Socialism

Modern American culture is statist to the core. The typical school curriculum tells students that capitalism is evil and socialism is good.  This only gets worse in college. 

While most of us know George Orwell as an authoritative critic of totalitarianism, few people know he was a committed socialist and a lifelong defender of communist Leon Trotsky. While he understood totalitarianism, he never understood socialism.

The political theorist Anthony de Jasay takes on the left‘s ideas of equality, and David Gordon is there to agree—and disagree. Jasay likens the left‘s view of equality to the Indian Rope Trick.

Capitalism is characterized by the private ownership of capital, coming from Lockean homesteading principles, and not from state coercion and force.

Einstein's name is synonymous with brilliance, yet his great intelligence did not translate to logical economic thinking. Instead, Einstein embraced socialism, thinking that one could guide an economy like one guides a mathematical equation.

Kamala Harris claims that she simply wants food prices to be lower. However, her de facto price fixing scheme would create food shortages and raise the real price of food. Of course, when that happens, Harris simply will blame capitalism.

For all of the talk about Kamala Harris being a socialist, she certainly does not advocate socialism of the kind we have seen under the old USSR or Mao’s China. Instead, her version has characteristics of Italy in the 1920s and the more notorious German version of the 1930s.

While Henri Bergson did not point his intellectual abilities toward politics, lesser men who were unscrupulous commandeered his ideas to promote their own collectivist ideologies. 

When discussing the homeless situation in the US, Star Trek does not usually come to mind. However, one episode from about three decades ago was both insightful and prophetic in presenting what would be homelessness in San Francisco.

Many proponents of free markets have tried to cast aside the name “capitalism” as a descriptor of the market system. They should take caution before doing so.