Jonah Goldberg: Capitalism Fingered as Fiend of the Past Decade

Readers are likely to find the name of Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism, frequently on this site, alongside others like P.J.O'Rourke, Mark Steyn and David Boaz. Here is a recent article from his column at the National Review.

Reducing “capitalism” to its alleged sins.

On the last day of 2009, that awful year, I was listening to a report on National Public Radio (yes, I’m a listener). Reporter Tamara Keith presented a by-now-familiar recap of the worst financial and corporate scandals of the decade, from Enron and Martha Stewart to Tyco and Bernie Madoff. It was a depressing slog of greed, venality, and theft. When the report was over, Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep summarized the report with a tart: “The decade in capitalism.”  

I don’t want to single out Inskeep, since he was doing what pretty much the entire media establishment has done, particularly of late: reducing “capitalism” to its alleged sins.

And that’s the point. There are few areas of life where a thing responsible for so much good gets so little credit for it.

Imagine if I were to collect the most infamous deeds of African Americans over the last decade — say, Michael Vick’s dog-fighting scandal and O. J. Simpson’s most recent criminal exploit — and then put a bow on it with the phrase “the decade in black America.” What if I did the same thing with Jews? Bernie Madoff, the face of Jewish America! Do the scandals of Rod Blagojevich, Charlie Rangel, and John Edwards define the Democratic party from 2000 to 2010? Do Abu Ghraib and the balloon boy sum up America?

Consider NPR. As a brand, it claims to be standing athwart capitalism because it’s “public.” What that means exactly is a bit unclear, since it still allows corporations to fund its programming in exchange for audio endorsements none dare call commercials and relies on the kindness of listeners to keep it afloat — listeners who, one way or another, make their money from you-know-what.

Indeed, speaking of the decade in capitalism, National Public Radio failed to mention that Joan Kroc, widow of Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, left more than $200 million to NPR in 2003. Mrs. Kroc’s generosity of spirit was her own, but the wampum is all capitalism’s, baby.

In a similar vein, the decade of capitalism saw one of the world’s richest men, Warren Buffett, pledge more than $30 billion to a foundation created by another offspring of capitalism, Bill Gates, for the purpose of aiding the world’s poor. Surely capitalism should get some of the credit, since the book on philanthropy in non-capitalist systems is shorter than the guide to cities without Starbucks.

Capitalism doesn’t just create generous wealthy people, but generous poor people, too. Americans give twice as much to charity as the most generous European nations, and the most generous Americans are, in fact, poor Americans.

But forget philanthropy. Since 2000, hundreds of millions of people in China and India — home to a plurality of the world’s poor — have lifted themselves out of poverty and illiteracy thanks to capitalism.

China started to embrace markets as a last resort in the late 1970s. And by last resort, I mean last resort. First they tried murdering tens of millions of their own people through collectivism and oppression. When that didn’t work, they embraced markets, and the poverty rate dropped from 64 percent to around 8 percent today.

As it always does, capitalism drove innovation over the last decade. The BlackBerry was introduced in 1999, but the iPhone didn’t exist in 2000, nor did the iPod. YouTube was a fantasy, and no one could even imagine why you’d ever need something like Facebook or Twitter (in fairness, some people still ask that question). iTunes was launched in 2003, and five years later it was outselling Wal-Mart as the No. 1 music retailer. Government-funded basic research in medical science deserves some credit for breakthroughs, but it’s worth remembering that lots of countries invest in basic research. America, with its markets, stands alone as the leading, arguably sole, source of medical innovation. Breakthrough drugs are as American as apple pie.

Every good thing capitalism helps produce — from singing careers to cures for diseases to staggering charity —  is credited to some other sphere of our lives. Every problem with capitalism, meanwhile, is laid at her feet. Except the problems with capitalism — greed, theft, etc. — aren’t capitalism’s fault, they’re humanity’s. Socialist countries have greedy thieves, too.

Free markets are in disrepute these days, particularly by the people running Washington. For them, government is the solution and capitalism is the problem. If they have their way over the next decade, they won’t cure what allegedly ails capitalism — people will still steal and lie — but they will impede everything that makes capitalism great. And that will be bad for everyone, even NPR.

Africa's Comparative Advantage is Poverty.

Here is an article I wrote for South Africa's News24. I've tidied up the typos (oops) and inserted the original links that managed to get lost in transmission, along with some updates as well.






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The Law of Comparative Advantage is one law of economics that is easily understood by everyone. Everyone should produce goods they produce best and most efficiently, and delegate the production of other goods to others, which insures the most efficient goods are always produced and wealth is maximised. Easy.

A friend of mine in the financial industry recently said to me that South Africa has no Comparative Advantage and he is only partly correct. The entire continent of Africa is at a disadvantage because it cannot produce anything more efficiently than at least somewhere else.

Africa's trade with the rest of the world has declined steadily since most of its countries became independent in the 1960s, and that decline began immediately after World War II. It may never recover.

