Capitalism is Not a System of Government

You are the means of production. Capitalism is not a system of government; capitalism simply means you own yourself and the effects of your actions. It means you keep that which you produce and/or that which you agree to accept in exchange for what you produce. In reality, the naturally emerging “hierarchies” of voluntary exchange which leftists claim to be evil are really what enables the creation of new means of production previously dreamed impossible (the device you’re using to read this, for example).

Without a medium of capital exchange (which can easily emerge in a free market without a government; Bitcoin and gold both being historical examples), inventors, entrepreneurs, machinists, and engineers would bear the increased time and travel burden of having to collect and barter for a wide variety of different items that they would need in order to build what they have in mind (as would everyone else). This would make something as commonplace as producing a cell phone or an automobile impossible. It would also make large scale economic calculation impossible, thereby making it impossible to know how much of anything (like food) to be produced. This is why Socialism almost always ends in mass starvation and a loosening of market controls.

And yet some people blame Capitalism for starvation and poverty. These people couldn’t be further from the truth. Poverty is the natural state of man. Capitalism is that which lifts man out of poverty.

By contrast, Socialism, Communism, Fascism, Democracy, Republicanism, Federalism, Theocracy, Monarchy, and Totalitarianism are all euphemisms for the same core principle: other people claim to own you and will initiate force against you to take some or all of what you produce – especially if you don’t adhere to their coercively established monopoly on economic controls.

Resistance results in kidnapping and imprisonment. Resistance to kidnapping and imprisonment results in assault or murder. Until a little over one hundred years ago, most of these systems thrived in human history during times when the vast majority of people were still shitting in chamber pots (or worse) and living in their own squalor. I even remember having friends while I was growing up in rural Maine who didn’t have indoor plumbing, and that was less than thirty years ago.

Capitalism drastically improved the quality of living for most of the world, and it continues to do so despite the fact that individuals acting under the aforementioned systems of government try to control every aspect of exchange for their own benefit.

All of these systems of government interfere with the private ownership of individuals to some degree. All of these systems of government suppress the signals in capital markets which entrepreneurs depend on for accurate economic calculation, and the proponents of these systems all blame the free exchange of consenting individuals when their coercively established economic controls result in the opposite of their intended effects.

This being the case, is it really any wonder why all such existing systems are on the verge of financial collapse?

The degree to which you coercively regulate or tax someone is the degree to which you prevent them from bettering their own circumstances and the circumstances of everyone around them.

The rising tide raises all ships.

Learn from history. Become a Voluntaryist.