism Sustainable?
Here's a snippet:
"The problem is that if you want to earn honest profits, you have to sell to consumers, who want quality and low prices. That’s hard, especially for mature products in industries that have been around a while. At some level, even the most independent-minded entrepreneurs realize that it’s easier to sell a sad story to the state than it is to sell real products to consumers. In fact, you can’t blame the corporate leaders who succumb to this temptation: there’s nothing illegal about making government your source of revenue.
"But it’s not capitalism, which involves the pursuit of profit through selling willing consumers better and cheaper products. And that’s why we wonder if capitalism is sustainable: we are asking our business leaders to have scruples, to leave money on the table by refusing to participate in cronyism. Remember, the argument for capitalism is based on the claim that even self-interested business leaders will benefit the whole system. But if self-interest leads toward cronyism, there’s a problem."
What do you think?
