{"id":40426,"date":"2019-11-17T01:00:32","date_gmt":"2019-11-17T06:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=40426"},"modified":"2019-11-17T10:09:25","modified_gmt":"2019-11-17T15:09:25","slug":"qotd-socialist-beliefs-about-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/11\/17\/qotd-socialist-beliefs-about-capitalism\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Socialist beliefs about &#8220;capitalism&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 25px 0px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>The poor understanding of economic and political institution that Marx did so much to promote remains widespread today. &#8220;Progressive&#8221; and hard-left opponents of markets hold mistaken \u2013 or, at the very least, questionable \u2013 presumptions about reality, which include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Wealth is either fixed in amount, or, while it might be destroyed or diminished by certain human activities (such as war), if wealth grows this growth occurs largely independently of human ideas, choices, actions, and institutions;<\/li>\n<li>trade and commerce, therefore, are largely zero-sum \u2013 that is, each exchange situation pits a party who will win against one who will lose;<\/li>\n<li>trade and commerce, in turn, involve activities are thus, at best, suspect; trade and commerce too often reward greediness and duplicity while penalizing generosity and honesty;<\/li>\n<li>the &#8220;distribution&#8221; of wealth \u2013 whether conceived as financial flows or assets, or as access to real goods and services \u2013 is determined largely by power;<\/li>\n<li>prices set on markets are largely arbitrary; prices seldom play any role beyond determining how much one party &#8220;wins&#8221; from trade and how much the other party &#8220;loses.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>each of a handful of large groups of people, mostly as conceptualized by intellectuals with no understanding of economics, has its own &#8220;interests&#8221; \u2013 interests that are shared by all members of the group and that are at odds with the interests of other groups; for example, &#8220;labor&#8221; has interests that are are shared by all workers and that are at odds with the interests of &#8220;employers&#8221;;<\/li>\n<li>while the state can be captured by ill-intentioned people, the state \u2013 especially under unlimited majoritarian rule \u2013 is also the only possible savior of the powerless against the predations and frauds of the powerful;<\/li>\n<li>absent vigorous state intervention, ordinary people \u2013 people whose main asset is the value of their own labor \u2013 lack both the power to get their fair share of society&#8217;s wealth and the intelligence or self-discipline to use wisely whatever share of wealth they do manage to secure;<\/li>\n<li>social progress is achieved by the powerless grabbing power under the leadership of men and women of singular vision, intelligence, and courage; &#8220;the People&#8221; will be led to the Promised Land \u2013 can be led to the Promised Land \u2013 only if they faithfully follow their caring messiahs;<\/li>\n<li>those who argue in favor of free markets are either soulless mercenary cronies for the powerful propertied class or they are ideologically blinded dupes for this class; no intelligent and decent person could possibly deny the enormous benefits available to &#8220;the People&#8221; when the state is empowered to work on their behalf against the propertied few.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Don Boudreaux, <a href=\"http:\/\/cafehayek.com\/2017\/10\/some-links-1048.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Some Links&#8221;, <em>Caf\u00e9 Hayek<\/em><\/a>, 2017-10-08.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The poor understanding of economic and political institution that Marx did so much to promote remains widespread today. &#8220;Progressive&#8221; and hard-left opponents of markets hold mistaken \u2013 or, at the very least, questionable \u2013 presumptions about reality, which include: Wealth is either fixed in amount, or, while it might be destroyed or diminished by certain [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,25,84,53,41],"tags":[780,622,322,76,315],"class_list":["post-40426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-economics","category-government","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-communism","tag-ideology","tag-nannystate","tag-socialism","tag-wealth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-aw2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40426"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52805,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40426\/revisions\/52805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}