Since when is capitalism is broken? Seems like during great recessions everyone wants Keynesian systems and when things are going great we want a classical economy.
Capitalism's always been the least broken system. Over time, we've added laws to make it even less broken. Anti-trust, for example, relatively uncontroversial. As is the FCC's role in regulating frequency allocation, I think pretty much everyone agrees that a pure-free-market free-for-all with "biggest transmitter wins" wouldn't make a lot of sense.
Right now, IMO at least, the issue is that every time we have a recession, it takes longer and longer for "average folks" to be able to get work again. Last time, it wasn't until right before the bottom fell out again. This time, the jobs might never come back.
What do those people do now? That's what needs fixing in the current version of capitalism, IMO.
In a lot of ways, the "fixing" is the problem. Capitalism relies on a consistent set of rules. All the messing around means that businesses will not take risks. Check the history on 1929 and now. There are some serious parallels from recovery to hiring based on actions taken by government.
You know, a huge percentage of the business owners follow the rules. They probably would follow more if the rules didn't require an expert (account or lawyer) to get right. Capitalism isn't Wall Street, it is the entire system. Look up your history and see that "Inadvertently" never enters into it.
So, you think we should disband the FCC and let "biggest transmitter wins" be the law of the land on the airwaves?
Or is that ridiculously and obviously stupid? Maybe it turns out that in order to do things right, you have to get into the weeds on an issue by issue basis and not rely on one size fits all approaches. Hands off economics are exactly the right thing to do most of the time, except when they aren't.
Also, 1929 in terms of government policy was totally different from now.
How did you turn what I said into "disband the FCC"? Government needs a consistent set of rules, the FCC is part of our current rule apparatus.
The key part of my statement was "consistent". Unclear direction creates uncertainty. The health care and tax legislation have created massive uncertainty. This is not good for recovery. This "lets take a new direction" approach played out in 1929 just as it is playing out today. In 1929 and forward there were many new approaches and many attempts at a "solution". All of these caused problems by changing the rules. Now, we will have more uncertainty because a new party controls the House. I don't see the rules stabilizing again for a while.
You were arguing from an absolute, government should stay out, free markets.
If disbanding the FCC is silly, then the absolute doesn't hold. That means we should evaluate on a case by case basis -- free markets are of course a good default position to deviate from depending on the exception, of course.
1929-1932 was most noteworthy for Hoover not trying a whole lot of new approaches. Then this FDR guy started, his whole thing was called "New Deal".
"You were arguing from an absolute, government should stay out, free markets."
What?!? Where the heck does the "consistent set of rules" come from other than government? I have no real clue where your response comes from. As to you second 'point', look at the government changes and how long it took for business to recover.
Anti-trust, for example, relatively uncontroversial.
I get giddy thinking about being persecuted for predatory pricing, gouging, and colluding.
Never mind those anitrust people often persecute smaller companies for bigger win, ignoring the big guys.
Oh yeah, let ignore copyright and patent laws, which creates monopolies. It's for the "benefit of the public".
You want to fix capitalism? How about restoring the rule of law? Nobody get special privileges. Not the writers, the inventors, the big corporations, or small corporations.
Since no one is excluded from creating a copyright or patent, I don't think it is accurate to call it a "special privilege..." Having intellectual property rights and how they are enforced (or not) are two different things, and the fact that there are IP rights is the only thing that stops large companies from stripping away the value created by individuals at will, reducing us all to share croppers at best. I think of all the song royalties that were ripped off from the originators of the Blues and the only saving grace was when the copyright laws were enforced to enable them to get some money to survive in old age...
If you were ever familiar with the history of IP, then of course you would know that it is a special privilege.
You have James Watt extending his patent 20 years longer, delaying the industrial revolution quite bit. Then you have American writers fighting for copyright recognition of British author just so they stop British competition.
The manipulation and abuse of law not only took place in modern time but throughout the existence of IP history. Not only that, you have scant evidence to prove that IP are beneficial.
I think there are a number of viewpoints that would not endorse your statement that "anti-trust is relatively uncontroversial"
Anti-trust regulations are unnecessary in a free economy, as inefficient monopolies by definition are vulnerable to competition, and efficient monopolies are already meeting their supply/demand ratio optimally.
