Stuck in my Craw, It Needed a Stick in the Eye

I was on an email list today where one of the respondents remarked belligerantly on the wonders of statism, the marvels of big intrusive government, the privilege of paying taxes, etc, ad nauesum, and ended with book recommendations on the horrors of capitalism.  I had to make a reply.  Had to.

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All these books on the horrors of capitalism are based on the premise of unbridled statism and the rejection of every legitimate concept of individual rights, which are requirements of human existence in the real world.  They set up a straw man that holds men beholden without limit to their "brothers" in a sort of global social serfdom, and then criticize capitalism for not embracing a principle antithetical to human nature and the principle of capitalism itself -- freedom -- while accepting, simultaneously rejecting, and using the bountiful largesse created by capitalism, in their quest to destroy it -- most especially, the principle of freedom itself.

The authors of these books typically redefine freedom so that we're only "free" when we're slaves to the well-being of every other creature on Earth.  We're only free, they say, when we're shackled to our "duties", regulated into oblivion,  beaten into submission with non-objective laws and taxed out of existence to support everyone else.  They call it "egalitarianism" and "social justice".  When the creatures benefited by their alleged concern aren't even human, they call it "environmentalism".  When they don't even care about any creatures as such, I call it just old-fashioned nihilism.

For a better book on capitalism, I recommend "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal", which will at least familiarize you with what it actually is, rather than what it isn't.  For a book on what happens on a global scale with unfettered statism when capitalism is rejected, I recommend Atlas Shrugged. As a few million people have recently noticed, it is the most accurate book of all.

Robb