A reader sent my article “Supporters of Capitalism Are Crazy, Says Harvard” to a friend and received the following response:
Ask him to show you a “free market” that has EVER worked for more than a brief period of time. It’s never happened in the history of the world, and it’s not because of evil government. Every “free market” has caused unacceptable consequences to the society it was attempted in and the result has been an attempt to reel it in with government controls. If this reality is accepted, then one must rationalize that there must be some form of control and regulation that is actually positive for the economy and the society that it serves. It is in this gray area that a binary thinker is incapable of rational thought….hence his use of insults and fallacious arguments to attempt to brow beat the reader to find his point credible. I am not impressed….
The reader wanted to know what he should say to this critic.
For one thing, note that my article was directed at a Harvard conference whose purpose was to understand the psychological roots of free-market thought. The conference sought to figure out why, given how bad a social system the free market is, people nevertheless continue to support it. Right away, then, the conference organizers insult and seek to psychoanalyze, instead of honestly engaging the ideas of, people with whom they disagree. So it’s a little odd that this critic is upset at me for allegedly calling people names, or whatever it is I am supposed to have done. Where is his equivalent outrage at the insults from Harvard? Nonexistent. It’s the usual double standard.
I wrote back to the reader (whose friend wrote the above):
What does he mean by “worked”? Why does he assume that the (unspecified) problems allegedly caused by the market are indeed caused by the market, or that coercive “solutions” would necessarily improve things? Sounds to me like he’s a fallacy factory. (And his misuse of the word “rationalize” is not a good sign.) Why bother with someone like this? He’ll absorb all your time.
How to answer stuff like this? That’s what I wrote my books for. Try Rollback, Meltdown, 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask, and The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.
Then there are videos like the one below, or my (audio-only) talk “
Half the time, your critic will be blaming the market for (1) the effects of general poverty, as when people think “capitalism” caused the seemingly impoverished condition of workers during the Industrial Revolution, or (2) the effects of previous government interventions. The latter case is especially true when interventionists try to blame the market for the boom-bust cycle, for unsound banking practices, etc.
Anyway, this video takes on some of the more common complaints:
