Corporatism

Capitalism is not corporatism

The word “capitalism”, like most political terms, engenders a lot of confusion and loading. It is a loaded “bad” word, evoking all sorts of social ills, egoism and greed (although I do not think those are bad things, of course). But it is also often equated with corporate exploitation or an anti-populist point of view. The reason for this confusion is in itself difficult to divine, since capitalism as a system does not correspond at all to these things. We must therefore endeavour to explain the difference.

One-dimensional confusion

Capitalism, simply defined, is an economic system …

Humanity

Is humanity progressing ?

As time goes by, is society getting better or worse ? Are we gaining or losing freedom ? Are we progressing ? Is the environment cleaner or more polluted ?

The mainstream view is that everything is getting worse and worse. Things, we are told, were much better during the last generation, and now it’s only a matter of time before human self-destructiveness plunges us into slavery/abject poverty/worldwide warfare. This view is conductive to fear and paranoia, and is easily exploited as a statist political tool.

Part of this mentality certainly comes from the “Good Old …

Evaluation

An evaluation of capitalism vs statism

The 20th century has seen the degradation of the classical liberal model of government into various kinds of statism. Some of the more proeminent were, of course, fascism and communism. However, milder kinds of centrism have also become proeminent in virtually all countries.

Statism – the idea that a centralized government could somehow be better than private initiative – is a surprisingly popular idea despite its absurdity. While few people would deny that a few public functions such as some form of limited law enforcment and judiciary system are necessary, it seems unlikely that …

Keeper

We are not our brothers’ keepers

When discussing world politics, a sense of perspective is needed. While our North American and European countries seem to be rather average in our eyes, they are, for the most part, the richest and freest countries in the world. Almost all the countries in other regions lie below the 10 000 $ line of GDP per capita, which is far below what we, in our great arrogance, consider “the poverty line”.

Who is to blame for this state of affairs, if anyone ? The universal answer seems to be “the rich countries”, and “corporate …

Fallen

Has Libertarianism fallen ?

Libertarianism is awfully unpopular. While this has no bearing on its truth or falsity, it does have a lot of bearing on its real-life applications. Any attention that it gets as a political option is tainted with the idea that IT’S SO MARGINAL, which makes it easy to objectify it.

So when a famous professor of political economy, Francis Fukuyama, writes an article called “The Fall of the Libertarians” in the Wall Street Journal on May 2nd, declaring that libertarianism is on its way out, people listen.

“Libertarianism”, Fukuyama declares, is a “radical dogma whose limitations …