Like road signs, words are symbols. They have general meanings that our minds share, direct us to act or react in a certain way, and allow us to know what everyone else is talking about.
So what is the common meaning of "capitalism"? What has that symbol come to represent among every day people?
Last night after the Campaign for Liberty panel with Ron and Rand Paul I heard an unfavorable meaning of the word. It is a variation I hear all too often.
Leaving the hotel, I stepped past a group of smokers just outside the doors. "Watch this," a fellow said to the guy next to him, then made a bee line to one of the CPAC attendants standing a few feet away. (CPAC attendants are readily recognizable in this huge hotel; our registration ID cards hang conspicuously around our necks on a blue ribbon with "CPAC.org" written all over them. )
I surmised the fellow making his way to the CPAC attendant was not an attendant and interested in a confrontation, so I decided to stick around. I made a quick stop at the curb and acted like I was looking for a cab.
It was a one-sided conversation. Here's a paraphrase of what the offended party said:
"Some jerk just came up to me with a dollar bill and wanted to tell me about capitalism. You know what I think of when I hear 'capitalism'? I think of my 401K. You're a bunch of selfish jerks."
With that he stormed in the hotel.
From these pithy remarks, I am going to assume this fellow believes that the financial collapse of 2008 that precipitated a drastic fall in his 401 K was the fault of capitalism. What he believe capitalism to be is central to this belief; the word has come to symbolize, in his mind, something it actually is not.
So many people believe that drastic downturns and booms and bubbles and busts occur in the market naturally and that government and federal bureaucracies have nothing to do with these market anomalies. Somehow, amazingly, government boondoggles like Fannie and Freddie Mac and their whorish vote-catching politicians in Congress had nothing to do with the financial meltdown of 2008. What's worse, the Federal Reserve, ostensibly there to avoid bubbles and bust and irregularities in the market, gets a free pass, too.
Basically, the market had become anything but capitalistic. That is, it was so over manipulated, regulated, goaded and prodded for outside the market--government interference--that a meltdown became inevitable.
Sadly, blaming it all on free market capitalism was inevitable, too.
Educating more people on the fundamentals of capitalism, what it is and what it is not, would go far in coercing our politicians (who are ever-fearful of not being reelected) from continuing to put us on the same old Keynesian boom and bust cycles then cower behind and manipulate the public's mis-education of basic economics. That's getting very old.
It would have been wonderful to broach this discussion with the angry fellow, but he was intent on carrying on with his misapplies anger. He should be angry--just for the right reasons and at the actual culprits, not at the capitalistic system that is responsible for his own high standard of living.
If he only knew better, if only more people knew better--but that's our job.
(Back to CPAC.)
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