Under the Antitrust laws, a man becomes a criminal from the moment he goes into business, no matter what he does. For instance, if he charges prices which some bureaucrats judge as too high, he can be prosecuted for monopoly or for a successful “intent to monopolize”; if he charges prices lower than those of his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “unfair competition” or “restraint of trade”; and if he charges the same prices as his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “collusion” or “conspiracy.”
I thought antitrust regulation was aimed at preventing collusion and price fixing by trusts of companies. Do you see that as different from a single company with a monopoly? You say that antitrust regulations are not necessary in a free economy, do you think we have a free economy now? (I am asking, not arguing)
The reason the article is of note is that one of the authors is Michal E. Porter, author of books on strategy that was seized upon to drive much of the "Greed is Good" Wall Street culture since the 80s. He is a Harvard Business School professor who just authored an article that I would characterize as essentially advocating Socialism.
Having read what I think is the most famous of those books (_Competitive Strategy_), I'm wondering what aspect of Porter's writing you think catalyzes "greed is good".
The normal ding on Porter seems to be that he's no longer relevant.
In a way your correct criticism of my using the word drove actually supplied the word that would have been better to use, catalyze. I think his books, and articles catalyzed a corporate movement that might have happened with or without his writing and consulting. My point in the original comment was that who he is, is what makes the article of interest. I didn't mean to judge or characterize what he did, that was not my point, I was not passing judgement.
You make another interesting point about his relevancy, since as I read the article, it really felt it was more like coattail riding by a consultant, moving from advocating a CSR framework to a "the new new thing is" CSV framework, upon which to advise corporate clients and create some kind of relevancy. The Social Enterprise "thing" is big at Harvard Business School and Kennedy School and in reading the article, it is sprinkled with more anecdotes rather than new intellectual models or frameworks on anything new.
So I mentioned greed is good for context not judgment, but to actually answer your question as to whether I think Competitive Strategy catalyzed anything, I would have to answer "yes", but only based anecdotally on graduating from an Ivy League School in the 80s where all my cohorts went on to jobs on Wall Street at investment banks and that book was secret key to mastery of the universe. But that is only my anecdote not fact, proof, or scientific study.
A company creates "shared value" simply by making a product that people want to pay for: they get your product, you get their money. Its really that simple, do we really need a 15 page mckinsey consulting article to explain this? "rethinking capitalism" is bull shit.
This article espouses a topic popular in most business schools today: they want to quantify (or simply pay lip service to) the idea of social responsibility. You will see all sorts of attention paid to this in most MBA programs today.
The idea isn't a new one and can trace its roots back to Marx and probably beyond. Marx argued that the workers should own the means of production [1]. That's simply a different take on creating "shared value".
But this article, as you'd expect from Harvard, is high on naive ideals. For example:
Not all profit is equal...
The premise is that corporations have a social responsibility. I view this as being like the idea of keeping tigers as house pets. You can change the purpose of a tiger to be a domesticated animal but at some point that tiger is going to snap your neck because, hey, that's what tigers do.
Of course tigers aren't inherently bad. The point is that tigers are really not suited for the purpose you have in mind.
Trying to colour corporations with morality is I think much the same. Capitalism works because corporations are amoral entities that simply respond to their environment. Add warm water to dry yeast and it grows. Add salt and it dies.
You control the actions of corporations not by making them feel something. You control them by treating them as yeast and adding warm water, salt or whatever is required.
To put it another way: you control corporations by controlling their environment.
Unless you're a pure capitalist you will recognize that there is some place for government intervention and regulation, not only for the good of the people but for the good of the corporations themselves.
Antitrust for example came about because companies were too successful. You can get an algae bloom in a river. The algae will eventually die out but only after killing virtually everything in the river and then starving.
In England the road system was nationalized (many years ago). In the US, the railroads were.
The difficulty lies in deciding exactly how much intervention is required.
Our current woes I think boil down to one thing: there is a mismatch between the interests of people and corporations and the interests of the politicians who decide what the intervention is. Corporations and people have to deal with consequences for a very long time. Politicians are often only concerned about what happens between now and the next election.
Of the things broken with the current system at the top would be (IMHO) the financial system. By this I primarily mean the Federal Reserve, the IMF and the World Bank.
The IMF and the Federal Reserve now have a role where they are basically welfare for investment bankers. You have seen crisis after crisis in recent years that largely stem from financial institutions having almost no aversion to risk. Why? Because we've trained them that way. If they ever get in any serious trouble, don't worry, we'll bail you out!