Why? Africa has been undercut consistently by other parts of the world and this trend is likely to continue. Latin America in particular has become a favoured trading partner of the West, even though Germans, for example, are still choosing to pay more for African bananas at the expense of Central American ones.

Coffee, fruit, and other exports are more easily and cheaply available elsewhere, most notably in Southeast Asia and Central America. Industrial production, needless to say, has never been an issue.

Two industries are available to Africa. Tourism and raw materials. These are the same two industries that Australia relies on. Spot the difference? Australia, foolishly in the view of many economists, exports raw materials to Japan, particularly timber, and then imports paper, even though they have the capacity to process it themselves.

Australia thus acts like an African country, but the difference between Australia and Africa is huge. Australia has both the culture and the supporting infrastructure to stave off what is known as the Dutch Disease. It is also Pro-Western, and does not carry the baggage of "post-colonialism" which glorifies traditional structures and abhors globalisation.

This difference cannot be underestimated and results in stagnation for almost all of Africa. Even Libya, probably Africa's "richest" country, is a desert in every sense of the word.

What does Africa have to offer the world?

In an age of Globalised free trade peoples have been forced to accept that they must trade for what they want, rather than try to take it by force. As a result (see link), death by war is at its lowest level for years.

But Africa has nothing to trade.

The Western aid industry has succeeded only in replacing revenues from lost trade since the War with handouts, turning Africa into the world's largest Welfare State.

If the West is no longer demanding products from Africa in exchange for money, which is the arrangement almost everywhere else in the world, what is it we are demanding?

The answer is absolution. What Africa exports to the West is alleviation of guilt (real or imagined, but I suspect the latter) and the proliferation of good feelings. This falls under the category of tertiary industry, as it is a service performed for money.

As a result, Africans have become the modern-day sellers of indulgences, peddling salvation to guilt-ridden foreigners, and their industry is in full swing.

As a result, to support this industry, Africa must do what it does best, which is to produce and almost endless supply of poverty, helplessness, squalor and destitution to meet what seems like an inexhaustible demand.

This may sound cynical, but it is a reality. And it is a reality that do-gooding Westerners are helping to perpetuate. By demanding nothing, we are creating limitless supplies of nothing, and this is making an economic disaster even worse.

Those who use Africa in this way are no better than the dealers of blood diamonds, as they need a constant supply of the resource was can call absolution, which is turn relies on an endless supply of misery.

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The article was favourably received, bar a couple of commenters who challenged my understanding of Comparative Advantage. So let me reiterate. There is nothing that African nations can do better than at least somewhere else.

Except attract aid.

If the reader is interested and has 22 spare minutes, it is worth watching this BBC interview with Dambisa Moyo and Alison Evans. Moyo is one of Africa's finest experts, and lays out why aid is a hindrance, not a help, to the African continent.

My point in referring to Africa's comparative advantage as Poverty, is rather to suggest that Aid represents a trade of sorts, and in lieu of reciprocal exchange of goods, Africa provides another commodity in the form of redemption - in the same manner as African American author Shelby Steele, jnr. speaks of in relation to Affirmative Action in the United States.

Aid is a drain on Africa's economy in many more ways than described above, not least in having the Dutch Disease effect on their currencies and other industries. That is not to say that Africans cannot do anything; they can, but are being paid not to.

Africans may not ever develop to the level of the West, due to harsh climate, lack of infrastructure or other reasons, but it is also entirely possible they may not want to. But that's a subject for another discussion...

The Left is so Weak that Conservatives Fight its Battles

Dutch politician Geert Wilders went on trial this past week, on charges of discriminating against a group and "inciting hatred" with his short film fitna, and yet none of those waving placards outside the courtroom calling for his death have been arrested on the same charges.

One would have thought that in order to prove a charge of "inciting hatred", the prosecution would have to produce at least one witness who, after having listened to what Wilders had to say, became suddenly filled with hate toward to some group or other. Not so, for his is fundamentally a thought-crime, where the only objective evidence is the subjective 'feelings' of an offended group. Not a good precedent.

Wilders has repeatedly stated in public that he does not, in fact, hate anyone, and that he is merely disseminating information that can be found within his subjects' own ideology. And ideology is the key to understanding what the Wilders trial is all about. Dutch opposition leader Alexander Pechtold has called Wilders a "racist", a label so devoid of any meaning nowadays that the only intention of its user can be to silence all dissent.

But, as any fool knows, Islam is not a race; it is a religion. And a religion is an ideology, one that, according to our Western values - the ones that we supposedly "value" - is entirely open to criticism, and even ridicule.

Wilders has also been referred to as "far-right"; another convenient term from the tired social-democratic lexicon, perpetuating and enforcing Joe Stalin's own ideologically-driven definition of 'right' and 'left' that has persisted long past its sell-by date. Anyone who has listened to anything Wilders has said knows that he is a Classical Liberal. He claims his warnings about Islam come from his love of Western values, including tolerance of the beliefs and lifestyles of others in a free society. He has spoken out, for example, against ongoing violence toward the Netherlands' gay community - more than half the instances of which, by the way, involve young Moroccans, who make up nowhere near half the population.

