Capitalism

(1/03/2010) - Though its so pervasive in our lives, I find that the nature/essense of money is tremendously hard to pin down.  On a physical level it is fairly useless – paper, cheap metal, or more often than not, electronic signals and magnetized ferromagnetic material.  You can’t eat, wear, or sleep in money (note to literalists – you know what I mean).  Yet in the experience of much/most of the world’s population, it provides you all these things and possibly much more.

On a very basic level, we can think of money’s value as a symbol for goods and services it can purchase.  For example, lets say I received this twenty dollars for mowing my neighbor’s lawn.  My neighbor works for Google, and received the money to pay me by working approximately 30 minutes developing web applications.  I can trade my twenty dollars for some apples, milk, a chocolate bar, and a movie ticket.  Each of these products was produced and brought to me by the work of hundreds, if not thousands of people. 

In our everyday experience, money is interchangeable for goods and services.  But at the same time, money is not equivalent to goods and services.  For example, the six dollars in my pocket is not a rain check for 2 gallons of milk or a used shirt.  If a plague kills half of the country’s dairy cows and the price of milk spikes to $10 a gallon, I’ll be out of luck.  Prices change for a huge number of reasons.  And there are hundreds of ways to acquire money.  For many Americans, money is acquired in exchange for paid work.  But there are other ways to acquire money – investing, bank interest, relatives, robbery, etc. 

(11/19/2009) - One of the main tenants (if not the main tenant) of mainstream “conservative” economics (i.e. those supported by large, pro-business organizations like the Club for Growth of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), or the Republican Party, but not necessarily all that consider themselves conservatives) is that the world works better when Government stays out of people’s business.

One of my main problems with these organizations is that they tend to be very selective when complaining about government-supported projects.  They are, for instance, usually in favor of increasing military spending.  The programs large conservative groups tend to focus on do have one thing in common – they are issues supported by many economic liberals.  Trains, social welfare, unions, support for bike lanes, the US Postal Service, climate change – these issues and organizations are perennially by conservatives as punching bags. 

The problem is that when “liberal” and free-market economic principles align, the big conservatives groups tend to grow silent because their existence seems dependent on opposition to liberal values.  It’s a shame.  It think the country could be improved greatly if they allied with liberals on common agendas, but that would make Obama and liberals look too good, so I don’t expect to see it happen.

(9/13/2009) - Standing close to the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it seems that Western-style free market capitalism is a resounding success.  It outlasted the USSR, transformed Mao’s China into a sort of free market, authoritarian oligarchy, and brought unprecedented wealth and prosperity to humanity. 

This is the story at least, a narrative so prevalent in the United States that it approaches a pseudo-truth.  Of course, the truth is more clouded than this simple story of an ideology with a dream.  Many writers have brought attention to the losers of capitalism and broader economic development.  The child in 19th century America that began working in the mills at the age of six, the old Chinese couple forced to move from their childhood home to make room for a dam, the family slaughtered in war funded by money from mining operations in the Congo. 

I don’t want to reflect on this kind of human waste and tragedy, as I don’t have much to add to the discussion at present.  Instead, I want to examine some of the aspects of capitalism that have worked for many people, some that don’t, and some that work, but only for only a little longer. 

Outdated Ideological Divides