Likewise the IMF/World Bank continue to throw money at developing nations because, basically, they can never lose that money. A country can't declare bankruptcy like a person or corporation can.
Initiatives like HIPC [2] are misguided. The country already can't pay. All you're doing is paying bank the organizations that never should've lent them money to begin with.
It should also be noted that some of these loans end up funding war, revolution and even genocide as well as funding the personal fortune of corrupt dictators.
Back to capitalism: capitalism has been the engine that in less than 200 years has turned us from a largely agrarian existence to computers and putting man on the Moon, while increasing the standard of living of billions of people to levels unprecedented in human history.
So when I read something like this, I think it's just the latest fad from Ivory Tower MBA academics who seek to justify their existence in a world that is largely coming to the conclusion that the MBA itself is a destructive fad.
Capitalism does not need to be fixed. We need to ACTUALLY have capitalism.
The above article seems to claim that we can fix capitalism by adding socialism to capitalism.
socialism != capitalism
They are mutually exclusive for the most part.
First it is important to note that we do not live in a pure capitalist system. I would estimate it as 25% capitalism, 25% socialism, and 50% kleptocracy (special interests / corruption).
To blame capitalism for all the problems is akin to taking an Olympic gold metalist, tying him up in iron chains, throwing him in a pool and then blaming swimming as the cause of drowning.
Capitalism is by far the most efficient system for increasing the wealth of an ENTIRE society. History has shown that societies prosper in direct proportion to how much they embrace capitalism.
We are currently moving from capitalism towards socialism and kleptocracy (think klepto as in stealing).
The common complaints against capitalism are not actually complaints against capitalism; they are usually against corporatism (regulation that favors corporations) or kleptocracy. Why do corporations have tax breaks employees can't take even though their situations are similar?
Bank bailouts were not a failure of capitalism. Capitalism would say that no company can get money for free. All money must be traded from other individuals wishing to purchase from you. The fact that the banks knew they were most likely to be bailed out created a moral hazard that encouraged them to take risks. "Privitized gains, socialized losses". Under pure capitalism a bank would not take such foolish action because they would know they would have a high probability of going out of business.
Monopolies are often created by government policy, not by free markets. For instance, why do lots of communities only have 1 ISP even though there are competitors that would love to do business there? It is because the city grants a license to that one company for a long period of time. DNS registration was granted a monopoly by the government. Why can't we have other DNS authorities? Surely the vast majority of people on here can still make a profit and charge cheaper for domain names. Why does GoDaddy have to pay a fee to another company that doesn't actually provide any real value?
In capitalism, if I was able to invest at 30% each year I could open my own bank and give out 10% in interest to all my depositors. Instead we are stuck with abusive banks.
The only semi-rational (emphasis on semi) argument that I have heard against capitalism is that those with capital have a higher chance of getting more capital and that this would lead to a concentration of power. It may in fact do this, but the moment the power is abused, others with capital will combine their resources to take the place of the exploitative company, or there will be revolts and people will boycott that company.
The system is set up so that businesses are fettered with regulations such as minimum wage and hiring ethnically diverse people (as opposed to the most qualified). Under global capitalism, the companies in countries that do not have those laws will drive the US companies out of business. Businesses that can will be forced to move to those countries if they wish to survive. It is no shock to me that unemployment is on the rise.
I agree with many of your points. However, note that Professor Porter does not technically propose socialism. Socialism would imply seizing private property, such as part of a company's assets, for the alleged purpose of using them to further the "public good" or satisfy "social needs", something a company would not do by itself. Note that prof. Porter does not even advocate increasing government regulation to channel more resources into social purposes. Actually, he does not even say that companies must of should take losses in order to help societal needs. His argument is that businessmen should look for opportunities in markets he chooses to call socially useful. In essence, he urges managers to make decisions that would make proper business sense anyways. Therefore, I can only speculate as to why he formulates the empty concept of "shared value." It is possible that he wants to create another framework to fill business schools' curricula (they have to teach something that sounds scientific) or to reassure himself that he is still relevant by taking a safe undefined middle-ground between "big business" and "society." I can only guess.
