I’m continuing my reporting on the current installment of Conservative Estimate, the recently founded website that is devoted to demolishing Conservatism.
Yesterday Mr. George how human beings can have morality without Religion and Tradition. This was a detour made necessary by his earlier demonstrations that neither Religion nor Tradition could provide the moral underpinning needed for decent society.
Today he resumes his attack on the Major Myths of conservative thought by taking up the seventh and last of them: the Myth of Capitalism.
The orange linguini lead you to our account of today’s post.
Mr. George begins by defining the Myth of Capitalism:
Free-market capitalism is an unquestionably beneficial and moral economic system.
He traces the main lineaments of this idea, pointing out that those who believe it also tend to think that Capitalism was the maturing of a historical growth of economics into its perfect form. This growth culminates in what they think is the most evolved state of economic activity—that all markets should be free to operate as they will, without the intervention of government.
He then shows the slight difference between conservatives and liberals in America regarding their attitude toward Capitalism:
Almost everyone in America believes some form of this Myth. Conservatives live and die for it. Most of them are completely oblivious to any negative consequences that arise from Capitalism. Liberals too believe the myth, although some of them may be more circumspect about the negative consequences. But then they blame some error in the system or some bad actor. Ultimately, they too see nothing essentially wrong with the system. In their view, if something bad comes out of Capitalism it must be because the good system is being used badly.
Finally, he says that beginning tomorrow, we will see that this belief is utterly false. He promises to show us in the next installment that Capitalism is not at all what most Americans take it to be:
The Myth is as wrong as can be. Capitalism is intrinsically immoral; the immorality cannot be removed; and Capitalism only acts relatively well when its intrinsic immorality is controlled, restrained, and minimized.
You can read the whole post
here.
Tomorrow, Mr. George will demonstrate that Capitalism is intrinsically, and essentially, immoral.
I’ll be reporting back each day as a new installment appears.