Why Is Capitalism So Unpopular?
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Why Is Capitalism So Unpopular?
[An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Floy Lilley, is available for download.]
Henry Hazlitt once said that good ideas have to be relearned every generation. Among the intellectuals of our time, capitalism is wildly unpopular. This in spite of the fact that it is the only social system that has permitted prosperity and flourishing.
Why they continue to oppose the free market in the face of such evidence is a matter of debate. Some have argued that intellectuals dislike capitalism because they feel it doesn’t offer them just rewards for their labors. Indeed, academic books do not sell particularly well, and it is easy for the dedicated scholar to feel a degree of envy when he sees “lesser” minds like John Grisham or J.K. Rowling bringing in boatloads of money for writing relatively straightforward fiction. (And that is to say nothing of professional athletes or, those most foul of professional villains, corporate CEOs.)
I think there may be a more straightforward explanation that plays a role in their dismissal of capitalism. To a “man of system,” to borrow Adam Smith’s terminology, capitalism just isn’t that exciting. Participants in the market economy are wholly beholden to consumer wants. The academics envision a grand world, where Great Men fight Great Wars, periodically inventing Great Things or developing Great Ideas. Instead, the market provides us with incremental processes, which expend enormous piles of resources, in a quest to make better Triscuits. It is hardly the stuff of high drama, to say nothing of Great History.
Under capitalism, the common man does not need an intellectual vanguard or a group of virtuous surrogates to make his decisions for him or to defend him against the rapacity of his fellows. He can do just fine without our help, thank you very much, and would be much obliged if we would go back to our ivory towers and leave him alone.
The idea that great statesmen are not needed — to say nothing about being wanted — can no doubt be galling to many who decry capitalism for its excesses. For the people who derive their self-worth from being paternalistic, this is a sorry state of affairs indeed.
According to the do-gooders whom Adam Smith called “men of system,” the average person is like a piece on a chessboard, to be arranged at the whim of a supervirtuous planner. The planner, who ignores the fact that each of the pieces has (as Smith put it) its own “principles of motion,” does his best to orchestrate a game according to …
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