The sad thing, however, is that the major premise of his philosophy will prove more damaging to capitalism (which he so passionately professes to defend) than most socialist ideas would. That premise is the notion that capitalism, or whatever remains from it in the mixed world economy of today, is fundamentally broken. That even those businessmen who thrive (or survive) by their own ability and productive effort are fundamentally guilty of looking after their own interest. They are guilty by popular opinion and have to find a way to exonerate themselves.
I urge all HN readers who have read the article carefully and understand that there is something wrong about it, to also read Ayn Rand's "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" (http://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Ideal-Ayn-Rand/dp/045114795...) and judge for themselves dispassionately. Just because I happened to be reading the book today, I quote a couple of paragraphs, with which I agree:
"I [Ayn Rand] want to stress that our [objectivists'] primary interest is not politics or economics as such, but "man's nature and man's relationship to existence" - and that we advocate capitalism because it is the only system geared to the life of a rational being. In this respect, there is fundamental difference between our approach and that of capitalism's classical defenders and modern apologists. With very few exceptions, they are responsible - by default - for capitalism's destruction. The default consisted of their inability to fight the battle where it had to be fought: on moral-philosophical grounds."
"There are the businessmen who spend fortunes on ideological ads, allegedly in defense of capitalism, which assure the public that all but a tiny fraction of an industry's income goes to labor (wages), to government (taxes), etc., with these shares represented as big chunks in full-color process, and, lost among them, an apologetic little sliver is marked "2 1/2 percent" and labelled "profits."
"There is the display of charts and models, in a hallway of the New York Stock Exchange, presenting the achievements of free enterprise and captioned: "The People's Capitalism."
"Since none of these attempts can succeed in disguising the nature of capitalism nor in degrading it to the level of an altruistic stockyard, their sole result is to convince the public that capitalism hides some evil secret which imbues its alleged defenders with such an aura of abject guilt and hypocrisy. But, in fact, the secret they are struggling to hide is capitalism's essence and greatest virtue: that it is a system based on the recognition of individual rights - on man's rights to exist (and to work) for his own sake - not for the altruistic view of man as a sacrificial animal. Thus it is capitalism's virtue that...
28 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 49.9 ms ] threadRight now, IMO at least, the issue is that every time we have a recession, it takes longer and longer for "average folks" to be able to get work again. Last time, it wasn't until right before the bottom fell out again. This time, the jobs might never come back.
What do those people do now? That's what needs fixing in the current version of capitalism, IMO.
Or is that ridiculously and obviously stupid? Maybe it turns out that in order to do things right, you have to get into the weeds on an issue by issue basis and not rely on one size fits all approaches. Hands off economics are exactly the right thing to do most of the time, except when they aren't.
Also, 1929 in terms of government policy was totally different from now.
The key part of my statement was "consistent". Unclear direction creates uncertainty. The health care and tax legislation have created massive uncertainty. This is not good for recovery. This "lets take a new direction" approach played out in 1929 just as it is playing out today. In 1929 and forward there were many new approaches and many attempts at a "solution". All of these caused problems by changing the rules. Now, we will have more uncertainty because a new party controls the House. I don't see the rules stabilizing again for a while.
If disbanding the FCC is silly, then the absolute doesn't hold. That means we should evaluate on a case by case basis -- free markets are of course a good default position to deviate from depending on the exception, of course.
1929-1932 was most noteworthy for Hoover not trying a whole lot of new approaches. Then this FDR guy started, his whole thing was called "New Deal".
What?!? Where the heck does the "consistent set of rules" come from other than government? I have no real clue where your response comes from. As to you second 'point', look at the government changes and how long it took for business to recover.
I get giddy thinking about being persecuted for predatory pricing, gouging, and colluding.
Never mind those anitrust people often persecute smaller companies for bigger win, ignoring the big guys.
Oh yeah, let ignore copyright and patent laws, which creates monopolies. It's for the "benefit of the public".
You want to fix capitalism? How about restoring the rule of law? Nobody get special privileges. Not the writers, the inventors, the big corporations, or small corporations.
You have James Watt extending his patent 20 years longer, delaying the industrial revolution quite bit. Then you have American writers fighting for copyright recognition of British author just so they stop British competition.
The manipulation and abuse of law not only took place in modern time but throughout the existence of IP history. Not only that, you have scant evidence to prove that IP are beneficial.
Anti-trust regulations are unnecessary in a free economy, as inefficient monopolies by definition are vulnerable to competition, and efficient monopolies are already meeting their supply/demand ratio optimally.