This raises an issue that has long confounded me. The love affair between the Left and Islam. For Islam is an ideology that shares none of the Left's values, other than perhaps the destruction of Capitalism, and/or America, and/or Israel. How can feminists, for example, welcome the rise of a misogynistic ideology that denies a woman's right to choose anything? And yet, some feminists will hesitate to name-and-shame rapists if they are of non-Western origin.

Indeed how can Code Pink, the Leftist American organisation, continue to support the Palestinian cause, when no Palestinian women were allowed to accompany their recent Gaza Freedom March?

And what of Europe's Jews? Well, they're leaving, as violence towards their community has increased substantially over the last 30 years, and it is not coming from neo-Nazis. It was the Holocaust that -rightly -forced us to question our culture and become as tolerant as we are today, and yet we are not protecting the very people who were almost wiped out on our continent. In Britain, anti-Zionism (the new antisemitism) became a feature of New Labour's efforts to attract the Muslim vote -which ex-Foreign Secretary Jack Straw needed to secure his election - as well as to attack former Tory leader Michael Howard.

So who is defending the victims of violence? It certainly isn't anyone on the Left, whose only response is to prosecute those who speak out against intolerance. Too ineffectual and downright cowardly to challenge the violently intolerant, they pick soft targets instead, like Wilders, while those who threaten his life remain unpunished.

Looks like it's Conservatives who have to come to the rescue. Again.

Further reading:
Christopher Caldwell, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, 2009
Mark Steyn, America Alone, 2008 edition.

Small Government Stuff from Canada

Yes, cut and pastes are boring and dull, but keeping abreast of what ideas are doing the rounds across the world is not :)

An excellent piece from Canada's Conservative National Post.

Lorne Gunter: Too much government

Posted: January 29, 2010, 8:30 AM by NP Editor

Lorne Gunter, Canadian politcs

Once, early in my journalistic career, I interviewed a U.S. historian about the causes of the American Revolution. At the time, Quebec separatism was hot, and I was trying to construct a story showing that Quebecers had little to complain about in Confederation, at least financially.

Quebec’s government, despite being the richest of the have-not governments for most of the past half century, is the recipient of half of all equalization payments. Quebec comes ahead by $8-billion to $10-billion per year in terms of what its taxpayers pay into the federal treasury versus what its citizens and governments receive in return.

The American colonists, by comparison, felt they were groaning under a crippling tax burden. Many of their staples, they felt, were onerously taxed while they received little from England in return and had no say in how large the levies against them would be.

Why FreeSate51?

Why indeed.

But, more importantly, why not?

For a while there we had the fastest growing economy in Europe, and now it's all gone. But have we ever had capitalism?

Issues of right and left in Ireland have always been swallowed up in other concerns like the so-called National question, and our two main political parties tend to dance around the 'centre' line, while our main left wing party has done a good job of sticking to the centre as well.

Times change, and as we stand here under mountains of debt we might consider looking at ways we have succeeded and failed in the past. Our "free-market" economy may have rewarded the odd entrepreneur, but the real machinations of our state-sponsored top-down China-style capitalism were geared toward enriching an elite that just so happen to be good mates with our chief political party.

How is this Capitalism?

P.J.O'Rourke has said that America has capitalism for the poor and communism for the rich. Ireland has the same, and NAMA proves it. Given a choice between protecting the people who have created our success and those who benefitted from it, the government chose the latter without a second thought.

We Irish cherish our freedom, but are happy to give it away to our government. Why? Is the fact that we are now governed by our "own" people an excuse for their incompetence, or is nationalism truly the last refuge of the scoundrel?

This blog broadly advocates the ideas of small-government Conservatism, currently most popular in the United States in the ideas of both Libertarians and Libertarian-Republicans. Our approach is simply that markets work best when government stays out of them, and economy is better off being run by the people who work within it, and not by politicians.

Libertarianism is Europe is often considered a left wing phenomenon, being associated with anarchists and various manifestations of an anti-establishment ethos. However, a growing wave of Right-Libertarianism is allying itself with Classical Liberal ideas about individual freedom and its relationship to property rights and the free market. Many formerly populist parties, such as Norway's Progress Party, have adopted free market ideas and identify themselves with Classical Liberal ideology.

Ireland's libertarian tradition dates back to Edmund Burke who said, among other things,
"In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority. "

Conservatism is Europe has long been associated with social conservatism, while liberalism tends to be a kind of 'social democracy' that is in reality a sort of Statism that stands in opposition to traditional Liberalism.

Libertarianism has adopted the slogan, Fiscally Conservative, Socially Liberal, and as such has been labelled an amalgam of left and right ideas. This is not so, and libertarians like to observe how the traditional left-right axis is misleading - in fact our current understanding of it derives from the ideology of Stalin! - and prefers to see the political spectrum in three dimensions.

See here for more information, along with a test you can take.

The political quadrant has two axes, the social and the economic, and better illustrates political opinions than the traditional single-axis model.