What Would a Capitalist Do?page 2
A little empathy for the wealthy is in order, too, since it’s typically not the wealthy who create poverty or the people who live in it. People have forgotten that the wealthy add value and needed services and products along the way to gaining and maintaining their wealth, while Government tends to impede economies.
Every social and economic system emanates from a moral foundation, so values and morality are inherent in them. Someone thought, “it is good if governments foster an environment that allows people to make goods and provide services that they can sell for whatever they can get, with some limitations against fraud and coercion.” Capitalism is founded on bartering. If you don't have the value I want for my product, capitalist systems give me the individual freedom to reduce what I charge to you, or I can choose to give my product to you for free or for a deferred charge. Or, I have the choice not to trade my product to you at all, and laws intend to protect me from those who attempt to steal my product, just as laws exist to protect others from being defrauded by me. Capitalism doesn't obligate me to offer my product for free, thereby removing all monetary incentive for me to create a product. “Giving” me someone else's free product, or making it available to me if I ever need it, whether or not I want it or can use it, as theft compensation for exorbitant taxation is no incentive, either.
Socialism lets governments seize my products (the Patriot Act lets Homeland Security take everything you own, as do several laws aimed at suspected drug dealers and laws allowing IRS agents full theft of every item in a delinquent payer’s life), my earnings (through unfair taxation, meaning the tax money isn’t going to emergency infrastructure protection and police forces or education), and my property (eminent domain is the most malfeasant and malicious form of government duplicity with corporations). My freedom to choose to do what I want with my products is denied. Socialism is an immoral system because it assumes that others, through paternal intervention, know better ways to use my money than I do. Even if someone else's idea about how to spend my money can be shown to be better for others, stealing my money isn't justified on those grounds. Altruism and helping others are personal choices that shouldn't be mandated by law.
They make more money at the mints every day, so nobody can get it all. People create value every day. Money gets redistributed through normal supply/demand channels. Some very wealthy philanthropists give away billions to charitable causes, and not just for the tax breaks. They choose to give it away to the causes they care about, to correct specific social or medical conditions, for instance. Through their charitable foundations, they monitor how their money is used. Capitalism allows them to earmark money for causes they believe in and feel strongly about. Capitalism allows even socialists to divert their money into scholarships and other charities to care for people whom they feel are disadvantaged.
Advocacy of legally enforced government redistribution of personal wealth should be repugnant to everyone. Taxation was not meant as a money redistribution scheme, but as a way to support running the government, whose legitimate primary jobs are protecting people from overt enemy threats from other countries, criminal elements within society, and highway potholes. It is not the government's job to evenly distribute my money without my discretion, without my judgment, without my conditions, without worthiness criteria that I determine, but based simply on the premise that such distribution is good for people. Socialism has been shown numerous times not to be good for people. Nobody likes the idea of give less to those of their choosing because the government wants to double tax their estates, for instance, so that individuals are unable to direct their inheritance to those they wish to have it upon the bestower’s death. Who I give my money to is nobody's business but mine.
Hundreds of thousands of books have been written about how the capitalist economic system works and succeeds and how socialism has failed in most nations that have experimented with it. The capitalist system offers the same usage rights to everyone equally, though people don't make the same use of those structures in the same way and may not have optimal capability (wealth, education, inspiration, support, entrepreneurial spirit, etc., etc. with other tangible and intangible qualities), but the system doesn't guarantee success. People will fail, and they will fail over and over again. People will succeed. The concept of a free market isn't Darwinian--it's economic. Government-induced checks in free markets negate and contradict the concept of free market, and most free market failures can be traced to imposed checks and restrictions (farm subsidies, excessive licensing fees, protectionism, corporate welfare, favoring businesses with government contracts, restrictions and penalties for questionable health and construction violations, and government loans based on race, to name a few).
Money gets redistributed through normal supply/demand channels. Some very wealthy philanthropists give away billions to charitable causes, and not just for the tax breaks. They choose to give it away to the causes they care about, to correct specific social or medical conditions, for instance. Through their charitable foundations, they monitor how their money is used. Capitalism allows them to earmark money for causes they believe in and feel strongly about. Capitalism allows even socialists to divert their money into scholarships and other charities to care for people whom they feel are disadvantaged.
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