Under the Antitrust laws, a man becomes a criminal from the moment he goes into business, no matter what he does. For instance, if he charges prices which some bureaucrats judge as too high, he can be prosecuted for monopoly or for a successful “intent to monopolize”; if he charges prices lower than those of his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “unfair competition” or “restraint of trade”; and if he charges the same prices as his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “collusion” or “conspiracy.”
The normal ding on Porter seems to be that he's no longer relevant.
The idea isn't a new one and can trace its roots back to Marx and probably beyond. Marx argued that the workers should own the means of production [1]. That's simply a different take on creating "shared value".
But this article, as you'd expect from Harvard, is high on naive ideals. For example:
Not all profit is equal...
The premise is that corporations have a social responsibility. I view this as being like the idea of keeping tigers as house pets. You can change the purpose of a tiger to be a domesticated animal but at some point that tiger is going to snap your neck because, hey, that's what tigers do.
Of course tigers aren't inherently bad. The point is that tigers are really not suited for the purpose you have in mind.
Trying to colour corporations with morality is I think much the same. Capitalism works because corporations are amoral entities that simply respond to their environment. Add warm water to dry yeast and it grows. Add salt and it dies.
You control the actions of corporations not by making them feel something. You control them by treating them as yeast and adding warm water, salt or whatever is required.
To put it another way: you control corporations by controlling their environment.
Unless you're a pure capitalist you will recognize that there is some place for government intervention and regulation, not only for the good of the people but for the good of the corporations themselves.
Antitrust for example came about because companies were too successful. You can get an algae bloom in a river. The algae will eventually die out but only after killing virtually everything in the river and then starving.
In England the road system was nationalized (many years ago). In the US, the railroads were.
The difficulty lies in deciding exactly how much intervention is required.
Our current woes I think boil down to one thing: there is a mismatch between the interests of people and corporations and the interests of the politicians who decide what the intervention is. Corporations and people have to deal with consequences for a very long time. Politicians are often only concerned about what happens between now and the next election.
Of the things broken with the current system at the top would be (IMHO) the financial system. By this I primarily mean the Federal Reserve, the IMF and the World Bank.
The IMF and the Federal Reserve now have a role where they are basically welfare for investment bankers. You have seen crisis after crisis in recent years that largely stem from financial institutions having almost no aversion to risk. Why? Because we've trained them that way. If they ever get in any serious trouble, don't worry, we'll bail you out!
Likewise the IMF/World Bank continue to throw money at developing nations because, basically, they can never lose that money. A country can't declare bankruptcy like a person or corporation can.
Initiatives like HIPC [2] are misguided. The country already can't pay. All you're doing is paying bank the organizations that never should've lent them money to begin with.
It should also be noted that some of these loans end up funding war, revolution and even genocide as well as funding the personal fortune of corrupt dictators.
Back to capitalism: capitalism has been the engine that in less than 200 years has turned us from a largely agrarian existence to computers and putting man on the Moon, while increasing the standard of living of billions of people to levels unprecedented in human history.
So when I read something like this, I think it's just the latest fad from Ivory Tower MBA academics who seek to justify their existence in a world that is largely coming to the conclusion that the MBA itself is a destructive fad.
[1]: bcheung ↗ Capitalism does not need to be fixed. We need to ACTUALLY have capitalism. relic17 ↗ I agree with many of your points. However, note that Professor Porter does not technically propose socialism. Socialism would imply seizing private property, such as part of a company's assets, for the alleged purpose of using them to further the "public good" or satisfy "social needs", something a company would not do by itself. Note that prof. Porter does not even advocate increasing government regulation to channel more resources into social purposes. Actually, he does not even say that companies must of should take losses in order to help societal needs. His argument is that businessmen should look for opportunities in markets he chooses to call socially useful. In essence, he urges managers to make decisions that would make proper business sense anyways. Therefore, I can only speculate as to why he formulates the empty concept of "shared value." It is possible that he wants to create another framework to fill business schools' curricula (they have to teach something that sounds scientific) or to reassure himself that he is still relevant by taking a safe undefined middle-ground between "big business" and "society." I can only guess.
The above article seems to claim that we can fix capitalism by adding socialism to capitalism.
socialism != capitalism
They are mutually exclusive for the most part.
First it is important to note that we do not live in a pure capitalist system. I would estimate it as 25% capitalism, 25% socialism, and 50% kleptocracy (special interests / corruption).
