By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them ...

SEE HERE Well most of the fruits and nuts are in the Demon-crat party. Those of us who are working folks tend to be a bit more conservative. Thomas Sowell has a new book out about intellectuals, and I fancy myself one, although one of the conservative ones like Sowell himself. There must be something in the water of the social sciences (that's an oxymoron of course) that turns them all into liberal, progressive, socialist, communist, statist proto-totalitarians. If that's not the case then I keep wondering why they almost all seem to end up with those kinds of opinions.

A long time ago I was thinking about the nature of discourse between people since all discourse is about the search for truth (I'm not talking about the weather here, not smalltalk) the question is why is it often so difficult. I concluded after some thought that it was because while we often think we are talking about the same thing, in fact depending on our presumptions, we may be talking right past each other, using the same words but meaning very different things.

There was a correspondent in today's newspaper who shall remain nameless but will be my poster boy for this. He said: "Capitalist markets are good at many things, but the assertion that they are good at taking care of the poor is a myth perpetuated by the wealthy to soothe consciences and justify selfish and profligated consumption." Wow!!

Not sure where to begin: "capitalist markets" is an incoherent category. There are only free or constrained markets. The markets in the United States are constrained. The only free markets are small informal affairs that have escaped the notice of governments. The idea that these markets don't help the poor is incoherent. It is not the function of markets to do anything but exchange goods at mutually agreed prices (in a free market) and at more or less controlled or constrained prices in a constrained or regulated market. What helps the poor is being able to have access to goods at the lowest possible price which is what a free market ensures. (See Adam Smith for the argument.) The demonization of the wealthy is gratuitous. The wealthy are in no particularly better position to control a market that is free than anyone else.

Our correspondent goes on to claim that "For distributing resources, capitalism is based on the principle of competition, which necessarily produces winners and losers." This is an interesting claim. Free market capitalism provides goods at the lowest price and quickly signals through prices the fact of scarcity so that producers can increased production or seek to provide the markets with alternatives. Government interference with markets muddles the signals and makes the markets less efficient. There is no "competition" only producers seeking buyers and distributing themselves voluntarily into the niches that are most productive for them.

Finally our correspondent claims: "Government is responsible for maintaining a socio-economic floor below which its citizens are not allowed to sink." This is asserted but not demonstrated. It seems to me that government does not have such a responsibility. Human beings have a responsibility to honor the dignity of their fellow human beings which includes helping the disadvantaged to live a human life and not be degraded. There is almost nothing more degrading than becoming a case-number in a government bureaucracy. The citizens may choose to delegate their own responsibility to the government but they cannot thereby escape the fact that it is a personal and human responsibility and not a government one.

In view of the fact that our correspondent gratuitously attacks capitalism, the wealthy, and assigns gratuitous responsibilities to government, one can suggest he is a statist and likely a socialist. Of course that is only an inference from his positions. One further statement "As a philosophy, capitalism is fundamentally at odds with the teachings of Christ — it encourages producers to gouge their neighbors not for what their product or service actually costs to produce, but for whatever they can get away with charging for them."

That's quite a condemnation. To start with capitalism is not a philosophy, but a label demonized by Karl Marx in Das Kapital. The implication is that the correspondent thinks that all goods should be traded at cost. Aside from the fact that all the costs are difficult to ascertain, on what principle should this be concluded? If I make something, this implies that I am required to sell it at what it cost me to make it. Suppose I am an artist. I buy paints, some canvas, and spend a couple of hours making a masterpiece because I've very good. My costs are minimal. Whose right is it to tell me what I should sell my work for? What does Christ have to do with it? Christ never condemned markets, only markets in the temple precinct. (a controlled market by the way) and He said that the poor would always be with us. "gouging" implies force and a free market doesn't require you to buy anything. It forces no exchanges. If you don't like the price you don't buy or you buy from another vendor at a lower price. So I suppose on the whole our correspondent has provided no coherent case against markets, or capitalism, nor has he demonstrated that Christ would be against markets. Instead he has demonstrated a thorough-going mind-set of a socialist/Marxist cast.

We need more clarity in the public square. No-one should make gratuitous assertions about motives without demonstration and expect them to just be accepted. Finally our correspondent is guilty of Bulverism. His whole argument turns on the gratuitous assignment of motives and characteristics to what he wants to condemn without any effort to demonstrate that the assertions are true. That is ideological thinking. There is too much of it in the world today since it undermines the search for truth. In fact free market capitalism has made every nation that has tried it wealthy so that the poor of those nations are the richest poor in the world.