Anti-capitalist video

While searching the Internet for anti-capitalist literature I came across this video. It’s very well done and I recommend giving it your full attention. The main problem is, however, the arguments that are directed against capitalism, are in fact not capitalist at all. For instance, the “game” with children in the Kindergarten who suddenly have their toys taken away and given to one child who then runs a despotic rule over the other children as he controls all of the “capital”. The fact that this is given the name of capitalism shows a distinct lack of knowledge of capitalist ideals. Firstly, capitalism is the ideal of economic freedom for everyone. That means that no single person controls capital. The video also ignores the vast changes that have improved our standard of living beyond the wildest imaginations of the hunter-gatherers. The poor today live in absolute luxury compared to the kings of only a few hundred years ago. The “game” does, however, point out the problems with despotic rule. Problems that capitalists have been trying to bring to peoples attention since capitalism was first recognized.

The other ideal in this video is a society without money. This all sounds very nice on the video, but who would produce the things that advance our lives? The vilification of money appears to stem from a distinct lack of knowledge about what money actually is. Adam smith sums up the function of money as a store of value that allows us to exchange goods and services at will. Basically, a baker makes more bread than he can use and the butcher more meat than he can use. The baker could exchange all of his extra bread to the butcher and vice versa, however, bread and meat like most things have a life. They cannot be easily traded again in part payment for the bakers’ delivery van for example. So instead, the baker gives bread to the local population in return for money of some form, which he can then use to make payments on his van and to buy some meat from the butcher. Money is not evil, it is not the root of evil, it is merely an efficient system of arranging trade for the benefit of those who engage in it.

The distribution of income that is often spouted by anti-capitalists as “proof” of the unfairness of the capitalist system, this is not a just argument. Firstly the current income distribution cannot be called capitalist, as we do not live in a wholly capitalist society. Secondly, the wealth that is held by the wealthiest in our society would not necessarily be redistributed to those poorer people if free markets were abolished. It is far more likely that that wealth would simply not exist, as the incentive to create wealth would not exist. If we want to find a very equal income distribution, we must go to the poorest nations on earth, mainly to subsistence farming communities, the richer a nation becomes, its income distribution also tends to widen. But where would you rather live, in America with a large gap between rich and poor, or in Ethiopia with virtually no gap? I believe that I could still elicit the same answer by asking, would you rather be a poor person in America, or and average person in Ethiopia? My answer would be America both times (I currently enjoy living in England, but that also serves my point as we have a large income gap too), and I believe that the thousands of people who risk their lives to enter America (and Britain) illegally every year would also agree with me.