To blame capitalism for all the problems is akin to taking an Olympic gold metalist, tying him up in iron chains, throwing him in a pool and then blaming swimming as the cause of drowning.
Capitalism is by far the most efficient system for increasing the wealth of an ENTIRE society. History has shown that societies prosper in direct proportion to how much they embrace capitalism.
We are currently moving from capitalism towards socialism and kleptocracy (think klepto as in stealing).
The common complaints against capitalism are not actually complaints against capitalism; they are usually against corporatism (regulation that favors corporations) or kleptocracy. Why do corporations have tax breaks employees can't take even though their situations are similar?
Bank bailouts were not a failure of capitalism. Capitalism would say that no company can get money for free. All money must be traded from other individuals wishing to purchase from you. The fact that the banks knew they were most likely to be bailed out created a moral hazard that encouraged them to take risks. "Privitized gains, socialized losses". Under pure capitalism a bank would not take such foolish action because they would know they would have a high probability of going out of business.
Monopolies are often created by government policy, not by free markets. For instance, why do lots of communities only have 1 ISP even though there are competitors that would love to do business there? It is because the city grants a license to that one company for a long period of time. DNS registration was granted a monopoly by the government. Why can't we have other DNS authorities? Surely the vast majority of people on here can still make a profit and charge cheaper for domain names. Why does GoDaddy have to pay a fee to another company that doesn't actually provide any real value?
In capitalism, if I was able to invest at 30% each year I could open my own bank and give out 10% in interest to all my depositors. Instead we are stuck with abusive banks.
The only semi-rational (emphasis on semi) argument that I have heard against capitalism is that those with capital have a higher chance of getting more capital and that this would lead to a concentration of power. It may in fact do this, but the moment the power is abused, others with capital will combine their resources to take the place of the exploitative company, or there will be revolts and people will boycott that company.
The system is set up so that businesses are fettered with regulations such as minimum wage and hiring ethnically diverse people (as opposed to the most qualified). Under global capitalism, the companies in countries that do not have those laws will drive the US companies out of business. Businesses that can will be forced to move to those countries if they wish to survive. It is no shock to me that unemployment is on the rise.
The sad thing, however, is that the major premise of his philosophy will prove more damaging to capitalism (which he so passionately professes to defend) than most socialist ideas would. That premise is the notion that capitalism, or whatever remains from it in the mixed world economy of today, is fundamentally broken. That even those businessmen who thrive (or survive) by their own ability and productive effort are fundamentally guilty of looking after their own interest. They are guilty by popular opinion and have to find a way to exonerate themselves.
I urge all HN readers who have read the article carefully and understand that there is something wrong about it, to also read Ayn Rand's "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" (http://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Ideal-Ayn-Rand/dp/045114795...) and judge for themselves dispassionately. Just because I happened to be reading the book today, I quote a couple of paragraphs, with which I agree:
"I [Ayn Rand] want to stress that our [objectivists'] primary interest is not politics or economics as such, but "man's nature and man's relationship to existence" - and that we advocate capitalism because it is the only system geared to the life of a rational being. In this respect, there is fundamental difference between our approach and that of capitalism's classical defenders and modern apologists. With very few exceptions, they are responsible - by default - for capitalism's destruction. The default consisted of their inability to fight the battle where it had to be fought: on moral-philosophical grounds."
"There are the businessmen who spend fortunes on ideological ads, allegedly in defense of capitalism, which assure the public that all but a tiny fraction of an industry's income goes to labor (wages), to government (taxes), etc., with these shares represented as big chunks in full-color process, and, lost among them, an apologetic little sliver is marked "2 1/2 percent" and labelled "profits."
"There is the display of charts and models, in a hallway of the New York Stock Exchange, presenting the achievements of free enterprise and captioned: "The People's Capitalism."
"Since none of these attempts can succeed in disguising the nature of capitalism nor in degrading it to the level of an altruistic stockyard, their sole result is to convince the public that capitalism hides some evil secret which imbues its alleged defenders with such an aura of abject guilt and hypocrisy. But, in fact, the secret they are struggling to hide is capitalism's essence and greatest virtue: that it is a system based on the recognition of individual rights - on man's rights to exist (and to work) for his own sake - not for the altruistic view of man as a sacrificial animal. Thus it is capitalism's virtue that...